Chancellor and astronomy professor F.A.P. Barnard acquired funding from the state to build an observatory completed in 1859 (the building is now named in his honor). The photograph print on the left is from a glass plate negative made circa 1860. Barnard began purchasing a truly impressive array of astronomical and scientific instruments from Paris and elsewhere by 1857 (the E. & G.W. Blunt sextant purchased during this spending spree is on loan from the University Museums). Barnard also ordered the largest known telescope at that time with a lens made in England and assembled in Massachusetts. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Harvard College acquired the contraband telescope instead.

In 1893, the university finally obtained a large telescope from the Grubb Astronomical Works in Dublin, Ireland. Installed in Barnard Observatory, the twin equatorial telescope had one lens for direct visual observation and another lens for photographs.

Kennon Observatory was built in 1939 during the Great Depression with funds from the Public Works Administration. The university named the building in honor of the Physics and Astronomy department chair Dr. William L. Kennon after his death in 1952.