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Thomas A. Greene Memorial Museum, Milwaukee, WI

Photo: Freekee, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and resized.

Museums

Thomas A. Greene Memorial Museum

A mineral and fossil museum run by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Department of Geosciences.

Lapham Hall, 3209 N. Maryland Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53211 · Milwaukee, WI

About Thomas A. Greene Memorial Museum

The Greene Museum holds a large collection of fossils and minerals gathered largely by Milwaukee pharmacist and amateur geologist Thomas Arnold Greene in the 1880s and 1890s. Its fossils are mostly marine invertebrates from Silurian quarries near Milwaukee, and it holds specimens from the Schoonmaker Reef, a fossil reef described in 1862. The mineral holdings include rare pieces from around the world and part of the Washington County meteorite. The collection was donated to Milwaukee-Downer College in 1911, and the original museum building opened on campus in 1913. It was later moved into Lapham Hall, where most of the collection is stored in the basement and a small exhibit space called the Greene Gallery sits on the first floor. The museum was named a National Historic Landmark in 1993.

  • #fossils
  • #minerals
  • #geology
  • #university museum
  • #Milwaukee

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