#N2108 - Joseph Mailliard photograph, ca. 1916.

Rear view of the U-shaped North American Hall, the Academy's first building in Golden Gate Park. The large windows in the sun look into what is now Mineral Hall. The wing on the left housed Academy research offices and specimen collections, and the wing on the right was the bird exhibit hall. From 1917 until approximately 1982, this courtyard displayed a 75-foot blue whale skeleton housed in an open-sided wooden shed.