08/10/2026
The Last Full-Time Taxidermist of the American Museum of Natural History Had a Secret Workshop in Milltown!
For nearly a century, a modest storefront at 119 South Main Street in Milltown held one of the most remarkable (and least-known) workshops in New Jersey.
Schwendeman’s Taxidermy Studio wasn’t your average trophy shop. It was a three-generation family craft studio that helped shape some of the most famous dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
It started with Arthur Schwendeman, a boy who skipped school so often that his teacher bribed him with taxidermy lessons. He and his wife Lillian opened the studio in the 1938. Their son David grew up in the workshop, then went on to become the last full-time chief taxidermist the AMNH ever employed. For nearly 30 years he mounted birds, reptiles, mammals, and more that still greet visitors in the museum’s halls today.
David’s son Bruce continued the tradition into the third generation, running the same Main Street shop with the same old tools, the same dusty mounts staring from every corner, and the same insistence that real taxidermy is equal parts art and science.
The studio was pure time capsule: business cards dispensed from an alligator’s jaws, shelves packed with specimens, and the quiet knowledge that many of the animals on display had been prepared with museum-level precision right there in little Milltown.
Today the shop is closed. The era of the Schwendeman family taxidermists has ended.
But the work they left behind still teaches us something important: the best taxidermy doesn’t just preserve an animal. It freezes a moment of life so carefully that it can educate generations long after the animal is gone.
😆 Fun fact: They did not work on pets or humans, but but David was once asked if he would mount a dead man sitting at his player piano. David denied the request. LOL
Next time you walk through the bird or mammal halls at the American Museum of Natural History, take a second look. There’s a good chance you’re seeing the quiet craftsmanship of a Milltown family that turned a storefront into a living link between New Jersey and one of the world’s great museums.
What local history gems have you driven past a hundred times without realizing the story behind them?
Source: NY Times, Wikipedia
