EveryMuseum.com - Orton Geological Museum / Orton Hall

The Orton Geological Museum has been located in historic Orton Hall, near the center of the Main Campus of The Ohio State University, since the building's completion in 1893. Both the building and the museum are named for Edward Orton Senior, the first president of the university. Present exhibits feature the geologic history of Ohio (showing its rocks, minerals, and fossils) but also include specimens from all over the world. Other exhibits display meteorites (including one that fell in Ohio), minerals, crystals, dinosaurs (including a full-sized replica of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull), fluorescent minerals, and mammoth and mastodon teeth. The centerpiece of the exhibit hall is the mounted skeleton of a giant ground sloth, one of four found in the state.

Orton Hall, one of the oldest remaining buildings on campus, opened in 1893 and is named after Dr. Edward Orton, Sr. who was Ohio State's first president, Professor of Geology 1873-1899, and Ohio's State Geologist from 1882 until his death in 1899. Orton Hall is a tribute to this man's dedicated service towards the understanding of the geology of Ohio.

From the clay tiles in the entrance hall to its walls and foundations, Oroton Hall is built of forty different Ohio building stones. In the outside walls, these stones are laid in stratigraphic order according to their relative positions in Ohio's bedrock. If you observe closely the capitals of the numbered columns in the entrance hall, you will see carvings of fossils, such as trilobites, as well as other objects such as the races of Man. The bell tower was dedicated in 1915 and contains 25,000 pounds of bells that can be heard regularly tolling across campus in the key of E flat. Encircling the top of the tower are 24 columns with gargoyle-like figures which are restorations of fossil animals.

Because of its unique architectural features, which have made it a campus landmark, Orton Hall has been entered into the National Register of Historic Places. It presently contains the Department of Geology and Mineralogy's offices and laboratories of Paleontology, Historical Geology and Sedimentology, the Orton Geological Museum, and the Orton Geological Library.