The Colby Trophy Room
Learn about the famous Colby Room at the Museum of Science
The Colby Trophy Room at the Boston Museum of Science is a unique room where you can view many prize animal mounts. The room is a replica of Colonel Franc is Colby Trophy Room in Hamilton, Massachusetts.
The room gives visitors a chance to see what the hunting life was like in the late 19th century
Ten Interesting Things about the Colby Trophy Room
- Colonel Francis T. Colby was a soldier, diplomat, and a big-game hunter.
- He died on July 30, 1953, and gave the museum $700,000 to build a replica of his trophy room. (At the time it was known as the Boston Society of Natural History.)
- If the Boston Museum of Science had not accepted the donation it would have gone to the Boone and Crockett Club of New York.
- The original room was smaller than the one at the museum - it was 20 by 40 feet. Clearly, the room in the museum is much bigger - in fact, it's about twice the size of the original room.
- He lived in Hamilton, Massachusetts and a house in Nairobi where he frequently visited.
- He shared various stories of the animals displayed in the room when people came to visit him. He never wrote them down - they might have made a great book. Many big-name visitors, with similar taste, would visit his house to see his well-decorated trophy room. Ernest Hemingway, Holt Collier, and other big-name game hunters visited the original trophy room.
- In the middle of the room, is a six-feet-long plaster cast model of an Indian rhino by notable Katherine W. Lane.
- In the original Museum designs, the room was to be placed on the third floor.
- Some of the Spears along with the side of the room still has poison on the tip.
- The museum recognized the large contribution that Colonel Francis Colby and name an annual award after him. The Francis Colby Award has bestowed annually on members of the Museum of Science family who have made extraordinary contributions of time, treasure, and talent to the Museum