UWM Thomas A. Greene Geological Museum

The Thomas A. Greene Geologic Museum displays a vast geological collection of one of Milwaukee’s great 19th century naturalists, Thomas A. Greene. This collection was recently awarded a prestigious designation by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) International Commission on Geoheritage as one of the most important geological collections in the world.

Thomas Arnold Greene (1827 – 1894) was a pharmacist and avocational geologist who moved to Milwaukee from Rhode Island in 1848. Throughout the 1880’s-1890’s, he amassed an impressive collection of approximately 75,000 minerals and fossils. He collected these specimens from local quarries, but also bought and traded for many that originated from localities worldwide. Most of the collection is regional—consisting of fossil animals that lived in the Milwaukee area during the Silurian Period approximately 420 million years ago. As a result, the Greene Museum maintains the most comprehensive collection of Silurian invertebrate fossils in North America (and possibly the world!).

In 1911, Thomas Greene’s descendants donated his collection to the predecessor of UWM, Milwaukee-Downer College. From 1913 through the mid 1990’s, the collection was stored and displayed at the Thomas A. Greene Memorial Museum building (3367 N Downer Ave.), designed by Alexander Eschweiler and registered in 1993 as a National Historic Landmark. The collection would later be moved to Lapham Hall, home to the UWM Department of Geosciences, where it remains to this day. While the bulk of the collection is stored in the basement, a selection of approximately 5000 fossils and minerals are on display in the first-floor exhibit space (affectionately called the ‘Greene Gallery’) for the educational benefit of the public and UWM students.