But back to botanist Engelmann — and the eye he’s keeping on the restoration.

Engelmann was born in 1809 and lived in St. Louis and near Belleville for a time. He and businessman philanthropist Henry Shaw were good friends. In fact, as Shaw decided to create a botanical garden that the public could enjoy on the grounds of his country home, Engelmann encouraged him to make it a place for scientific research as well. The garden, along with the Museum Building, opened in 1859.

Shaw had hired architect George Barnett to design his home on the estate, known as Tower Grove House, and he also hired him to design the 7,000-square-foot Museum Building . The building is modeled after one at the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in England. When Shaw died in 1889, his body lay in state inside the Museum Building. Barnett designed Shaw’s mausoleum near the building as well.

Engelmann’s face isn’t the only one workers recently discovered on the ceiling. As they knocked out more plaster, they found a portrait of Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish researcher who lived in the 1700s and is known as the father of modern taxonomy, or the system of classifying and naming organisms. The garden’s brick Linnean House, the oldest continually open public greenhouse west of the Mississippi River, is named after him. Barnett designed that building as well.