The Museums Annex was located on North University Ave. between the Ruthven Museum of Natural History and North Hall. The building originally served as the children’s ward of the University’s Homeopathic Hospital. It was constructed in 1919 for a cost of $32,322. Health Services took over the building in 1922, and it became the Museums Annex in 1940.

While the building served as the children’s ward of the hospital, this slide was an expedient escape route in the event of fire.

A narrow underground tunnel once connected the Museums Annex and North Hall, a throwback to the time when both buildings were part of the medical family.

The building had no elevator, but it featured wide stairways to accommodate hospital needs. It also included a dumbwaiter.

Young patients in the children’s ward of the hospital may have been lucky enough to visit the University’s miniature zoo, which was located nearby.

Health Services vacated the building in 1940. At that time, the Institute for Fisheries Research — along with the Great Lakes Laboratory of the Fish and Wildlife Service and several other museum disciplines — moved into the Museums Annex Building.

In 1930 scientists in the Institute for Fisheries Research published the group’s first research report: “Diseased Bass from Loon Lake, Iosco County.” Read about U-M’s long and prominent history of Great Lakes research.

This gear would have belonged to scientists working in the Institute for Fisheries Research. The University first allocated space for the institute in 1930.

Snakes? Mole-rats? Just another mystery.

A graduate student’s office door.

This melancholy space would be the ideal hideaway for a painter or a writer.

In the basement, O’Brien discovered a dark room that looked as though it had not been used in years.

Outdated equipment from a bygone era.

Timeless evidence that caffeine is the fuel of brilliance.

This pressed glass came from an interior door window. “It could make for a nice texture in Photoshop too,” O’Brien says.

Paper clips and keys to nowhere. We’ve all walked away from drawers like these…

The space where the Museums Annex and North Hall once stood will be the site of a 300,000-square-foot, $261-million biology building that will be connected to the Life Sciences Institute.