Alcohol House

Nestled under the towering dinosaurs on display in the Carnegie Natural History Museum, a room exists which holds more specimens than for view to the public in the whole rest of the museum. You can find its entrance just beyond a quaint office space to the left of the portal entry behind the museum. Quickly making its presence felt with a strong smell of ethanol, its initial dark corridor gives off an eerie vibe. Entering the first floor, tanks of turtles can be found in cabinets along the walls, and shelved in the middle of the floor, each presented with a list of species. Quickly, you can tell this space is primarily for work. Empty jars, boxes of gloves, gaskets and identification tags are strewn across tables, not to mention the massive jugs of ethanol mixtures ready to preserve new specimens. The visual stimuli is certainly overwhelming, each species with a story behind it, the collector who preserved it, locality data and the year it was found.

Walking up the grand marble staircase to the second floor, you are welcomed by shelves of jars in multiple sizes, accommodating the beasts that resided within them. Snakes, lizards, frogs and more all occupied the shelves, organized by species name and locality. Although located in Pittsburgh, PA, Carnegie has one of the most diverse collections in the world and with a quick look you’ll find specimens from Indonesia, Uganda, Japan and all stretches of the world. The third floor boasts the same presentation, up a spiral staircase you’ll find mostly frogs, as pictured above. Unless you want to flick on the dusty FM radio from the mid-1900’s sitting in the corner, you’ll be joined in silence, surrounded by thousands of jarred creatures, some that if were alive, could kill you very swiftly.

Maintaining these specimens is crucial to their preservation, checking percent alcohol levels in every jar which varies with the temperature of the room and switching jars when more specimens are introduced or the ethanol needs to be changed. One major project to preserve the data of each specimen is transferring paper records online, which is definitely scary for some older curators who question the security of the internet but understand the danger of natural disasters wiping out most to all of their paper records stored in the museum. Be wary to crop out some extra time in your schedule when visiting the alcohol house, you may want to stay a little longer than expected, attempting to soak in the international collection of diverse species. If you want to get an even closer look, the museum’s friendly curation staff are always looking for volunteers to help with maintenance and transferring records online, you could even have your name on their database!