Former Thayer Bird Museum and Auc Art Gallery, Lancaster, Massachusetts

The Thayer Bird Museum, on Main Street in South Lancaster, was designed by architect Henry Forbes Bigelow and built in 1903 for ornithologist John Eliot Thayer II, who needed a place to house his vast collection of North American bird specimens. Even though Lancaster was off the beaten path, the museum attracted more than 10,000 visitors in its first six years. In 1974, the building was sold to Atlantic Union College and is now the Mabel Bartlett Art Gallery. Much of the Thayer collection was donated to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at his alma mater, Harvard University.

Courtesy of Lancaster Historical Society