Cleaning the Elephants

The elephant exhibit gets cleaned by vacuums and feather dusters at the American Museum of Natural History on Feb. 28, 1951. It’s part of spring cleaning at the 25-acre museum, a process requiring 135 workers and a month of scrubbing elephants, dinosaurs, totem poles, teepees and 94,000 square feet of glass.

The Times wrote on March 1, 1951, “The 135-man corps of the custodian’s department of the American Museum of Natural History has come to a time of the year at which housekeepers the world over find themselves when a light dusting won’t do any longer; the place needs a good turning-out.”

“Armed with dust rags, vacuum cleaners, cleaning compounds, brushes, pails and mops, the spring-cleaning crew began its sorties, discreetly conducted because of the presence of visitors, to the heights of the dinosaur and to the base of the walls,” The Times wrote.

The workers “brush off the brontosaurus, the elephants, and the several-yard-high totem poles in public view, often to the delight of small fry … The crew is thankful that uncounted dust-catchers, like masks and other carvings and feathered and woven relics, are sealed under glass.”