It is a crenellated stone structure built from 1876 to 1880 to house the "mineral, geological, natural, and man-made curiosities" of Alfred University's second president Jonathan Allen.

The building was originally started by Professor Ida Kenyon, who wished to make a private residence that resembled the castles of her native Germany.

The Federal Writers Project described the museum as exhibiting a unique collection of "rare shells, mounted birds and animals, Indian artifacts and pioneer agricultural implements, early American pottery, Steigel and Sandwich glass, and the finest workmanship in the ceramic arts".

[4] In 2008, artist Lenka Clayton devoted time to several projects that sought to call attention to the Steinheim Museum's absent collection.

[5] Among these projects were: ""7,000 Stones," that collected a symbolic pile of stones- numbered as if part of a collection- which were then discarded; "Found Instructions 1", that used an inventory sheet of the dying collection- found in the university's Special Collections- to create a modern display; and "Amnesty for the Museum," where she put a call out for the missing artifacts of the collection in order to photograph them in their current environment.