The Natural History Museum is located on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. Its original collection, comprising dried plants, and animal and human skeletons, was purchased by the British Government from Sir Hans Sloane and housed in Montagu House, Bloomsbury, in 1756, which was the home of the British Museum. In 1864, land in South Kensington was purchased and Alfred Waterhouse hired to design the new museum in Romanesque style. The new museum opened in 1881. Both the interiors and exteriors of the building incorporate terracotta tiles and bricks that feature relief sculptures of flora and fauna, with living and extinct species featured within the west and east wings respectively.