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The National Museum of Natural History

OH Ellis L. Yochelson

U62W279
1985X

75 Years in the Natural H istory Building

The National Museum of Natural History

— “ir ined PR ae 2 LR

Ab er

75 Years in the Natural History Building

The National Museum of Natural History

Published on the occasion of the Diamond Jubilee of the Natural History Building (1910-1985)

for the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, by the Smithsonian Institution Press

City of Washington, 1985

75 Years in the Natural History Building

Ellis L. Yochelson, U.S. Geological Survey Edited by Mary Jarrett

FRONT COVER: Looking north from the Mall at 11:01 A.M.
May 11, 1909, just after the last stone was set on the south porch
of the Natural History Building.

BACK COVER: 1920 view of east court and dome looking

northwest.

HALF-TITLE PAGE: Sketch of building showing three main wings
and smaller ranges, enclosing the courts. The exhibits were
assigned essentially as suggested here, but the grounds when
completed were far less elaborate.

TIPLe PAGE: Setting the last stone on the south porch at 11:00
A.M. May 11, 1909. This completed the heavy construction on the

new building.

PART LT OPENER: Dome and south porch of the new National
Museum still under construction. About six months later, in the
summer of 1910, the collections started being moved across the

Mall.

PART 2 OPENER: The Féenykovi elephant Loxodontus on its
opening night, May 6, 1959.
PART 3 OPENER: The Natural History Building today, looking

west along the Mall and Constitution Avenue. Photo by J. Tinsley,
July 1985.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yochelson, Ellis Leon, 1928-

The National Museum of Natural History: 75 years in
the Natural History Building.

Bibliography: p.

Supt. of Docs. no.: SI 3.2:N21/2

1. Nauonal Museum of Natural History—History.
I. Jarrett, Mary. II. Title.
QH70.U62W279 1985 507’.4°0153 85-600180
ISBN 87474-989-1

(eo) Phe paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence
— and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines

for Book Longevity of the Council and Library Resources.

Book design by Christopher Jones

Contents

GTC WOU per tee eerecn etait eines sie tees Peneeae ersten Saas 6

Pi RAGE mentee ree eee menor tence ecahan eens SPP ena noma ee tes 8

CMT OOO Ry Geer, scat oe tate sitaoes ste pre atcaawannusten tacad ci gsatradtiSeas: )

Part One: The Structure
Chapter 1 The United States National Museum............0.0.cee eee 15
Chapter? “Whe New Butlin iisi.tes aiiictes caverande toa tacteintsnon age aac taeamhunisines 23
Chapter h.> tunilclime attire BiG eer siseasesaartt nsec sialon deh atdes'seadestiseeaaees once 29
Chapier, = “Movie into: Valllnallav ics cdsce-scosuateasuaizeainaanitaiece dane cuca 35
Ghapier >) ‘the NationalsGallery of AVG sii.) sisi niiisie ited: 4]
Chapicn6 " -AtiiliateduO re ani Zan Os oie vcasscetec.casces Sashes Aessnaens saevestactevaiesente 47
Part Two: The Exhibits
Chapier 7. iNew Aoxhibits, New, OF NCES ic. te ance S catch narae seeded 57
Chapter 8 ‘The Great War and Its Lingering Aftermath..........000....0.. 65
Ghapien 92 CVINGen Me BIA ie, or oeease waacascanacuett ttdaninacessieorssaataage macsnasteettensatenset aA
Cia piers OO NNO CEN at Ne eee, serne a ete ae eres acing ens seen Sct ata SSS eo nee 79
Chapter 11 New Faces, New Funds, New Exhibits .............0ccccceeeeeeees 85
Chapter 12 lew Wings and: a New Hlepham 2. .c.ciec.ce.t)erstessevesazenccseoe 99
Chapierd > Bis science: -Deep Space, Deep Waters -cccscc:sacsceseceess ahs tae ‘bef
Chapter ta “Moderine Wms ss isesca (8c. is oa etontxpneieieg ler Siakway Vivseessusarcigay sales
Part Three: The Museum

Ghapicn > “Museum -ACimim Sina OM; racncasrssssesdaniedacetcscanveteensantauearava rns 129
Chapicelo” VIG SCleIMINe Stalls aaa, eaeere 2 .27-hecasissaeye cere teeianesaciers ietsanta 137
Chapicr die, Siiared PaAciiaes ics. c5. cert. cca 7. candies tec sed eases asee aS 147
Chapter JS™ Shops and’ Maintenance x .25..2cosehee eset edenssncainns sagansnngacenrcasavesen 159
Chapter 9.“ Orblersemctine BUM 52 rs naiece ace vondsrer dost hiiserceaonanncsee dies: 165
Chapter 20> WOE: Y 1SitOTs . ticasrasrtoasacisepacapseonnsnersessenncsenevinswesmisiysaerontswts sess 7
Giapien 2. (Publics PlACes jin secstere-seecsasnctaveaunine sear rasehansnePinga ses coieimeden vers 179
Ghopter 22. Outside Chic Bil anne: erecta crtoce cs sessccsee eee sees csactee ease 19]
Chavier 23> Mine GOUCCtOIMS:. 2. aisgsesassde eres sstcs songns vss serens guscas a1 iSesa es gees ens 199

ISSO te apt Mee ee PTT OE PO DPT ae ree 207

Imdex:or Persomals Nammesis-cs.c2-ccea1scs cess eesneca se soere tie aesenaroes 214

Sources Of [llustiratiOms scscccececcceecsceeccsccescnscecevcatecseovessecasesesess 216

Foreword

his year we are celebrating the Diamond Jubilee
of the Natural History Building, which first opened
its doors to the public on March 17, 1910. The new
building represented a major advance for the Smith-
sonian Institution, vastly expanding its space and op-
portunities for collection storage, exhibition, and re-

search, and it ushered in a whole new era in the life of

our already well-established museum, known today as
the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH).
During the past seventy-five years, the Natural History
Building, familiarly called the “NHB” by its residents,
has undergone many changes to keep pace with the
growth of its activities, which have expanded and changed
constantly to stay abreast of the extraordinary advances
in science and the ever-expanding need for public dis-
plays and activities. Phus the building and its lite have
been inextricably bound to each other through the years.
Over these seventy-five years we have seen upwards of
150 million visitors come through our doors, 50 million
in the last ten years alone, and we expect more than
six million in 1985. Our collections for research and
display now number about 100 million.

The idea for this book first took shape in a chance
conversation that I had with the author, Dr. Ellis L.
Yochelson, at our Museum’s Christmas Party in De-
cember 1983. While discussing ways to celebrate the
seventy-fifth anniversary of the NHB in 1985, Ellis,

who has always had a keen interest in and sense of

history, suggested that a book be written on the history
of the building since 1910. I immediately seized on the
suggestion, and a project was born—with Ellis himself
as author. As a long-time resident of the building who
not only knew much of the history himself but also was
a scientific colleague and personal friend of several of
the NHB’s oldest citizens, Ellis was an ideal choice.
Furthermore, as a member of the resident paleonto-
logical staff of the Geological Survey of the United
States Department of the Interior, one of the longest-
running scientific affiliates with the NMNH, he could
bring a unique perspective to bear on the history of
the building. Although always a loyal advocate of the
Museum, he could take a more detached view than one
of our own staff, and at the same time he understood
implicitly the symbiotic relationships that have always
characterized the associations between the scientists of
the NMNH and of the several affiliated agencies that
have long had research units in the building.

We all are enormously indebted to Ellis Yochelson
for the Herculean job that he did in writing this book
within virtually impossible deadlines. From the outset,
he wisely decided that he could not bring the building
to life without telling the story of the people who worked
here and of the activities and events that have punc-
tuated the history of the building. It is, therefore, much
more than a history of the building: it is a history of
the Museum.

Dr. Yochelson has given us a charming book, full of

fascinating anecdotes and his own dry wit. He would
be the first to point out that it is written from his own
perspective as a personal chronicle. He was not asked
to write an official history, and the book should not be
read on that assumption. Many, but by no means all,
of the guiding figures in the Museum’s history appear
in these pages, and the author does not pretend to
emphasize each in proportion to his or her importance.
It was never our intention that the book would incor-
porate all employees past or present, and Ellis has had
complete freedom to emphasize personalities as he saw
fit. In a companion volume to this book, the pictorial
Directory published in March 1985, all present NNUNH
staff and associated employees—about 1,250—are fea-
tured.

I am indebted to many persons for their help in
making this book possible, including some, no doubt,
of whom I am unaware. Certain persons deserve special
mention. Without the full cooperation of Richard Z.
Poore, Chief of the Geological Survey’s Branch of Pa-
leontology and Stratigraphy, this book never could have
been written by Dr. Yochelson, a U.S.G.S. employee
under his charge. Many present staff members re-
viewed all or parts of the manuscript. I am grateful to
the departmental chairmen for soliciting these reviews.
The chairmen at the time were: Robert F. Fudali (Min-
eral Sciences), W. Ronald Heyer (Vertebrate Zoology),

Foreword

Leshe W. Knapp (Smithsonian Oceanographic Sorting
Center), Mark M. Littler (Botany), lan G. Macintyre
(Paleobiology), Wayne N. Mathis (Entomology), Clyde
F. E. Roper (Invertebrate Zoology), and Douglas H.
Ubelaker (Anthropology). Especially detailed and thor-
ough reviews were prepared by Frederick M. Bayer,
Fenner A. Chace, Jr., Joseph Ewan, Pamela M. Henson,
Karl V. Krombein, Curtis W. Sabrosky, and Victor G.
Springer. Essential technical work in the preparation
of the final copy was performed by Anne Curtis, Bar-
bara Gautier, IT’. Gary Gautier, Ella Giesey, Carole Lee
Kin, and Joan B. Miles. Patricia Geeson, Victor E. Krantz,
and James H. Wallace, Jr., rendered indispensable help
in the process of gathering pictures for the book. Ann
Rossilli designed the Diamond Jubilee logo.

Finally, I am especially indebted to Stanwyn G. She-
tler, Assistant Director for Programs, for reviewing the
entire manuscript in detail and guiding the book through
the many stages of editing to publication on my behalf;
to Mary Jarrett, for her painstaking and exemplary
final editing of the book; to Hope G. Pantell of the
Smithsonian Institution Press, for her vital editorial
guidance during production; and to Christopher Jones,
for his pleasing design of the book.

RICHARD S. FISKE, Director
National Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institution

July 1985

Preface

LD-TIME TOUR GUIDES IN WASHINGTON used to

like to say, “On the north side of the Mall, opposite
the Smithsonian Castle, the large granite building with
the green dome on top is the United States National
Mausoleum.” In a way the building did look like an
oversize cemetery monument, and it does contain many
dead objects, but there is nothing funereal about the
place. Since March 17, 1910, when the public was first
invited to see the inside of a not-yet-completed building,
people have been enjoying, more or less continuously,
this national museum and its exhibits.

Over the years a variety of names have been applied
to the structure. “Phe United States National Museum,”
“the New National Museum,” “the National Museum
of Natural History,” and “the Natural History Build-
ing” have much in common, yet each is a shade dif-
ferent, indicating a stage in the development of the
nation’s museums. The building itself has changed
through time. It has housed trivial and significant ob-
jects, uninspired and fascinating exhibits, and, always,
dedicated people. I have tried to write a little about all
these subjects—that is, about space and time and some
of the people who occupied both dimensions. — ,

One seldom finds an opportunity to use the word
“concatenation.” But had the United States Geological
Survey not hired me in 1952 to work at the Natural
History Building of the United States National Mu-
seum, and had I not been involved with the Geological
Survey centennial in 1979, and had I not met National
Museum of Natural History director Richard Fiske at
the Invertebrate Zoology Christmas party in 1983, and
had the present Chief Geologist, Robert Hamilton, not
worked with Fiske when both were on the Geological
Survey, I would never have heard of the anniversary
of the Museum building, nor would I have been given
the time to write about its history. When it became
evident that the tme allotted was not going to be enough,

my branch chief, Richard Z. Poore, permitted me to
maintain the Geological Survey tradition of meeting a
commitment.

William Massa, with the aid of his colleagues in the
Smithsonian Archives, invariably brought me the pa-
pers or photographs I requested, and then searched
around on his own to find the items he knew I really
needed. Without the help of Victor Kranz and, through
him, a whole host of people in photographic services
throughout the Institution, there would be no illustra-
tions.

Because the Museum has no central photographic
archive, tracking down negatives and identifications for
old pictures posed special problems. Prints for which
negatives could not be found were copied, but some of
them, of course, may have been derived from even
earlier copies. Photo negative numbers are given at the
end of the book.

Almost none of the Smithsonian’s photographs are
capuoned, and before 1975 scarcely any bore a date.
If the information given for a picture seems vague or
incomplete, it is because no further data were available.

Honesty forces me to say that I enjoy talking. In past
years I have had the privilege of speaking with Sec-
retaries Abbot, Wetmore, Carmichael, and other fine
gentlemen and ladies no longer present. During a six-
month period, I conversed with about a quarter of the
people currently on the staff of the Museum and its
affiliated agencies in an attempt to determine how the
Museum has run and is running. It was far more stim-
ulating and informative than reading eighty-five years’
worth of annual reports. In particular I owe a major
debt to Ed Henderson and to “Coop” for advice and
recollections, and for first paying attention to me in
1944. If I did not get it right after all this assistance,
the fault lies with me.

Date
May 13, 1878

May 17, 1878
1879

1881

August 19, 1887

November 18, 1887

September 6, 1896
January 27, 1897

July 1, 1897

July 1898

January 30, 1903
June 15, 1904
February 22, 1906
January 23, 1907
August 11, 1909
October 15, 1909
March 17, 1910
June 1, 1910
June, 1911
June 20; 1911
October 8, 1911
October, 1917
July 16, 1918

November 1, 1918
April, 1919

July 1, 1920
April 1, 1925

Chronology

Event

Joseph Henry, first Secretary of Smithsonian Institution,
dies.

Spencer Fullerton Baird appointed second Secretary.

Name “United States National Museum” first used by
Congress.

National Museum (Arts and Industries) building opens
after use for Cleveland Inaugural Ball.

Secretary Baird dies.
Samuel Pierpont Langley appointed third Secretary.
Assistant Secretary George Brown Goode dies.

Charles Doolittle Walcott appointed Acting Assistant
Secretary in charge of U.S. National Museum.

National Museum organized into three departments:
Anthropology, W. H. Holmes, head; Biology, F. W.
True, head; and Geology, G. P. Merrill, head.

Richard Rathbun appointed Assistant Secretary in charge
of U.S. National Museum.

Funds for new building appropriated by Congress.
Ground broken for New National Museum.
Secretary Langley dies.

Charles Doolittle Walcott appointed fourth Secretary.
Staff begins to move collections into new building.
Heating boilers fired.

New National Museum opened to public.

Holmes again appointed head of Anthropology.
Leonhard Stejneger appointed second head of Biology.
Building formally completed.

Sunday-afternoon visiting hours begin.

Bureau of War Risk Insurance moves into building.

Building closed for use by Bureau of War Risk
Insurance. Richard Rathbun dies.

W. de C. Ravenel appointed assistant to the Secretary, in
charge of U.S. National Museum.

Building reopened to public.
National Gallery of Art formed, with Holmes as director.
Alexander Wetmore appointed Assistant Secretary.

February 9, 1927
Fall 1927
January 10, 1928
1929

October 29, 1929
June 19,1930
1930

April 1931

June 30, 1934
1940

December 7, 1941
June 30, 1944
January 12, 1945
October 23; 1946
July 31, 1947

May 26, 1948

1949 (2)
December 1952
January 2, 1953
Fall 1955

July 1, 1957

February 4, 1958

August 1958
May 13, 1960
January 1962
1960

1963

July 1, 1963
October 15, 1963
January 31, 1964

February 1, 1964
February 1, 1965

July 1, 1965
July 1.1965

Summer 1965

September 16-19, 1965

March 1966

March 24, 1969

Secretary Walcott dies.

Rotunda closed.

Charles Greeley Abbot appointed fifth Secretary.
Decking put in east range, ground floor.

Rotunda reopened.

Wings authorized by Congress.

War Collection moved to Arts and Industries.
Decking of west range and west north range begins.
Heating and electrical plants cease operations.
Conversion to alternating current begins.

America enters World War II.

Secretary Abbot retires.

Alexander Wetmore appointed sixth Secretary.
100th anniversary of Smithsonian Institution noted.

Department of Biology divided into departments of
Botany and Zoology.

A. Remington Kellogg appointed Director, U.S. National
Museum.

Ice plant ceases operation.

Secretary Wetmore retires.

Leonard Carmichael appointed seventh Secretary.
Junior League begins docent tours in Museum.

U.S. National Museum divided into Museum of History
and ‘Technology and Museum of Natural History.

A. Remington Kellogg appointed Assistant Secretary.

A. C. Smith appointed Director, Museum of Natural
History.

Funds for east wing construction appropriated by
Congress.

T. Dale Stewart appointed Director, Museum of Natural
History.

Construction begins on east wing.

Construction begins on west wing.

Department of Entomology formed from Division of
Entomology.

Department of Geology divided into departments of
Paleobiology and Mineral Sciences.

Secretary Carmichael retires.
S. Dillon Ripley appointed eighth Secretary.

Bureau of American Ethnology and Department of
Anthropology merge to form Smithsonian Office of
Anthropology.

Smithsonian Office of Ecology formed.

Department of Zoology divided into departments of
Invertebrate and Vertebrate Zoology.

Department of Botany moved to Museum from Castle.
200th anniversary of birth of James Smithson celebrated.
Richard S. Cowan appointed Director, Museum of
Natural History.

Official name becomes National Museum of Natural
History.

Chronology

September 26, 1971
November 16, 1971
January 15, 1973

1973

September 16, 1973
December 17, 1973
March 5, 1974
1975

1975

October 1975
August (?) 1975
July 1976

1976
December 1976
Fall 1978

May 30, 1979

December 7, 1979
January 1980

August 1980

February 9, 1981
March 1981

July 15, 1981
May 16, 1983
September 17, 1984

July 10, 1985

125th anniversary of Smithsonian Institution.

Baird Auditorium dedicated.

Porter M. Kier appointed Director, National Museum of

Natural History.

“Rearticulation” returns building management, exhibits,
and educational activities to directorship of Museum.
Former Secretary Carmichael dies.

Former Secretary Abbot dies.

Discovery Room opens.

Smithsonian Oceanographic Sorting Center becomes part

of Museum.

Office of Anthropology abolished; Department re-
established.

Escalator installed in foyer.

Osteo-Preparation Laboratory built in east courtyard.
West Court building completed.

Greenhouse built in east courtyard.

Naturalist Center opens in West Court building.
Inventory program begins in Museum.

Kier leaves directorship; James F. Mello appointed
Acting Director.

Former Secretary Wetmore dies.

Richard C. Fiske appointed Director, National Museum
of Natural History.

Constitution Avenue entrance modified for physically
handicapped.,

Work begins on Museum Support Center.

Link Port facility, in Fort Pierce, Florida, becomes part
of National Museum of Natural History.

Evans Gallery opens in foyer.

Museum Support Center dedicated.

Secretary Ripley retires; Robert McCormick Adams takes

office as ninth Secretary.
Fiske leaves directorship; James C. Tyler appointed
Acting Director.

Part One

The
Structure

eee eN NENTS comin)

_ az — ee

Chapter I

United States
National Museum

LTHOUGH THE STORY OF THE SMITHSONIAN has

been told many times, it is a good story that de-
serves retelling from a slightly different angle. In brief,
the Institution was created by an Act of Congress in
1846 to execute the will of the English chemist and
mineralogist James Smithson, who had bequeathed his
entire fortune to the United States “to found at Wash-
ington ... an establishment for the increase and dif-
fusion of knowledge among men.” Although Congress
had settled on science, art, and history as the areas of
knowledge to be pursued, the outline was a vague one.
The Institution’s first Secretary, Joseph Henry, wanted
to support research and publications, but not to have
the Institution actively involved in gathering collections
or developing a public museum. The Board of Regents
did insist upon an impressive Smithsonian building,
and in 1847 construction began on “the Castle,” located
on the south side of the Mall with its main entrance
centered on Tenth Street.

Three years later, the overworked Henry hired young
and energetic Spencer F. Baird as his assistant. In Baird,
natural history found a powerful advocate. He was a
prodigious collector as well as a master at persuading
others to collect for him. Historians argue as to whether
Henry’s original objections to a museum were swayed
by the force of Baird’s arguments or by the weight of
his collections.

There was no formal founding of the United States
National Museum, but in 1858 large government-owned
collections from the moribund National Institute were
transferred to the Castle from the Patent Office build-
ing (now the National Portrait Gallery and National
Museum of American Art). One of Henry’s concerns
was guarding the Smithsonian endowment; he was aware

Installing totem poles in the United States National
Museum (now the Arts and Industries Building), possibly
mm the early 1880s. The onlookers may be Samuel P.
Langley and Otts T. Mason. Donated from the
Philadelphia Centennial exhibit, the totem poles were
accessioned in 1876. The one in the center is currently on
display at the north end of Hall 8.

of what a financial drag a museum could be, having
seen the cost of collection maintenance lead to the ruin
of the National Institute.’ Before agreeing to accept
the collections, Henry had made certain that federal
money would be available for their maintenance. In
1857 (and every year since) Congress appropriated the
funds. A Guide to the Smithsonian Institution and National
Museum was published in 1859, but it was not until 1870
that Henry used the name National Museum in the
Annual Report, and not until four years later that Con-
gress used the term in an appropriations bill.”

Henry’s insistence on federal support for federal col-
lections had several interesting consequences. The
Smithsonian continues as a semiprivate institution, but
because it administers government funds, its museum
employees are civil servants just like employees of the
Agriculture, Commerce, or Interior departments, with
the same rules and regulations to follow. Perhaps the
most important point is that the museum is public prop-
erty: Anyone may enter to see the exhibits; anyone may
enter without paying a fee. Henry’s recognition that
the federal government should maintain a museum, in
the same sense that the government should make a
survey of the coasts or investigate how to make crops
grow better, was a major development whose ramifi-
cations continue to this day.

Centennial Exposition Exhibits

The approaching 1876 Centennial Exposition at Phil-
adelphia was to be a great event. Because there was no
working space in the Castle, a small, temporary brick
building was constructed to the west of it in 1875, near
where the Freer Gallery of Art now stands. There Baird
assembled a crew—including his protégé George Brown
Goode—to help plan and build exhibits. The Smith-
sonian had a noteworthy display in Philadelphia, and
Baird coaxed many of the other exhibitors to donate
their materials to the federal government.

As might be expected, these donations changed the
problem of getting more material into the enormously
crowded Castle from difficult to impossible. “Tempo-
rary storage space had to be obtained by taking over a

pre-Civil War armory situated in a neighborhood long
since eradicated by urban renewal, between Sixth and
Seventh on B Street, SW.’

Without too much prodding, Congress agreed to give
the National Museum a building of its own. Ground
was broken on the east side of the Castle on April 17,
1879. The square brick structure was a cheap one, cost-
ing only $315,400. Familiar now as the Arts and In-
dustries Building, it houses a facsimile of the 1876 Ex-
position put together for the nation’s Bicentennial. A
reconstruction of the Smithsonian Institution display
may be seen on the east side of the south hall.’

On March 4, 1881, the nearly completed United States
National Museum building was used for James A. Gar-
field’s Inaugural Ball. After the bunting was taken down,
the floors swept, and a few minor repairs made, the
building was opened to the public. For the first ime
there was some additional space for permanent ex-
hibits.

George Brown Goode
Meanwhile, Secretary Henry had died. In 1878 Baird
succeeded him and eventually promoted George Brown
Goode to Assistant Secretary, in charge of the National
Museum. Goode, who had come to the Institution in
1873, was by training an ichthyologist. While he never
put the fishes entrrely behind him, he rapidly became
a “museum man.” When the Centennial Exposition in-
spired a whole series of major fairs and shows, Goode
sent exhibits to them. In his tme he was widely re-
garded as the New World’s leading specialist in museum
administration and in exhibit preparation, which he
developed into a field in itself. After Baird’s death in
1887, Samuel Pierpont Langley, an astronomer, be-
came Secretary of the Smithsonian. He was not partic-
ularly interested in collections, but Goode, being steeped
in the Baird tradition, continued to acquire material.
Most of it went into the National Museum, but the
Castle retained a sizeable display, described in a con-
temporary account:

Case after case through one of its great halls is
filled with birds of all feathers, mounted so
skillfully that they exhibit not only the
characteristic poses of the birds but in many cases
their habits in life. They vary in size from the
smallest humming bird to the largest ostrich... .
Another large hall is devoted to insects collected
from an equally-wide area and presenting as great
a diversity in size and color. ... Here also is a
marvelous collection of birds’ eggs, varying in size
all the way from the hemeopathic pellet to a
football. The collection of shells, of sponges, of
coral, and other curious organisms of the sea is
enormous.’

Goode as administrator delineated three roles he saw
for a museum. He recognized that, first, it served as a

museum of record; and if material is to serve as a stan-
dard of comparison, it must be kept safely. Today we
might refer to this as a data bank of objects. Second,
Goode noted the museum of research; and people who
work in science, just as in any other field, must have
the proper facilities. Today we might refer to this as a
research institute, but Goode made clear in his various
writings that study of the collections, not abstract theo-
rizing, was what he referred to as research. Finally,
there was the museum of education; and without col-
lections, museums have no objects to exhibit. Today as
always, the display halls are what the average visitor
considers a museum.

There are examples of museums that, without any
collections, do well at one or another of these various
functions. As Goode saw it, however, the basic reason
for a museum was to accumulate and maintain collec-
uons. Collections were like the platform of a stool, with
the three functions Goode distinguished acting as the
legs. The trick was—and still is—to keep these “legs”
in perfect balance. Because this is almost impossible,
one aspect of the history of the Smithsonian Institution
has been the emphasis on different museum functions
at different mes. None of the three approaches has
ever been ignored.

Goode knew that this new building was incapable of
showing the diversity of nature and the handiwork of
man in a coherent manner, let alone storing the moun-
tains of natural-history specimens that kept piling up
in Washington. In his Annual Report of 1882, Secretary
Baird acknowledged “the inadequacy of the Museum
building, then scarcely more than a year old, to house
the rapidly increasing national collections.”° One of the
basic facts of museology is that there is never sufficient
space to house the collections. Regardless of this, the
dedicated museum worker brings them in.

In the course of his day-to-day work, Goode devel-
oped many ot the techniques still used in the Museum.
He improved the accessioning and cataloguing pro-
cedures, standardized case and drawer sizes, issued in-
structions on collecting methods, and oversaw a myriad
of other seldom-considered details. Goode died at the
age of forty-five, almost certainly from overwork.’

“The death of Secretary Baird in 1887, while a serious
blow ... was felt less by the Museum force in general
than was that of Dr. Goode in 1896,” the head of the
Department of Geology wrote in the 1920s. “The loss
of the last named was seemingly quite irreparable and
for a time created a panic among those who had been
looking forward to a life profession in Museum work
under his guidance and with his cooperation.”®

George Brown Goode summed up his lifetime of
experience in a one-sentence aphorism that to this day
is quoted by museum authorities seeking increases in
their budgets. He wrote, in capitals: “A FINISHED
MUSEUM IS A DEAD MUSEUM AND A DEAD MU-
SEUM IS A USELESS MUSEUM.”?

The Structure

Office space in the balcony of
the Smithsonian Castle’s
Great Hall, probably well
before 1910. The specimens
being studied are mollusk

shells.

Hall of Fisheries in the
Smithsonian Castle, some-
where between 1880 and

1910. The life-size models of
the octopus and the giant
squid were moved to the new
National Museum, where
they remained on exhibit
until the 1950s. Later they
were tra nsferred to storage al
Silver Hill, Maryland, but
they lost some plaster in
moving and eventually

were discarded.

The United States National Museum 17

toward the Capitol.

Charles Doolittle Walcott

Following Goode’s death, Charles Doolittle Walcott
served as Acting Assistant Secretary, in charge of the
United States National Museum, for eighteen months
in 1897 and 1898. Walcott was a paleontologist who
had risen through the ranks to become director of the
United States Geological Survey in 1894. That orga-
nization had run afoul of Congress, but made a come-
back under Walcott’s leadership. Not only had he per-
suaded Congress to restore the budget to its former
levels in order to study geology and make topographic
maps; he convinced them that his organization should
be studying the national forests.

Walcott conunued to head the Geological Survey and
to publish papers on paleontology while he was Assis-
tant Secretary, but his close contacts with Congress now
benefited the National Museum as well. The Museum
had long planned to build side galleries in the four
main exhibit halls, and in 1897 Congress appropriated
$8,000 for the first of these galleries.'? Goode had been
requesting funds without success since 1893.

Walcott inherited an administrative hodgepodge, for
Goode had designated innumerable divisions and sec-

United States National Museum under construction, pro bably in 1880. The picture was taken from t

he Castle, looking east

tions within the United States National Museum. There
was virtually no paid staff; whenever a volunteer ap-
peared, a special niche was carved out for him as an
honorary curator or some such ttle. Although Walcott
was unable to increase the staff, he clarified the or-
ganization by setting up three departments: Anthro-
pology, Biology, and Geology. Each had a head curator,
with curators in charge of subdivisions. For the first
ume a chain of command was established. The various
internal divisions have changed over the years. While
the Department of Anthropology survives intact, the
departments of Botany, Entomology, Invertebrate Zo-
ology, and Vertebrate Zoology represent the original
Biology Department; and Mineral Sciences and Paleo-
biology, Geology.

As Acting Assistant Secretary, Walcott performed one
further, inestimable behind-the-scenes task for the Mu-
seum. “During his administration,” the geologist Bailey
Willis relates, “‘Uncle Joe’ Cannon was Speaker of the
House, and it was [Cannon’s] habit after a fatiguing
session to walk up Pennsylvania Avenue. Walcott, as if
by chance, would draw up beside the curb with a fast-
stepping bay and a light buggy and suggest a drive in

The Structure

Installing the Easter Island
images in the National
Museum, 1888. George
Brown Goode 1s to the left,
Secretary Langley stands
with hat in hand, and to the
right is Otus T. Mason, later
to be second head of the
Department of Anthropology.
Copied from a print in
William Henry Holmes’s
“Random Records.”

Rock Creek Park, but during these rides he never men-
tioned business. On one occasion ‘Uncle Joe’ paused,
his foot on the step, and said: ‘Walcott, you may have
a building for the Survey or one for the National Mu-
seum, but you can’t have both.’ And Walcott took the
Museum.” !!

Richard C. Rathbun
In 1898 Richard C. Rathbun was named Assistant Sec-
retary, in charge of the United States National Museum,
and Walcott returned full-time to the Geological Sur-
vey. Rathbun had started his career as a geologist, but
under Baird’s spell he had become enamored of fish
and, like Goode, soon developed a compulsive concern
for collections and museums. It is to him that we owe
our clear account of the first National Museum building
and the various attempts to persuade Congress to build
a new one. After Walcott left, it was Rathbun who kept
up congressional interest, for Secretary Langley was
preoccupied with developing a man-carrying aircraft,
and, to put it gently, was not known for either his
administrative or political skills. In 1903 Congress fi-
nally authorized the building, at a cost not to exceed
$3,500,000—a figure attained through some political
shufflings with several proposals. Before midyear a firm
of Washington architects, Hornblower and Marshall,
had been selected to draw the final plans. It was ex-
pected that construction would take about four or five
years.'*

In the 1880s the general idea of a second museum

The United States National Museum

had been a brick building similar to the United States
National Museum, but two stories high. The World
Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago set the stage
for a change from high Victorian style to neoclassic
arehitecture. It also inspired what became the McMillan
Commission to beautify the city of Washington. The
proposed museum was to be the first building con-
structed according to the dictates of the Commission,
and plans for it became increasingly elaborate. For a
time the anticipated building was one-third larger again
than the one that actually was constructed.

Langley led the ground-breaking on June 14, 1904,
but faded from the scene and died early in 1906. The
Board of Regents offered the secretaryship to Henry
Fairfield Osborn, who declined to leave the American
Museum of Natural History in New York City. At last,
in 1907, Walcott became the fourth Secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution.

For several years Rathbun bore the burdens of the
Museum and its new building. As Acting Secretary after
Langley’s death, he oversaw all of the Smithsonian’s
increasing activities, and while the new Secretary was
settling into office and going off to Canada to search
for fossils, Rathbun planned the new exhibits and the
horrendous job of moving the collections. When all was
finished, Rathbun described the building. There is much
architectural terminology to digest and perhaps more
detail than one wants in this account, but one cannot
help feeling that Rathbun loved every bolt and brick
in his lovely new building. Oo

Oriental Hall in the United

States National Museum.

Cement floor being put in at
the United States National
Museum, with Pacific
Northwest Indian canoes
hanging above. This was
probably taken in the late
1880s to 1890 after the
original wooden floor

rotted away.

The Structure

Above, plaster cast of toothed
whale Zeuglodon (now
more correctly referred to as
Basilosaurus); below, Irish
elk (Megaloceros); and
extreme left, ground sloth
(Eremotherium), in the
United States National
Museum. The Trish elk has
been remounted at least three
times, and is now in Hall 6.
This ground sloth is not the
Panamanian specimen
currently on exhibit. The
Zeuglodon was not collected
until the 1890s, so the pho-
tograph can be dated within
about a fifteen-year interval
near the turn of the century.

Mammal exhibit in the
United States National
Museum around 1900,
showing the Hornaday
buffalo (Bison) group

in the foreground.

The United States National Museum 21

Chapter 2

The New
Building

¢¢ [[N THE DESIGNING OF THE BUILDING,” Rathbun

wrote, “two principal objectives were kept in view,
first, to secure the largest possible amount of available
space and second, to produce a substantial and digni-
fied structure... . Planned asa great shell. . . the build-
ing contains few permanent walls, and by giving ex-
ceptional width to the main mass an unusual extent of
floor area as compared to the extent of the outer walls
has been obtained. Other notable features are the ab-
sence of the customary monumental staircase, and the
minimizing of dark spaces as also of distracting archi-
tectural details in the interior. The construction is en-
tirely fireproof.”'

Although it is impossible to get from one place to
another within its walls without getting lost, the basic
plan of the building is simple. Picture an inverted, fat
T having the horizontal member twice the length of
the vertical. This is the south side of the building, facing
the Castle across the Mall, with the Capitol to the east
of it and the Washington Monument to the west. The
shorter, vertical member of the T points north. From
the north or Constitution Avenue entrance, two nar-
rower segments called ranges extend eastward and
westward parallel to the Mall. Each range then turns a
right angle and runs south to join the main wings, thus
enclosing a hollow rectangle on each side of the north-
south segment. The rotunda marks the intersection of
this north with the east-west wings at the front of the
building. Even with this plan in mind, it is not partic-
ularly easy to visualize locations such as, say, the south
side of the north range, no matter how many years one
walks around inside the two-square-block structure.

The two open courts, each 128 feet square, were a
vital part of the building’s design. They provided two
commodities seldom spoken of today—fenestration and
ventilation. Electric lights were in fairly common use
by the turn of the century, but no intelligent person

July 9, 1904: Digging the foundation for the new National
Museum on the east side of the building, using an
authentic steam-powered steam shovel and mulepower to

haul the dirt.

would have expected them to take the place of daylight,
especially if one wanted to see the true colors of objects.
The courts were a necessity if the inner part of the
Museum were to be light enough for the exhibits to be
seen and the staff to work. In addition, everyone knows
that cross-ventilation is far better than just opening a
window. Windows on both sides of the building were
one way to ameliorate the Washington summer heat.
The courtyard walls are faced with light-colored brick,
and the windows are framed with granite from Wood-
stock, Maryland.

The exterior walls of the Museum are built of solid
red brick, hidden from view by a facing of granite blocks
ten inches or more thick. The exterior walls are quite
massive; on the east side they measure seven feet in
thickness. The new Museum was built to last, and it is
strong. For twenty years the east attic contained several
hundred 500-pound steel cases full of fossils, giving a
total weight of approximately half a ton per square
yard, yet there was never any doubt that the building
could support such a load.

The McMillan Commission had decreed that gov-
ernment buildings were to have a light-colored exterior,
a reaction against the red-brick style that had domi-
nated Washington during the last quarter of the nine-
teenth century. The Patent Office and Tariff buildings,
two early government structures (one occupied, and
one soon to be, by the Smithsonian) were of limestone
and local sandstone. They had not stood up well. That
left granite as the logical facing material.

Three different kinds of granite were used on the
outside of the building. The ground-floor stone is from
Milford, Massachusetts; this is called pink granite, but
the color is light gray, the stone developing a pinkish
cast when wet with rain. The first and second floors
and the dome are built of white granite from Bethel,
Vermont. The third floor uses another white granite
of a different hue, from Mount Airy, North Carolina.
(Perhaps, half a century after the Civil War, it was good
politics to have some stone from north and some from
south.) Had any cost/benefit ratio been seriously con-
sidered, it is unlikely that granite would have been se-

‘
;
d

;

Breaking ground for the new National Museum, June 14,
1904. Sec relary Langley holds the shovel. To the left,
midway between him and the lady with the umbrella, is
Assistant Secretary Rathbun. To the right of Secretary

lected even in the early 1900s, for the need to cut each
stone to size before setting it in the proper position
outside the bricks turned the granite facing into a major
logistic problem. Labor and material were inexpensive,
however, and the new Museum did not exceed its pro-
jected cost. This was in the tradition of the first National
Museum building, which had been built for less than
was appropriated by the Congress and had opened
ahead of schedule.

New Building Vs. Old

The differences between the new building and the old
were manifold. One gets an idea of what was thought
of the old National Museum from George Perkins Mer-
rill, head curator of geology and an expert on building
stones, who had joined the staff in 1881: “It was a square
squatty affair of red, blue, and yellow brick, exteriorly
an architectural horror, interiorly a barren waste. It

Langley, hat in hand, is J.D. Hornblower, architect, and
behind the hat is Bernard L. Green, superintendent of
construction.

presented one redeeming feature—space; and as it was
space that Baird was after, I presume it may at first
thought have been considered a success. One may here
be reminded of the reply made by a high official after
being shown through the then newly finished Pension
Office building. ‘Well,’ it was asked, ‘have you any crit-
icism?’ ‘Yes,’ was the reply, ‘it is fireproof.’”*

Yet no one except Rathbun seemed excited by the
appearance of the new building, which, though hand-
some and solid, is hardly dramatic. The British Museum
of Natural History building, with its various terra-cotta
animals decorating both exterior and interior walls, is
far more interesting.’ The National Museum’s archi-
tects and some of the staff had toured European mu-
seums before final plans were made, and original plans
did include terra-cotta facing. But that idea soon dis-
appeared in favor of an exterior whose classic style has
remained in harmony with neighboring buildings. To

The Structure

rs 1 SSE

TT Ti

Three architectural sketches of the proposed New National subsequent designs showed an even fancier dome. Bottom,

Museum. Top, with a low mansard roof and a skylight the building with a semple Roman-style dome, essentially as
around the central areas, as planned in July 1903. it was constructed except for the obelisks at either end. This
Middle, with the elaborate dome projected in 1904; sketch was published in the Annual Report for 1909.

The New Building 25

Bui LoInG For NAnNOoNAL Museum
RULES FoR WORKMEN

Working hours 8 tO IZ and 12.301 4.30.
Come and go Through middle gate g

3. Each man will receive a check by which
his time will be kept.

Checks must be taken care of and
depositéd with fhe watchman at the gaté
before & o'clock. Laté men must
first report at the office.

. Men who lose checks must replace
Them with new ones before going
fo work or receiving pay.

. Checks will be distributed 16 The men
before Quitting time.

Men leaving work earlier must first report
to the foreman and then get their
checks at the office.

. Men absent for three days will be laid
off unless a satisfactory excuse is

promptly given :

Men laid off or quitting, work will
receive a card fo € pay clerk at
the Library Building.

. No smoking during working hours.

Use water closefS and commit no
nuisance about the building.

- Refurn all fools at end of day to places
as directed by foreman.

» Nobody allowed f6 carry anyfhing but his
Own properly away from the building.
Packages will be examined whenever
Thought proper by foreman or watchman.

Superintendent

Rules for workmen as laid down by Bernard L. Green. The
superintendent of buildngs and grounds for the Library of
Congress, he knew how to run a major construction job.

NORTH PAVILION

ETHNOLOGY
ETHNOLOGY

WES8T COURT £A6T COURT

oo 2 sw

“SYSTEMATIC. GEOLOGY

FOSSIL PLANTS

q SOUTH PAVILION «
MAMMALS . AND . FOSSIL VERTEBRATES
ROTUNDA

ey
oO

FOSSIL. INVERTEBRATES

EAST WING

“Plan of first story of new building, showing distribution of
exhibition collections.” This illustration from the Annual
Report for 1913 shows clearly the three wings, each
connected with two ranges to make the two courts. One hall
in the east wing and several halls in the west wing still
were not open to the public at this time.

NORTH PAVILION

WEST RANGE EAST RANGE

| DOMESTIC, LOCAL I
| ANIMALS [FAUNA

shee fel

AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGY
e 8 £ © 8 8 8

WEST COURT

SYSTEMATIC ZOOLOGY
AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGY

OLO WORLD ARCHEOLOGY

APPLIED GEOLOGY

REPTILES
ATRACHIANS ;

WEST WING EAST WING

el SOUTH PAVILION
“Plan of second story of new building, showing distribution
of exhibition collections,” from the 1913 Annual Report.
The black dots denote supporting pillars. In the west north
range (Hall 26), the local-fauna exhibit included the birds
of the District of Columbia now on display by the Baird
Auditorium.

The Structure

some viewers it looks even newer than the fifty-year-

old Federal ‘Triangle buildings on the north side of

Constitution Avenue.

While the Museum building is not the Parthenon or
even the Lincoln Memorial, likewise it is not a char-
acterless modern-day office building, and the dedicated
student of architectural history can spend an hour look-
ing at the exterior. There is some detail to be discerned.
The window ledges of the ground floor are formed by
the upper surface of the massive lower course of mon-
oliths, whose rusticated surface contrasts with the smooth
blocks above. Each vertical pair of windows on the two
exhibit floors is treated as essentially one window,
strengthening the vertical lines of the building.

On the third story, the roof line is set back along the
ranges but is entirely vertical on the wings. ‘The third-
floor ranges have more granite decoration than the
wings, with alternating half-circles and triangles above
the windows. The roof and dome are covered with light
gray-green slate from Poultney, Vermont, and choice
ledges and crevices all over the building—the south
portico in particular—are covered with pigeons. The
birds are conditioned by many years’ worth of attempts
to harass them into leaving, and nothing affects them.
Like the granite, they are permanent.

Dome, Stately Entrance, Rotunda

The building’s most pleasing aesthetic feature is prob-
ably the dome, best seen from the Mall side. The en-
trance from the Mall is stately, with two runs of steps
to the south portico. The north entrance is architec-
turally the least satisfactory part of the building. Both
sides have massive bronze doors. If there is one single
criticism to be leveled against the architects, these grand-
looking, heavy doors are it. Several generations of me-
chanics have oiled them, tinkered with them, and cursed
them, but since the day the Museum opened, the public
has had difficulty heaving them open.

The interior of the building is only slightly more
detailed than the exterior. The easiest way to see its
best features is to go to the second floor and walk around
the rotunda, looking both down, to the floor of Ten-
nessee marble, and up. The view of the dome and the
large windows is even better from the third floor, but
this contains offices and collections and 1s off-limits to
tourists. Few of the staff visit the fourth-floor rotunda
unless their collections are stored there.

The rotunda is eight-sided, with the four sides di-
rectly facing the wings and the portico being much
wider than the four sides in between. Each of these
four longer sides has a screen of pillars made of pol-
ished brecciated marble. ‘The first-story columns are
Doric in style, and the second- and third-story columns
are Roman Ionic. As one continues to look upward
above the third screen of columns, the four semicircular

The New Building

In this proposal for the rotunda, drawn in section,
enormous bull’s-eye windows let light into the area, the
mtervor is adorned with figures, and the dome is
surmounted by a winged statue. To the left are additional
statues at the south entrance, and an exedra—an enormous
semicircular entrance befitting a palace. The auditorium, in
this fanciful sketch, is placed under the rotunda, indicating
a date after 1904—after construction had begun.

clerestory windows and the arches containing them can
be seen. Craning one’s neck, it is possible to see the
tiled interior of the dome and the skylight. This is al-
most as impressive a view as looking into the dome of
the Capitol.

There are three exhibit halls to the north, east, and
west on the first floor, and two each on the second
floor. By Rathbun’s measure, the new building had
468,000 square feet (ten and three-quarters acres), of
which 220,000 square feet (five acres) was exhibit space.
The central hall of each of the three wings has an
enormously high ceiling, most of which is roofed by a
long, wide skylight. This high ceiling is best seen today
from the center of the north hall. A balcony on the
second floor, added in the 1960s to Hall 10, permits a
better view of the skylight and the plaster molding than
tourists in the early days could have had. Sull, one
wonders why even this relatively simple ornamental
detail was put in, for the truth of the matter is that no
one looks at it. People come to a museum to see the
exhibits, not the shell that contains them.

ca f

Chapter 3

Building
The Building

Avene CONSTRUCTION BEGAN , on June 14, 1904,
“the lateness of the season precluded the holding
of a formal ceremony on the occasion, but the first
spadeful of earth was turned by Secretary Langley in
the presence of the superintendent of construction, the
architects, and the employees of the Museum and In-
stitution.”' Langley said a few words, a board fence was
erected, and the digging started. The remark about the
lateness of the season is a reflection of the era when
Congress departed for the summer. What is perhaps
more interesting was that it was considered still “too
early to discuss the details of the plans.”’ There were
not many major museum buildings in the country, and
in spite of their examination of foreign buildings, the
architects really did not have a grasp of what was needed,
or how best to put the parts together.

Clearly the plans were not engraved on stone; they
shifted repeatedly and sometimes wildly. Plans of 1902
show a nearly flat roof having a great skylight over the
rotunda. Part of the roof was modified to a mansard
style, covering pavilions on the east and west ends of
the structure. As late as 1904, the auditorium was placed
in the foyer, not under the rotunda. The south entrance
was designed as an exedra—a semicircular entryway
befitting a palace. The entire south facade was to be
adorned with statuary. The formerly flat roof suddenly
sprouted a dome in the style of the French Second
Empire.

In its ime the Museum was the largest building in
the city apart from the Capital, covering nearly four
acres. Completing the excavations and having the mas-
sive concrete foundations in by November 9, 1904, was
an excellent start. The contracts for the granite were
let during these first several months. Early in the winter,
“the scheme of correcting any possible mistake of line
and effect as practiced at the Union Station by erection
of a wooden fascimile of a section was tried at the Mu-

Northwest corner of the building before completion of the
ground floor, looking south toward the Castle on November
22, 1905. The office at this corner is now occupied by the
Travel Service.

29)

seum. A complete bay, or window, from basement to
attic was constructed, and it proved so serviceable that
a complete change was made in the elevation of the
structure. It was discovered that a certain lack of height
prevented a convergence of lines. The question was
answered by raising the foundation three feet.”’ This
alteration “also permits the transfer of the lecture room
to the rotunda basement, removing it from the center
wing, which will become available for exhibition pur-
poses.”* Denizens of museums are supposedly attracted
to the basements, which by tradition are expected to
be dark and cramped. At least now it is clear why the
Museum basement, or ground floor, has such a high
ceiling. It is another tribute to the strength of the build-
ing that the architects could add extra height without
any concern.

Laying the First Stone

The first stone was laid August 21, 1905
near the north entrance, on the east side. The northern
side of the building site required less excavation than
the Mall side, so apparently it was easier to start there.
The cornerstone is on the northeast corner of the Con-
stitution Avenue entrance. Things were moving well
on the construction except that, as Rathbun noted in
1906, “the failure of one of the quarries to furnish stone
within the time agreed upon has been the cause of some
delay and had retarded the completion of the building
until about two years hence.”

The top of the building caused major problems.
Hornblower and Marshall, not content with their dome
of 1904, envisioned in 1905 an even more elaborate
one surmounted by a great winged statue. The con-
struction superintendent, Bernard L. Green, who was
also the superintendent of buildings and grounds of
the Library of Congress, was sympathetic toward a dome
but consulted another architect, who greatly modified
the Hornblower and Marshall concept. In one of his
last major decisions, Langley got rid of the elaborate
dome and the statuary. Thus the neoclassical building
came to be surmounted by a simple Roman-style dome.

By October 1906, the Washington Post was writing,

a large block

“Looming up amidst the trees which skirt the northern
edge of the Mall, near Tenth Street, the walls of the
new United States National Museum are now beginning
to assume tangible proportions.””

Delays in Construction
However, it was not going all that smoothly. “Work on
the new building has not progressed as rapidly as was
expected, owing to delays in the delivery of the granite
which was to compose the greater part of the outer
wall,” Rathbun complained again in 1907. “The fault
has lain both with the quarry and with the railroad
leading therefrom, the former have already violated
the me limit of its contract by a considerable amount,
and the latter having neglected to furnish necessary
cars when called upon to do so. This delay has not only
caused annoyance, but is resulting in pecuniary loss to
the Government through the deterioration of large col-
lections held in storage, and in other ways.”

Annoyed as he was, Rathbun did overemphasize the
deterioration of the collections. This was in large meas-
ure material from the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Ex-
position in St. Louis. Once again, as at Philadelphia in
1876, a great deal of material was available and the
Smithsonian took it, knowing full well that storage space
was inadequate.” Sull, Rathbun could report there had
been some progress, with the east side completed to
the second story and work on the west side ready to go
as soon as the granite arrived.

In the summary of 1908 Rathbun wrote:

At the close of the [fiscal] year the exterior walls,
except those enclosing the south pavilion and the
dome, for which the stone had not been received,

The Mall before construction
of the new National
Museum, as viewed from the
tower of the Castle. To the
right is the Post Office
Building, a massive granite
structure completed in the
1890s; the museum site is
farther to the right, just out
of the picture. June 1, 1904.

were finished, and the construction of the roofs
was well underway. The interior structural walls
and piers were also completed in the rough, and
many of the metal window frames of the first and
second stories were in place. Some of the latter
likewise had been glazed. So much work still
remains to be done in the interior, however, such
as the building of partitions, the laying of floors,
the plastering, the installation of the heating,
ventilating, and lighting plants with their immense
ramifications of pipes and wires, the completion of
the windows, and countless lesser details, that the
expectation held forth of being able to make some
use of the building by January, 1909, has had to
be abandoned.’

For once Rathbun was wrong, for the building was
used earlier than anticipated—‘“as the meeting place of
the Sixth International Tuberculosis Congress, held in
the early autum of 1908. ... A large part of the first
and second floors, as well as the basement, was given
over to the Congress and while the progress of con-
struction of the building was thereby much retarded,
this delay may be regarded as fully sanctioned by the
exceptionally important nature of the event which oc-
casioned it.”!”

In his next report Rathbun fired another blast at the
granite quarry and the railroad, this time including the
stonecutters, and remarked that a monumental stair-
way had been dropped from the plans because it would
take up too much space. Actually he had a great deal
to be pleased about, even though the building was still
not finished. “The entire stonework of the outer walls
of the building, including the porch, columns, and front

The Structure

muni

of the south pavilion in which the main entrance is
located, was, however, completed, as were also the roofs
and the skylights of the building generally. .. .Good
progress was made in the preparation and construction
of furniture for the new building, more especially for
the storage rooms and laboratories, in which it is in-
tended, so far as possible, to utilize the best quality of
fireproof material.”"!

Of course, nothing goes easily. The optimists who
had assumed that the building would be completed by
June 1909 had not renewed the lease on rented storage
space, and the bulk of the stored collections had to be
moved into several of the new exhibit halls. Although
Rathbun complained that “this summary action pre-
vented the assorting and proper assignment of material

. and will necessarily cause some inconvenience in
the final adjustment of the collections,”'* it does seem
clear from this remark that he was a patient, long-
suffering man, slow to anger—at least in his official
writings.

Rathbun’s report continued:

On August 10, 1909, occupation of the third story,
which is divided into rooms for laboratories,
reserve collections, and offices, was obtained from

Building the Building

from tower of the Castle before World War I.

the superintendent of construction, although at the
time the story was unprovided with doors, and
temporary expedients had to be adopted for the
protection of such property as was first moved. On
November 9 following, the remaining stories of the
main building were turned over to the Museum,
and while constructive work of a subordinate
character continued to be carried on during most
of the rest of the year, it cannot be said to have
materially interfered with Museum operations.
The mechanical plant was completed in ample
time to meet the requirements of the winter
season, the boilers being put into permanent
service on October 15, 1901."

Congress came up with a supplemental appropriation
to allow for grading and construction of roads on the
outside and to paint the walls on the inside.

The last construction work on the new National Mu-
seum was finished on June 20, 1911. The annual re-
ports for the next several years discuss problems of
leaks in the new roofs and how a great amount of metal
flashing had to be taken up and replaced; but like the
delivery of granite, this too was ultimately completed.

Construction on the ground
floor at the west side of the
building, looking north
toward the Post Office.
September 13, 1905.

=a. a = mat OB awe ( es

dation of the new National Museum, probably taken from the tower of the Smithsonian Castle. The low area in the
center is the site of the Baird Auditorium. March 22, 1906.

Foun

32 The Structure

Ta, RSE a |
meee: emery Tee aE
eles cap arrange | }
ga A
= ee {
a i a al ig

Construction of the east wing to the third-floor level and the rotunda to the fourth-floor (attic) level; probably taken in 1907
from the tower of the Castle. In the middle distance is the Old Patent Office building, the current site of the National
Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery.

Aerial view of the new
National Museum looking
north-northwest; the farmers’
market is on the north side of
B Street and there is no
construction for the Federal
Triangle of government
buildings. The projections on
the south side of each court-
yard house the freight
elevators, which were run by
direct electric current

until the 1960s.

Building the Building 33

Chapter 4

Moving Into
Valhalla

ee DETAIL IS PRESERVED as to the actual me-
chanics of the move to the north side of the Mall.
Loaded on wagons, specimens and cases scattered among
the Smithsonian Castle, the old National Museum, and
temporary storage facilities were transported to their
new home. While the east side of the building had been
the first to be built, the west side, facing the Washington
Monument, was the first to start filling up.

On August 11, 1901, the day after permission to
occupy the third floor was obtained, the mollusk col-
lections began to be moved in. The division’s curator,
William Healy Dall, measured the floor plans (“a hope-
less muddle”)' late in May, but soon went off to Maine
for the summer, leaving assistant curator Paul Bartsch
to supervise the move. A long-time preparator in the
Department of Biology, John A. Mirguet, had a vivid
recollection of bringing a case full of mollusks from the
balcony and the north tower of the Castle to the third
floor of the new building and positioning it on a piece
of flooring newly laid down by the carpenter. ‘The time
it took him to go back to the Castle and return with
another load was just sufficient for the carpenter to lay
another piece of flooring. These cases were awkward
pieces to move—six feet high and about ten feet wide,
with space for four stacks of drawers.

When Dall returned in the fall he spent a month
unpacking his books and office collections, and by mid-
November was settled in his new quarters, actively pur-
suing his research. Not only was he an important figure
at the Museum, but his career casts some light on the
often-curious arrangement of research collections.

In 1865 Dall, then twenty, came to Washington for
the first time, leaving shortly thereafter for more than
three years in Alaska. Upon his return he lived in the
south tower of the Castle, working on the collections
without pay. As there was no prospect of employment,
he joined the Coast Survey in 1871 and went back to
Alaska for three more years, this time to study the

“Alcoholic specimen room, middle part of ground story, west
wing,” from United States National Museum Bulletin
80 (1913). This area is now used for preparation of exhibits.

Aleutian Islands. While working in the Castle after his
return, he continued to be paid by the Coast Survey
until 1884. ‘Then he joined the United States Geological
Survey, but still remained in his Smithsonian office,
now in the north tower. While the recent mollusks were
moved to the west range of the new National Museum,
the collection of Cenozoic fossils was moved there also.
As part of this work for the Geological Survey, Dall
curated these fossils and wrote a study of the fossils of
Florida.

Dall was a friend of T. Wayland Vaughan, another
Geological Survey employee and a specialist on corals.
Thus modern and Cenozoic corals were also housed
with the mollusks at first. Modern brachiopods were
an interest of Dall’s, so they too were “mollusks”; and
because Paul Bartsch taught courses in economic para-
sitology at a local university, parasitic worms were” mol-
lusks” for years.”

An Orderly Transfer
Under Rathbun’s direction, the move into the new
Museum was fairly orderly. “As it was desirable at first
to establish the scientific staff and the general collec-
tions in the building, the construction of the storage
and laboratory furniture was taken up and mostly fin-
ished before work on the exhibition cases was begun,”
he reported in 1910.°

Fire is one of the persistent worries of any museum
administrator. As a safeguard, cases for specimen stor-
age, formerly made of wood, were to be of steel or at
least covered with metal; covers on these cases inhibited
the pervasive dust. Steel shelving and steel racks were
also the ideal. Sulphur-tipped, strike-anywhere matches
were forbidden in the building, and several signs posted
in the attic proclaimed in large letters that smoking
there was grounds for instant dismissal.

Rathbun’s account of fiscal year 1910 went on:

The moving of the reserve collections was
commenced in August, 1909, and by [July, 1910]
not only had it been practically completed, but the
systematic arrangement of the specimens in their
new quarters, either permanently or tentatively,

had also been accomplished. While the new
installation had not been perfected to the same
extent in all of the divisions, yet, as a whole, it was
so far advanced as to produce conditions vastly

superior to those existing at any previous time.
Such a result was only made possible by the greatly
increased and more convenient accommodations,
which permitted the spreading out in an accessible
and orderly manner all of the material belonging
to each division, and by the employment of
temporary help exceptional progress was made in
the work of recording and cataloging specimens.
The mechanical and scientific workshops and the
offices generally were among the first in the new
quarters to be furnished. '

Writing in 1941, the vertebrate paleontologist Charles
Gilmore looked back on the transition:

At the time of my affiliation with the National
Museum in 1903, the bulk of the [O.C.] Marsh
collection was stored in rented buildings in
southwest Washington. The first floor of a three-
story brick building on the west side of 10th street
near C street, SW, was then in use as a
paleontological laboratory, the cellar and the two
upper floors being completely occupied by boxes
and crated trays of vertebrate material. The study
collections of this period were kept in standard
trays arranged in tiers of the balcony in the
southeast corner of the present Arts and
Industries Building and in the lower part of A-
topped exhibition cases in use at that time. These

Final stages of work on the
exterior of the dome, looking
west from the roof of the east
wing.

collections in storage from 1903 on were rapidly
reduced in bulk through preparation and
condemnation of worthless material, so that in
1910, with the occupancy of the New Natural
History Building, the widely scattered storage
collections were assembled as a unit. ... For the
first time the preparators were provided with a
well-lighted, well-equipped, roomy laboratory (27
by 77 feet). These improvements in facilities were
almost immediately reflected in an improved
quality as well as quantity of output.’

The process of moving took a few years, for after
the transferring of the study collections, the exhibits
had to be taken down and reinstalled. While this opened
up some space in the Castle, the greatest positive impact
was on the old National Museum building. A Depart-
ment of Mineral Technology had been established in
1904, but lack of space and staff made it a paper or-
ganization until natural history left the building. In-
dependent divisions of Textiles and Medicine also were
created, taking some of the hodgepodge out of the
Department of Anthropology. These divisions coa-
lesced during fiscal year 1918-19 to form the Depart-
ment of Arts and Industries. Precisely when the red
brick building came to be known as the Arts and In-
dustries Building is not clear, but by the 1920s and
1930s most people referred to the buildings as “the
Museum” and “the A & I.” During the ten years it took
Arts and Industries to come into its own as a tourist
attraction, the notion of a new and old National Mu-
seum disappeared. Oo

The Structure

ff
Those who led the Institution and the Museum during this
period, photographed on the steps of the Castle in January
1915. Front row, left to right: Dr. Charles D. Walcott,
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution; Dr. Richard Rathbun,
Assistant Secretary in Charge, United States National
Museum: Dr. George P. Merrill, Head curator, Geology;
Dr. Frank Baker, Superintendent, National Zoological
Park; Dr. William H. Holmes, Head Curator,
Anthropology, and Curator, National Gallery; Mr. Harry
W. Dorsey, Chief Clerk. Back row, left to right: Dr.

Moving into Vathalla

————
PEPE. bias

een ee Beare
Charles G. Abbot, Director, Astrophysical Observatory; Dr.
Leonard C. Gunnell, Assistant in Charge, Bureau of
International Catalogue of Scientific Literature. Mr. ]. H.
Fill, Property Clerk; Mr. James G. Traylor, Appointment
Clerk; Mr. C. W. Shoemaker, Chief Clerk, Exchange
Service; Mr. W. I. Adams, Disbursing Agent; Mr. A.
Howard Clark, Editor; Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, Head
Curator, Biology; Mr. F. W. Hodge, Ethnologist in
Charge, Bureau American Ethnology; Mr. Paul Brockett,

Assistant Librarian.

=e “East wing, third story,”
from United States Na-
tional Museum Bulletin
80 (1913). This laboratory
of invertebrate paleontology
cannot be precisely located,
but the general area, now
occupied by archeologists, lies
more or less under the section
of roof shown in picture on
page 36. The negative is
stained, and the effect seen
on the wall is not that of a
leaking roof. The woman
using the typewriter, barely
visible behind cabinets, may be
Margaret Moodey, secretary
of the Department of
Geology.

‘pe —el

“West range, ground story, storage of mammals,” from Avenue) side; offices were on the west court side. That area
United States National Museum Bulletin 80 (1913). was occupied by the Bureau of the Biological Survey, and 1s
The working area shown is on the B Street (Constitution now occupied by the National Anthropological Archives.

38 The Structure

“East range, third story,”

from United States
National Museum Bulle-
tin 80 (1913). This area
continues to be occupied by
Physwal Anthropology, but
the cases to the left side of
the hall have been replaced
by racks holding deeper
drawers on both sides. On
the right in the distance is
the site of the research office
of Secretary Robert McC.
Adams; immediately behind
where the photographer was
standing is the office of S.
Dillon Ripley. The wooden
floor has been replaced by
terrazzo, and the lighting has
been improved.

Moving into Valhalla

“West wing, ground story,
laboratory of marine inverte-
brates,” from United States
National Museum Bulle-
tin 80 (1913). This office
on the south side of the
building originally belonged
to Mary Jane Rathbun, and
it is probably she who is sit-
ting by the table. The area is
now used for offices by the
exhibits staff.

ti ae gia a aaa

Chapter 5

The National
Gallery of Art

Nala ART MAY SEEM INCONGRUOUS with nat-
ural history, it did play a significant role in the
history of the Museum and its buildings. Just as much
as the National Museum, the National Gallery of Art
was a creature of circumstance. In 1903 Harriet Lane
Johnston, niece of President Buchanan, left an impor-
tant collection to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Wash-
ington, with the proviso that it be transferred to a na-
tional gallery of art, should one be established. Because
of certain requirements of the bequest, the Corcoran
Gallery declined the Johnston collection.

The Smithsonian had acquired some etchings, paint-
ings, and sculptures in the early days of Joseph Henry’s
regime, and while much of the material had been lent,
works of art had always been on display in the Castle.
So, with a number of paintings in the Johnston collec-
tion essentially available for the asking, the lawyers de-
cided that the Smithsonian Institution, with its open-
ended charter, was the national gallery of art; the name
was acquired through this friendly court suit.’ To im-
plement the will, a National Gallery of Art was estab-
lished within the administrative structure of the Na-
tional Museum.” Somehow space was found for paintings
and art objects to be placed on display in the brick
building of the National Museum in the fall of 1906.
This action did ensure that legally there was a National
Gallery, though the jumbled surroundings were far
from inspiring.

Since art works continued to be shown in the Castle,
a logical next step would have been to refurbish part
of the Castle as an art gallery. As the new National
Museum building neared completion, the National Gal-
lery’s first curator wrote: “The new building ... in
accordance with the understanding with Congress, has
been planned and constructed for the great collections

Wooden pillars from the John Gellatly bequest, surmounted
by candle-carrying angels. The chest in the center supports
a wooden frame in which various stained-glass windows are
exhibited. The totem pole looming over the display indicates
that this is near the south side of Hall 10, facing south
toward the rotunda. Post-1933.

of natural history—geology, zoology, botany, ethnol-
ogy, and archeology. It has neither the room, nor the
proper lighting for paintings.”* But Congress did not
see the situation quite the same way, and no money was
appropriated for construction in the Castle.

The new Museum, as noted, did not have proper
lighting, but it did have room, and the center skylighted
hall of the north wing was given over to art. The pic-
tures were installed between “some of the more inter-
esting ethnological groups and historical exhibits”’—
that is, the Indians to the west in Hall 9 and the Oriental
civilizations to the east in Hall 8. It was an uncomfort-
able alliance. For lack of a better display area, a mis-
cellaneous lot of statuary was placed in the ambulatory
around the rotunda, and some pieces were stationed
in the ground-floor lobby. Later, the walls on the second
floor of the rotunda were hung with paintings that
could not possibly blend with the mounted animal heads
that decorated the two stairwells. The admixture gives
an excellent example of the National Museum’s being
one concept and the Natural History Building’s being
another.

This sounds entirely negative, but the other side of
the coin is that Hall 10 in the center of the north wing
was the first Museum display to be installed. Although
it is not easy to hang an art exhibit, it is infinitely faster
than installing a natural history display. In the final
analysis, as poorly suited as the building was for art,
the National Gallery must have been a godsend to As-
sistant Secretary Rathbun, enabling him to open some
exhibits in a relatively short time.

Formal Opening

On March 17, 1910, from noon until five in the after-
noon, the National Gallery of Art, and thus the new
Natural History Building, was formally opened to the
public. “Admission was by card, partly to prevent undue
crowding, and partly to bring the event specially to the
attention of Congress, the official body in Washington,
and all other persons known to be interested in the
promotion of art at the Nation’s Capital.”’ On Friday,
March 18, the building was open to the public, and

View of part of the collection in one of the rooms in Hall
10. Hiram Powers’s The Greek Slave ts to the right; to
the left is one of the items in the Harriet Lane Johnston
bequest, a portrait of her son as Cupid Stringing His
Bow. In the ane is one of the earliest art acquisitions of

the Institution, G. A. Healy’s painting Francis Pierre
Guillmane ae Phas was presented to President John
Tyler, who gave it to the National Institute, from which it
was transferred to the Smithsonian.

“hundreds” of people took the opportunity to see the
show. Thereafter, halls were opened as completed. In
spite of the ume and effort that had gone into the new
Natural History Building, there was never any formal
dedication.

The publicity regarding the establishment of a Na-
tional Gallery had stirred interest within the art world
and resulted in additional donations. Early in 1904,
Charles Freer offered his collection of Oriental art and
American paintings to the Instituuon; whether he was
influenced by the Johnston bequest or had decided on
this step earlier is not known. As a matter of record,
the Board of Regents—after some hemming and haw-
ing—accepted the initial Freer gift in January 1906,
before the legal tangle involving the Johnston bequest
and the National Gallery was resolv ed. Unul the open-
ing of the Freer Gallery in 1923, the only display in
Washington of some of the treasures in this collection
took place as a temporary exhibit of 175 paintings and
objects in the new National Museum from April 15 to
June 15, 1912." (A life-size model of the great blue
whale now is suspended where Whistler's paintings once
hung.) The Freer collection, and later the Freer build-
ing, were part of the United States National Museum
until 1920.

William Henry Holmes
The person chosen to direct the Smithsonian’s initiative

into the arts was William Henry Holmes. Holmes had

ABE aham Lincoln, contemplating, at the north end of the
north wing on the second floor. This area, near the north
elevators, is now occupied by docents. The exhibits can
hardly be seen by the light of the widely spaced incandescent
bulbs, but someone left his straw hat on the steam radiator,
suggesting that summer light was coming in. The Orpheus
behind Lincoln is a plaster cast made in 1915 for the
Francis Scott Key Memonal at Fort McHenry, Baltimore.

It was later bronzed and shown in the rotunda. The light
fixtures suggest a date before 1930.

first come to the Institution in the 1870s, and began
his career as a scientific illustrator under Fielding Brad-
ford Meek; Meek lived in the Castle for nearly twenty
years and was Joseph Henry’s star boarder. Holmes
had worked for the Hayden Territorial Survey and had
been one of the first to explore the Indian ruins of
Mesa Verde; he had also described the buried fossil
forests of Yellowstone Park. Later he became a member
of the U.S. Geological Survey and accompanied Captain
C. E. Dutton to the Grand Canyon. Two mountains,
one in the Gallatin Range in Yellowstone National Park
of Wyoming and one in the Henry Mountains of Utah,
are named for him, along with a pinnacle in the Grand
Canyon—an indication of the esteem in which he was
held by his geological colleagues.

Holmes was an excellent artist and particularly liked
watercolors. He prepared outstanding perspective
landscape views to illustrate reports for Hayden and
the U.S. Geological Survey; his line drawings of the
Grand Canyon are unequalled. Investigations by Holmes
of Indian stone tools during the early 1890s opened
new vistas in American anthropology. Because of his
skill in both anthropology and art, he was heavily in-
volved in preparing exhibits for the 1893 Columbian
Exposition in Chicago. While there he was induced to
transfer to the new Field Museum, but the director of
the Field Museum and Holmes clashed early and often.

In 1897, when Walcott formed the Department of
Anthropology, Holmes returned to the Museum as de-

The Structure

Part of the Gellatly collection,
looking north in Hall 10,
post-1933 and pre-1948.

The center piece is now the
desk of the director of the
National Museum of
American Art.

partment head. He was also the curator of prehistoric
archeology, for all department heads held other posi-
tions and were expected to continue their research.
Holmes was responsible for the founding in 1902 of
the Division of Physical Anthropology, which brought
Ales’ Hrdli¢ka to the Museum staff. That same year,
Secretary Langley called Holmes away from the Mu-
seum to be chief of the Smithsonian’s separate Bureau
of American Ethnology; Holmes continued his work as
curator of prehistoric archeology. Starting in August
1906, his new title as curator of the National Gallery
added to his many duties, although not to his salary.
In July 1909 Holmes relinquished his position as chief
of the Bureau of American Ethnology in order to re-
sume the head curatorship of the Department of An-
thropology.

It took a long time for a National Gallery of Art to
be officially recognized by Congress, but on July 1,
1920, Holmes became the full-time head of this new
Smithsonian bureau. His name disappeared from the
annual reports of the National Museum, and the De-
partment of Anthropology was run by Walter Hough.
Holmes kept the same office on the Constitution Av-
enue side of the Museum building, just to the east of
the elevators, that he had occupied as head of the De-
partment of Anthropology.

Holmes made a determined effort to establish a real
art gallery, writing articles and creating committees of
support, and by 1923 space had been reserved on the

The National Gallery of Art

Mall for a major new building. A design contest was
won by Eero Saarinen, who later designed the terminal
at Dulles International Airport, but his plans were voted
down by the regents as too modern.

Unfortunately, all efforts to obtain construction funds
from Congress collapsed when rumors began to cir-
culate that Andrew Mellon might donate a building for
an art gallery. This was a setback to Holmes, for al-
though nothing came of this rumor during his lifetime,
it effectively stopped all other public support. By 1930
the gallery staff consisted of only himself and three
assistants. In 1926 his left leg had to be amputated, but
Holmes returned to his office. A few years later he was
permitted to take a Civil Service examination and to
continue on the government payroll long after most
employees retire. On June 30, 1932, the day when
Holmes finally did retire, he wrote in his “Random
Records”: “In his 85th year he is still at his desk in the
National Gallery of Art.”” Ruel P. Tolman succeeded
him; ten months iater Holmes was dead.

Andrew Mellon’s Offer

Eventually Andrew Mellon did offer the nation both
money and paintings for a National Gallery of Art. This
resulted in the impressive domed building that stretches
from Fourth to Seventh streets on Constitution Avenue,
vaguely resembling the Natural History Building but
built of light marble rather than somber granite. To
make sure that nothing complicated the offer from

A temporary exhibit in Hall
10, hung on low screens in
front of the permanent col-

lection. This could be a show
of local artists, possibly from
the 1930s or 1940s.

Mellon, the art holdings of the Smithsonian were re-
named the National Collection of Fine Arts (NCFA) in
1937;

During the first decade of Holmes’s tenure, in spite
of restricted space, the National Gallery developed a
series Of temporary exhibits and continued to receive
donations; at One point a sculptor worked publicly as
a special exhibit.” The accumulating art more than filled
the “art hall” off the rotunda. By 1930 it included, in

part, the Alfred Duane Pell collection of “art objects of
varied types and much interest,” and several groups of

historical portraits.

“The visitor finds himself face to face with many of

the outstanding personages of the great war,” Holmes
wrote of one group, “kings, queens, presidents, sol-
diers, statesmen, and others—whose faces and achieve-
ments are familiar to the peoples of every civilized na-

tion.” There were also a “collection of portraits of

survivors of the Civil War painted from life by Walter
Beck 50 years after the close of the war[;]... the John
Elliot collection of portraits of young Americans who
entered the air service of France before the United
States had decided to take part in the struggle [World
War I]... anda very interesting collection of sketches
of prominent World War personages made by John C.
Johansen for use in executing his great work, the ‘Sign-
ing of the Peace Treaty, June 28, 1919°”" which oc-
cupied the west wall of the lobby. The lobby also con-
tained many pieces of sculpture and some other paintings.

For those interested in origins, the work of the Na-

tional Portrait Committee in assembling paintings of

World War I personages marked the dim beginnings
of the National Portrait Gallery. The Pell collection,

with its numerous glass and porcelain objects, gave a
real stimulus to what eventually became the Division of
Ceramics and Glass in the National Museum of History
and Technology. Meanwhile, for a natural history
building, the new National Museum became increas-
ingly eclectic. ‘he sculpture-crammed lobby scarcely
hinted of natural history, and since 1923 war portraits
had intruded into one of the second-floor halls.'°

In 1929 the National Gallery obtained the John Gel-
latly collection, which in 1933 was moved to Washington
to be displayed intact as it had been in the donor’s New
York home. The collections grew at a slower rate after
this major bequest, and while the gallery and later the
National Collection sponsored temporary exhibits in
the ground-floor foyer, the main exhibits changed very
little. In the spring of 1956 the National Collection held
a fiftieth-anniversary show of turn-of-the-century
paintings from the important William T. Evans collec-
tion. But despite their best efforts, the staff of the Na-
tional Collection had not made much progress toward
becoming a real gallery.

The Catlin Paintings

By 1963 the National Collection of Fine Arts, with a
total staff of ten people, still had little official contact
with the Museum. However, the National Collection
was the keeper of the Catlin paintings, perhaps the
single most important collection of western Indian eth-
nography in the world. Catlin paintings were on exhibit
in several halls; they hung above the elevator doors,
and all over the third-floor walls wherever there was a
small empty space. Wherever there was a large empty
space, something romantic in a gilt frame was hung.

The Structure

Exhibit of the Ranger
Collection, 1929, in the
National Gallery-National
Museum, north hall. Direc-_ |
tor William Henry Holmes
holds onto a bench to support
has single leg. Louise
Rosenbusch, research, is also
standing. The other two
employees of the National
Gallery of Art are the clerks
Helen Hogen and Glenn
Martin, seated at the desk.

The storage area in the east north range was also
overflowing, and anyone in the Museum who had office
wall space and wanted a painting could have one. Sev-
eral people had original Holmes drawings on loan. Dur-
ing the 1930s, the building superintendent had a nude
hanging in his office. For about twenty years J.H.F. van
Lerius’s melodramatic Death Preferred, now the center-
piece of the Renwick Gallery, was in the paleobotanical
library of the Geological Survey. The diaphanously-
clad maiden jumping from a window to escape the
clutches of ruffians attracted a number of visitors not
interested in plants.

Three Buildings Acquired
After half a century, change was in the air. The old
Patent Office Building, a few blocks northeast of the
Museum, was turned over to the Smithsonian in 1958
as a gallery site.'' Barney Studio House, on Massachu-
setts Avenue, became an outlying part of the NCFA in
1960. In 1962 the National Portrait Gallery was formed,
and in 1968 both art museums were installed in their
new home in the Old Patent Office building. Next, the
NCFA acquired the building at Seventeenth Street and
Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, near the White House, now
known as the Renwick Gallery. As the final step of this
story, the NCFA was retitled the National Museum of
American Art in 1980.

During the mid-1960s, the displays in the north wing
of the Natural History Building were gradually dis-
mantled and transferred to the newly renovated Patent

The National Gallery of Art

Office Building, between Seventh and Ninth streets on
F and G streets, NW. For several years temporary ex-
hibits were still hung in the foyer of the National Mu-
seum, and there were several special exhibitions in Hall
10, the last being in 1969. Thereafter, the whole build-
ing reverted to natural history. Yet after all, there was
nothing so strange in the long cohabitation of natural
history and art. Many major museums, for example the
National Museum of Wales, have objects of natural
history and oljets d’art under the same roof; and no one
has ever been able to draw a precise line between art
and ethnography.

In spite of some objections by the anthropologists,
the Catlin paintings left the building, for by official
decision they are art, even though the Department of
Anthropology holds title to them. By contrast, John
Elliott’s Diana of the Tides remained behind. This is a
huge painting, one of the original holdings of the old
National Gallery of Art. For years it occupied the east
wall of the dinosaur hall because there was no other
place to hang it. When the hall was refurbished, the
mural was boxed over and hidden from view. When
the hall was modified again in the 1970s, rediscovery
of the forgotten mural provided a minor sensation.
Diana is still hanging in the same place, again hidden
from view. Perhaps the National Museum of American
Art hopes the National Museum of Natural History will
forget where it is or who owns it. Aesthetics aside, the
practical fact is that murals twenty-five feet high and
very long are awkward to display. Oo

Chapter 6

Affiliated
Organizations

T IS WELL KNOWN THAT THE Smithsonian Institution

helped focus scientific endeavors that eventually re-
sulted in the founding of various government scientific
agencies. The Weather Service is cited as the classic
example, but similar developments occurred in natural
history. The “museum community” includes many in-
dividuals who are in the Museum but not of it, and for
the first fifty years at least, about half of the scientists
and support staff in the new building were paid by
other government organizations.

Most people both inside and outside the building are
still unaware of any distinction between Museum mem-
bers and those of associated agencies, the primary dif-
ference often being the day on which they are paid.
The ultimate confusion occurred a few years ago when
an assistant secretary of the Department of the Interior
wrote the Secretary of the Smithsonian, congratulating
him ona staff publication that would be of considerable
use to his department. The item, it turned out, was one
prepared by Interior Department employees within the
Museum.

Geological Survey

The easiest administrative history to follow is that of

the U.S. Geological Survey. After the Civil War, the
tradition of government-supported exploration of the
western United States resulted in four simultaneous
territorial surveys.’ In addition to making maps and
studying the rocks, they followed the pattern of earlier
government explorations by examining, to varying de-
grees, other aspects of natural history. Eventually sev-
eral of the survey parties crossed paths in the field.
Congress rectified what was judged to be duplication
of effort by discontinuing three of the surveys; the
fourth, a survey of the fortieth parallel, had been fin-
ished.

John Wesley Powell in his office in the Bureau of
Ethnology on F Street, 1894 or earlier. Explorer of the
Grand Canyon, first director of the Bureau of Ethnology,
and second director of the Geological Survey, Powell is
representative of all the American scientists who were and
are affiliated with the Museum.

In March 1879, the United States Geological Survey
was created, under the Department of the Interior, to
carry on the geological facets of this work in a more
systematic manner. The same act, the Sundry Civil Ex-
pense Bill, also ood the Bureau of Ethnology and
placed it under the jurisdiction of the Smithsonian.”
John Wesley Powell, who had explored the Colorado
River and had headed one of the four territorial sur-
veys, became the director of the bureau. The U.S. Geo-
logical Survey was organized with Clarence King as
director, but within two years he left. Powell became
director of that agency as well, and rode both horses
for thirteen years.

Within the section of the act establishing the Geo-
logical Survey appears the following sentence: “And all
collections of rocks, minerals, soils, and fossils, and ob-

jects of natural history, archaeology, and ethnology,

made by the Coast and Interior Survey, the Geological
Survey, or by any other parties for the Government of
the United States, when no longer needed for inves-
tigations in progress, shall be deposited in the National
Museum.”* This is potentially a powerful piece of law-
making; tradition ascribes its wording to Powell. Assis-
tant Secretary Baird had always maintained—an ar-
guable point—that the congressional action establishing
the Smithsonian had made it the keeper of the nation’s
collections. The wording of the 1879 law expunged
doubt as to the final destination of all federal collec-
tions. It also established tangible bonds between the
Museum and a group of other organizations.

The Geological Survey made its headquarters in the
National Museum when the brick building opened in
1881, but in a few years the director moved to the Hooe
Iron Building, on F Street between Thirteenth and
Fourteenth. Laboratories had been set up in the north-
east tower of the National Museum, so the chemists and
physicists stayed a few years longer. But the paleon-
tologists in residence at the Museum stayed put, with
their ever-increasing collections, because of the diffi-
culty of moving so many fossils. As the Survey grew,
more paleontologists were added to the staff in the
Hooe Building, and their collections were kept there
because of tight quarters in the National Museum. As

soon as the new National Museum opened, some of the
Geological Survey paleontologists moved into it from
the brick building and the Hooe Building. ‘To this day,
more than a dozen Geological Survey paleontologists
remain in the Museum.

Commission on Fish and Fisheries
In 1871, eight years before the Geological Survey took
shape, the U.S. Commission on Fish and Fisheries was
organized. This was a brainchild of Secretary Baird,
who ran it at no extra salary until his death. He settled
the commission in the former armory at Seventh and
B streets, SW, and developed additional laboratories in
other parts of the country, the most famous of which
was at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The Armory build-
ing, which continued to be used for storage of Museum
collections for decades, lay in a line with the Army
Medical Museum, the original National Museum, and
the Castle, so there was plenty of communication be-
tween the Smithsonian buildings and the Commission.
Shortly after the turn of the century, the Fish Com-
mission became the Bureau of Fisheries under the De-
partment of Commerce and Labor.* “Technical studies
yield valuable data for the fishing industry,” a later
article explained. “The life habits of fish and the changes
in the abundance of various kinds of fish are studied.
An efficient fish ladder for the upstream migrations of
the salmon and other fish was developed in cooperation
with the states and the industry. The Bureau’s aid to
the pearl button and goldfish industries will long be
remembered.” Smile though one may at the last sen-
tence, the scientists of the bureau performed many
economically useful investigations. In the course of their
activities, the staff of the commission and the bureau
collected numerous fishes, most of which were saved
for the collections.

E. O. Ulrich, paleontologist
of the U.S. Geological Sur-
vey, in has frrst office in the
Hooe Building, 1901.

In 1939 the Bureau of Fisheries was transferred to
the Interior Department, joining the Biological Survey,
transferred to Interior from Agriculture the same year.
In 1940 both were absorbed into the Fish and Wildlife
Service, which in 1956 became the U.S. Fish and Wild-
life Service. The former Fish Commission was parti-
toned into the Bureau of Sports Fisheries and the Bu-
reau of Commercial Fisheries, with the latter eventually
returning to the jurisdiction of the Department of Com-
merce.

As the events of World War II disrupted Washington,
the Old Armory was torn down to make room for tem-
porary buildings. (The west end of the National Air
and Space Museum now occupies the site.) In 1942 the
collections of fish and a few ichthyologists were moved
into the north side of the south wing on the ground
level of the National Museum. Part of the area was
temporarily decked over to make more office space,
and one bureau employee was placed in a former la-
trine. The fisheries collections were integrated with those
of the Division of Fishes—the bureau collections were
substanually larger.

Today the Commerce Department is represented in
the Museum building by a few people on the ground
floor who do a great deal of scientific work affecting
what food we gather from the seas. They enjoy the
dubious pleasure of walking on the only original wooden
floors remaining in the building. Just to complicate
things a little more, or perhaps to show the breadth of
the applied-science community, the National System-
atics Laboratory of the Department of Commerce used
to include a malacologist (a student of the clams and
snails), housed on the third floor in the Division of
Mollusks. Currently this organization includes, in ad-
dition to fish specialists, a “shrimp woman” and a “crab
man” with offices in the Division of Crustacea.

The Structure

An oblique vie
south side of the Mall, the Army Medical Museum (now

replaced by the Hirshhorn Museum) stood on the site of the

Armory, used for storage. The Bureau of Fisheries site is
now under the National Air and Space Museum. The
compiler has left out the courtyards of the Natural History
Building, while towers and turrets on the Arts and
Industries Building and on the Castle have been extended
considerably. To the north of the Castle, the Freer Gallery,

Affiliated Organizations

ees Se Fag
lt; EN
PRD 0 | ee te

PU |

Vyas PAD iss
oo Ot OD
nytt

“r
MAN

Department of Agriculture, with experimental plantings
where the National Museum of American History now

stands. The Mall was not as heavily wooded as shown, but

did have far more trees than today. (From Washington,
the Beautiful Capital of the Nation, copyright 1922 by
William Olsen, National Aero-View Publishing Company,
Washington, D.C.)

Department of Agriculture

The relationships of the Department of Agriculture to
the Smithsonian Institution and to the National Mu-
seum have been even more involved. For many years
the United States National Herbarium was in the Smith-
sonian Castle, and scientific papers generated by those
who studied the collection were published by the Mu-
seum. However, at that time the employees in the her-
barium were mostly from the Department of Agricul-
ture. All other Smithsonian plant collections and the
few paid Museum botanists were jammed into the her-
barium space, perhaps the most crowded area of a
crowded institution. That remarkable student of the
grasses Agnes Chase, in whom the Smithsonian took
just pride for many years, was an employee of the De-
partment of Agriculture, as was A. S. Hitchcock, whom
she came to assist.

Although the new Natural History Building was
“commodious,” for some reason the plant collections
were not moved to new quarters there. If it was thought
advantageous for the herbarium to remain in the Cas-
tle, just east of the Department of Agriculture, perhaps
it seemed just as well for the Museum’s botanical ma-
terial and staff to stay there too. In 1947 the Museum’s
Department of Biology was divided into departments
of Botany and Zoology. But even so, the staff of Botany
and their collections were not transferred. They and
the Department of Agriculture botanists remained
somewhat isolated until the west wing was added to the
Natural History Building in the 1960s.

Government Entomology

The Department of Agriculture, founded in 1862, not
only predated the Fish Commission but had a far broader
mission in the natural history realm. ‘Phe relationship
of insects to crops is so obvious that Townsend Glover,
the first government entomologist, was on the scene in
the 1840s, as an employee of the Patent Office. How-
ever, government entomology did not really become
noticeable until 1878, when its few practitioners were
organized into a Division of Entomology and C. V. Riley
arrived from Missouri. A most forceful personality, Ri-
ley was compelled to leave office once, but with a change
in administration he returned to run the organization
until 1894, when he was given the option of resigning
or being fired.

The insect collection of the Museum had been widely
distributed to various specialists throughout the coun-
try. Riley offered his Department of Agriculture col-
lections to the Museum on the condition that it establish
a position for someone to study insects; the Museum
complied. A few years later Riley donated his private
collection. These two actions were the key building blocks
of the insect collections of the Museum. Both Riley and
his successor, L. O. Howard, were honorary curators
in the Department of Biology.°

In 1894 the old brick Beiber Building, behind and

to the east of Department of Agriculture headquarters,
became vacant. Entomology moved there, along with
the Biological Survey.’ This location, to the west of the
Castle, was only a few minutes’ walk from the National
Museum. It is not clear whether any entomologists were
housed in the brick Museum, but with space so limited
there, it seems unlikely.

At the turn of the century, much of the work of the
Bureau of Entomology was directed toward control of
economically harmful insects. Later, Howard wrote,
“work on even more fundamental aspects was begun,
such as the physiology of insects and their reactions.
And it was found necessary to enlarge the facilities of
the Bureau in its taxonomic work. This work, consisting
of the accurate identification of insects, has ... been
of the most important help to the more strictly eco-
nomic workers of the Department of Agriculture; and

.. of the different State Experiment Stations and Ag-
ricultural Colleges. . .. Demands have been [so] great
from institutions throughout the States, [that the] Mu-
seum force of the Bureau will undoubtedly be en-
larged.””

Howard’s annual reports do not mention the location
of staff members, but according to C. F. W. Muesebeck,
a long-retired specialist on parasitic wasps, Department
of Agriculture entomologists—not including How-
ard—were in residence in the Museum by 1910. Not
everyone was happy with the arrangements. A. A. Gi-
rault grumbled in a paper, “This work was done in
Bedlam, that 1s, the Insect Section, U.S. National Mu-
seum at Washington, a place unfit for scholarship.” At
peak staffing, in 1942, the systematic entomologists of
the Department of Agriculture numbered twenty-eight
specialists, twenty-one aides, and four typists.'° Al-
though most of the systematic entomologists have re-
mained at the Museum, some moved first to the main
building of the Department of Agriculture and later to
the Agricultural Research Center at Beltsville, Mary-
land.

Biological Survey

The Biological Survey originally came into the De-
partment of Agriculture in 1885 as the Economic Or-
nithology section of Riley’s Entomology Division. Started
through the efforts of yet another scientific entrepre-
neur, C. Hart Merriam, the enterprise was promoted
one year later to Division of Economic Ornithology and
Mammalogy. In 1896 it became the Division of Bio-
logical Survey, and in 1905 the Biological Survey at-
tained bureau status. Under Merriam its work was mostly
on systematics, distribution, and life history of animals,
for although he had begun as an ornithologist, Merriam
devoted increasing amounts of time to mammals. The
Biological Survey eventually did a few studies of rep-
tiles, but its strength was in birds and mammals, with
a particular concern toward developing the concept of
animal and plant distribution by climatic life zone.

The Structure

Entimoligieal workers, U. S. ee Wee May 21, 1925. Miner 8 is L. 0. Howard, chief of the Baa of
Entomology. Of the twenty-eight people shown, apparently none was paid by the Museum.

Merriam never got on well with Congress or with
most of his subordinates, and in 1910 he retired. When
the new Museum building was occupied, the Biological
Survey ornithologists moved to the third floor of the
north wing and the mammalogists to the west range on
the ground floor. ‘The collections of the Biological Sur-
vey since its inception had been stored in the Museum,
but were maintained as a separate series until the 1940s.

The major objectives of the Biological Survey were
changed. Studies of bird-insect relationships were dis-
continued. Game management and predator control
became more important, and the taxonomic work re-
ceived less emphasis. Like the Fish Commission, the
Biological Survey changed in name and moved from
one government department to another. However, tax-
onomy still has its place; today the U.S. Fish and Wild-
life Service of the Department of the Interior includes
a Museum section to support such work at the Museum
of Natural History."' It is administered out of Denver,
but that is hardly more illogical than administering the
systematic entomologists from a Beltsville, Maryland,
office, or the Commerce Department taxonomists from
Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

If other agencies did not mention having employees
in the Museum, the annual reports of the National
Museum, by the same token, almost never mentioned

Affiliated Organizations

the activities of others in the building, except the mu-
seum work of those who were honorary staff members.
There seems to be no written agreement that the Mu-
seum would provide space for these other scientists,
yet the arrangement has worked well for more than a
century. Washington bureaucracy is replete with fights
over turf and office space, but one cannot tell from the
size, location, or quality of an individual Museum office
who works for which federal agency.

Bureau of Ethnology

Although the Bureau of Ethnology was under the
Smithsonian Institution, it functioned independently,
and never had employees in the new Natural History
Building. Founded in 1877, it flourished for some years
in the Adams Building on F Street, NW, just across
from the Geological Survey. Offices became available
in the Castle as a result of transfers to the new Museum
building, and in 1910 the bureau, which had been re-
titled the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) in 1894,
moved to the Mall.

Because the bureau had a separate budget and be-
cause ethnographic material was popular with Con-
gress, many outstanding publications were produced.
Perhaps the best known was BAE Bulletin 30, Handbook
of American Indians North of Mexico, which was edited by

CIC

Roland W. Brown, a paleo-
botanist with the U.S. Geo-
logical Survey, at his desk in
“Stone Hall” in December
1958. The wooden desk and
gooseneck lamp were stan-
dard equipment of the time;
above are Sears Roebuck
catalogues into which Dr.
Brown pasted newspaper
clippings of interest. Brown
owned only a single pair of
shoes, shown here, which he
cobbled himself. The manu-
script of his book The
Composition of Scientific
Words zs on the windowsill.

!
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\

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ee pee =
=a =
=a el ao.
a | . = =
za B@ =
Eat ie
Re =>
= * @ cs an
> Saae a =
=. 33 a -
= + ow —_ =
~ eat =

-_ =
Eis a

E- =>
== ta = Ff
Renee = - = =
= TE —a™, =
=
=

S.H. Mamay, a paleobotanist with the U.S. Geological steel cases. Stone slabs about two inches thick and up to
Survey, working in “Stone Hall,” probably in the mid- eight feet long are attached to the wall and extend above the
1950s. Behind him are three-foot wooden cases atop six-foot top of the cases.

52 The Structure

( te a ren A

John Paridoso, a biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, measuring wolf skulls (Canis), with caribou (Rangifer)

be. 4
eet

— As

hanging above. The photograph was taken before 1964 in the Fish and Wildlife area of the west range, ground floor.

F. W. Hodge during the first decade of this century.
More than a third of a century later, Bulletin 143, the
Handbook of South American Indians, was completed.

Although relationships between the Department of
Anthropology and the BAE had been strong when
Holmes ran both, they gradually became less satisfac-
tory. In addition, for the last half of its lifetime the
staff of the bureau dwindled, and in July, 1964, it was
merged with the Museum’s Department of Anthro-
pology to form the Smithsonian’s Office of Anthro-
pology.'* At that time its scientific staff of three an-
thropologists moved to the Museum of Natural History.
During the early 1970s, a major revision of the Hand-
book of American Indians North of Mexico was undertaken.
William Sturtevant, one of the last former BAE em-
ployees on the departmental staff, is in charge of the
project, whose budget is distinct from that of the de-
partment.

Affiliated Organizations

Systematics Continues
In the current government science community, system-
atics—the differentiation of species, their naming and
classification—is given less significance than in the past,
in spite of its obvious application to the nation’s envi-
ronment, food, and fuel. There have been staff in-
creases for natural history positions in the Departments
of Agriculture, Commerce, and the Interior, but they
are slight compared to total growth of these agencies.

However, the old tradition of the Museum as the
place to do systematics for the federal government re-
mains. During the early 1960s the Department of the
Army joined the club of associated agencies by housing
a Southeast Asia Mosquito Project in the Museum. The
outside world still confuses the staff members of the
affiliated agencies with those of the Museum, and the
Museum continues to provide space for these allied
scientists and their valuable collections.

So)
oo

Part Two

The
Exhibits

ry 4

teh

Chapter 7

New Exhibits,
New Offices

ad WHEN THE NEW NATIONAL MUSEUM opened
is a minor point for debate, since the building first
served as a meeting place in 1908; collections were first
stored in unfinished halls early in 1909; and the main
floor of the north wing was first opened to visitors on
March 17, 1910. This last date, marking its public de-
but, seems the best one to pick as the building’s official
birthday.

Over the next year, “only the remaining part of the
space allotted to ethnology and consisting of the north-
ern sections of the east and west ranges on the same
floor were made accessible,” but in 1911 and 1912 “much
greater progress was shown,”' especially in the area of
exhibits. While safety dictated steel- or metal-covered
storage cases as soon as they could be obtained, aes-
thetics, in the head curator’s view, dictated wooden
display cases. These were traditional for more than half
a century, and because the Museum provided plans
and specifications for many other new or changing mu-
seums, similar display cases were seen throughout the
country.

Although much of the work had to be contracted out,
many of the new display cases were built by the car-
pentry and cabinet shops in the new National Museum.
Mr. Cole, who had been chief carpenter for Secretary
Langley’s effort to build a man-carrying aircraft, moved
in to take charge, and the sawing of mahogany and
pine wafted a pleasant smell through a large part of
the ground floor. Dark mahogany was standard for all

Hall of Archeology of Mexico, Central and South America
on the second floor (Hall 26), taken from the stairs looking
south. Those are calendar stones in the foreground and on
the wall to the right. The glyphs on that wall are Mayan,
and the cases contain Aztec pottery. Behind the calendar
stone is a model of the Castillo at Chichén Itza, and behind
that, partly in the shadow, is Coatlique, main mother
goddess of the Aztecs. The Mayan stele behind it is from
Capan, Honduras. Because the models of the Serpent
columns, which were at the door of the Castillo, are not
pended in the hall, this view probably was taken before
1924.

display cases in all the halls. When these were com-
pleted, the shop spent decades building wooden storage
cases that were then covered in the sheet-metal shop
and sent off to the curators, who could never get enough
of them. By 1912 the three Smithsonian buildings con-
tained “2,724 exhibition cases of all kinds and sizes,
a storage cases and pieces of laboratory furniture,

2,800 pieces of office and miscellaneous furniture, 32,976
unit specimens
of steel, 6,839 insect drawers, and 13,253 mis-

unit specimen drawers of wood, 4,712
drawers
cellaneous specimens drawers and boxes of various
sizes.”>

About a year after the building opened, the new
Museum experimented with the concept of opening
for half a day on Sundays, and the public loved it. On
October 15, 1911, a local paper reported: “The New
National Museum will have its second Sunday opening
today. The program is a more inviting one than that
which attracted 15,000 to the institution at the initial
Sunday opening a week ago for two new exhibits have
been installed and several of the old ones have been
repaired and rearranged. The museum’s corps of tax-
idermists, preparators and cabinet makers have been
busily engaged since Monday transferring and com-
pleting the exhibits.

“Zoology and paleontology,” the article continued,
“is the subject matter of the two new exhibits, which
have been located on the first and second floors of the
buildings. It is announced that the rotunda on the first
floor will be open, as will the east hall of that floor and
the northern part of the west range on the second floor.
It is in these rooms that the zoological and paleonto-
logical exhibits will be displayed.”

Installing the new exhibits was hard work, and George
Perkins Merrill remarked: “At best the head of a de-
partment or division has not been able to depend on
more than a moiety of each day for research, and in
times when exhibits are in preparation he has been
obliged to dispense with even that. There are few forms
of literary work, it must be added, that require greater
care than that of label writing. To be able to state con-
cisely and clearly the essential facts concerning an object

Part of the Hall of Building
Stones (Hall 20), on the
north side of the east wing,
second floor, showing two
exhibit cases with a slab
attached to the wall between
them. The cases were about
eight feet tall, so that it was
difficult to see the upper
shelf. In the early days, the
paint shop was in charge of
removing the glass if a cura-
tor had to get into a case.

is by no means an easy task as everyone knows who has
made the attempt. If the label is too long it will not be
read; if too short it is not sufficiently explicit.”
Merrill noted that the Department of Geology, unlike
Biology or Anthropology, was tending “toward open
installation with the main aisle through the center of
each hall, or if utilized for display of objects, only such
as can readily be seen over and around. In short the
aim has been to so arrange the cases and isolated objects,
that a visitor can, in making continuous progress through
the hall see readily on either hand every individual
object on display.”’ He added that “the paleobotanical
exhibit has proven with us as is almost universally the
case with other museums, the most difficult of all to

make interesting and attractive.

Exhibit Challenges—and Problems
A 1913 document chronicled the concerns of the Di-
vision of Mineralogy and Petrology. There and else-
where in the Museum, exhibit technique was not nearly
so sophisucated as today. (“The labels employed are on
herbarium board. Gray board was preferred by the
Assistant Curator, but was not adopted because two-
thirds of the labels had been previously printed on the
herbarium board.”)’ But the problems that the curators
faced with tourists and exhibit maintenance were com-
parable to those of later generations:

The average visitor spends so little time in each

hall, that every effort must be made to secure his

attention and the exhibition has been designed to

attract attention and create interest, as well as

supply information. ... The cases are fairly dust
proof and thus far the specimens have remained
clean; in the course of time, however, sufficient
dust will filter in to cause the specimens to require
cleaning. This period can be deferred somewhat
by care on the part of the one in charge to secure
adequate cleaning of the cases with the vacuum
cleaner. ... Every effort should be made also to
force the operators to keep the tops of the cases
clean, a difficult task as they are apt to overlook all
points not directly visible. The tops of the cases
should be inspected also to note if the top glass
becomes loosened, in which event special
opportunity for access will be given the dust.

The enormously popular gem collection, which could
not “be given too great prominence, or too much at-
tention,” was arranged

in seven table top cases down the center of the
hall. It is believed that the sage-green velours
lining to the cases is the most suitable that can be
secured. Unfortunately it fades; this objection
would hold for any other fabric or color. The
white silk pads are also satisfactory but those now
employed were used in the old building and are
not especially fresh and clean, and in a few years
will have to be renewed.*

Not all exhibits were simple. William Henry Holmes
did a great deal more than install the National Gallery
of Art, and in some ways was the star of the new Mu-

The Exhibits

West end of Hall of Geology
and Meteoritics (Hall 6) in
the 1920s or 1930s. In the
cases to the left are igneous

rocks, most trimmed to uni-
form rectangular shapes. The
meteorites are to the right,

but the largest specimen, in
the foreground, is a plaster
cast of a Mexican specimen.

Tourists would touch the cast
and then chip a piece away,
so that it continually had to
be repaired with black paint.

Eventually director Wetmore

was persuaded to discard
the cast.

seum’s show, earning accolades for his ingenuity with
ethnological exhibits. His “scheme for getting these
changing peoples on record,” as a Washington news-
paper article observed, had first been displayed at the
1893 World’s Fair at Chicago, and is now in use in
practically all the great museums of the world. This
new idea of the American ethnologist was to crystallize
into permanent form a family group of all the impor-
tant people. This group should be cast, life size, into
some permanent material. The members that go to
make up the group should be shown at their customary
activities. They should be clad as when seen at home.
The scene should be set as though the pages of history
were turned back to the time when the people lived
untrammeled by a higher civilization and foreshad-
owed by higher peculiarities of the time and place they
formerly occupied. .. . Dr. Holmes is a scientist and an
artist. He is one of the great men in ethnology in
America.”
Rathbun described the arrangement of the exhibits
in detail:
Many paintings of Indians from the Catlin
collection and other sources were hung, and a
large series of transparencies of Indian subjects
were placed in the windows of the halls. he totem
poles and other carvings and paintings of the
northwest coast tribes, with the exception of the
Haida house front and its associated totem poles,
were installed at the south end of the middle hall,
where they make a striking display. In the

New Exhibits, New Offices

arrangement of the collection from the Pueblo
region it was found advisable to separate the
antiquities from the ethnological material proper,
with which they have heretofore been associated,
and they have been transferred to the division of
prehistoric archeology. The construction of lay
figure groups progressed rapidly, and seven full-
sized groups of this character were added to the
exhibition.

The exhibits of this division are assembled
primarily by geographic area, and the peoples and
their cultures, so far as represented, may be thus
studied in much the same order that the peoples
themselves might be visited by the traveler. Under
these headings the classification is by nations or
tribes, and by special exhibition units illustrating
culture as follows: tribal area, synoptic series of
artifacts, family groups, industrial groups,
individual figures, pictorial exhibits, and sculptural
exhibits. Of the 16 full sized lay figure groups that
have been planned the following 12 are finished
and on view, namely the Eskimo, Chilkat, Hupa,
Cocopa, Zuni, Sioux, Virginia, Tehuelche, Samoan,
Negrito, the arrow makers, and the snake dance.'°

Neil M. Judd, newly hired in 1911 as an aide in
ethnology, remembered the exhibits well from a dif-
ferent perspective.

The new building with over ten acres of floor

space had been completed externally in 1910, but

the interior plaster was not yet dry when orders

Hall of Eskimo and Indian Groups (Hall 9). ae
paintings by George Catlin are on the wall above the cases;
Eskimo clothing is in the foreground and Indian clothing is
m the distance. Probably post-1930, judging from the light
fixtures.

a dla

The Piney Branch Quarry Indian group, to the bes
discussed and illlustrated in the Smithsonian ae rae
Annual Report for 1920. The case behind, mainly
hidden, holds the Hopi snake dancers. Holmes’s work at this

quarry in Washington, D.C., brought him world fame and
cast new light on the manufacture of stone tools. In his

Random Records” is another photograph of this group,
with a notation that someone had moved it to the second
floor without consulting him. After the move, furthermore,
the area surrounding the figures was strewn with water-
worn cobbles rather than flakes of broken stone. Holmes was
furious.

came to rush the exhibits. . . .

The “new” National Museum was individualistic,
unlike any other. It was entirely up to date. With
larger-than-usual exhibition spaces, special
furniture had to be designed. In archaeology, for
halls with twenty-foot ceilings and windows on
both sides, four kinds of cases were provided:
those fixed in position against a wall; caster-
equipped “floor” cases four feet wide by eight feet
long and eight feet high; “double-slope-top” cases
with storage drawers beneath; and “narrow flat-
top” cases, likewise on rollers and with storage
facilities. Each was precisely like every other of its
kind, and each was allotted a predetermined space,
row upon row. Wall cases and floor cases were
equipped with adjustable shelves, but it took two
strong men to lift their great plate-glass fronts.
They were all very modern. And every glass-front
case was a mirror reflecting every other case and
its contents. ‘hose were parsimonious times at the
National Museum. We lacked competent assistants
and adequate equipment. But somehow the work
was done. ... As the task progressed, we begged
from colleagues in other halls and improvised
when other means failed. From sheer necessity we
continued to use handmade pasteboard boxes and
trays, salvaged from the “old” museum [and] red-
stained wood trays made to fit the old walnut
exhibition cases... .

Three halls with 216 exhibition cases on nearly
35,000 square feet of floor space were reserved for
Western Hemisphere archaeology—from the
Arctic to the Antarctic. Under Prof. Holmes’
supervision those 216 cases were my responsibility;
filling them in a hurry my job. ... There was no
tume to mark and describe individual specimens.
They were unpacked and immediately put in
exhibition cases, and the contents of those cases
became visible storage not to be changed
appreciably for forty years."

Biology Exhibits

The Department of Biology encountered the most chal-
lenges in installing material, for the subject matter to
be exhibited was far more diverse than that of Geology
or even Anthropology. Display of specimens was also
more difficult—there were serious problems of pro-
tection against pests and deterioration. After the build-
ing opened, an unanticipated change had to be made
in the halls themselves when the ground window glass
proved insufficient to protect the colors of the speci-
mens from sunlight. The enormous windows, each con-
taining two movable panes that had to be kept open in
warm weather, were fitted with a complicated system
of curtains. “The main curtains on the first floor, of
unbleached muslin, reach from the window top to the
upper level of the ventilating openings and are followed

The Exhibits

Indian exhibit—Hopr snake dance. This group too 1s
discussed and illustrated in the Annual Report for 1920.
To take the photograph—probably in the 1910s or 1920s,
for the model behind this case is not on a stand—the sides

by shorter curtains.”'* A third set of curtains, black,
was drawn after closing time as extra protection for the
mammal and bird exhibits.

Shortly after the exhibits work began, F. W. True,
the head of Biology, was promoted by Secretary Walcott
to Assistant Secretary in charge of library and ex-
changes, and on June 1, 1911, Leonhard Stejneger took
over. Stejneger had had less experience with exposi-
tions than Holmes and Merrill, who in a sense had
stockpiled some displays, but he kept things moving.
Because “a satisfactory display of plant life present[s]
difficulties which have not yet been worked out,”'” (to
this day the Museum has not developed a major bo-
tanical display), Biology’s exhibits related to zoology
only. Even without botany, they occupied a large num-
ber of halls.

“The first story is devoted to the mounted skins of

mammals and birds arranged faunally,” Rathbun wrote,
“the latter group occupying the [west] range and a por-
tion of the north hall of the [west] wing. . . . The Amer-
ican mammals, consisting principally of North Amer-

New Exhibits, New Offices

and back of the case were covered with fabric to cut down
on reflection and to mask adjacent cases. The display is in
Hall 11 in the west north range, first floor.

ican representatives, have been assigned to the large
skylighted hall, the African mammals to the outer end
of the wing, and the Australian and oriental mammals
the south hall, while the palearctic fauna will share the
north hall with the birds. Pending their arrangement
a few large mammals mounted separately on pedestals
have been exhibited in the rotunda.”

William T. Hornaday

One of the major items transferred to the central sky-
lighted Hall 16 of the west wing—the site of the tem-
porary Freer exhibit—was the group of six buffalo that
Wiliam T. Hornaday had mounted in 1888. One of
the finest taxidermists of his generation and the person
most to be credited for the founding of the National
Zoological Park, Hornaday had personally shot three
of the specimens in one of the last buffalo hunts in the
United States. He was one of the first, if not the first,
to develop the notion of placing specimens in natural
settings, and he had brought back sufficient material
from Montana to provide a realistic environment. (“The

group, with its accessories, has been prepared so as to
tell... the general visitor... the story of the buffalo,
but care has been taken ... to secure an accuracy of
detail that will satisfy the critical scrutny of the most
technical naturalist.”)'” Unfortunately, Hornaday had
clashed with Langley and left in 1897; the new exhibits
could have used him. ‘Taxidermy was so important to
the department that for a few years there was a de-
partmental position of chief of exhibits, at that time the
only official recognition of exhibition design within the
establishment.

Graced by Hornaday’s newly mounted specimens, an
African buffalo group, and some individual African
specimens Theodore Roosevelt had collected after leav-
ing the White House, the mammal hall was formally
opened on April 22, 1913. Some of the biological ex-
hibits on the second floor had already opened the pre-
vious year; others were sull being worked on. By the
end of June the entire area allotted to natural history—
the wings and ranges in the first and second stories—
was open to the public.

During the following year, Rathbun noted, “the di-
vision of plants has for the first ume been represented
to the public by an exhibition of flower studies in water
color ... embrac{ing] a wide range of domestic and
foreign plants as well as cultivated varieties.”'” There
sull were many cases to be installed, but the dramatic
phase of opening new halls was over. Because a great
deal of space was now open in the old brick Museum,
much of the Annual Report was devoted to the change
of exhibits there.

It was a phenomenal achievement for the reference
collections to have been moved, and for so many new
display halls to have been opened, in a relatively short
time. By way of comparison, the Freer building did not
open until two years after it was completed, and that
was a far smaller operation. A published plan of the
Museum?’s exhibit halls indicates that all five acres of
display space was filled by 1917.'’ By any criteria one
cares to apply, the staff had done a remarkable job,
and deserved at least to pause on their laurels.

Offices and Storage Space

There was a vast amount of space in the massive new
building apart from what the exhibits occupied. Most
of the ground floor, except in the north wing, remained
to be filled, and the third floor provided acres of new
offices and seemingly unlimited storage space. As head
curator of geology, Merrill rated a large office on the
southeast corner, the same size as the office of the
director on the southwest corner, except that Merrill’s
was full of steel cases that divided it into several cub-
byholes. The remainder of the Geology Department
had adjacent offices facing the Mall, and the large min-
eral collection was at the north side of the east wing.
The chemical laboratory overlooked the east court.

Paleontologists of the Geological Survey filled most
of the offices on the third floor of the east range, con-
venient to the Geology Department. E. O. Ulrich and
a young J. B. Reeside were among those who moved
from the Hooe Building to share an office overlooking
the east courtyard. Late one afternoon Ulrich was
studying the fossil brachiopods in a large collection and
dividing them into three piles, each a different species.
Reeside arrived early the next morning and was there
to see Ulrich come in and begin shouting that someone
had mixed up the piles during the night. Deciding and
then changing one’s mind as to how much variation
there is within a species continues to be a major preoc-
cupation of a large number of people in the building.

The vertebrate paleontologists were on the ground
floor, partly because they needed more space and high
ceilings to assemble large specimens, and partly because
they needed ironwork from time to time to mount a
skeleton; this could be obtained from the nearby ma-
chine shop. Charles W. Gilmore had the northeast cor-
ner office. The library, on the east north range between
his office and the lobby, did not even occupy all the
space of that range. The saw for meteorites and the
stone-cutting and polishing equipment were also on the
east side adjacent to the shops and the east court. The
shops occupied most of the east wing.

Holmes had his office on the Constitution Avenue
side of the third floor, adjacent to the elevators in the
north wing. It was not as spacious as Rathbun’s and
Merrill’s south-side rooms, and on windy days there
was a racket from the halyard whipping back and forth
on the flagpole outside the window. But Holmes as an
arust liked the north light of the office, which also
chanced to have a marble-lined private bathroom. Sev-
eral other ethnologists were in the east north range;
Ales Hrdlicka and the physical anthropology collections
occupied the courtyard side. They were separated from
another group of ethnologists scattered in the east side
of the north wing closer to the rotunda. Anthropology
had a potsherd and casting laboratory in the north
range on the ground floor, around the corner from
the vertebrate paleontology laboratory; since both op-
erations used a fair amount of plaster in restoring miss-
ing fragments of bones or pots, the association was
convenient.

The Department of Biology was both the most split-
up and the largest in staff. The entomologists—that is,
the Department of Agriculture employees—were in the
west side of the north wing and in the west wing. Mol-
lusks were in the west range, along with a few Geological
Survey folk who worked on fairly young fossils. The
Museum’s bird division and the ornithologists of the
Biological Survey were in the west north range and the
courtyard side of the west wing. In later years the head
curator of biology had the first office in the east wing
nearest the rotunda. It is not a particularly distin-

The Exhibits

Hall of Archeology of
Europe and Asia (Hall 23),
on the second floor of the
north wing, looking north to
the elevator doors in the
distance; a model of the
Parthenon is to the right.
The windows on the left open
onto the west court, and the
openings on the right
overlook Hall 10. Probably
1910-1940.

guished one, but does have a large closet at one end,
an uncommon feature. Most offices had clothes trees
or lockers, for the thickness of the Museum’s walls pre-
cluded the sort of thin partitions used for conventional
closets.

On the ground floor, the mammalogists held sway
in both the west north range and the west range. Most
of the west range was occupied by mammalogists of the
Biological Survey, while the Division of Mammals had
the Constitution Avenue side of the building. The Mall
side of the west wing was occupied by the invertebrate
zoologists, and the Museum fish people had the north
side, looking out into the west courtyard. Botany re-
mained in the Castle.

Few New Staff Members

In spite of the large new quarters, few new members
were added to the scientific staff; most of the expansion
was from associated agencies. Neil Judd, in Anthro-
pology, was one of the few new junior staff members,
and his position probably came about because Holmes
was so busy with the National Gallery. Waldo Schmitt,
in invertebrate zoology, was another. A native of Wash-
ington, D.C., he had been a scientific aide in the Division
of Marine Invertebrates before joining several cruises
in Bureau of Fisheries vessels. After a year in California,
he returned to the Museum as an assistant curator.’”
In order to provide a paid position for him, Mary Jane

New Exhibits, New Offices

Rathbun, the sister of the Assistant Secretary, gave up
her staff appointment. Schmitt's devotion to her, through
the next thirty years of her career, was less an expres-
sion of gratitude than a true scientific love story. Miss
Rathbun was the specialist on crabs.

Compared to the brick building, the new National
Museum was a palace. All the offices, which were steam-
heated, had windows, giving plenty of daylight to work
by. For those on the ground floor, lavatories were in
the lobby; there were two on the third floor near the
rotunda. It may give some notion of the building’s size
to point out that from a remote office to the nearest
bathroom was close to a 500-foot walk.

There seems to be a general rule of thumb today
that it takes about five years after a major move for an
organization to function with its former efficiency. It
takes time to settle in and fit new members into the
staff, to remember where materials have been moved,
to get a grasp of how the library has been rearranged.
Yet the disruption of research at the Museum was min-
imal. Judging from lists in the annual reports of the
published papers of the staff, there was no noticeable
slackening of publication as a result of the move and
the new exhibits program. Certainly by 1913 the Mu-
seum staff was pursuing research at a more active pace
than ever. But the tranquility and order that had been
earned by hard work were not to last.

— Bi hice SAS TRE 2 fea cS a 2 ESET es

3 ot “ :

Chapter §

The Great War and
Its Lingering Aftermath

a FIRST HINT OF COMING DIFFICULTIES was re-
corded in an annual report: “The auditorium was
used on June 1, 1917, for an address to the employees
of the Institution and its branches by Eugene E.
Thompson, secretary of the Washington Liberty Loan
Committee, who explained the object of the Liberty
Loan, how the bonds could be purchased, and the de-
sire of Federal officials having the matter in charge that
the first loan of the United States receive as great a
number of individual subscriptions as did the last loan
in Great Britain.”' The weekly “Local Notes” that Sec-
retary Walcott had instituted the year before record
that the staff was paid in advance so that they could
participate in the loan drive. Later the “Notes” record
the sponsoring of a Red Cross ambulance by the staff.
Benjamin Walcott, the Secretary’s youngest son, went
off to fly for the French and died in 1917.

The Great War impinged upon the Mall in increas-
ingly real ways. “From the first evidence of trouble, the
[geology] department was subject to call for material
for experimental purposes, particularly along the lines
of electricity, radioactivity, light and sound transmis-
sion, from all branches of the government, the Geo-
physical Laboratory, and numerous private investiga-
tors.”* Later, for a period of several months, Merrill
“was detailed by the Council of National Defense to
find a sufficient supply of quartz for naval supersonic
purposes for not only his own country but for France
and England as well.” Biological effects of gas warfare
and peat as a fuel source were investigated. The Di-
vision of Physical Anthropology furnished data on the
human races of the Balkans, and other parts of the
Museum supplied esoteric information now vital to the
nation.

On October 13, 1917, President Wilson called to Sec-
retary Walcott’s attention the urgent need for space to
house the Bureau of War Risk Insurance, a new agency

under the Treasury Department. He asked if part of

the Arts and Industries building could be used. Instead,

Wartime rally in front of the Museum,
looking north from the Mall.

space was made in “the foyer on the ground floor of
the natural history building with the adjoining rooms,
and shortly after, the west north and west ranges, by
removing the collections of the division of mammals
and of the Biological Survey to the same ranges on the
second floor. The space thus provided amounted to
approximately 25,000 square feet.”

While accepting, as his colleagues did, the necessity
of this sacrifice, Steyneger was quite clear as to the up-
heaval it caused within the Museum:

when late in the caiendar year of 1917 the division

of mammals and the Biological Survey were called

upon to give up their laboratory and storage space
in the west and west north ranges, ground [floor],
it was decided to move the cases containing these
collections up into the corresponding exhibition
space on the second floor. In these ranges were
exhibited the District of Columbia fauna, the
domestic animal series, all the invertebrates
including the insects, the whole synoptic series, the
special exhibits of color aberrations, hybrids, birds
eggs and nests, the destructive work of insects, the
historical exhibit of the corals of the Wilkes

Exploring Expedition, etc. The bulk of the

exhibition cases were placed in adjacent alcoves

containing the special exhibits, but a large number
had to be given shelter in the whale hall, which
thereby became unduly crowded with a very
heterogeneous assembly of exhibits. Some of the
large cases could not be thus accommodated and,
like that containing the zebu and the yak, were
transferred to the south side of the south hall on

the first floor, where the original arrangement . . .

had to be disturbed and the cases crowded

together. Toward the end of the fiscal year it
became necessary to give up more space for the
same purpose, in consequence of which both the
big halls on either side of the great skylight hall on
the first floor for the west wing had to be cleared
of their exhibits. . . .”

On November 23, the President again wrote to
the secretary [Walcott] asking that the Board of

é ——<— : a As. =

Margaret W. Moodey, 1910. Miss Moodey was sec relary in
the Department of Geology, and probably this was taken in

the southeast corne) office of the third floor.

pic. . Ey ee
Clerks on the first floor of the Museum, probably in 1918.
The scene is one of the ranges—the exhibits cannot be

identified.

Regents place at the disposal of this bureau from
60,000 to 80,000 additional feet in the exhibition
hall... which was provided by concentrating the
cases in parts of each hall and protecting them by
means of partitions, thereby leaving large areas
available. . . .

As the force increased additional space was
granted, so that at the close of the fiscal year, the
bureau occupied 69,286 square feet in the foyer,
auditorium, and ranges on the ground floor; the
rotunda, and portions of the exhibition halls on
the first floor extending from the center of the
north hall around east through the southern
section of the west hall, thereby providing
accommodations for 3,059 employees.

On July 16, 1918, at the further request of the
President, the Board of Regents closed the natural
history building to the public, thereby making
available for the Bureau of War Risk Insurance on
the ground and two exhibition floors a total of
138,600 square feet.”

This conversion to office space was a remarkable in-
cident, probably unparalleled in the history of Amer-
ican museums. The building is large, but the concept
of thousands upon thousands of clerks at their desks
brings that point home dramatically.

Museum Reopened

In late March 1919 the Bureau of War Risk Insurance
moved to quarters of its own at the corner of Vermont
Avenue and H Street, NW, but its funds were so de-
pleted that it was unable to honor its agreemnt to ren-
ovate the Natural History Building. The Museum thus
had to be reopened unrepaired—the first floor on April
11 and the second floor on April 22. In the next fiscal
year the Museum received sufficient funds to repair
the damaged plaster walls and repaint the exhibit halls.

For years, a footnote to the annual attendance figure
of 132,859 for fiscal 1918—19 indicated that it reflected
only the three months the building was open that year—
April, May, and June, 1919. Attendance was strikingly
heavy, suggesting that visitors had sorely missed the
Museum during the long time it was closed. Attendance
during the previous fiscal year, 1917-18, represented
a great increase over annual figures for the first few
years the Museum was open. More than 401,000 visitors
came to the Natural History Building during the twelve
months of that year. The relatively heavy attendance,
in spite of the fact that some exhibits were closed, showed
the swelling of population in wartime Washington and
the lack of other entertainment facilities.

During World War II the Museum remained open
and functioned about as normally as any agency did at
that ume. When there was talk of closing it again, it
was successfully argued that the educational and en-
tertainment value of the Museum, for people assigned

The Exhibits

Clerks on the first floor of
the Museum. This may be
Hall 12 in the west range
looking south; before World
War I, it housed a bird
exhibit. Another hall, in the
distance, is blocked off for
offices. The 125 or so people
shown give some indication
of how crowded the building
must have been with desks
for 3,000 clerks. Fans pro-
vided all the climate control
that was available.

’

to war work in the city, far outweighed any minor sav-
ings in fuel or labor.

One aftermath of the First World War was a huge
accumulation of uniforms, weapons, medical instru-
ments, and a host of miscellaneous materials that came
to be known as the War Collection and stayed in the
building for more than a decade. Partly as a result of
this great growth in the collections, in 1921 a Depart-
ment of History was split off from the Department of
Anthropology; it was headquartered in the Arts and
Industries Building. Another legacy of the war was a
sheet-metal shed, behind the Castle, that had been erected
by the Army Signal Corps. This became the Aircraft
Building and the nucleus of the National Air and Space
Museum.

New Administration

The Museum was under new administration, for on
the same day that it had been closed to the public—
July 16, 1918—Richard Rathbun died. There was no
member of the scientific staff either willing or able to
succeed him. Perhaps if the war had not disrupted
matters so, one of the three head curators would have
moved into the job, but that did not happen, and on
November 1, 1918, the position of Assistant Secretary
in charge of the United States National Museum was
discontinued. William de C. Ravenel was placed in charge
of the administrative affairs of the Museum, with the
titles of Administrative Assistant to the Secretary and
Director of Arts and Industries in the Museum.

It is hard to find out much about Ravanel, except
that he was of the South Carolina Ravenels. A former
official of the Fish Commission, as Rathbun had been,
Ravenel was more a bureaucrat than a scientist. His

The Great War and Its Lingering Aftermath

personal interests lay in Arts and Industries and the

historical collections. But he strongly asserted the right
of natural history to occupy the entire Natural History
Building, uncramped by the National Gallery of Art
or—even more unmanageable at that tme—the War
Collection.

The rotunda was set aside for naval exhibits during
the latter half of 1919, and the Navy soon filled it with
signalling devices, a paravane, and various munitions.
“During the month of June the large 6-inch naval gun
which fired America’s first shot in the World War was
delivered at the building. Owing to its weight and the
impossibility of getting it in the building it was placed
on the east driveway, where it makes a most impressive
exhibit.”

Early in 1920, according to the Annual Report,
the space assigned to the War Collections was
increased by two large ranges on the ground floor.
... In one was installed the collection of foreign
uniforms, insignia and decorations ... and the
collections of captured German military
equipment. ... In the second range were placed
the collections of chemical warfare and ordnance
material. The west and central portion of the foyer
. was given over to the Corps of Engineers for
its exhibit; a portion of the foyer and three rooms
on the east to the exhibit of the Medical
Department ... and the walls of three rooms on
the west of the foyer to the pictorial material. . . .*

The public liked these new displays, but the staff had
become deeply frustrated by the continued occupation
of so much of their exhibit and storage space and the
hindrance of their work.

“Setting up the Serpent columns in the National casts may have been placed near the north
Museum,” a copy of a photograph in William elevator before being moved into Hall 23. There

Henry Holmes’s “Random Records.” Judging was some work on the exhibit halls after they
from the ceiling height, this was the second floor. reopened in 1919, though it rs difficult to
The material behind does not appear to represent document just how much was done.

Central American anthropology, and these plaster

68 The Exhibits

The War Collection in the west or west north range, 1919—
1929. To the right is a naval gun with a sighting rifle on
the barrel. The wheeled object ts a field oven, and the
foremost case contains boards of insignia. On the wall are
drawings by J]. C. Chace of various war heroes.

“W. E. Scollick and Doris Cochran’s mother painting model
of ocean sunfish, about 1928.” There were two models

The Great War and Its Lingering Aftermath

The Henry Ward een Pahibe at aie Pee corner of
the first floor, at the juncture of Halls 6 and 7. This
photograph was taken after 1922, when the Ward
Collection was placed on exhibit. The African elephant head
(Loxondontus) on the wall cannot be located, and may
have been deaccessioned when the display was revised.

made of Lampris; both 1 were taken off exhibit in the early
1950s, when the fish hall was closed.

- Lares

Chapter 9

Interregnum

aA THE RECOVERY OF LOST SPACE, funding for
the Museum was of first concern. Yet, Ravenel
wrote, “the appropriations for the fiscal year ending
June 30, 1920, remained practically the same as for the
past ten years—excepting those for heating and lighting
and for furniture and fixtures, the former being in-
creased to take care of the additional buildings, the
latter being slightly reduced from the amount for sev-
eral years just prior to the war—notwithstanding the
fact that since the Natural History Building was con-
structed about ten years ago approximately three mil-
lion species have been added to the collections. ‘This
alone ... should warrant a large increase in the ap-
propriation for preservation of collections, from which
the entire staff of scientific, administrative, and exec-
utive branches of the service are paid, and a consid-
erable increase in the item for furniture and fixtures.”'
The budget item for “preservation of collections” was
$300,000 that year.

A year later the appropriation was $312,650, but the
extra sum went entirely to the newly opened Freer
Gallery. The United States National Museum now had
four buildings: Arts and Industries; the still-new Nat-
ural History building; the tin shed behind the Castle,
dignified by the name of Aircraft Building; and the
Freer Gallery. In 1923, with appropriations still vir-
tually unchanged, the Museum reported “difficulty in
making both ends meet. . . . It is only by rigid economy
and by the omission of many things that should be done
that the year ends without a deficit.”

Though the country, under President Harding, had
returned to normality in a very large way, the Smith-
sonian and its buildings were not prospering. The

Stairwell on north side of east wing, April 1984. The
transparencies on the window into the east court are
between the first and second floors. These are the last
remnants of the old Hall of Geology and Meteoritics, dating
from a time when this stairway was open to visitors who
went to the second floor to see the building stones, minerals,
and gems. Except for the light fixture, this view could have
been taken any time since 1920.

fledgling Bureau of the Budget was now charged with
conducting the government’s business, and while peo-
ple were waiting to see how it would operate, it did
constitute an immediate barrier between agency heads
and Congress. Secretary Walcott was a past master of
friendly relations with senators and congressmen, and
had enjoyed easy entry to the White House since the
time of President Cleveland, but none of that was work-
ing for him now.

Grim Times for the Smithsonian

With access to Congress cut off and an unsympathetic
administration in power, times were grim. The year
1925—26 “marks acrisis in the affairs of the Institution,”
Walcott reported. “For several years it has grown more
and more difficult to stretch the income from its meager
endowment sufficiently to cover the steadily increasing
costs of even the limited amount of research which can
be undertaken and the administration of the eight
growing Government bureaus. The cost of publishing
is more than twice that of 10 years ago, which has
resulted in materially decreasing the output of Smith-
sonian publications. . . . The Institution has for several
years been undermanned, and the ordinary running
expenses are met only by the exercise of rigid econ-
omy.” Everyone seemed to use the phrase “rigid econ-
omy.”

As one way of raising funds, Walcott instituted the
Smithsonian Scientific Series; the bulk of this encyclopedic
work was written by staff members in the National Mu-
seum. Eventually the series produced some income for
the Institution, as did the books of paintings of North
American wildflowers by Mrs. Walcott, but not enough
to help substantially. Secretary Walcott then made a
serious attempt to increase the Smithsonian endow-
ment. Consultants were hired, and Dwight Morrow
agreed to head the first nationwide fund-raising drive
in the history of the Institution. On February 11, 1927,
a major meeting was held in the Castle to start this
search for endowment funding. Sadly, Walcott had died
only two days before, and it was only because of his
deathbed wish that the conference went on as planned.

What with Walcott’s death, Morrow’s appointment as
ambassador to Mexico, the stock market crash and the
subsequent depression, the drive was a failure.

The Passing of the First Generation

The whole first generation of naturalists who were es-
tablished names in the old National Museum now began
to die off. Frank H. Knowlton, an eminent paleobo-
tanist, died in 1926. Only a few weeks after Walcott’s
death, the mollusk expert William Healy Dall died.
George Merrill of Geology died in 1929; W. H. Holmes,
the artist-anthropologist, retired in 1932 and died in
1933. In evaluating careers, one historical issue is whether
a person is noteworthy simply because he was an early
worker in a given area; but there is no doubt that all
these people were first-rank scientists.

‘There were a few staff members added in the 1920s.
William F. Foshag had become an assistant curator of
mineralogy and petrology in 1919, and the following
year Doris M. Cochran came on as an aide in the Di-
vision of Reptiles and Batrachians (amphibians). Later,
Herbert W. Kreiger and Henry B. Collins came to the
Division of Ethnology. Stull later, Thomas D. Stewart is
listed as an aide in the Division of Physical Anthro-
pology; as T. Dale Stewart, he later played an important
role in the history of the building. In 1928 Remington
Kellogg transferred from the Biological Survey to be-
come an assistant Curator of mammals, and at the close
of the decade, Edward Henderson transferred from
the Geological Survey to the Division of Physical and
Chemical Geology.

Since the Bureau of the Budget had reclassified all
positions within the Museum in 1924, salary standards,
especially for scientists, were higher, which helped the
Museum to attract and retain a full staff. The new
Secretary was Charles Greeley Abbot, who had been
director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

Alexander Wetmore

The most noteworthy staff addition of the 1920s was
the ornithologist Alexander Wetmore. As a member of
the Biological Survey since 1911, he knew the Museum
well. In 1924 the director of the National Zoo, Ned
Hollister, died unexpectedly. Wetmore was appointed
by Walcott to succeed him, but held this position for
only a few months. “In accordance with a plan to de-
velop and coordinate the scientific work of the various
branches of the Smithsonian Institution,” read the An-
nual Report, “provision was made ... for an additional
assistant secretary, and on April 1, 1925, Dr. Alexander
Wetmore was appointed to this post with general su-
pervision over the Museum interests of the Institu-
tion—the United States National Museum, the National
Gallery of Art, and the National Zoological Park.”* Wet-
more was listed that year as Assistant Secretary, but the
following year his utle reverted to the classic one, last
held by Rathbun, of “Assistant Secretary, Smithsonian

Institution, in charge United States National Museum.”

Wetmore asked for assistance, and John Graf was
added to the Museum staff as his administrative aide,
although his office was in the Arts and Industries Build-
ing. On the rare occasions when Wetmore made an
unreasonable decision, the staff member concerned
would take it up with Graf. Of course, almost always
everyone did what Wetmore advised. “A tall man of
quietly distinguished presence and great natural mod-
esty,”’ he did not demand respect, but he commanded
it. After World War I, jackets were not worn at the
desk, but somehow everyone put on a jacket to visit the
director’s office.

Departmental Rearrangements

Some internal rearrangements had been made in the
Museum’s departments. In 1920 a Division of Echi-
noderms (starfish, for example) was formed so that
Austin H. Clark could become curator. Clark, who had
been socially and politically active in the Museum circle
for years, had assumed that after Walcott’s death he
might be made director. But that never happened, and
Clark remained in his ground-floor office writing huge
monographs. An active worker, Clark was famed for
keeping the messiest office in the building. He never
filed away reprints or accession slips, but could always
find what he needed. Long after Clark’s official retire-
ment, a younger colleague went to his office to complain
about not being able to obtain a typewriter. According
to legend, Clark dug into the pile of reprints on one
of his tables and extracted a standard model typewriter
that had been completely hidden from view. Judging
from the dates on the reprints hiding it, the machine
had been covered for ten years.

The year after Clark got his division, the Division of
Mollusks was formed. Paul Bartsch had already been
promoted to the rank of curator, and this separation
occurred more at the request of other departmental
members than for any other reason. Bartsch was a wom-
anizer, yet he also taught a Sunday-school class and
helped instruct Boy Scouts. He wrote a great deal on
mollusks, and supposedly one can trace his romances
by the new species bearing the names of various ladies.
While there may not be any truth to the story that he
once chased a secretary onto a ledge, he did pull up
the skirts of one secretary, who ran screaming to Wet-
more. One day in 1953 when Bartsch, then in his 80s,
was said to be coming in for the day, an illustrator who
hoped to meet him was advised to keep her back to the
wall and her hands on her skirt.

Lapses in the Work Ethic

Most people worked conscientiously, but of course there
were lapses. Edward Henderson tells of the “hat trick”
of Barton Bean in the Division of Fishes. On occasional
mornings Bean would go to his office, turn on the lights
and hang up his hat and coat, and then stroll uptown

The Exhibits

The National Gallery of Art during the George Washington
Bicentennial in 1932. The large paintings on the walls
were specially prepared by American artists, and a

to shoot a few games of pool, later returning to pick
up his hat. Henderson also mentioned the technician
in the ground-floor preparation room of the Depart-
ment of Geology. He would come to the Museum each
morning and telephone to Miss Moodey, the depart-
mental secretary—everyone on the staff had to report
in. Then he would turn on the large band saw used to
cut meteorites and go off to the waterfront for hours.
One day the band went off course and sawed into the
steel table. The saw and the table with the two-inch-
deep cut are still in use.

The Staff and the Telephone

The telephone office was at the northeast corner of the
north range. The staff was allowed six private calls a
month; all others were charged at a rate of three cents
per call. Upon getting the operator, the first step was
to state that this was an official call. The chief operator

Interregnum

temporary exhibit of sculpture was installed. Below the
picture of Fort Necessity is the statue by Daniel Chester
French, The Minuteman.

had the habit of listening from time to time and then
ringing the staff member after a call was completed,
arguing that the business had been private, not official.
One conversation was concluded by the outside party’s
saying that he had better hang up because the old bat
might be listening in. The chief operator immediately
rang the curator’s office, incensed at being called an
old bat by someone outside the Museum.

Although later telephone operators did not so ob-
viously listen in, for years all long-distance calls had to
be placed through an operator; it took a bit of effort
to reach the point where the curators could place long-
distance calls directly without first notifying the de-
partmental secretary. Not until 1963, when a more elab-
orate telephone system was installed in the new Mu-
seum of History and Technology, did the staff have
access to direct dialing throughout the country. Not
until 1980 were push-button telephones installed.

~I
ae

East range ground floor, April 1984, showing the steel
decking and windows that open onto the corridor but are
plastered-over on the exterior. From the 1930s to the
1960s, vertebrate fossils were stored here. The cases,
covered to keep out dust, now contain invertebrate fossils;
the fluorescent lights are moderately new. The Scanning
Electron Mu roscope Laboratory is directly below.

Karl Krombein recalls that the library for entomol-
ogy, which was along the west north range, also housed
the secretary for the Department of Agriculture en-
tomologists. Phe only USDA telephone in the building
was in that office, and whenever a telephone call came
in, the individual office would have to be buzzed through
an elaborate code of short and long noises. The person
buzzed would then run to the telephone, and as some
of the offices were 300 feet away, this did not make for
efficient communication.

Musical Chairs

Herbert Friedmann was listed as curator of birds in the
Annual Report for fiscal year 1930; in the following re-
port, G. Arthur Cooper was listed as assistant curator
in the Division of Stratigraphic Paleontology. But these
were not increases in the staff, for Friedmann replaced

the deceased Robert Ridgeway, and R.S. Bassler had
moved up to head curator of geology after Merrill’s
death, leaving a vacancy. Charles Resser handled the
Cambrian fossil collections and Cooper was to look after
everything else. In 1934, Edward A. Chapin trans-
ferred from the Biological Survey of the Department
of Agriculture to replace the deceased J. M. Aldrich in
the Division of Insects. In number, if not in position,
the staff was nearly static until the 1940s.

T. Dale Stewart described the situation as a “game
of musical chairs that goes on all the time in the Smith-
sonian.” He turned to an especially sticky chapter on
the history of this department:

Dr. Walter Hough, a long-time head curator of
anthropossgy, had died ... in September, 1935.
Normally, he would have been succeeded by one
of the three curators under him. In order of
seniority, this would have been either Ales
Hrdlicka in physical anthropology, Neil Judd in
archeology, or Herbert Kreiger in ethnology. As it
happened, however, these three were not on
speaking terms with one another. Faced with this
situation, Alexander Wetmore . .. reached down to
the next level in the hierarchy and picked Frank
Setzler, Judd’s assistant curator, to be acting head
curator. ...

It has long been my opinion that Setzler’s
advancement to the head curator’s office was due
largely to the fact that he made a special effort to
ingratiate himself with his elders. ... No one else
had the temerity to call Wetmore “Alec”, [or]
Hrdlicka “Ales”; yet Setzler did and apparently
they liked it. Indeed, the three anthropological
curators liked it so much that they acquiesced in
Setzler’s advancement over them.”

‘There were personal problems in other departments,
too. In Geology, an emotionally unbalanced aide once
threw a rock and hit James Benn, a quiet man who
curated the minerals. Head curator Bassler almost al-
ways said no to any request, but if it were pursued to
the point of going to see Dr. Wetmore, Wetmore would
usually say that the request seemed reasonable and Bas-
sler would immediately agree. Biology, apart from
Bartsch, was calmer, though there is the true story of
Miss Rathbun’s throwing a glass of water in the face of
a technician who became hysterical when finally dis-
missed for poor performance. In the latest oral version
of the scene, the diminutive Miss Rathbun dragged over
a chair to stand on while she poured a pitcher of water
on the hysteric.

The Thirties

In 1935 no one publicly expressed any interest in cel-
ebrating the first twenty-five years in the new building.
Even if it was not one big happy family, however, the
Museum of the 1930s was a scientifically rewarding

The Exhibits

Later view of the Hall of Paleobotany on the first floor
looking west to rotunda, 1930s. To the right is a fossil tree
stump. To the left of Hall 5, in Hall 2, one can see the
papier-maché Stegosaurus made for the 1902 Pan-
American Exhibit in Buffalo, and the Triceratops skeleton
to the right.

place. Most members of the scientific staff were turning
out large tomes. In the exhibits field, the Museum in-
stalled, in 1931, the seventy-foot skeleton of the huge
dinosaur Diplodocus longus, a fossil unearthed from the
quarries at Dinosaur National Monument in Utah.
Mounted so that visitors could walk under it between
the shoulder and the hip, the skeleton reigned for twenty
years as the Museum’s single most impressive exhibit.
The old A-frame cases, at Edward Henderson’s sug-
gestion, were partitioned so that people viewing a dis-
play from one side would not look into the faces of
those on the other side. Henderson also introduced, in
the 1930s, the first lighted case in the building, to il-
luminate the Star of Artaban sapphire. To make its
alcove as dark as possible, he pushed the case so far
back that the top of it could be glimpsed from the
Dinosaur Hall below; for this Gilmore chided him.
Although money problems remained, space prob-
lems were partially resolved. Early in 1930 the naval
collections that had filled the rotunda for ten years were
moved to the Arts and Industries Building; over most
of the year, the remainder of the War Collection fol-
lowed piecemeal. That same year a steel-frame gallery,
or mezzanine, was erected over rooms 18 to 20 on the
ground floor, “increasing the storage facilities of the
division of vertebrate paleontology by approximately
1,750 square feet of floor space.” It is not clear what
prompted this new construction, although there were
attempts under President Hoover to use government
construction as a way of promoting the economy.
Vacating “two large and finely lighted” second-floor
exhibit halls that had been closed to the public since
1917,” the long-suffering mammalogists returned to
the ground floor. There they too obtained additional

Interregnum

oo ee 2A
Stratigraphic section, Invertebrate Paleontology. This was
part of Panorama of Life on the north side of Hall 4,
which showed a cross-section of the United States, together
with cases of fossils arranged by age. In the foreground is
part of the hologic series of fossils.

space by decking: “The galleries in the two ranges proper
will cover all the space between the exterior wall of the
building and the partiton walls enclosed the rooms in
the two ranges; and, in addition, in rooms 51 to 53 and
in the eastern half of room 57. The western half of this
latter room is already occupied by a steel gallery and
steel shelves containing the alcoholic mammal collec-
tion.” A synoptic display of marine invertebrates, par-
tially installed on the ground-floor west north range,
was abandoned in favor of the decking.

Today on the Constitution Avenue side of the build-
ing, in the windows of the west north range, one can
see a horizontal line of steel I-beams. They ruin the
appearance of the windows and certainly were not a
feature that Rathbun would have approved. The upper
deck consisted of loose steel plates that always rattled
when someone walked on them, with the storage cases
sitting directly on small cross-girders. There were plenty
of gaps between the plates, just large enough for dropped
pencils or books to fall through into the offices below.
The vertical steel I-beam supports are in the halls, but
they have been there for so long that even the oldest
inhabitants of the building do not recall either the ver-
tebrate paleontology or the mammal galleries’ being
installed. Unaesthetic as they may be—though made
feasible by the aesthetic decision to raise the ground
floor three feet in 1905—these decks were and are very
useful. In addition, they were symbolic, a tangible in-
dication that preoccupation was shifting from the ex-
hibitions to research and reference collections.
Crowding in Natural History
The Museum staff was greatly relieved to see the War

Collections disappear, but as usual there was a trade-

Leonhard Stejneger, head curator of zoology, standing by a
special temporary exhibit in the Castle. The illustrations to
the right, by a Japanese artist, were prepared before 1909,
but never published; the fauna is currently under study by
Victor C. Springer of the Division of Fishes. This display
was prepared for the February 1927 endowment drive.

off to the disadvantage of natural history. Half of Hall
26 on the second floor became the site of a lace exhibit
brought over from Arts and Industries. At first the
Constitution Avenue side of the hall was used for lace
and the south side for biology; it took nearly a decade
to improve this to the point that the area nearest the
elevators was devoted to lace and the western part to
natural history. Case after dreary case of lace, Malcolm
Watkins, recalls, gave way at the dividing line to displays
of chickens on one side and wasps on the other. The
Wasp Case was strewn with crumpled newspaper in an
attempt to communicate the idea that a newspaper and
the material forming the nest of a paper wasp were
fundamentally the same. Each year the nest got darker
from dust and the newspaper got yellower. Within a
few more years, several exhibit alcoves on the west side
were converted into office space for entomologists. Not
all the space that had been open in 1917 was ever re-
covered for public displays.

Even if the lace were ignored, the Natural History
Building was sull a long way from being fully devoted
to natural history. In 1932, to commemorate the 200th
anniversity of George Washington’s birth—a major event
in the Capital . under the aus-
pices of the National Sculpture Society, was installed
in the National Gallery of Art, with extension into the
rotunda of the Natural History Building. The rotunda
will be kept free of ordinary exhibits that it may serve
its proper purpose as an impressive entrance into the
building. The greater part of the foyer was alloted for
a temporary exhibit of the National Capital Park and
Planning Commission dealing with the development

“a special exhibition . .

and future plans for the city of Washington.”!”

At the close of the bicentennial year the foyer exhibit
was removed, as were the twin stone lions that had
temporarily graced the pedestals at either side of the
south steps. But the rotunda received some “largesse”
in the form of several of the plaster figures from the
show. Having been presented to the National Gallery
of Art, they remained in place, whether the Museum’s
curators liked it or not.

The Great Depression

By 1933 America was in the Roosevelt years and the
Great Depression. This was a grim time, but for Wash-
ington civil servants, not so grim as elsewhere. Most
Museum staff members were given a month’s unsalar-
ied furlough, but at least they had jobs to return to.
Watson Perrygo, the taxidermist, like many others, con-
tinued to come in and work on the collections; even-
tually, the Smithsonian scraped up the money for back
pay.

As umes got worse, the Museum became the site of
various emergency relief work projects instituted by the
New Deal. A short-lived Civil Works Administration
placed temporary help in the building between Decem-
ber 15, 1933, and February 20, 1934. In all, 208 people
shelved books, typed lists, wrote labels, and repaired
equipment. “As our staff has been for a long time un-
dermanned,” Wetmore wrote in the Annual Report, “the
C.W.A. work came at an opportune time, and not only
provided employment but aided materially in placing
our records and collections in proper condition for
preservation and study. The assistance, though occu-
pying much of the regular staff in supervision, was
entirely worth while and much appreciated.”

When the CWA project ended, in February 1934,
the Museum applied to the District of Columbia gov-
ernment for similar assistance under the Federal Emer-
gency Relief Administration (FERA). In November “33
women, and 43 men were so assigned. Supplies and
materials required were purchased from the regular
appropriations. As before, the work was concerned
largely with . . . the handling of the national collections
and was limited to preserving specimens, book and rec-
ords, and increasing their usefulness for study and sci-
entific research.”!*

WPA Project

This project closed one year later, but in May 1936 a
WPA (Works Progress Administration) project to suc-
ceed it was initiated through the District of Columbia
government. For that fiscal year, about 18,000 man-
hours of work was under FERA and about 6,500 under
WPA. The Federal Art Project also allowed a bit of help
for the art collections. In fiscal year 1937, temporary
help increased to eighty-eight people, although some
worked only briefly. By the close of the next fiscal year,

The Exhibits

yee
vel

rh
¥ yy

yl
1s i

< iv Fag Ec

Exhibit of do

mestic chickens, 1920-1940. The case of monkeys to the right suggests Hall 13 in the west wing, a display

area that was divided between birds and mammals. This is currently the bird hall.

167 temporary WPA employees were in the building.
“The project proceeded smoothly, not only as a result

of the efficient organization but also because many of

the workers had gained experience from the previous
year.””°

There continued to be fluctuations in numbers, and
a gradual decrease the next year. In 1940 WPA help
ended, and was eulogized in the Annual Report: “The
termination of this project on April 15 was felt in all
departments of the Museum. Aside from the care given
in arranging the study collections and conducting nu-
merous other tasks related to the preservation of the
material, the cataloguing and numbering of specimens
were of direct aid to research, for the material thus
handled became readily available for study by our own

staff and other technical workers. The departure of

these assistants brings loss to the Museum. ... Their
accomplishments were of permanent value, and it is
hoped that their service at the Museum was of equal
value to them in making them better fitted to take their
places in the outside world.”

There is no doubt that the use of temporary help
was a mixed blessing. Some of the collections benefited
from the extra attention; a card catalogue prepared for
the meteorite collection and a picture file of decapod
crustaceans are still in use. But Henry Collins remem-
bered a terrible muddle made by an unemployed dress-
maker who renumbered collections. ‘T. Dale Stewart

Interregnum

noted that the WPA employees could put a number on
a bone when instructed, but then could do nothing
more with it. Waldo Wedel recalled a drunken drafts-
man whose table was covered with newspaper; an inked
line began along a straightedge and then angled off to
follow a line between the columns of newsprint. Still,
he remembered another WPA employee as the best
typist he ever encountered. At best, keeping unskilled
help occupied was a drain on the staff.

Late in the WPA period, before the free help ran
out, the National Collection of Fine Arts made some
renovations, replacing tons of weak plaster, painting,
and covering the walls with a light-colored monk’s cloth.
Otherwise, little of this extra help was directed toward
the exhibits. Coal dust was everywhere, and because
the building shook slightly from the machinery on the
ground floor under the geology halls, the dust moved
off the specimens in the cases and accumulated in elon-
gate windrows. The usual method of dealing with this
was to open the top of the case and blow.

Just before the Second World War, the elevators in
the lobby and the rotunda were replaced; after thirty
years, it was high time. These were about the only major
expenditures having anything to do with exhibitions.
For two decades, work at the Museum had looked in-
ward toward research and toward increase and main-
tenance of collections, not outward toward the general
public. 0

~I
~I

eS ein eins emote ee

sie ase decent
a a a re

Chapter 10

World
War II

ORLD WAR I WAS QUITE a different affair from

World War I. The Great War had been a shock
to most people, destroying what had been half a century
of peace and tranquility. The second war was antici-
pated by many, and America’s involvement was longer
and deeper. To the National Museum community, the
second had two distinctive effects. It caused funda-
mental modifications in the relationship of science to
government. And on the practical side, there was real
concern about destruction in Washington—a point never
seriously considered in 1917, but one that had worried
the Museum staff even before the bombing of Pearl
Harbor on December 7, 1941.

“For the past year attention has been given to the
designation of categories of specimens that were to be
evacuated from Washington in case of entry into the
War or should air raids come to Washington,” read the
1941—42 report. “The work of selecting and packing
this material has occupied the staff for months, and
part still remains to be accomplished. In some of the
collections type series have been maintained separately
for some time, while in others types were kept with
other material so that it was necessary to segregate them,
with many thousands of specimens concerned. . . .. Type
specimens preserved in alcohol, which offer some dif-
ficulties in handling, were evacuated together with se-
lections of insects. Other type material will go to a ware-
house in another location.”' (A type specimen is the
standard to which other organisms are referred to see
if they are the same species.)

Safeguarding Type Specimens

Karl Krombein, newly on the staff of the Department
of Agriculture, was given the task of separating insect
types from the general collection in his charge. Looking
back on it forty years later, he judged it to have been
a worthwhile effort, for the separate type collections
received more care and attention. Any museum curator
worth his salt will be extremely protective of the types;

Triceratops in the early Dinosaur Hall, with
Stegosaurus behind.

from a scientific standpoint, they are by far the most
valuable part of any collection.

Little is said in the annual reports about this evac-
uation of material, and the few participants still on the
staff do not dwell on it. Specimens were taken to Luray,
Virginia, where they remained for three years. “It is
with considerable relief that we were able during the
year [1944] to bring back to Washington the thousands
of valuable type specimens and other irreplaceable ob-

jects that early in the war had been removed from the

Capital for safekeeping. ... Return of this material,
which aggregated more than 60 tons, was completed
in November, 1944, and by the end of that year most
of the specimens had been reinstalled.”

The Museum had only a single great auk, so it was
taken off exhibition, wrapped in paper, and sent away.
The help was inexperienced and neglected to put moth
balls in the package. As a result, many of the feathers
were eaten and dropped off. Watson Perrygo glued
them back on one at a time. Eventually, the specimen
was restored, but it looked so bad until all the feathers
were replaced that Wetmore told Perrygo to keep a
cover over it at all times so that no one else would see
it.

Unwrapping and returning the types to the collec-
tions was far worse than packing them. Inevitably some
specimens were lost, and the packing and unpacking
disrupted research for years. Like the similarly disrup-
tive conversion of the building to office space during
World War I, evacuation of the types was a unique
event. Should a global conflict come again, with the
Museum at ground zero in Washington, evacuating types
and rare specimens would be futile.

Pearl Harbor spurred planning for the protection of
the works of art in the National Collection of Fine Arts.
A portion of the wall behind the mural Diana of the
Tides was fortified to resist bomb fragments. Plans were
made for the evacuation of some paintings, and others,
including miniatures and part of the Gellatly collection,
were assigned to the ground-floor lobby, which was
considered safe from incendiary bombs.

An important safety measure was “the removal of

NORTH PAVILION

WEST RANGE

7 ETHNOLOGY

AMO CHEMICAL GEOLOGY

WEST COURT EAST COURT

6 PHYSICAL

2 VERTEMRATE Fosse.

i
8
=

WEST WING EAST WING

ee = = i=

fox on PARK EN

RANCE \\\

Plan of exhibits on the first floor as anticipated in 1919,
but not realized until the 1930s. From a 1919 brochure
containing ten pages of text describing the exhibits, plus

floor plans.

many tons of heavy storage racks containing geological
and paleontological specimens from the fourth floor
to the ground and second floors of the Natural History
Building. Also, storage cases and many specimens were
taken from other sections of the fourth floor to the
second floor to such an extent that allows free move-
floor of the building in
case of fire from incendiary bombs, the floor in question
various items of inflam-
mable material were eliminated.”

ment throughout the upper

being directly under the roof;

Building-Stone Exhibit Closed

Charged with securing storage space for these hefty
collections, a committee recommended that the build-
ing-stone exhibit on the second floor be “reduced in
size and that specimens that had outlived their useful-
ness be made available to other Government bureaus.
As a result, a considerable portion of such material was
accepted by the National Bureau of Standards for use
in testing the weathering conditions of various types of
building material. The space thus obtained made room
for a portion of the rock series and all the Paleozoic
invertebrate fossil collections. Then, the paleobotanical
collections formerly occupying the northern half of the
fourth floor were removed as a unit into two rows of
cases 9 feet high lining both sides of the northeast base-
ment hallway."

Hall 20, G. P. Merrill’s old “Building Stone Hall,”
actually had been under scrutiny for years, with some
members of the Geology Department wanting it closed.
Not many visitors came to the Museum in the 1930s,
and very few of them went in to see the slabs and cubes
of stone, Merrill’s pride and joy. Part of the exhibit
consisted of a series of bottles from various mineral

NORTH PAVILION

EAST RANGE

26 ooMEBTIC §— Local
ANIMALB FAUNA

WEST COURT

EAST COURT

23. AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGY

25 OLO WORLO ARCHEOLOGY
=
NORTH WING
=e
2) AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGY

19 ECONOMIC GEOLOGY

10 MiNeRALoayY

WEST WING EAST WING

pe er a a) SOUTH PAVILION

Plan of exhibits on the second floor as anticipated in 1919
but never realized, because of the moving-in of the lace
collection in the west north range and the gradual
encroachment of offices in the west range.

springs, but since the water had evaporated from some
of them, they had to be refilled from the tap. Edward
Henderson finally persuaded a friend at the National
Bureau of Standards that the Bureau might build a wall
of the various stones. Bassler as usual was against the
idea until Wetmore approved.

The paleobotanical collections were placed in the east
north range corridor outside the library, an area des-
ignated as an air-raid shelter. Yet the drawers of very
heavy specimens, piled up nine feet high, would have
been killers had they ever been tumbled by bomb blast.
In later years, just climbing up to look into them was
a hazard.

Civil Defense Measures

Frank Setzler, head curator of Anthropology, was in
charge of air-raid precautions for the Mall buildings.
Practice air-raid and blackout drills were described in
the report for 1943: “Twice during the year our air-
raid defense organization, consisting of approximately
212 employees, was given instruction in the use of fire
hoses, chemical fire extinguishers and the portable fire
pumps. Numerous incidents were prescribed during
the dayume air-raid drills which provided practice for
the stretcher and first-aid squads.”

For a number of years, wooden boxes filled with sand
were scattered throughout the attics. Gradually the
shovels and buckets disappeared and in the 1960s the
sand boxes were discarded, except for some near locked
doorways, to be used in case of fire. The measures that
might have mitigated destruction by incendiary bombs
would not have much impact in a nuclear age.

As might be expected, Museum attendance declined
at the start of the war. Attendance was so low in early

The Exhibits

Looking south at the Feath-
ered Serpent column and
model of the Castillo at
Chichén Itza in the Hall of
Archeology of Mexico, Cen-
tral and South America
(Hall 23). The columns were
moved about 1924, but were
not originally placed in this
hall; the hght globes suggest
a post-1930 date.

1942 that Perrygo used to visit the guards at the doors
to ask how many visitors were trickling in. After a year
attendance rose again. The Museum was open six and
one-half days a week; when the half day was shifted to
Monday, many people came on Sundays from 9:00 A.M.
to 4:30 p.M. From late 1942 until mid-1943, 25 to 35
percent of the visitors were servicemen, and efforts
were made to accommodate them. “In the Natural His-
tory Building a program of Sunday docent service for
guiding parties through the Museum, was inaugurated.
A number of women U.S.O. volunteers were especially
trained to act as guides, and the “tours’ conducted by
them proved very popular. During the period covering
the last 35 Sundays of the fiscal year [1944], over 5,000
members of the military personnel took advantage of
this guide service.”

Wartime Service

The scientists were by no means immune from wartime
service. In the Department of Anthropology alone, 25
percent of the staff left. J. F. Gates Clarke, an ento-
mologist then with the Department of Agriculture, held
a reserve commission and was gone by February 1942.
Karl Krombein, who later transferred from Agriculture
to Museum, stayed in the Air Force Reserve even after
the war and retired as a full colonel. T. Dale Stewart
taught human anatomy ina medical college in Missouri.
Others, like new assistant curator of birds S. Dillon
Ripley, joined the Office of Strategic Services. The State
Department recognized that it was important to

World War II

strengthen ties with Latin America, and Waldo Schmitt
was one of the first ambassadors of good will to be
dispatched. “Uncle Waldo” returned successful—char-
acteristically, bearing large collections of invertebrates.

The Museum’s real effort was not in entertaining
visitors Or protecting specimens, but in providing 1n-
formation. For the first time the nation was heavily
involved in Asia and the Pacific. Not many people had
knowledge of the area, but a few staff members had
collected specimens in these regions or knew them from
the literature. The staff and the library were over-
whelmed with requests for data on such topics as “cam-
ouflage plants; natural vegetation of specific regions

.; the use of land, fresh-water and marine animals
for food, the palatability of the flesh thereof, and meth-
ods of capture; the serviceability of hides and skins for
various purposes; disease transmission; marine
fouling organisms, bibliographic surveys; recommen-
dations regarding personnel.”” The list was more than
half a page long, and there must be a story behind each
of the requests for information.

The Museum staff was called upon for a great deal
of on-the-spot instruction, some having to do with dan-
gerous animals. “Assistance was given the Army Med-
ical School and the National Naval Medical Center, as
well as various Army and Navy training centers
throughout the country, by supplying well-preserved
material of insects and Acarina [mites and ticks] that
are involved in human health problems. About 1,200
specimens were specially mounted on pins, and ap-

Hall of Extinct Monsters (Hall 2) with Diana of the
Tides on the wall in the distance and one of the few
benches in the building in the foreground. Taken after
1932 from the second-floor rotunda, looking east. The
Zeuglodon has been displaced from center stage by the
Diplodocus. Triceratops is behind Diplodocus, and
behind it are both the skeleton and papier-maché
Stegosaurus.

An early view of the Dinosaur Hall with Tri iceratops ‘and
skeletons of the toothed whale (foreground), flanked by a
mastodon and Irish Elk. Date unknown, but before 1930
and probably before World War I, judging from the paucity
of material in the hall.

proximately 450 slide mounts were made for such train-
ing centers. During the year [1943] nearly 200 Army
and Navy officers who were being assigned to malaria
survey or control units, or to other activities concerned
with human-health problems, have received some in-
struction or other help from personnel of this divi-
sion.””®

During the early days of the war, groups of six or
eight servicemen would appear at the north door, hav-
ing been given oral orders to report to the Museum,
but no specifics. The guards would call Perrygo, who
would take the men in hand and provide instruction
on how to collect fleas and parasites from small mam-
mals. They would go out in the field, set traps, and
catch mice; the bodies were put in bags while still warm—
before the fleas hopped off. After a week or so of this,
the official papers would arrive ordering the men to
learn how to collect fleas. Some of these trainees went
on to become professional biologists after the war.

Survival Booklet

An absolutely basic booklet in the war was the Navy’s
Survival on Land and Sea, to which every department of
the Museum contributed data. The Smithsonian’s War
Background Studies was a major accomplishment, the
first volume being published six months after the war
began. For the first time, large numbers of American
armed forces were in places where the general concepts
of western civilization and culture did not apply. How
much these studies helped smooth cultural shock on
both sides can never be evaluated, but there is no doubt
that they were important.

“Though it cannot be told here or now,” Wetmore
wrote in 1943, “the story of the Museum’s participation
in this war is one in which we can all take pride.” But
the story has never been given in any detail, and those
who participated are mostly gone, like Julia Gardner
of the Geological Survey, who determined the launch-
ing site of a captured Japanese fire balloon by studying
the microfossils in a bag of its sand ballast. Rumor has
it that the migration routes of Pacific snapping shrimp
were plotted so that American submarines could nestle
up to them when threatened, for the sounds of these
crustaceans confused the sonar on Japanese ships.

A Sad Year for the Museum

The year 1943 was not a happy one at the Museum.
Miss Rathbun died, ending half a century of study of
crabs. And “with the death of Dr. Leonhard Stejneger
on February 28, the Department and the Museum suf-
fered an irreparable loss. He had been head curator of
the department of biology for the past 32 years. As man
and as scientist, he was noted for his breadth of knowl-
edge, depth of understanding, and, above all, for his
clear thinking.”'? Because Stejneger had held a presi-
dential appointment, he was immune from Civil Service
regulations and was still an employee at the age of

The Exhibits

Mammal groups in the
central hall of the west wing
(Hall 16) in the later 1930s
or 1940s. The Wapiti (Cer-

vus) are still on exhibit; the
glass eyes, painted with oil
paint on the interior, are
becoming opaque with age as
the paint pulls away from the
glass. Behind the Wapiti is
the buffalo group assembled
by William Hornaday. To
the right, seen through the
glass of the case, are the
mountain goats (Oreamnos).
Because one of them is lying
down, this may not be the
same group as is currently
displayed.

ninety-two. When he was in his eighties his doctor for-
bade him to do any more waltzing, as he became too
dizzy. Had he not been injured by a car when crossing
Constitution Avenue, he might have worked another
decade. Waldo Schmitt took over as head curator of
biology. Although a few old-timers continued to work
during the late 1940s and the 1950s, the war essentially
marked the end of the old-time naturalists who had
joined the staff in the brick National Museum.

Wetmore Succeeds Abbot

In 1944 Charles Greeley Abbot finally retired after
sixteen years as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institu-
tion. After six months under the formal title of Acting
Secretary, Alexander Wetmore was appointed in 1945
as sixth Secretary of the Institution, making official
what he had been for years as Assistant Secretary. For
the next four years he continued to serve as director
of the National Museum, and the Annual Report by the
director was formally submitted by “A. Wetmore” to
“The Secretary.” After 1947, when items concerning
the staff, the buildings, and a few other matters were
transferred for economy’s sake from the Museum re-
port to the full annual report of the Secretary of the
Institution, many details that had cast light on day-to-
day events were no longer recorded.

Just as the Annual Report of the Museum never ex-
plicitly noted the beginning of World War IT, it did not
record the end of the conflict. In the latter part of 1944
times continued to be difficult, but by early 1945 victory

World War II

was in the air, and by late summer the traumatic event
was over. The staff finally could think of research un-
connected with military work and devote some time to

more basic activities.

Nineteen forty-six marked the 100th anniversary of
the founding of the Smithsonian Institution. The Postal
Service issued a commemorative stamp, and consid-
ering that the war had been over for less than a year,
the Museum’s anniversary celebrations were not a bad
effort. They included a special exhibition in the foyer
from July 1 to September 27, 1946; a scholarly lecture
by Matthew Sturling of the Bureau of American Eth-
nology on his excavations in Mexico; and, on October
23, an evening ceremony followed by a reception in the
rotunda attended by 1,021 guests. Lucile St. Hoyme, a
physical anthropologist who was there, remembers that
the Marine Band Orchestra played from the second
floor around the rotunda. Wetmore surprised everyone
by dropping his modesty and leading the dancing.

One thing that was lacking in the Smithsonian’s cen-
tennial year was time to prepare a detailed written re-
cord considering what the Institution, and the Museum,
had accomplished in one century, and what they hoped
to accomplish in the next. Additional publicity would
have been extremely helpful, for the problems of the
thirties had not disappeared during the war. Funding
sull was short, and even with the return of workers
from the armed forces, the Museum was understaffed
at every level. Oo

Chapter 11

New Faces, New Funds,
New Exhibits

ee AS THERE WAS NO post-World War I increase in
staff at the Museum, there was no significant change
for at least a decade after World War II. If one counts
the scientific staff members listed for the three Museum
departments in 1946, the tally is: Anthropology, eleven;
Geology, ten; Biology, twenty-eight. Of the twenty-eight
in Biology, seven were botanists and one was Secretary
Wetmore. In 1956 the figures were: Anthropology, ten;
Geology, eight; and Zoology, twenty. Over in the Castle,
the Department of Botany listed eleven on the staff.
The number of aides in both years is unclear, but more
exhibits specialists were listed in 1956.

Students of administration like to compile tables of
age and grade distribution, but such exercises would
reveal very little about the Museum. During its first
four decades especially, the rate of change was slow.
In 1930, for example, G. Arthur Cooper was hired as
a bright young man of promise, and while he more
than lived up to expectations, his first raise came thir-
teen years later. When C. E. Resser died in 1944, Cooper
finally was promoted from the old Civil Service grade
P-3 to P-5.

It is equally hard to define generations of scientific
workers, since many scientists within the Museum had
careers of forty to fifty years. Paul Bartsch retired in
1946 after fifty years’ service; he died fourteen years
later. After forty-seven years, R. S. Bassler retired as
head curator of geology in 1948, but stayed around for
thirteen years more. Nevertheless, by the 1950s there
was scarcely anyone still working who recalled the old
days of the Museum before World War I, with the
exception of Waldo Schmitt. Schmitt was definitely not
a stick-in-the-mud when it came to new ideas. It was
he who in 1947 instituted the separation of Biology into

Edgar C. Laybourne painting the scales on a thin,
transparent layer inside the cast of a python (Python) in
the late 1950s or early 1960s. The model will be
strengthened by additional fiberglass; this tedious technique
gives widescence to the scales. Chopped up by a visitor in
1969, the specimen was repaired and is back on display in
Hall 29, near the Insect Zoo.

departments of Botany and Zoology; as last head cu-
rator of biology, he became the first head curator of
zoology. It was long past time that botany was given a
voice of its own.

A Brief Change from the Norm

It was a rare event in the 1920s and 1930s for anyone
to be hired, but even rarer for anyone to depart. During
the first decade or so after World War II, a strange
thing happened: Some scientists left the Museum staff.
Those in the shops, char force, and guards had come
and gone, but the turnover rate of scientific staff from
the inception of the Museum until World War II was
essentially zero; no one ever left, whether he was paid
or not.

Again in the 1960s and 1970s, very few of the per-
manent scientific staff left for greener pastures. It is a
little hard to account for what happened in between.
The war was followed by a tremendous boom in aca-
demic science, which led in turn to new opportunities
in industry and greater mobility of society at large.
Perhaps the stodginess and stinginess of the Museum
and the life of a curator no longer appealed to those
who had seen a lot of the world. Certainly the “young
tigers” who joined the staff in the late 1940s were far
more outspoken than their predecessors in their efforts
to institute change.

Cramped, Hot, Noisy Offices

It was not the Museum proper, but its affiliated or-
ganizations that showed the biggest growth in scientific
staff during the decade after the war. Rock and fossil
collections were moved once more, and in 1950 the
Geological Survey modified the closed-off “Stone Hall”
into office space. Noise droned in from the rotunda
and from the balconies overlooking the dinosaur ex-
hibit on the floor below. Specimen cases served as office
partitions, and in summer it was miserably hot. Lloyd
Henbest, who studied microfossils, kept a rat trap and
obtained enormous specimens. Roland W. Brown, an
eminent paleobotanist, used to come to the Museum
on weekends when it was quieter. The Museum in-

stalled an exhibit of a Geiger counter and a piece of
uranium ore on the wall outside his office, but though
he complained about the infuriating ticking noise, the
display remained because of public interest in atomic
energy 1n all its aspects.

The Geological Survey had already gained some ex-
hibit space, formerly used for invertebrate zoology, in
the northwest corner of the second floor. A “Coral
Room” was built in 1947, and some of the studies of
Pacific atolls that had been drilled and cored after World
War II were conducted there. The Department of Ag-
riculture entomologists also grew in number and oc-
cupied all of the west range on the second floor. Before
World War II they had changed a few of the exhibit
alcoves into cell-like offices; now there were individual
cubicles on both sides of the hall, with a passageway
between allowing what few tourists wandered that way
to walk from one side of the building to the other.
Everyone who was in Hall 27 recalls the cases in the
passageway containing the giant spider crab and the
giant clam, the last remnants of the invertebrate ex-
hibits that had been in the area.

Eventually the east side of this row of offices, facing
the west court, was decked over to provide needed
storage space for insect cases. ‘This made the little cu-
bicles even worse, for there was no air circulation. Dur-
ing the summer, at least two of the entomologists took
off their shoes and shirts before starting work. Among
those who put up with these conditions was R. E. Snod-
grass, from the Department of Agriculture. He ex-
emplifies the remarkable Museum retirees, for he re-
tired in 1945 and completed fourteen papers and a
mayor book on insect morphology before his death sev-
enteen years later.

Swamped with New Collections

By the start of the 1950s, the staff was being swamped
with new collections coming in by the thousands. While
the Museum’s functions of record and research were
going along about as well as might be expected with
the funds available, its exhibit halls were dreadful by
the standards of the larger American museums. George
Brown Goode had warned that a finished museum was
a dead museum, yet to too many minds, once a major
exhibit had been installed nothing more needed to be
done.

Secretary Wetmore had long been aware of the prob-
lems. As early as 1939 he had declared, “Much of our
exhibition equipment is antiquated, and added per-
sonnel is required for its proper care and moderniza-
tion.”' But despite his efforts, there was never money
in the budget for major revisions. Frugality was as much
a way of life as it had been during the Depression.
Ernest Lachner, hired in 1949 as an ichthyologist, re-
quested a pair of stainless-steel forceps and was refused
because no funds were available. When Harold Saun-
ders of the Geological survey asked the supply clerk

for a pencil, she responded, “What are you going to
use it for?” Whatever planning had been done for any
new halls was lost in the shuffle of World War II.
Although all the Museum departments had made
some changes in their exhibits since the 1930s, what
little exhibit work was being done—with the exception
of Perrygo’s habitat displays—was in effect only adding
a bit more of the same. From the tourist’s point of view,
nothing changed. One quick visit was more than enough,
as the reactions of local citizens attested. One who had
visited the Museum during this period likened it to a
funeral parlor because of the dark mahogany cases and
dim lights, and another thought the large, open hall-
ways looked like a bowling alley. Another, taking a field
trip with a university professor, suddenly became aware
that the exhibits were arranged to present a logical
story; but a visitor without a knowledgeable guide would
have been unlikely to understand the presentation.

Changing Exhibit Concepts

In the late 1940s, several Museum committees sug-
gested that the Smithsonian ask for additional funds
specifically designated to improve the exhibits. Frank
Taylor, a curator in the Arts and Industries Building
and a “museum man” of the Goode mold, wrote a care-
ful justification of the need for $300,000 to fund a
change in the public displays. He became chairman of
an overall exhibits committee that changed the concept
of exhibits throughout the Smithsonian. The others on
this original committee were Paul Gardner, then with
the National Collection of Fine Arts; Herbert Fried-
mann, the curator of birds; and John C. Ewers, associate
curator of anthropology. Ewers, already an outstanding
ethnologist of American Indians when he joined the
staff in 1946, had made displays for the National Park
Service and had planned, designed, and executed the
Plains Indian Museum in Browning, Montana. The Na-
tional Museum hired him with the expectation that
because of his interest and experience, he might be able
to do something to improve the displays in addition to
his research.”

Another key appointment from the standpoint of
exhibits was Clifford Evans, who came to the Depart-
ment of Anthropology in 1951. In the thirty years be-
fore he died, he did a great deal of research on Latin
America in partnership with his wife, Betty Meggers.
He aroused not only his department but the Museum
in general. He was a person of forceful opinions, and
though some of his ideas were not accepted, they were
never ignored.”

Evans and Meggers were intrigued by the new idea
of possible human contact between Japan and South
America, and they soon installed a case with a few ob-
jects and maps near the elevator in the second-floor
west north hall, adjacent to the mummies. It was the
first new scientific exhibit for anthropology in about
forty years. Shortly thereafter, they went into the east

The Exhibits

Family group of Smith
Sound Eskimos from Green-
land, in the Hall of Eskimo

and Indian Groups (Hall 9)
before 1916. The group is
discussed in the Smithsonian
Institution Annual Report
for 1920. To the right,
below the Catlin Indian
paintings, is a case of N orth-
west Coast Indian artifacts,
and between them and the
totem pole is a house front,
mostly obscured by the case.
The totem pole is situated in
Hall 10, to the east.

POLAR ESKIMO
THE NORTHERNMOST PEOPLE OF THE WORLD

Polar Eskimo group, 1956 or 1957. The Bien ae been renamed and Peeled since the 1920s. Located at the south end
of Hall 9, this high-visibility display is seen by anyone walking from the south door to the Museum Shop.

New Faces, New Funds, New Exhibits 87

Design sketch for Hall 11, drawn in the early 1950s before the installation of new and refurbished exhibits. The Hopi snake

dancers are on the south side near the center of the hall.

north hall on the second floor, devoted to South Amer-
ican Indians, and planned a major revision. Because
no one else dared to do it, they came down on a Sat-
urday and painted the back of one mahogany case a
striking blood-red. Assistant Secretary Kellogg stated
that the red had to go, but there was a new Secretary
coming in who, as a psychologist, liked colors and their
effect on the public.

Carmichael Succeeds Wetmore

At the end of 1952 Alexander Wetmore voluntarily
stepped down and went back to work full-time in his
office in the Division of Birds. He commented that he
had “seen the unfortunate results of clinging to posi-
tions too long and [that] he was resolved not to make
that error.’ His successor, Leonard Carmichael, a dis-
tinguished scientist and educator, took office on Jan-
uary 2, 1953, as seventh Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution.

Carmichael had definite ideas about modernizing the
exhibits and expanding the Institution, and was able
to set them in motion. By June 28, 1955, he had ob-
tained congressional authorization to plan and con-
struct, to the west of the Natural History Building, the
Museum of History and Technology; it was opened to
the public less than nine years later. (The structure is
now called the National Museum of American History,
and demonstrates that it is not a good idea to carve a
name in stone hastily.) Carmichael was able to obtain
significant increases in funding for the modernization
of old exhibits in the Natural History Building, and for
display halls in the new building. He studied the pro-
posal for each new hall carefully, sometimes making
curators squirm if their display concepts were fuzzy.

Major Exhibits Program

There is no question that a major exhibits program was
finally starting at the Smithsonian in the early 1950s.
Many of the staff did not want to be involved in any
such things; for example, Jack Ewers quotes his boss,

Herbert Krieger, as insisting that there was no need
for new exhibits, and that the staff need only “polish
up the old Rolls-Royce.” Yet the hall completed by Ev-
ans and Meggers had made every other antiquated hall
look even dowdier by comparison. This convinced some
of the staff that exhibits work could be done, and even
convinced some of the old-timers that it should be done.

John E. Anglim, frustrated during his career as a pot
restorer, now blossomed as a creative designer and dis-
play specialist. He juxtaposed stone tools with drawings
of their present-day morphologic equivalents. His idea
of painting the mahogany cases gray was upsetting to
some curators, but this color emphasized the object
rather than the case. When an electrician suggested
that he could light certain objects better if their posi-
tions in the case were reversed, this was done. Anglim
went on to become the head of the exhibits program.

Meanwhile, Evans and Meggers invented a first-rate
technique for labeling. They would ask one of the paint-
ers to come down off his ladder and read the label; if
he did not understand it, the text was changed. On the
completion of the first new hall, they put up a plaque
listing the names of the carpenters, painters, and elec-
tricians from the shops who had helped construct it.
Despite the tensions built into this kind of work, the
atmosphere was one of celebration. The biggest point
of disagreement was that Anglim detested lavender and
refused each ume Meggers wanted it. (He was prompt
to note that in an electrical fire years later, a doll case
done in lavender was almost the only casualty.)°

New Exhibition Halls

On April 14, 1954, according to the Annual Report, “the
first wholly new exhibition hall to be completed in many
years at the Smithsonian, ‘Highlights of Latin American
Archeology,’ was opened to the public. ... This new
hall shows many departures for us in modern museum
techniques, in lighting, and in the use of color.”° The
press gave it excellent reviews,’ as did the experts and
dignitaries attending its formal opening, the premier

The Exhibits

Hopi Indian snake-dance group in a modern case on the south side of Hall 11; the labels are below, at the front of the case.

A similar photograph appears in the Annual Report for 1955.

cultural event of Pan-American week. Secretary and
Mrs. Carmichael, in order to be present, gave up the
voyage on the Queen Mary that they had planned and
traveled to Europe by air instead.

The following year saw the opening of “Indians of
the Americas” (Hall 11) on the first floor in the west
north range. This was the first overhauling clearly un-
der the aegis of Friedmann, chairman of the natural
history exhibits group. Ewers, who did an excellent job
on it, described the strong and weak points of the hall
before its renovation:

Visitors to this hall used to be impressed by the
sheer number of exhibits and objects on view—
more than 6,500 specimens. The magnitude of the
collections could be sensed by merely walking
through the hall without stopping to examine a
single exhibit. But what did it all mean? ... Yet
there were islands of interest in that uncharted sea
of information that comprised the old installation.
These were the always popular, large groups of
life-sized figures of Indians wearing real articles of
clothing and engaging in typical activities
demonstrating the making or uses of tools and

New Faces, New Funds, New Exhibits

domestic utensils, weapons and handicrafts. These
exhibits were designed by the talented artist-
anthropologist, William H. Holmes, some of them
more than half a century ago. They were some of
the oldest exhibits in the museum. Yet they
possessed human interest qualities which attracted
the attention of museum visitors of all ages and
both sexes. However these groups were glassed on
four sides. Their effectiveness was hampered by
inadequate lighting. Their realism was impaired by
the distracting sight of adjoining cases crowded
with unrelated materials showing through their
plate-glass backgrounds.

Problems of modernizing exhibits in an old
museum differ considerably from those of
developing an entirely new one. The legacy of
high ceilings, internal pillars, large windows,
antiquated heating, lighting and ventilating systems
impose very real problems. Still more obvious are
overall space problems.*

In addition to the old life-size figures, some miniature
dioramas were prepared. (It costs far less to make a
small figure than a large one, and only few new large

ako 4

Installing a whale skeleton in the Hall of Osteology (Hall
28), 1961 or 1962. This is the first exhibit at the rotunda
entrance to the hall. Left to right: Leonard Blush, Frank
Greenwell, Leon Frederich, Watson Perrygo, and Carleton

manikins have come into the exhibits in recent decades.)
“Indians of the Americas,” all in all, was a good hall in
content, design, and display, and it attracted interest.
Sull, everything depends on the observer. One day when
Ewers was walking through the hall, he saw a small boy
standing entranced in front of the case of Hopi Indian
ceremonial snake dancers. The boy yelled for his father
to come. “So what?” said the father, taking a look. “It’s
just a fellow chewing on a snake.”

Next to come was the bird exhibit in Hall 13, in the
west wing on the first floor. Herbert Friedmann had
been thinking about how he would like to change this
display almost from the day he joined the staff. Watson
Perrygo did most of the work—and did most of it within
a year. The day before the hall was scheduled to open,
in March 1956, a stepladder toppled into a case, and
everyone worked all night to repair specimens and build
a new Case.

Lingebach; the three standing were temporary employees. A

photograph of the completed exhibit appears in the Annual
Report of 1964.

Next to open was Hall 26 on the second floor, above
the American Indian Hall. “Everyday Life in Colonial
America” displaced the lace and the chickens, and
whether one called it ethnology or cultural history, it
was a major improvement. Because of the ultraconser-
vatism of head curator Setzler and curator Krieger, it
had been impossible for Malcolm Watkins, hired in
fiscal year 1949, to do anything that deviated one iota
from the routine; but Friedmann, as exhibits chairman,
recognized the problem and got around it by ordering
Watkins in writing to prepare plans for a new hall im-
mediately. This administrative ploy—Watkins’s idea—
worked, and the hall was started. The timing was not
the best, since the contract for the new hall was followed
in a matter of weeks by the authorization for building
the new Museum of History and Technology. But al-
though this hall thus ended up being dismantled and
moved out within a few years, it was another fine ex-

The Exhibits

hibit, appreciated by the local press: “Advances in mod-
ern lighting and electronics, used by the Institution for
the first time, unobtrusively make the hall come alive.
The visitor entering the hall will automatically activate
a ‘proximity switch’ to start a tape recording that briefs
him on what he will see.”

One day, at the time “Everyday Life” was being in-
stalled, the elevator shaft was found teeming with thou-
sands of ants, and panic ensued. Remington Kellogg
put out an emergency call for Jack Clarke of the Di-
vision of Entomology. Clarke was at lunch, and tele-
phone messages arrived every few minutes in his office.
After Clarke returned and took a quick look, he had
a good laugh. The Museum was not being invaded by
ants. These were carpenter ants from the dismantled
old Colonial houses, and now that spring had come,
they were trying to get outdoors to build a nest. As
Clarke predicted, the ants were gone the following day.

Exhibits Philosophy

The new exhibits program was well under way before
its philosophy was articulated by director Kellogg, or
whoever wrote the Annual Report for the year ending
June 30, 1957. “The curators of the National Museum
have twofold objective in planning their halls and ex-

hibits,” it read—‘“to give the Museum visitor the ex-
perience of viewing objects of significant historical or
scientific interest and rarity; and to show these objects
in exhibits so effectively explanatory that they increase
the visitor’s knowledge, not only of the object, but also
of the history, science, technology, or art to which the
object relates. The attainment of this objective and the
authenticity, scholarship, and factual content which dis-
tinguish the exhibits reflect the devoted and time-
consuming work of many busy scientists and historians
of the curatorial staff.”!”

Even though Ewers was in charge of all exhibit plan-
ning for fifty-five halls in the yet-to-be-opened Museum
of History and Technology, he completed a second
display in the Museum of Natural History devoted to
Indian and Eskimo cultures. Opened in December 1957,
this exhibit (Hall 9) was linked to Ewers’s first anthro-
pological hall by a map adjacent to the north elevators.
The exhibits collectively were called “The Native Peo-
ples of North America.” A dramatic open case of wooden
masks had to be removed later for security reasons after
a few youngsters jumped into it.

When it came time for the biological halls to be re-
vised, the American buffalo group Hornaday had pre-
pared in 1888 was removed from public view and dis-

TABLE 1: Openings of Major Natural History Exhibits: 1954-1967

Hall 23

Hall 11

Hall 13

Hall 26

Hall 12

Hall 9

Hall 19

Halls 14 and 15
Hall 4

Hall 5

Hall 3

Hall 21

Hall 8

Hall 22

Hall 16

Hall 2

Part of Hall 19
Part of Hall 20
Hall 25

Hall 28

Part of Hall 29
Hall 7

Highlights of Latin American Archeology
American Indian Hall

Birds of the World

Everyday Life in Early America
North American Mammals

North American Indians and Eskimos
Hall of Gems and Minerals

The World of Mammals

Fossil Plants and Invertebrates

The Age of Mammals in North America
Fossil Reptiles and Amphibians

North American Archeology 1
Cultures of the Pacific and Asia
North American Archeology 2

Life in the Sea

Hall of Fossil Reptiles

Gem and Jade Halls (revised)

Hall of Meteorites

Physical Anthropology

Osteology

Cold-blooded Vertebrates

Cultures of Africa and East Asia

New Faces, New Funds, New Exhibits

April 14, 1954
June 2, 1955
March 22, 1956
January 26, 1957
April 30, 1957
December 8, 1957
July 31, 1958
November 25, 1959
June 6, 1961

June 6, 1961

June 24, 1961
June 25, 1962
November 16, 1962
February 18, 1963
June’ 25; 1963
Summer, 1965
December, 1966
Spring 1965(?)
Fiscal Year 1965
Fiscal Year 1966(?)
August 25, 1967

91]

mantled. Buried in the plaster below the largest buffalo
was a tin box containing two 1887 issues of the magazine
Cosmopolitan, with articles by Hornaday. At the top of
one article, Hornaday had written:

To my illustrious Successor:
Dear Sir:

Enclosed please find a brief and truthful account
of the capture of the specimens which comprise
this group. The old bull, the young cow and
yearling calf were killed by yours truly.

When I am dust and ashes I beg you to protect
these specimens from deterioration and
destruction. Of course they are crude productions
in comparison with what you produce, but you
must remember that at this ime (A.D. 1888,
March 7) the American School of ‘Taxidermy has
only just been recognized. Therefore give the devil
his due, and revile not.

W.T. Hornaday'!

The specimens had faded over the years and were
somewhat tattered. They could not be put into the new
exhibit, and buffalo obviously are large and hard to
store, so they were given to the Montana State Museum.
‘Their current status is uncertain. As the last wild Bison
bison shot in America for display in a museum, the
group has considerable significance. Any buffalo skins
exhibited today are from domesticated herds, but it was
primarily as a result of Hornaday’s concern that the
American buffalo was saved from extinction. The In-
stitution lost a part of its history when the specimens
left the building.

More New Halls

Major new mammal exhibits were badly needed. Leon-
hard Stejneger had been against habitat groups, ac-
cording to Edward Henderson, because he wanted the
visitor to be able to view the animals from all sides. He
would not even permit a blue sky background to be
installed behind the mountain goats. While a few hab-
itat groups had been installed in the early 1950s, after
Stejneger’s death, the halls as a whole reflected his pre}-
udice.

The North American Mammals hall, completed in
1957, was done in segments, part of it having opened
the year before. The hall included a display of Rocky
Mountain sheep that Secretary Walcott had obtained
for the Philadelphia Sesquicentennial exhibit, and which
Perrygo had first worked on in 1925. During the in-
terval before the mammal halls were finished, Secretary
Carmichael held the annual dinner for the Board of
Regents in the west wing of the main building, giving
the regents a close-up view of the progress of the new
exhibits program. The two halls comprising “The World
of Mammals” were opened in 1959. That work was
supervised by Henry W. Setzer, an outspoken mam-
malogist hired in 1948 whose principal interest was

small mammals from Africa.

George Switzer and Paul E. Desautels were respon-
sible for the Hall of Gems and Minerals, opened in the
summer of 1958. Switzer, who joined the staff in 1948,
became the first head of Mineral Sciences when the
Department of Geology was split into departments of
Paleobiology and Mineral Sciences. Desautels was hired
in 1957, in part to assist with the new hall, and he later
went on to increase the holdings of gems and minerals
significantly. Rolland Hower of Exhibits designed the
new display cases. Understatement being an old Smith-
sonian tradition, the case introducing the world’s finest
mineral collection was labeled simply “The Smithsonian
Mineral Collection.” Five months after the hall opened,
the Hope Diamond was presented to the Institution
and installed in a safe specially built into the display.
The Jade Room, just to the north of the gem hall, also
opened in 1958.

By this time the new exhibit halls had begun to crowd
the old ones, and the National Collection of Fine Arts,
while holding on to Hall 10 on the first floor, gave up
some space on the second floor in Hall 22. “Twenty oil
portraits of World War II leaders by John C. Johansen
and pastel drawings of the Civil War Veterans by Walter
Beck have been removed from the second floor gallery
and are to be installed at the south end of the foyer
together with the miniature portraits in specially lighted
cases,” read the National Collection’s report for 1958.'*
For what was supposed to have been a temporary gal-
lery to have lasted more than thirty years does afford
some perspective on just how badly the new exhibits
program was needed.

June 1961 was the crest of the wave. Waldo Wedel
opened a hall of American Indian life on the east side
of the second floor, “North American Archeology 1.”
On the east side of the first floor, a hall of invertebrates
and plants, supervised by G. A. Cooper and opened on
June 6, constituted a quantum jump over the old fossil
hall; its stellar attraction was a series of wax reconstruc-
uons of sea-bottom life.

“The Age of Mammals in North America,” which
opened the same night, was the project of Lewis Gazin,
who had joined the staff in 1932, spent a long time in
the war, and returned in 1946, the same year Gilmore
died. This hall included the first of a series of mag-
nificant murals painted on plaster by Jay H. Matternes.
Even twenty years ago it was difficult to find a plasterer
who could prepare the proper rough coat and finish
coat for a fresco surface, yet this specialized art is even
more refined today; one can scarcely tell where the case
ends and the background begins. W.H. Holmes would
have appreciated the Matternes mural, a combination
of excellent science and excellent art.

An alcove of fossil fishes and amphibians, opened
informally a year earlier, was polished up by the ad-
dition of a diorama and included in the grand opening.
The late David Dunkle, who had joined the Department

The Exhibits

Preparatory sketch for the
Maya Sculpture Group, por-
traying stoneworking at
Mila. This group was made
for the 1916 Panama-Cali-
fornia International Exposi-
tion in San Diego. For many
years, a case with these two
figures stood near the north
end of Hall 23. In notes
accompanying this pre-1915
sketch, William Henry
Holmes wrote detailed
descriptions of the clothing,
stone, and tools to be
depicted. Copied from an
unpublished sketch by
Holmes in his “Random
Records.”

Py 3 ie > Sapeatiesl
mi ¥ re : "A < cn < 5 _ . y ee]
q Sagi” < dy z Eat ° ®. :
sh" ia Sw eee a om eS

The Maya carvers, constructed from the sketch by Holmes. this stood near the north stairs, not far from the entrance to
The exhibit was refurbished, as indicated by the large, the second-floor hall (Hall 23) that was completed by
raised lettering on the back wall of the case. For many years Clifford Evans and Betty Meggers.

New Faces, New Funds, New Exhibits 93

of Geology in 1947, supervised this section. He esti-
mated that in the week before the alcove was opened
he was summoned there at least once an hour because
someone had put down a model of a fish and could
not remember whether it should point to the right or
to the left when mounted. The fossil mammal hall was
a long way from finished, and more Matternes murals
were to come; but since the first days of the “New
National Museum” it had been standard practice to
open a hall just as soon as there was something to show
the public, and hope that later there would be time to
add objects and correct mistakes. Of course this seldom
happens, for curators and exhibits people always have
more pressing concerns than revising recently opened
halls.

Eugene Knez and Gordon Gibson, both hired by the
Department of Anthropology in 1959, were informed
that they were expected to prepare halls promptly, and
together with Saul Reisenberg, who joined the staff in
1957, they established an informal group to review one
another’s ideas and exhibit scripts. Reisenberg’s part of
the “Cultures of the Pacific and Asia” project was fin-
ished first; 1t began with an Easter Island head that had
been on display in the original National Museum. The
remainder of Hall 8 was done by Knez.

New Division, New Museum

Development of the Museum of History and ‘Tech-
nology, although the building was sull incomplete, led
to Malcolm Watkins’s transfer to that staff. A new Di-
vision of Musical Instruments was formed, and pro-
duced a temporary exhibit in Hall 8 before the per-
manent installation of the Pacific exhibit. The division
then moved to History and Technology, but old-timers
in the Museum of Natural History will never forget the
pianos of the priceless Worch Collection, a real treas-
ure. Adjacent to the old mineral hall stood the tiny
piano built for the midget “General Tom Thumb,” made
famous by P.T. Barnum.

Unul the 1960s, unfortunately, there was no one on
the staff to care for the instruments, and there was no
space whatever for storing them properly except for
one small spot on the second-floor rotunda balcony.
Pianos, harpsichords, clavichords, and virginals were
stacked three and four high in the stairwells and all
around the third-floor rotunda balcony. One particu-
larly hot summer day, the glue holding the legs of one
instrument gave way, and the sound of musical anguish
when it crashed, amplified by the dome, was a noise
that will not be forgotten by anyone who heard it. When
offices on the third floor of the east range were vacated
by employees migrating to the Museum of History and
Technology, walls were torn down and space was used
for storing human skeletons in drawers.

Herbert Friedmann Moves On
On May 31, 1961, Herbert Friedmann retired after

thirty-two years at the Museum of Natural History;
perhaps “retired” is not quite the proper word, for he
left to become director of the Los Angeles County Mu-
seum. In a place that has housed many erudite and
witty people, Friedmann stood out. Not only did he
study birds directly, but he wrote on such subjects as
the symbolism of the goldfinch in medieval art. One
day he passed a youngish inhabitant of the building
who had grown a beard over the summer. He said, “I
see you are down to your secondary sex characteristics,”
and walked on."’

By the ume of Friedmann’s retirement, the Museum’s
“continuous modernization program” had been in ef-
fect for eight and a half years. As the Annual Report
summed it up, “nine of the fifteen galleries on the first
floor and four second-floor halls had been renovated
and opened to public view. Each hall has presented
distinct problems in exhibition because of the different
subject matter interpreted in each. However, each ren-
ovated gallery reveals marked improvements in the or-
ganization of topics, in the attractiveness of presenta-
tion, and in the simplicity of labelling that combine to
make it a much more effective educational medium
than was the series of exhibits that occupied the hall
prior to modernization.”'' The general supervision of
the exhibits program was taken over by A.C. Smith,
and when Smith moved up to Assistant Secretary, T. Dale
Stewart had the job. But the director of the Museum
had many problems to worry about, and the exhibits
did not receive the same attention that Herbert Fried-
mann had given them.

Three More Halls

Fiscal year 1963 was again an important time for ex-
hibits; three major halls opened. Waldo Wedel com-
pleted his second hall of North American Archeology
in the east north range of the second floor. While both
these halls were far better than what had been there
earlier, neither Hall 21 nor Hall 22 was dramatic or
inspired, as Wedel, who never particularly liked ex-
hibits work, will be the first to say. A superb field man
and a member of the National Academy of Sciences,
Wedel was hired in 1936, and like Cooper, was not
promoted for thirteen years until Neil Judd, the person
in front of him, retired.’” In 1983 Hall 21 was closed
off to be used as a staging area for moving collections
from the building, and in 1984 Hall 22 was closed off
for the same purpose.

The Dinosaur Hall was done by Nicholas Hotton III,
who joined the Department of Geology in 1959. This
hall entailed major construction; a large balcony was
built to increase the display area and to reduce the effect
of the high ceiling. A stairway led from the balcony to
the moon rock display in Hall 22, opened for the na-
tion’s bicentennial. Diplodocus longus was displayed in a
smaller area than before because the east end of the
hall, below the balcony, was walled off. A popular

New mammal hall in the 1960s, with a habitat group of h
Hall 15 upon entering from the rotunda.

item was a large dinosaur bone that tourists could touch,
but they could no longer walk under the specimen.
Across the rotunda, the Hall of Ocean Life was less
than satisfactory, and some staff members still consider
the term “disaster area” more appropriate for it. The
old whale model, based on measurements taken of a
beached specimen, left the impression that the creature
was nearly as flat as a pancake. The prime feature of
the renovated hall, “Life in the Sea,” was the new, ninety-
two-foot model of a great blue whale. During its con-
struction, someone removed the wrong rope and the
head fell off with two people inside, but fortunately
they were not hurt and only a small dent was put in
the fiberglass. It was common practice for the director,
Remington Kellogg, to stop by nearly every day and
tell the whale-construction crew that he was going to
retire as soon as the model was completed. One day he
noted the slow rate of progressing by observing, “You
sons-of-bitches will keep me working forever.”

New Faces, New Funds, New Exhibits

artebeest (Alcelaphus) to the reght—the first exhibit one sees in

Kellogg did retire, and the hall, although it was in-
complete, was dedicated and opened in February 1963.
An elongate balcony had been installed opposite the
whale, partly to simulate the side of a ship and allow a
view of the whale from the side. The balcony was used
for only a few months for one temporary exhibit, and
none of the dioramas planned for it had been installed
before the stairway to it was declared unsafe. The bal-
cony has been closed off ever since.

In one incident, humorous only in retrospect, a vis-
itor wrote to point out that a California abalone shell
on display was not of legal size. He donated a larger
one, just in case the Museum did not have a proper
specimen. A letter of thanks was sent, but a year later
the same person wrote that he had visited again and
the display had not been changed. One of the curators
of mollusks replied by explaining how hard it was to
have an exhibit changed—an accurate statement. About
forty-eight hours later there was an inquiry from the

office of one of the California congressmen, and almost
immediately the display was corrected. In contrast to
this rapid change, David Pawson, who joined Inver-
tebrate Zoology in 1964, recalls being taken through
the same hall when he first arrived and noting a sand
dollar oriented upside down in a case. When he men-
tioned this, the person from Exhibits who was guiding
him replied in all seriousness that they were so back-
logged, it would be nine years before any changes could
be made. Pawson filed this fact away, and nine years
later wrote a memorandum to have the error corrected.

Exhibits Work Continues

On January 22, 1964, the Museum of History and Tech-
nology was dedicated. Attention focused on it, not on
Natural History, and the year was one of only partial
accomplishment in exhibits. Knez got his part of a hall
open; Wedel reinstalled a life-size diorama originally
constructed by Holmes. A portion of the osteology hall
was finished and opened informally; Jay Matternes
completed another mural. Even if there had been more
to record, the change from the Annual Report to Smith-
sonian Year in 1964 resulted in much less detailed style
of accounting. For example: “Members of the curatorial
staff participated in the planning and design of the hall
of osteology, which opened during the year, and hall
of cold-blooded vertebrates. The latter is in process of
construction, and considerable progress has been made
in obtaining material for the tropical and habitat cases.” !”
There is no indication in the departmental files when
either display was opened. A projected fish hall never
materialized.

“Cultures of Africa and East Asia,” which opened in
1967, was a hall that posed interesting problems. ‘The
first hurdle faced by Gordon Gibson in installing the
African portion of the hall was the Henry Ward be-
quest. Ward was a British sculptor who had lived in
Africa as a plantation manager and then opened a stu-
dio in Paris.'’ When he died he left his collection to the
Smithsonian, with the proviso that it be exhibited as it
had been in his studio. Clearly there were some ad-
vantages in rearranging objects and moving some of
the statues, and equally clearly there were legal obsta-
cles. Gibson eventually got Kellogg’s permission to look

into the matter. At the me the Smithsonian had no
legal counsel, so Gibson walked across the street to the
Department of Justice and found an assistant attorney
general willing to help. Gibson wrote to all of Ward’s
descendants and obtained permission for legal action.
The case went to a judge for consideration under an
obscure principle allowing speculation as to what the
donor might have done had he known the present cir-
cumstances. The judge ruled that Ward would have
been sympathetic toward a new display, and the direc-
tor’s permission to modify the donation was forthcom-
ing.

For Knez’s part of the hall, John Weaver of Exhibits
had sculpted life-size figures of Chinese Opera actors
that made men dressed in women’s costumes still look
like men, and he had prepared two-dimensional Ko-
rean manikins standing in a house doorway so that they
appeared three-dimensional. For Gibson, Weaver made
a diorama of northern Cameroon showing half a dozen
one-sixth-life-size figures engaged in smelting iron. From
sketches left by Ward he sculpted a huge figure of a
warrior brandishing a spear, which was cast in bronze
for the display. The hall got rave reviews, and all the
papers photographed the statue.'* Weaver wanted his
name on the warrior, but the exhibits office refused
because his Civil Service job ttle was model maker, not
sculptor. Weaver quit.

The new exhibits program in the Museum, begun in
the 1950s, had now run its course, so far as natural
history was concerned. Progress in the last stages was
by individual cases, not by halls. The Smithsonian’s
exhibits program had different outlets, partly because
of the great amount of work needed in the new Museum
of History and Technology. The Institution had new
art galleries opening, and many temporary exhibits were
being made for all its various museums and for the
Smithsonian Institution ‘Traveling Exhibition Service,
launched in 1951.

After the mid-1960s, the staff of the Museum of
Natural History gradually shifted its attention back to
collections and research. Sull, the new exhibits had
pushed the Museum from the 1920s to the 1960s, in a
single decade. Oo

The Exhibits

THE ANCESTRAL GODS

: Ades? $y Ne
Easter Island head acquired in 1887 and installed in the 1962, where this photograph was published, noted that the
U.S. National Museum the following year. This is the first specimen is ten feet high. The headpiece, however, has a
display one sees in “Cultures of the Pacific and Asia” (Hall different catalogue number than the statue.

8), entering from the rotunda. The Annual Report for

New Faces, New Funds, New Exhibits 97

Chapter 12

New Wings
and a New Elephant

HE ROTUNDA IS A GRAND architectural feature.
However, no one seems to have known what to
do with it. At first the architects had a skylight above
the rotunda, but this gave a bizarre roofline to the
building. Their next conception was a large dome with
enormous bull’s-eye windows, followed by the winged-
statue-topped model. Even though Hornblower and
Marshall were overruled on the ornate French Second
Empire-style dome, they persisted, and in 1909 rec-
ommended St. Gaudens’s Victory as the statue for the
center of the rotunda. Mercifully, this idea was rejected.
When the iron grilles were installed on the doors in
June 1911, and the public finally could use the main
entrance to the building, cases of large mammals were
in the rotunda. For a time a giraffe was centered below
the dome. Later, various statues flanked the ambula-
tory. For a brief time in the 1940s a giant blue vase
stood in the center. During much of the 1950s the
rotunda was empty, save for the guards’ desk and the
benches under the ambulatory. It was not until 1959
that a proper rotunda-sized exhibit was installed: the
largest mounted elephant in the world.

An Awe-inspiring Sight
While some staff members regard the elephant as just
another animal on display, it is an awe-inspiring sight.
Shot November 13, 1955, by J.J. Fénykovi near the
Cuito River in Angola, the elephant was skinned in a
single piece weighing over two tons. The 1,800 pound
skull also was collected, along with the leg bones and
the two tusks, each of ninety-six pounds’ weight. Fényk6évi
wrote in 1956, “I have decided to let a big museum
have him. There, reconstructed by their experts, he can
stand in all the size and majesty he enjoyed in life—the
biggest elephant ever shot by man.”! (A larger specimen
has since been reported.)

According to one story, Fénykovi first approached
the British Museum (Natural History), but they de-

Building the manikin for the Fénykovi elephant in Hall 16,
before the clay fell off, 1958. The entrance to the rotunda
is behind the elephant.

clined the specimen because they already had a group
of elephants in the center hall. According to another
story, a member of the American consular staff in An-
gola read about the animal’s being killed and cabled
the State Department, which informed the Smithson-
ian. Whatever the true story, the elephant arrived from
the field. Although a truckload of salt had been dumped
on the skin in the field to preserve it, the untanned
hide reeked, and those who worked at the west loading
dock, where it was stored for months, still remember
iE;

William L. Brown, the chief taxidermist, prepared
an account of what was involved in mounting this el-
ephant. It is worth quoting in full, for a similar pro-
cedure, although on a smaller scale, has been used for
some of the mammal groups on display.

When the hide arrived at the Museum it was in
one piece so it had to be cut into three parts for
tanning. Then a wooden armature, two or three
inches under life-size was so constructed as to be
disassembled into three sections, head and neck,
and two body halves. This supported the water
clay used to make the life-size model. ‘To support
the armature four giant A-shaped trusses were
made in order to take care of the heavy weight
during construction. Because of the lack of
humidity in the hall where the work was being
done, a large plastic housing was built around the
frame. Into this a steam line was inserted in order
to maintain a high humidity, thus preventing any
drying of the clay while modeling.

When the model was completed the hide was
placed over it, adjusted, and worked on until every
wrinkle was restored and a life-like appearance
produced. After this, a plaster of paris mold,
reinforced with sisal fiber, was made over each of
the sections to hold the skin in exact position while
the work proceeded. To strengthen each heavy
plaster of paris mold, wooden beams were
attached, to which hoists would be fastened later.
At this stage the plastic housing was removed.

Ni Lier

Taxidermy shop in Butler building, west court, with the Fénykévi elephant skin on the floor. Probably 1958.

After this, each of the three sections was lowered
to the floor by two two-ton hoists.

Then all inner armature, clay, wire, and so
forth, were removed, leaving the elephant skin
attached to the outside mold. When the skin had
been thoroughly cleaned, a layer of plaster of paris
about “%4 inch thick was applied. This held the skin
between two layers of plaster while drying. When
thoroughly dry the inner coating of plaster was
carefully removed; three layers of burlap and two
layers of aluminum screenwire, each reinforced
with papier mache were laminated to the hide.
This construction produced a thin manikin, very
tough and durable, about 2 inch thick.

Next, another internal armature of seasoned
wooden ribs was built and fastened to the inside of
the manikin for support. At this stage the outer
wooden frame and plaster mold were removed.

After the mold was removed, the body halves
were joined together from within by bolting.
Papier maché was then applied to the seams.

The head was treated the same as the two halves
except for support. A wooden structure was made
inside the head to hold a long beam from which
the head would be supported when attached to the
body. The tusks were inserted and the head was
fastened to the body halves. After the seams had
been sealed, the finishing touches, such as setting
the eyes and restoring the color of the hide, were
made.”

The elephant’s blown-glass eyes were hand-painted, the
legs were filled with sand, and the tusks were artificial

100

the originals weighed too much.

The mounting took about sixteen months and was
done to the west of the rotunda in the Hall of the Sea,
which was closed for a number of years while the el-
ephant and the whale were constructed. After most of
the clay had been put on the manikin, the clay dried
out and collapsed; it was only after that setback that
the plastic tent and steam house were used. The taxi-
dermists had to work in bathing suits because of the
high humidity. When the elephant was moved into the
rotunda, it cleared the door frame by one and one-half
inches. For those who wonder how the head was at-
tached, there is a trap door in the belly of the elephant,
with the seams at folds in the skin where they cannot
be seen.

There was a great deal more to the job on the ele-
phant than just the mechanics. Neal Deaton, one of the
taxidermists, also wrote an account, emphasizing the
study that was done of living animals in zoos and of
movies taken by hunting parties. “Selecting the final
position came only after much deliberation and thought,”
he wrote. “There was some suspicion of an over-dramatic
attitude, for fear it would cheapen the final effect and
lessen its majestic quality. On the other hand, if the
animal were mounted in a still position it might appear
too statuesque. It was agreed to put the specimen in a
fast walking shuffle, the head erect and slightly turned,
scenting with its trunk. The ears were positioned to
show their characteristic flapping motion. The position
was planned to give an impressive picture of an active
elephant in a somewhat suspicious attitude, displaying
its massive bulk and strength.”

The Exhibits

The Fénykovi elephant as
decorated by the Women’s
Committee of the Smithson-
ian Associates for a medieval
Christmas, December 8,
1978.

Elephant Unveiled

The elephant was unveiled in March 1959. Shortly
thereafter, William L. Brown retired, leaving the ani-
mal to mark his career of almost half a century at the
Museum, and Neal Deaton left to set up his own busi-
ness. Frank Greenwell remains as the only taxidermist
who worked on the elephant—indeed, the only taxi-
dermist left on the Museum staff. About twenty years
afterward, Greenwell and his wife, Pat, spend six weeks
repairing the skin. In 1983 Greenwell gave the elephant
new fiberglass tusks made in the Exhibits Department
model shop.

The platform around the elephant has been modified
several times. For a few weeks a piece of elephant hide
was placed on the railing so that tourists could feel it,
but when the skin wore out it was not replaced, because
the African elephant had become an endangered spe-
cies. At one point the elephant was wired for sound,
and trumpeting noises shook the dome every fifteen
minutes; fortunately, this was discontinued. A record-
ing about the elephant was added for those desiring
more information than the label supplies. A skeleton
of a pygmy elephant to place beside the big one was
contracted for, but the skeleton turned out to be largely
plaster reconstruction rather than authentic bone, and
the contract was canceled.

The elephant 1s the subject of a couple of anecdotes
that are part of the oral tradition of the Museum. As
indicated, the animal is in a walking position with trunk
and tail outstretched. No one will confirm it, but Sec-
retary Carmichael is supposed to have been so aghast
at the sight of the large open anus that he issued orders

New Wings and a New Elephant

lia 4

The elephant on December 14, 1979, when the Christmas
dance of the Women’s Committee had the theme of “Babar
Visits America.”

10]

NATIONAL MUSEUM
INCLUDIN
THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION a 5

—,
ae

STREET
|
|
|
|

: fall paves Axis of Mall 4

Proposal for wings to be added to the new National
Museum; from Rathbun, 1918. The suggested building to
the right is now the site of an ice-skating rink across from
the National Archives.

for it to be sewn up. Phe comments attributed to As-
sistant Secretary Kellogg are unprintable. It is a fact
he had taxi-
dermists check into unsewing the elephant. After study-

that when Porter Kier became director,

ing and photographing some elephants in the zoo, they
reported that the African elephant’s anus is hidden by
skin wrinkles except when actually in use.

On April 1, 1960, an elephant-sized pile of dung was
discovered under the animal shortly before the Mu-
seum opened for the day. There was considerable ag-
itauion, compounded when the laborer cleaning up with
shovel and broom objected to pictures. When the fuss
was all over, the dung turned out to be a superb mod-
eling job done in clay by a member of the exhibits staff.
The administration never considered this a humorous
event and spent a long ume trying to track down the
model maker.

It was coincidental that the dedication of the elephant
occurred half a century after the building first opened.
No one mentioned the tming at the dedication cere-
mony. In 1966, for the celebration of the 200th anni-
versary of the birth of James Smithson, banners were
designed for each of the Institution’s bureaus; the one
for the Museum of Natural History featured an ele-
phant. The Museum’s letterhead, more austerely, has
stayed with a drawing of the dome.

East and West Wings

The east and west wings, the largest structural devel-
opment of the building itself since the rotunda dome
was completed, had existed in theory for over forty
years. In 1918 Rathbun gave his opinion that the great-
est need of the Smithsonian Institution was a building
for industrial arts and American history, and that this
building should be followed by construction of a sep-
arate National Gallery of Art. He thought, nevertheless,

102

that wings for the Museum ought to be started promptly.’

By the mid-1920s, Holmes had created considerable
momentum toward a National Gallery of Art building.
While this was still far from materializing, Wetmore in
1928 built on hopes for the gallery in campaigning for
additional space for natural history. He wrote in the
Annual Report:

The ultimate construction of a National Gallery of
Art to which the art collections will be removed
will free a certain amount of space in the Natural
History Building, but that area will be
automatically absorbed by the natural history
exhibits retired to make room for art, and will not
afford necessary relief. There should be added to
the Natural History Building two wings, one on
the east and one on the west, in accordance with
the original plan of the architect for this structure.
These, with the same height as the present
building will give needed space for the
tremendously valuable research collections and will
relieve crowded laboratories, which in the division
of insects, for example, have become almost
intolerable. ... [I[]n some instances at present four
persons depend upon the light from a single
window for illumination for work requiring
delicate examination, frequently under the
microscope. The additional floor space would also
afford a more logical arrangement of exhibits, a
remodeling of many in more modern form, which
cannot be attempted at present, and a relief from
the present crowding, which is often tring and
confusing to the visitor.’

(It is ironic that Wetmore used the Division of Insects
as an example; thirty-five years later, when the wings
finally were completed, the entomologists still had the
least satisfactory office space.)

Exactly the same words were repeated the following
year in the Annual Report on the Museum. Perhaps these
words were read on the Hill, or possibly the grave prob-
lems of slippage of the keystones of the rotunda arches
(discussed in Chapter 21) focused attention on the
building. A bill was introduced in Congress to authorize
the wings, and to bring home its necessity, Secretary
Abbot declared the building “as crowded as a woman
traveler’s trunk.”

Whatever was the catalyst, “the Smoot-Elhiott bill au-
thorizing the extension of the Natural History Building

. was passed without a dissenting vote. The bill was
approved by the president on June 19, 1930. Under
this authorization it is planned to add to the present
building so that it will extend from Ninth to Twelfth
Street, in general duplicating the present structure, where
the ground floor and third floor are given over to of-
fices and laboratories and the two intermediate floors
are devoted to exhibits.”’ This concept of the wings as
providing a major addition to the exhibit area was quite

The Exhibits

shorhontephe gh phen led ch pheahe-behenhencrbeatbeobe A phe

aay.
= ‘

Aerial view looking south down Tenth Street, showing small
parks on either side of the building, where the wings now
stand. The projections on the south side, at the corner of
each court, house the freight elevators. In the background
are the Freer Gallery to the right of the Castle and the Arts

New Wings and a New Elephant

Py ~~ >

Be Matin *
appt

ry) \

and Industries Building to the left. Hains Point is in the
distance, and National Airport, across the river, ts not
particularly busy. The automobiles suggest a date in the
early 1950s.

103

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- ADDITIONS -TO:
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WASHINGTON DB

A 1931 architectural sketch for the two wings, showing dual courts in each. The architects mislabeled Ninth Street, to the
east of the building; the former B Street to the north has become Constitution Avenue.

different from the offices and storage that were even-
tually constructed.

After the authorization for the wings was given, ar-
chitectural sketches were prepared, and the staff of-
fered suggestions. Hrdlicka submitted a plan for an
elaborate hall of physical anthropology; Wetmore had
practical ideas about elevators, checkine facilities, and
stairways for this proposed new space.” But those fa-
miliar with the methods of Congress know the rela-
tionship of that slippery duo “authorize” and “appro-
priate.” Nothing may be done unless it is authorized.
However, even if permission to perform a parucular
action is given, nothing happens unt money is granted.
Ten thousand dollars for planning was appropriated
in fiscal year 1931, and then momentum toward the
wings stopped. The Annual Report of the Museum de-
livered regular statements on the continually increasing
need for space, but because of the Great Depression
and then World War II, nothing happened. For years
the senior botanist, Conrad Morton, remarked that he
would have wings before the building did.

James Bradley to the Rescue

The next key person in this account was James C. Brad-
ley, first listed in the Annual Report for fiscal year 1959
as an assistant to Secretary Carmichael; Bradley later
became an assistant secretary and finally under secre-
tary. One of his first acts in his new position was to read
the authorization bill passed years earlier. He noted
how little other Smithsonian administrators at the time

104

seemed to know of overall Congressional process. The
authorization for construction had been given in 1930
with the proviso that the cost not exceed $6,500,000—
which, incidentally, was nearly twice the cost of the
original building.

Having digested the bill, Bradley called the General
Services Administration and was advised that Congres-
sional authorization would not have to be renewed if
it could be shown that the new cost estimate was com-
mensurate with the first, given the normal inflation that
had occurred over the intervening years. Next Bradley
went to Arnold Spaatz, a retired Air Force general who
headed the Office of Management and Budget. Spaatz
would have liked to help the Smithsonian, but the con-
struction estimate of $19,000,000 for both wings was
just too high. Bradley then suggested that the construc-
tion start out with one wing. Spaatz agreed, and in May
1960 Congress appropriated a sum that was expected
to cover the renovating and airconditioning of the ex-
isting building, plus the construction of the east wing.
When construction finally began, the addition had overall
dimensions of 190 by 180 feet and consisted of a base-
ment, ground floor, and six upper floors.

Mills, Petticourt, and Mills of Washington, D.C., were
the architects for both wings. The George Hyman Con-
struction Company did a rapid job on the east wing,
and finished the building faster than had been antici-
pated. Its bid for the east wing was actually lower than
budgeted for. With these savings in the kitty, the Smith-
sonian requested and received an additional $4,336,000

The Exhibits

West wing and west side of
the National Museum of
Natural History, looking east
from the roof of the National
Museum of American
History, April 1984. The
flagpole is to the left, on the
north wing. The west-side
loading dock and entrance to
the mail room are in the
parking lot on the

lower right.

cm aaa

fas ono

for the west wing, though no one can say exactly what
each wing cost. Hyman Construction bid on the west
wing and was also awarded that contract. This was a
lucky break for both the Institution and the company,
since the same blueprints could be used; all the engi-
neers had to do was reverse them. Mirror images often
confuse people, and some of the staff who spent much
of their time in one wing get lost when they venture
into the other. The differences between the wings are
minor. A different company supplied passenger ele-
vators for the west wing, and whereas the east wing has
mostly soapstone work sinks in each office, the west
wing has mostly small porcelain hand basins.

Each wing was supposed to add 259,903 square feet
to the building—a precise enough number to satisfy
any bean-counter, though each time the wings are men-
tioned officially, a slightly different figure is given.
Rathbun had estimated that the main building had
158,989 square feet for laboratories and collections,
and 75,856 for all other nonpublic purposes. The wings
almost doubled the laboratory and storage space, as the
new National Museum had done half a century earlier.

“The general arrangement of each floor in the new
wings is essentially standardized,” ran a 1962 report.
“There will be a central area for the appropriate ref-
erence collection, surrounded on the three outside walls
of the wing by a series of workrooms and laboratories.
... All such rooms will have excellent daylight and will
contain the facilities needed for the intended use as
designated by members of the scientific staff, who in
each case have designed the details of their own areas.
On the average, each floor will have between 20 and
30 workrooms or laboratories, and each division will
center its activities with a well-demarcated area.”

New Wings and a New Elephant

Lost Storage Space

Fairly early in the planning, the curators thought that
the support pillars would be one foot square. Instead,
the pillars turned out to be round and nearly three feet
in diameter. As a consequence, about 10 percent of the
central space anticipated for storage cases was lost. Also,
the Fine Arts Commission required that the top floor
be set back, which pared the floor space in each com-
pleted wing to 209,000 square feet.

The architects did a good job on the exterior design
in matching the wing to the old building, from which
it is set back a few feet on the north side. At the lower
level the granite has the same hue, but the surface is
not so strongly rusticated as in the main structure. Un-
like the ten-inch-thick granite of the main building, the
stone of the wings is a veneer. The metal-framed win-
dows pivot to open, and are placed in groups of three.
These window groups are about as wide as the window
openings in the main building. Rectangular metal pieces
of the same color as the window frames and above each
window add to the illusion of long windows, as in the
main building. Because the top floor is set back behind
a parapet, the windows there do not contrast with the
prominent stone molding around the windows on the
third floor of the main building. The freight elevator
does not run to the sixth floor because the Fine Arts
Commission judged that its extension above the sixth
floor would give an unacceptable appearance to the
root line.

At the east and west ends of the wings there are
double doors, locked except during fire drills. On the
north side, sidewalks lead from Constitution Avenue
to an entryway and lobby. During the first few months
of occupancy these doors were open in the east wing,

105

but because this required an additional guard, they
were closed and have not been reopened. The doors
in the west wing never have been used.

On the interior, the ground floor and the second,
fourth, and sixth floors connect to the main building.
The north side of each lobby contains two automatic
elevators; each wing has one stairwell adjacent to the
elevators and another near its south corner. Freight
elevators on the south side of each wing open into both
the wing and the main building. Every floor has two
sets of toilets. Except for the polished limestone in the
lobbies, never seen by the public, the wings are utli-
tarian.

Remington Kellogg, then director, insisted that the
curators personally lay out and design office space, and
this took a lot of time. Cooper drew the plumbing and
sinks on the outside walls, as they had been in the main
building, and was told to do it over because the plumb-
ing had to be on interior walls. He grumbled, but rede-
signed. Fortunately for everyone, Cooper had read the
specificauions of the General Services Administration
and pointed out that these quarters were to be labo-
ratories, not offices; an office is rather rigidly defined
in terms of square feet, whereas a laboratory is not.
Had the term “office” been used further in official
correspondence, everything would have had to be
changed. Parts of the west wing have much less space
for the individual scientist because they are offices.

Work Gets Under Way

As with the original building, construcuon began on
the east side. There was no ground-breaking ceremony;
the contractor began work as early as he could in 1961.
Shortly after the first bulldozer appeared to dig the
foundation, the heavy equipment broke into Tiber Creek.
This creek had meandered across the swamp of the
pre-Mall era to the barge canal that flowed where Con-
stitution Avenue is now. Decades earlier, Tiber Creek
had been enclosed in a massive brick tunnel and buried
about twenty feet underground. Now it ran across the
corner of the building site, so it was dug up, moved,
and again sealed away from view, this ume in concrete.
Because there was some movement in the foundation
of the main building, heavy collections of fossil plants
were immediately moved from the east north range
into the first story of the new wing, even before the
walls were up. Later the plants were moved again, to
the fourth floor of the wing.

Only one or two people on the ground floor lost their
offices, and the vertebrate paleontology laboratory was
able to continue work, despite the disappearance of all
its windows. The breaking down of walls uncovered
swarms of albino cockroaches, and one staff member
remembers how eagerly the entomologists stalked these
unusual specimens. Many people were temporarily in-
convenienced by the noise and dust, but the work pro-
gressed rapidly. By wintertime, construction had reached

106

the level of the third floor of the main Museum build-
ing. Several offices in the east range had to be sacrificed,
and the construction crews hung canvas over the open-
ings they had broken in the wall. One day it was so cold
that ice formed in the sinks in adjacent offices.

The east wing had acres of cement flooring that re-
mained vacant for weeks. After the cases were brought
in, gray tile was laid around the perimeter and brown
tile in the aisles between the cases. Every time a Case is
moved—admittedly a rare event—the bare cement floor
is exposed, and tile that does not match either color
has to be laid. The contractors did learn, however, and
the floors of the west wing were tiled in one color, before
the collections moved in. Raised phone jacks and elec-
trical outlets put in the middle of the floor had been
found objectionable in the east wing, yet the same de-
sign was used in the west wing.

Moving into the East Wing

By the end of June 1962, the east wing was nearly
done—plastered on the inside and finished on the out-
side, except for some miscellaneous caulking and clean-
ing. On August 16, the new occupants began to move
in. Nicholas Hotton believes that he was the first to
establish an office in the new wing; he was on the north
side of the first floor with the other vertebrate paleon-
tologists.

The move itself went extremely well, and though it
was hard physical work and the whole process took
about six months, everyone who participated recalls the
time with pleasure. Curators lugged cases along with
workmen. Not a single drawer was dropped. One of
the items that sticks in the memory was moving some
cases of Geological Survey fossils in the third-floor hall
and uncovering a door that had been hidden for dec-
ades. On it was lettered the name of E. O. Ulrich, then
dead for twenty years. One social event was a party
given by S. H. Mamay to dedicate the paleobotanical
library, in which he installed the painting Death Pre-
ferred. A lot of people marveled at all the empty space
in the new wing. Cooper, ever the realist, is reported
to have said, “It won't last long.”

According to plan, the east wing was to accommodate
the Division of Birds on the top floor, the Division of
Mollusks on a large part of the fifth floor, and “prac-
tically all the functions of the Department of Geology
and the activities associated with it” on the remaining
four and one-half floors.'® This basic layout was not
followed entirely, for the anthropologists were given
about one-third of the fifth floor for a storage area. As
a consequence, Tertiary fossils had to be distributed
beween the fourth floor and the basement.

The basement was designed for indoor parking, and
for about fifteen months many employees lived in the
lap of luxury. It soon became obvious that the wing was
full, and the cars were pushed out to make room for
collections and some of the shops. The entrance to the

The Exhibits

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basement was too low to admit a large truck, and twenty
years later, when the fossils were being moved to the
new Silver Hill facility, this architectural oversight led
to strong words.

The Arrival of Air Conditioning

Air conditioning came in with the new wing. Old-tumers
hailed it as a momentous break with the past, and Frank
Taylor, then director of the United States National Mu-
seum, produced a nice homily on the occasion: “Visiting
the Museum is now much more pleasant for the hundreds
of thousands of summer visitors, who as a result, are
induced to stay longer and absorb more of the instruc-
tion and inspiration that exhibits provide.”"'

But air conditioning was a new concept for the Mu-
seum, and the engineers could not get it to work prop-
erly. When members of the staff managed to contrive
keys to open the pivoting windows, the captain of the
guards announced under orders that when rounds were
made, “every damn window in the wing has got to be
closed.” An anonymous voice from the rear mentioned
that Dr. Kellogg liked his window open, and the order
was modified to, “Well, every other damn window in the
wing has got to be closed.” Despite perennial problems,
the climate control eventually got somewhat better, but
the north side of the building is always too cold and
the south side is always too warm.

New Wings and a New Elephant

Moving drawers of fossil invertebrates into the east wing, 1962.

During the early days in the east wing, the cleaning
force could not cope with the extra work. One day a
memorandum from “Buildings Maintenance” ap-
peared under every door, indicating how difficult 1t
was for the cleaning staff to keep ahead of the slovenly
scientists. It further noted that henceforth all scientists
were expected to clean their own offices and that brooms
would be placed on each floor. The scientists were i1n-
censed, and when the building superintendent found
out about it he was incensed, and sent someone around
to collect all copies of the spurious memo. Porter Kier
sull has the original copy he wrote.

Entomologists Move Out
There were many more scientists along the west side
of the building than along the east side. The largest
group was the entomologists in Hall 27 on the second
floor. In 1962, when space was needed for construction
of the west wing and renovation of the main building,
they volunteered to move to the Bergman Laundry
building in northwest Washington for what was sup-
posed to be a couple of years, but turned out to be
nearly a decade.

The contract for the new construction was signed in
August 1963, and the digging began in November. Once
again the work went quickly, and by the end of June

107

1964 most of the west wing’s granite facing was in place.
During the latter stages of construction, a workman
standing on some boards in the elevator shaft fell to
his death when the boards broke. It was the only fatality
associated with the building of the wings.

Renovation of the original building was going on at
the same time. On the second floor near the southwest
corner, Waldo Schmitt, by then officially retired, oc-
cupied a mezzanine office that he had loaded with quite
a lot of junk. When an opening was made on the side
of the building, the decking began to sag, and the con-
struction crew had to prop up the deck with timbers.
Carolyn Gast, an artist for Invertebrate Zoology who
had the office below Schmitt’s, made a sign for the area:
“The little city of Gustingdust. Population ten.” The
building manager saw this one day and tore it up. Gast
then made a series of signs in Greek, Russian, Hebrew,
Japanese, and a variety of other languages, expressing
the resident scientists’ opinion of the building manager.
One day the building manager came through with a
subcontractor who translated the Hebrew, but the signs
stayed up anyway.

As with the east wing, construction on the west side
was completed with no unanticipated problems, and by
mid-1964 part of the wing was occupied. The scheme
for the west wing—before the ground was broken, at
least—was that it should “house the Division of Fishes
on its ground floor, the Division of Marine Inverte-
brates on its first and much of its second floor, the
Division of Reptiles and Amphibians on the rest of the
second floor, the entire Department of Botany on the
third and fourth floors, and the Division of Insects on
the fifth and sixth floors, a portion of which will also
provide some storage space for the Division of Mam-
mals, which otherwise will occupy the adjacent top floor
of the west part of the adjacent building.”'*

Moving into West Wing

The Division of Fishes was first into the wing, with
Leonard Schultz overseeing the move. Ernest Lachner
employed a dozen high school students to help the
Smithsonian labor force, and had the other curators
and Fish and Wildlife biologists stationed at strategic
places. A quarter of a million jars, totaling several mil-
lion specimens, were moved in a month without a single
jar being broken.

The visitors’ book of the Division of Reptiles and
Amphibians, kept by Doris Cochran, records that there
was a visiting scientist working in the old quarters in
the main building on January 8, 1965. By January 26,
the next visitor was working in the new facility, on the
first floor of the west wing.

The moving of Botany to the fourth and fifth floors
(rather than the third and fourth) was more compli-
cated. One of the gothic windows in the Castle was
removed and a temporary elevator built outside to win-
dow level. The curators and laborers would move a

108

long herbarium case up a ramp to the window, and
then it would go down the elevator to a truck; the cases
were too large to be taken down the stairway. Plans had
been made to bring the National Fungi Collection to
the Museum at the time of the move, but the then-new
chairman of Botany, William L. Stern, decided against
this, for it would have used up all the badly needed
expansion room. One botanist recalls that he warned
the director of the Museum there would be insufficient
floor space, even without the fungi. He pointed out
that on the balcony in the herbarium within the Castle,
cases were stored three high, but in the new wings they
could be stored only two high. Though he was assured
that his fears were unfounded, the storage space that
was to last for thirty years was filled in ten.

Much of the storage in the west wing is of wet spec-
imens in bottles and jars. hese alcoholic specimens
were placed in large, closed-off interior rooms, consid-
erably reducing the danger of fire. The curators had
urged that there be positive air pressure in these rooms
to help keep out dust, but the system was not up to
this. Sull, the new space for all the jars was a great gain,
and allowed the collections to be properly organized
for the first time in fifty years. Had the ceilings been

just a few inches higher on most floors, an extra tier

of cases could have been fitted in, affording about 30
percent more storage space.

The invertebrate zoologists filled their storage space
with twelve-inch-wide shelving and needed more, so
they were given room for additional wet storage on the
third floor. The Division of Paleobotany, which also
needed more space, was assigned to new quarters in
the west wing. “For the first ume, the entire paleobo-
tanical collections of the Museum and those of the U.S.
Geological Survey housed in the museum [were] located
in a single area.”'’

Only the sixth floor remained to be filled. Part of
this was already designated for wet storage of mammals,
but there were some vacant offices—later used by En-
tomology—and the mammalogists moved into them.
After the renovation of the main building, they had
moved from the ground floor to the west north range,
and this was a logical extension of their territory.

Meanwhile, back in the main building, the ground-
floor fur vault, which had been displaced by the door-
way leading into the west wing, was moved down the
west range a few feet. The National Anthropological
Archives moved from the Castle to the ground floor
on the west side of the range adjacent to the wing. The
fisheries staff from the Department of Commerce moved
into offices on the east side of that range and the south
side of the west north range, all facing into the court-
yard. The library got the area facing Constitution Av-
enue that the Division of Mammals had vacated, and
improved the existing decking. The rearrangements
on the ground floor were to everyone’s satisfaction,
unlike the shufflings higher up in the new wing. =O

The Exhibits

Construction of the east wing
at fourth-floor level, 1961.
Ninth Street then went across
the Mall, not under it. In
the distance, to the east, is
the Army Medical Museum,
now the site of the Hirshhorn
Museum. A photograph of
the east wing with all floors
completed appears in the
Annual Report for 1962

Aerial view looking north- ree at the building with
east wing attached, showing the setting-back of the sixth

floor of the wing and the small- machinery building, for air

conditioning, on top of that. The main air intakes are in
the north corner of each court. On the north side of

New Wings and a New Elephant

—
—

Constitution Avenue are the National Archives, to the right,
and the Department of Justice, to the left. This photograph

and several illustrations from ground level were published

in the Annual Report for 1963.

109

Chapter 13

Big Science:
Deep Space, Deep Waters

| ee AGREES THAT THE postwar science boom
the first man-made satellite late in 1957. This satellite
was one of the Soviet contributions to the International
Geophysical Year, an eighteen-month, major investi-
gation of the physics of the earth. For the first time
since the end of World War II, the United States was
in second place, and federal funds were poured into
several branches of science.

The immediate result of Sputnik was a tremendous
surge of interest in outer space—specifically, in what
happened to an object when it came from space through
the atmosphere to the earth’s surface. Years before,
Edward Henderson had been chided by Wetmore for
spending his time only on meteorites. Suddenly it was
realized that a meteorite is a space probe that has landed
on earth, and everyone came to Henderson’s office to
find out about meteorites. Government agencies pressed
money on him, awakening some of the staff to the
possibility that the government might be interested in
what the Museum could contribute to various other
scientific programs.

With the increasing emphasis on outer space aimed
at landing a man on the moon, the Apollo program
had a direct impact on growth at the Museum. The
National Aeronautics and Space Administration rec-
ognized the merit in detailed study of the Museum’s
large meteorite collection, and they agreed to purchase
an electron probe and maintain it for three years, after
which the Museum would be responsible for costs. This
agreement led to the hiring of four additional people
in Mineral Sciences and nearly doubled the professional
staff of the department.

Kurt Fredrikkson seated by the electron probe on the fourth
floor of the east wing, 1967. The probe itself is near the
circular pillar that protrudes into the room; the rest of the
equipment serves to detect and record. Charles Fiori, in the
background, makes adjustments on the machine. The probe
has been replaced by a later model and moved to an
adjacent room.

in America began with the Russian launching of

111

The International Geophysical Year focused atten-
tion on Antarctica, and resulted in the establishment
of permanent American stations on that continent. At
the age of seventy-five, Schmitt went on an icebreaker
cruise to investigate sites, and with virtually no equip-
ment on hand, cajoled the ship’s company into helping
him make one of the largest collections of marine in-
vertebrates ever obtained from the region.

Expansion in Biology

When it became clear that the International Geophys-
ical Year was going to be a success, a group of biologists
conceived the idea of an International Biological Pro-
gram, to begin in the 1960s. Although this did not
generate as much excitement or money, it was another
step forward for “big science.” Under this program,
Setzer ran a major project for collecting small mam-
mals, with field men working throughout Africa and
the Middle East. At about the same time, the Pacific
Ocean Biological Survey Project, supported by the De-
partment of Defense, studied bird distribution and mi-
gration. Both programs added many specimens to the
collections, but they were supported by grants and con-
tracts—“soft money’—and with one or two exceptions,
did not lead to permanent staff increases. The Office
of Naval Research funded some studies of sharks and
shark attacks, again on a contract basis.

The atomic age, and particularly the development of
the hydrogen bomb a few years before sputnik, indi-
rectly stimulated expansion at the Museum, curiously
enough in biology. Museum scientists had collected ma-
rine organisms at Bikini Atoll in 1947 and 1948, before
and after atomic bombs were tested. With the hydrogen
bomb experiments at Eniwetok Atoll during the early
1950s, it was even more critical to sample the biota.
Travel money and funds for supplies and temporary
assistants came to the Institution. The Atomic Energy
Commission provided funds to build some decking on
the south side of the ground floor of the main building;
this was the first new space added inside the building
since the decking of the 1930s. Some of it was used as
offices for contract research associates.

Moving insect cases from the deck on the west range, second
floor (Hall 27), 1962, after this Hall of Invertebrates was
converted into offices for entomologists.

Changes in Zoology

Administrative changes were taking place in the De-
partment of Zoology. When Friedmann, who had suc-
ceeded Schmitt, retired in 1961, Fenner Chace served
as acting head for a year before stepping down to be-
come the first Senior Scientist in the Museum. He was
followed by Horton Hobbs, Jr., a specialist on fresh-
water crustaceans. Hobbs was the first scientist hired
from outside the Museum specifically to be a depart-
ment head. Promotion from inside, slow as it was, was
no longer an automatic event—a tremendous break
with tradition.

Another big change within Zoology concerned the
entomologists. The site they had been moved to in 1962
was the former rug-cleaning department of Bergman’s
Laundry, just off Georgia Avenue on Lamont Street in
northwest Washington, about a mile from the Museum.
The building was spartan but adequate, and because
of the kind of operation that had been run there, floors
were sturdy. There were no internal partitions, but the
entomologists were experienced in building office walls
from specimen cases. The move of specimens and peo-

ple went fairly smoothly, and several people recall George
Steyskal of the Department of Agriculture driving his
car into the freight elevator, driving it off, and un-
loading directly onto his new desk. The entomologists
had 55,000 square feet of space. For the first time they
were able to get their collections in order and to have
offices fairly close to one another.

This new space, as they had hoped, provided the
opportunity for growth. On July 1, 1963, the Division
of Insects was split off as the Department of Ento-
mology, and J. F. Gates Clarke became the first head.
The total departmental staff at that time consisted of
fifteen people. Twenty years later the number was sixty-
five, including technicians and clerical support. The
Department of Agriculture entomologists managed to
add a position or two, but their number has been nearly
constant.

There were a few wisecracks at first about living in
a laundry, and it did not take long for this facility to
be christened “Lament Street” by its inhabitants. The
neighborhood was dangerous. No one associated with
the Museum ever ran into trouble, but there was con-
stant worry. On one occasion a murder victim was found
on the parking lot, and during the entomologists’ ten-
ure several shopowners in the neighborhood were shot.
After a gun store was robbed, the Federal Bureau of
Invesugation had a stakeout in the building before raid-
ing an apartment across the street. During the 1968
riots in Washington, there was considerable concern
for the staff and the collections, but again they came
to no harm.

In 1968 and 1969 the entomologists returned to the
Mall. Though they originally were slated for the fifth
and sixth floors of the west wing, the fifth floor had
gone to Botany, and because of the setting-back re-
quired by the Fine Arts Commission, the sixth floor
was smaller than anticipated. Hall 27 on the west side
of the second floor, which had been used for offices,
was fully decked over, this time with steel plates, but
that proved insufficient. Hall 30 on the south side of
the second floor was also converted to offices and decked
over. The Museum entomologists currently occupy about
36,000 square feet, far less than at Lamont Street. They
have a few offices in the west wing of the main building.

Nothing exists in a vacuum in the Museum, and one
action affects another. Because these two exhibit halls
were appropriated for offices, a partially completed hall
of fishes was scrapped, and a projected hall of fresh-
water and marine invertebrates was dropped.

Oceanography Program

The real driving force for growth in the Museum dur-
ing the early 1960s was oceanography. Using the In-
ternational Geophysical Year as a model, a number of
scientists set up an International Decade of the Oceans,
in a way a water-based International Biological Pro-
gram. After Stewart became director and Richard Cowan

The Exhibits

H. Adair Feldmann and
Beatrice Burch in the Smith-
sonian Oceanographic Sort-
ing Center. This photograph
was taken in the early 1970s
at the Navy Yard in south-
east Washington, where the
Sorting Center moved before
the Lamont Street building }
was vacated. Now the Sort- EXS%i
ing Center is in the Museum
Support Center at Silver
Hill, Maryland.

assistant director of the Museum in 1962, the special
position of Assistant Director for Oceanography was
created. Eugene Wallen transferred from the Atomic
Energy Commission to the Museum to fill this post.
While at the Commission he had been a strong sup-
porter of the Museum, and had provided several large
grants.

Wallen was an excellent organizer and wasted no time
when presented with the opportunity to develop the
Museum’s oceanography program. “The establishment
and functioning of the Smithsonian Oceanographic
Sorting Center is perhaps the most important single
accomplishment of the first year of the oceanography
program,” read the Annual Report published in 1964.
“The Sorting Center is designed to provide assistance
of several kinds to taxonomic specialists both in Federal
and non-Federal establishments. A principal function

is to sort to practical taxonomic level the multitude of

plants and animals collected on oceanic cruises.”' The
Sorting Center, opened in 1962, was on the second floor
of the Lamont Street laundry building. Under the en-
ergetic direction of H. Adair Feldmann, it soon became
an effective and widely known unit. Before the ento-
mologists left Lamont Street in 1965, the Sorting Center
moved to a building in the old Navy Yard in southeast
Washington. During the summer of 1985, another move
was made to the Museum Support Center.

With so many organisms coming into the collections,
the Museum could not hope to study them all. Never-
theless, there was good reason to increase the staff and

Big Science: Deep Space, Deep Waters

hire specialists in groups that had not been studied by
earlier curators. As one measure of growth, in fiscal
year 1964 Zoology listed twenty-four names, even though
a separate Department of Entomology had been estab-
lished that year. The following year the old Department
of Zoology was split into two, and the last of the seven
departments of the present Museum emerged. In fiscal
year 1965, when this division occurred, there were sev-
enteen people in Vertebrate Zoology and sixteen in
Invertebrate Zoology. Paleobiology also added special-
ists on fossils and marine sedimentology during these
years.

“Perhaps the most obvious of the changes in the first
three years of the Smithsonian’s research effort in
oceanography,” Smithsonian Year for 1965 explained,
“has been a large increase in staff involvement in bi-
ological and geological oceanography activities. Not only
has the number of scientists involved in the oceanog-
raphy program tripled in these three years, but the
number of organizational units included in the pro-
gram also has tripled. Whereas before, the Institution
had extremely restricted capability to treat the nearly
100 major groups of marine organisms, selective re-
cruiting has resulted in the addition of capabilities to
examine and carry out research on groups which could
not be included in earlier oceanographic efforts.”

A positive event of 1966 was the decision by Congress
that “Public Law 480 funds’—foreign currency owed
the United States that must be spent in the country
repaying the debt—could be used for biological work.

113

Both Museum scientists and those from academic in-
stitutions received grants of PL 480 money, which con-
tinue to be helpful to the pursuit of science at the Mu-

seum.
By June 1966 the Smithsonian had formed a separate
Office of Oceanography and Limnology (the study of
lakes, ponds, and streams). Thus the Sorting Center
was no longer part of the Museum. A Mediterranean
Marine Sorting Center was established, supported by
foreign-currency funds made available under Public

Law 480. Looking back, the impression one gains 1s of

rapid expansion into a variety of fields. The Interna-
tional Biological Program embraced the total environ-
ment, not just the oceans. The Smithsonian established
the Office of Ecology in July 1967, and Helmut Buech-
ner, as assistant director for ecology at the Museum,
developed a modest staff. A Chesapeake Bay Center
for Field Biology was started, and for its first year was
under the administration of the Museum.

Fort Pierce Facility

In 1968 Wallen became acting head of the Office of

Ecology, and in October of 1969 it merged with Ocean-
ography and Limnology to form the Office of Envi-
ronmental Sciences. Although Wallen continued for a
time as an assistant director, increasingly he had more
to do with oceanography overall and less to do directly
with the Museum. In the early 1970s he went to Fort
Pierce, Florida, to organize another Smithsonian bu-
reau, and later left the Institution. In 1981, after several
changes in administration, the Fort Pierce facility be-
came part of the National Museum of Natural History.
And when the Office of Environmental Sciences was

114

View looking north in Hall
27, probably in the late
1950s. The giant clam
(Tridacna) is to the extreme
right. Beyond it, on the right
side, the alcoves have been
closed off to make offices for
the U.S. Department of
Agriculture entomologists.
Some cases of invertebrates
remain on the left, but
behind them are more offices,
with cases sticking up. Out
of sight at the corner of the
hall was the “Coral Room.”

closed in 1975, the Sorting Center again became part
of the Museum—essentially, another department.
There was one other facet of big science that left a
physical change in the Museum. Within the Depart-
ment of Botany, the idea of a comprehensive “Flora of
North America” in a series of publications was devel-
oped. Several feasibility studies were done, and mo-
mentum toward this major compilation began to build.
This project helped lay the groundwork for automatic
data processing, now a standard practice in the Mu-
seum. There were a few offices opening up in the north
wing adjacent to the elevators. The exhibits people had
left the area in terrible shape, but cleaned up and decked
over, it would have made an ideal headquarters for the
“Flora.” The construction was completed, but in 1973,

just before the move, the project expired. The “Hand-

book of North American Indians,” big science in itself,
moved into the area. When this group moved to the
southwest corner of the ground floor, the public ed-
ucation staff inherited the space.

The volumes of Smithsonian Year for 1970 and 1971
combined are not as thick as the volume for 1969. “As
in all research/education centers over the country, the
year was one of retrenchment, deferred needs, and
constantly revised priorities,” the 1971 yearbook re-
ported. “Rather than lose any of its excellent staff, this
Museum chose to keep the people even though that
decision meant drastically reduced funding for items
other than salaries.”* This was a hard choice. The era
of big science had dramatically increased the size of the
staff, but when the cuts came, people were more im-
portant than travel or even cases for the specimens. 0

The Exhibits

J. FG. Clarke, Division of
Insects, and two laborers

C unpacking collections at
Lamont Street.

any gi LS all ae asst |i 3

vn Maitlh ;

Putting in the floor supports for cases of insects at Lamont Street, 1962.

Big Science: Deep Space, Deep Waters

115

=. “

Chapter 14

“Modern Times”

ae OPENING OF THE Museum of History and Tech-
nology in 1964 marked a major change in the
course of the Smithsonian Institution. It coincided with
the start of the twenty-year tenure of S. Dillon Ripley
as Secretary of the Smithsonian. During these two dec-
ades the Institution increased dramatically in both scope
and diversity. For much of its history, one could well
have described the Smithsonian as natural history with
a few appendages; after 1964 the Museum of Natural
History became simply one among a series of museums.
In this sense alone the Museum lost significance, for
staff and budget increased markedly during this era.

Leonard Carmichael, in reviewing the 1953-63 dec-
ade of his secretaryship, noted the development of the
Museum of History and Technology, the increase in
the collections from 34 million to 57 million specimens,
the increase in field investigations, the formation of the
Smithsonian Oceanographic Sorting Center, the con-
struction of the east wing of the Natural History Build-
ing, and the appropriation for the west wing.' The John
F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts became a
separate bureau, and the number of visitors to the
buildings on the Mall nearly tripled.

Immediately after Secretary Ripley assumed office,
the increase of staff and development of new offices
in connection with oceanography and ecology accel-
erated. This resulted in new attitudes toward science
at the Museum, and there were changes in attitude
toward public affairs as well. In 1965 the Smithsonian’s
Annual Report was supplanted by a more popularized
yearbook, Smithsonian Year. Because of the progressive
growth of the Institution, with the addition of bureaus
and functions, detailed information on individual events
has necessarily been curtailed, although the yearbooks
collectively give a sense of great happenings throughout

Removing a tree from It All Depends (Hall 10) for
transplantation to the South American Hall (Hall 23),
February 1975. The mirrors behind give an illusion of
great distance in the forest. They reflect photographer Roy
E. (“Chip”) Clark to the upper left, and to the right, at the
base of the tree, Reginald J]. (“Bud”) Sayre.

117

the Institution. The yearbook itself has changed from
year to year, even to alterations in cover illustrations
of the Castle between 1972 and 1973 as the cupola, lost
in the fire of 1865, was restored to the north tower.

Growth of the Museum Shops

The publication of the magazine Smithsonian repre-
sented a large step in the Institution’s becoming truly
national in scope, rather than Washington-based; of its
appealing to the public at large, rather than being bound
to buildings in Washington. The development of the
Museum Shops provides another example. Secretaries
Abbot and Wetmore had been concerned that sales by
the Institution might deprive local merchants, and as
a consequence there was no shop in the Museum. Un-
der Secretary Carmichael, steps were taken to satisfy
the desire of tourists to purchase Museum-related items,
and under Secretary Ripley the program expanded
rapidly.

“The first year [fiscal year 1968] of the reorganized
Smithsonian Museum Shop program saw the construc-
tion of a shop in the Museum of Natural History at the
Constitution Avenue entrance and a book shop at the
Mall entrance.”* From the start this shop was a hit with
tourists, Causing traffic jams in the lobby. It occupied
a small office next to the marble stairway, but soon
expanded, and the north end of Hall 10 on the first
floor, in the area now occupied by Splendors of Nature,
was partitioned off for storage. The Museum Shop,
which moved to the West Court building in 1976, has
become a major asset. It is never without customers;
during the spring and summer it suffers from over-
crowding. An accessory to each show in the Evans Gal-
lery is a small separate sales desk in the foyer, selling
books and objects related to the temporary shows. After
the remodeled Hall 3 reopened in 1981 and a big thing
was made of the return of the dinosaurs, a movable
cart called “The Dinostore”
tunda for a time.

was stationed in the ro-

Financial Problems

Just as Museum Shop sales fluctuate seasonally, the

fortunes of the Museum have fluctuated, though on a

slightly longer cycle. Secretary Ripley recognized early
that the Museum had financial problems. Access to
National Science Foundation Funds had been cut off
by Congress in the early 1960s, but while Ripley was
able to persuade Congress to increase the appropria-
tions for research to the Institution to compensate for
the loss, these funds were removed by Congress in the
early 1970s.

Fiscal year 1970 was a downer, financially. “When I
first came to the Smithsonian,” Ripley stated in July,
“T was concerned with our inability to compete with
other institutions for highly qualified scientists because
of salary levels. Now we have succeeded in attracting
a number of highly competent, indeed distinguished
scientists to our professional staff in the National Mu-
seum of Natural History.”’ Yet, he added in the 1970
Smithsonian Year, “If ivory towers existed here earlier,
they have long since crumbled, spilling their occupants
into the midst of concerns that involve us all. ... De-
creasing resources in the past few years for carrying
forward research-curation-education programs in the
Museum became a major preoccupation in the latter
half of the year. Reductions in ‘buying power’ caused
by near-level funding, inflation, and general pay raises,
have been met in recent years by progressive reorgan-
ization.”' According to one source, 98 percent of the
budget in this fiscal year was allocated to salaries. One
could pick almost any year during the 1920s or 1930s
and read similar stories of financial distress.

Nevertheless, in Ripley’s view, much had been ac-
complished in change of attitude in the five years since
he took over:

Scientists and scholars can only be appropriately
treated as professionals; they must be accorded
latitude in order to act responsibly as masters of
their domains of subject matter knowledge. One of
my first aims as Secretary was to provide that
department chairman serve in rotation “from the
ranks” so to speak, and for limited terms, in order
to minimize the hazard of an internal seniority
system that might block initiative and convert
scientists into permanent administrators. Research
support is made available to staff members in the
form of grants and from appropriated funds, so
that they will act responsibly as principal
investigators treating scarce resources as wisely as
they would funds of their own. I put an end to
pre-publication review of professional publications
by the Secretary, preferring to read them as
reprints from colleagues rather than submissions
for administrative clearance. We cancelled a
burdensome annual report required of each staff
member about his research because it served
unnecessary and merely administrative purposes.
Burdensome formal reporting can be no substitute
for consultation and constant awareness by
supervisors. Evaluation of professional

118

accomplishment is now conducted by committees
of peers formed in major research units, known as
“Professional Accomplishment Evaluation
Committees.” Staff members have been
encouraged to teach in universities on official time
(without added compensation) and to request
changes of their duty station at intervals so as to be
able to spend a year in study and research without
distractions of daily office routine, an equivalent to
a university sabbatical. Travel to professional
meetings has been encouraged.’

All the items mentioned were important, but the two
with the longest-lasting effects have been rotation of
department chairmen and peer reviews. The change
to chairmanship from lifetime head permitted more
flexibility, though it also increased the paperwork, al-
ready swollen by the shift of administrative control from
the divisional toward the departmental level. The peer
review is the most important single factor in promoting
research activities, for everyone on the staff knows that
published papers are what one’s peers evaluate.

Research Vs. Service

Under Wetmore and his predecessors, research cer-
tainly was considered important and was encouraged.
However, the prevailing view appeared to be that the
functions of the Museum were those of a service or-
ganization—to increase the collections and care for them,
and to answer all public inquiries. John Ewers, an
authority on American Indians, notes that Herbert
Krieger would not allow him to forward any inquiries
to others, so that he was forced to answer questions on
subjects as far afield as African ethnology. Research
could be done only in the time left after inquiries were
answered. This view of the function of the Museum
curatorial staff began to change in the 1950s. Today,
the collections are not always cared for directly by the
curators; the degree of curatorial involvement varies
among the departments. Inquiries are often answered
by assistants. The currently prevailing view is that the
scientific staff should be involved primarily in research.

Congressional Oversight

Another milestone or millstone the Institution faced in
1970 was the general oversight hearings held by Con-
gress. Previously the Institution had appeared only in
connection with congressional appropriations hearings.
No one knew what to expect. By dint of determined
investigation, the General Accounting Office showed
that some money appropriated for construction in the
Museum, totalling just under $44,000, had been used
instead for construction in the Arts and Industries
Building. This had been done so that the registrar could
be moved and to provide an extra office for entomol-
ogists. The misapplication was viewed sympathetically
by Congressman John Brademas, who said, “When I
think of what goes on in the Department of Defense,

The Exhibits

Beth Miles installing a sun-
dial shell (Architectonica)
in Splendors of Nature
(Hall 10A), with Carl
Alexander looking on, 1978.

my blood does not boil very much about the Smith-
sonian’s shortcomings.”°

The Museum got through the hearings satisfactorily,
and possibly as a result of the experience tried a dif-
ferent budgetary approach. New research projects,
mainly in environmental science, were specified in the
proposed budget, and some of them were accepted by
Congress. The early 1970s thus brought additions to
the scientific staff, though not on the large scale of the
mid-1960s. About 105 professional scientists are now
on the staff; the numbers fluctuate in reaction to var-
ious hiring freezes, but the last decade has not seen any
dramatic change.

Growth by transfer, quite another matter, has oc-
curred, with many services coming under the jurisdic-
tion of the director in 1973. If one looks simply at
budget figures, the Museum would seem to have ex-
panded sixfold over the last twenty years. But if one
allows for salary increases, effects of inflation, and
transfer of people and services, little change in the
available funds can be discerned.

“Modern Times”

Exhibit Halls Undergo Change

In 1973, after the “rearticulation” of various services,
the Museum once again had its own exhibits group.
Shortly thereafter a committee was formed to develop
a long-range plan for the halls. Its chairman, Leo J.
Hickey, a paleobotanist, is now director of the Peabody
Museum at Yale, and the vice-chairman, Donald Duck-
worth, an entomologist, is now director of the Bishop
Museum in Hawaii.

An article in The Torch, the Smithsonian’s staff news-
paper, outlined what the committee planned to change:
“In the past, NMNH seldom attempted to clearly iden-
tufy the underlying concepts of its exhibit halls. Objects
were arranged in cases by the curators because they
were the best, or the prettiest, or because they came
from the same South Seas island. Occasionally a case
would be organized around an interesting idea but fre-
quently it would not be closely related to the cases around
it. The effect is that our halls don’t create a broad
concept of natural history in a way the public can un-
derstand.’

Hall 20

Hall 6

Hall 23

Hall 29 (south)
Hall 1OA

Hall 26

Hall 10

Hall 2 (center)
Hall 2 (east)
Hall 26 (west)
Hall 2

Hall

The South American Hall (Hall 28), photographed from
the north steps looking south toward the rotunda, in 1978.
The ceiling is lower and the lighting better than in earlier

120

TABLE 2: Major Exhibits, 1971-1985, Still on Display

Our Restless Planet

Ice Age Mammals and The Emergence of Man
South America: Continent and Culture

Insect Zoo

Splendors of Nature

Western Civilization: Origins and Traditions

Dynamics of Evolution

The Conquest of Land

The Flowering Plant Revolution

The Living Coral Reef

Dinosaur Hall

Fossil Mammals

Origin of Life and the Early Atmosphere

| displays in this hall. This is an example of an inter-
disciplinary exhibit, for geology, plants, and animals are
used to amplify the ethnology.

November 1, 1971
September 13, 1974
Fall, 1975

August 23, 1976
October, 1977
June, 1978

May 18, 1979
April 17, 1980
April 17, 1980
October 15, 1980
December 4, 1981
Fiscal year 1985
Fiscal year 1985

The Exhibits

Communicating ideas to the general public is diffi-
cult, especially when most of the information is to be
conveyed through objects. Even a professional scientist
should not criticize a hall until he has tried designing
one of his own, for no matter how an exhibit is ar-
ranged, some viewers will respond to it and some will
not. Because the Museum’s new halls were to cut across
several departmental lines, scientifically trained ex-
hibits specialists were hired to serve as liaison between
curators and designers. One aptly described her posi-
tion as occupying the space between a rock and a hard
place.

This third generation of exhibit halls is coming along
more slowly than the second generation of the 1950s
and 1960s, but it is coming along. In Hall 6—the first
to open, in September 1974—“the visitor can start out
at the beginning of the Ice Age when the Earth was
dominated by big mammals and end up in a cultural
milieu dominated by man.”* The hall, which includes
two more Matternes murals, also featured two giant
ground sloths nicely displayed on a central platform,
behind piano wire strung from floor to ceiling. The
specimens could be seen without obstruction, but vis-
itors kept plucking the wires, and eventually the entire
hall had to be closed and redesigned. One of the skel-
etons the vertebrate paleontology laboratory was par-
ticularly proud of was a woolly mammoth. The aim of
the preparators is to make supports as unobtrusive as
possible, and it took Leroy Glenn a full year to drill the
limb bones and place supporting iron inside so that the
specimen appeared freestanding. When the hall was
temporarily closed, the mammoth was among the spec-
imens that had to be shifted. Like all large elephants,
it presented problems, clearing the ceiling by less than
an inch. Decades ago this area was the hall of physical
geology, and if there was ever a case of metamorphosis
in the Museum, Hall 6 is it.

Physical geology still occupied Hall 20 on the second
floor, but while a few of Merrill’s stone cubes and slabs
remained, this too was otherwise a total renovation. The
exhibit was a long time in preparation, and a series of
different designers were involved. Our understanding
of geology changed dramatically during the 1960s, when
plate tectonics became almost a household term; the
hall managed to bring in these newer concepts. At its
east end are the meteorites, and between them and the
main part of the hall are moon rocks. ‘These specimens
may once have ranked third in interest after the Hope
Diamond and the Insect Zoo, though they no longer
attract the crowds they did at first.

Some Exhibit Problems

There were some problems with the bicentennial ex-
hibit that opened November 19, 1975. Our Changing
Land presented the concept of change through time of
the Washington-area environment. The central corri-

“Modern Times”

dor was a forest, but all the trees had uniformly large
trunks more than four feet in diameter—the designer’s
effort to transform the brick supporting pillars of the
building. The forest never looked real, and many peo-
ple headed straight for the escalator. The exhibit stayed
until the foyer was renovated to create the Evans Gal-
lery.

On the first floor, in Hall 10 above the foyer, the
ecological exhibit /¢ All Depends had opened a few years
earlier. It was in part tropical rain forest: “Modeled of
papier-maché and plastic, after sketches and photo-
graphs taken in Panama and South American jungles,
the exhibit’s trees, foliage, and vines were enclosed in
a mirrored ceiling-high silo. Walking into this dimly lit
enclosure, visitors had the illusion that they were in the
center of a vast tropical forest—with trees rising 80-
100 feet above their heads.”” It was a great illusion. At
the last minute there was concern that the silo would
act as a chimney in the event of fire, and a special
halogen gas system was installed in the attic above the
hall.

“Earth Day” came to America in 1970, and the other
part of Hall 10 was a response of sorts to public concern
for the environment. Its exhibits dealt with various as-
pects of ecology apart from rain forests, with emphasis
on man’s impact on nature. The many pieces of au-
diovisual equipment in this hall kept giving trouble,
which cooled enthusiasm for using so much such equip-
ment in exhibits thereafter. When the hall finally closed,
few were sorry to see it go. Later there was talk of
modifying the hall to a display showing the interrela-
tions of plants and insects. A giant model grasshopper
was fabricted but never put on public display. The trees
went to Hall 23. Some temporary shows were staged
in Hall 10, including one by the Russian government,
Siberia: Land of Promise. Sull later it was used as a supply
room and for temporary storage while a new exhibit
was being planned.

Hall 23, the first new hall of the 1950s renaissance,
had been done by Evans and Meggers. The first hall
to be done for a third time—by Evans and Meggers
again, plus a committee—it reopened quietly in the fall
of 1975. While it was closed for construction, a freeze-
dried parrot was placed in one of the trees. One day
someone noticed that nothing remained except the
skeleton, moths and beetles having eaten it. The stuffed
cormorants at the north end of the hall have been more
successful in resisting infestation. Pampas grass was
brought in from Argentina, though its arrival was de-
layed for a long time by the American Embassy’s in-
ability to understand why it should accept a shipment
of hay for transportation to Washington.'? A booklet
to accompany the hall was planned, but funds were not
sufficient for it. Later, booklets were printed to sup-
plement the Insect Zoo and the Ice Age Hall, among
others, and are sold at the Museum Shop.

|r|

Part of Ice Age Hall (Hall 6) in March 1975, showing
part of one of the murals by Jay Matternes on the right.
The American Mammoth (Mammuthus) just clears the

The Insect Zoo

The Insect Zoo is a real success story. It began in the
early 1970s as an idea of Ronald Gore, then a special
assistant to the director. For several years it was in
operation during the summers only, in the northeast
corner of the second floor at the junction of Halls 21
and 22. The life in the zoo provided a counterpoint
and a welcome relief after the cases of archeology in
the adjacent halls. The entire operation was run by
volunteers supervised by the Museum staff. A number
of the entomologists contributed insects, and one day
a serious Memorandum was issued from the director’s
office asking for volunteers to feed the mosquitoes.
During the summer of 1975, after the zoo closed, a
vertebrate paleontology preparator worked on display
in this area, and the tourists used to gather to watch
him remove the matrix from a bone.

The Exhibits Committee decided to run the Insect
Zoo year-round, and it reopened in August 1976, in
time for the meeting of the International Entomological
Congress in Washington. From the first day it attracted
crowds. Although there are a number of behind-the-

122

pare

ceiling. A slightly different view of the skeleton is in
Smithsonian Year 1975.

scenes problems in keeping these short-lived animals
in cages, especially rearing more insects as replacement
stock, the zoo is likely to remain in the Museum as a
permanent display of living organisms. To reach it, one
walks through the Hall of Osteology. If one waits in
the right place in that hall, invariably an adult will be
heard to say, “I didn’t know snakes had bones.”

Other Exhibitions

Splendors of Nature'' in Hall 10A, where the National
Collection of Fine Arts once spilled out of its bounds,
has been another big success. “Museum Director Porter
Kier’s idea was not to provide any scientific message as
the Museum ordinarily does in its exhibits, but rather
each object was to be on view in the hall for just one
reason—because it is beautiful,” said the 1978 Smith-
sonian Year.'* Hall 10A, incidentally, represents the only
addition ever made to Rathbun’s original numbering
scheme. This area at the north end of the north wing
is noteworthy for one other feature. Except for the
north stairway, it is the only public place in the Museum
where visitors can look out of windows.

The Exhibits

Construction in Hall 2 in the 1970s. Diplodocus is in picture to the left is a ramp to the second floor. An ;

the foreground, and Diana of the Tides is temporarily earlier view of Diplodocus in this hall is given in the
‘ ioe 2 i g : : x ; c z

exposed in the distance above the balcony. Just off the Annual Report for 1963.

“Modern Times”

Long after /¢ All Depends, in Hall 10, was dismantled,
a temporary show of Treasures of Mexico was installed.
Even though this was on exhibit for only two months,
it resulted in a permanent change in the building. A
balcony leading off the second-floor rotunda was built
out into the open space, and is now considered part of
Hall 10.

Next in Hall 10 came Dynamics of Evolution, whose
unveiling in 1979 ushered in a new set of problems.
Some highly sophisticated concepts were being pre-
sented to the public, but in addition, it was the first
time the word “evolution” had ever been used in a
Museum display. This does not mean that the Insti-
tution had shied away from the subject. In the early
1920s, when anti-evolution laws were being passed by
some states, Secretary Walcott had Abbot prepare a
statement that was duplicated and passed around, though
it is not certain whether these pages circulated outside
the Museum. But while the old exhibits on the second
floor were designed to convey ideas of individual var-
iation and of change, the word evolution itself had not
been used.

As might be anticipated, not everyone was pleased
with the creation of this hall, and the Smithsonian In-
stitution was sued. The United States District Court

124

The Insect Zoo on a quiet day in 1977. Formerly the Whale Hall, this is the only part of Hall 30 currently open.

ruled that the exhibit came under the “increase and
diffuse” mandate of the Institution, and that the evo-
lution hall was not a religious display. The case was
appealed, and the right of the Smithsonian was upheld.
Justice Louis F. Oberdorfer of the United States Court
of Appeals made an interesting observation: “Finally,
appellants are under no compulsion to go to the Mu-
seum. If they choose to do so, they are free to avoid
the exhibits which they find offensive and may focus
on the other exhibits of which there are many.”'*> No
one in the Museum argued with this decision.

In the late 1970s all the fossil halls in the east wing
of the main building were closed for renovation. The
concept of “Fossils: The History of Life” took shape,
and the two segments dealing with transition from sea
to land and with the appearance of the flowering plants
opened in Hall 4 in April 1980. A year later the di-
nosaurs made it back into the limelight in Hall 2. In
positioning of specimens and architectural style, the
present dinosaur hall bears no resemblance to either
the original one or the revamped model of the 1970s.
A ramp was built from the balcony on the east end of
the hall to another balcony extending off the second-
floor rotunda. The stairs from the east balcony leading
to the moon rocks disappeared; a platform for speci-

The Exhibits

mens was hung on the south wall, and a giant pterosaur
was suspended from the ceiling. At the grand opening,
“dinosaur music” composed on a Moog synthesizer
rumbled through the hall.

This dinosaur exhibit provides an excellent example
of display recycling. The papier-maché Stegosaurus now
on the south side of the hall had been on view in both
preceding dinosaur exhibits. The life-size beast was
originally made for the 1904 St. Louis Exposition and
paid for with funds appropriated for displays there.
Somehow a wild rumor got started in the 1960s that
the papier-maché was made from worn money with-
drawn from circulation. The staff knew better, but to

resolve the point, several people from the Bureau of

Printing and Engraving did an “autopsy” and deter-
mined that ordinary paper was involved.

In 1983 fossils of ancient soft-bodied animals col-
lected by Secretary Walcott in western Canada were
installed in the entryway to Hall 2. An exhibit of ex-
tremely ancient fossils, opened late in 1984, finished
off Hall 2, and fossil mammals in Hall 3 will complete
the jigsaw puzzle. Once all the pieces fit together to
make a coherent story, one will be able to start at the
dawn of life just off the rotunda and end up with the
cave men at the north end of Hall 6.

Used for both display and research, the coral reef
installed in the Hall of the Sea in 1980 is an important
addition to the Museum."* Occupying the center of the
hall is an exhibit consisting of a short movie and a
display of specimens from the Pacific Ocean deep-sea
vents. This too has received a great deal of attention,
though there is widespread feeling that the full-scale
model of a deep-water submersible, hung in 1983 as a
complement to the hall’s exhibits, is more of a detrac-
tion.

Four exhibit halls on the second floor are currently
closed. Two are being used for offices by entomologists,
and two for organizing collections to be moved to the
new Museum Support Center. Despite this temporary
loss of space, public display gained new importance in
1984 with the establishment of the position of Assistant
Director for Exhibits.

Educational Programs

Aside from the exhibits themselves, efforts in public
education broadened during the Ripley era, although
several of them had been in place for years. The Mu-
seum always identified specimens and answered in-
quiries from the public. Under Secretaries Henry, Baird,
and Langley, the Institution distributed “duplicate
specimens” to schools and universities, as well as edu-
cational materials of a more general type. During the
192Qs a set of rocks and minerals illustrating the con-
cept of weathering and soil formation was sent out. As
late as the 1940s the Museum was distributing sets of
common minerals to schools, and some schools, uni-
versities, and nature centers are still receiving speci-

“Modern Times”

mens. The Museum has hung occasional displays of
schoolchildren’s work in the foyer. After World War I
the Smithsonian started a weekly radio program, with
Austin Clark, the echinoderm specialist, taking the lead
in organizing the broadcasts. The current “Radio
Smithsonian” is a later, independent development.

In 1955 the Junior League of Washington organized
a docent program for the Museum and began to give
tours for school groups. They were successful—indeed,
the program grew to such an extent that the league
could no longer handle it. In the late 1960s the Junior
League donated money to the Smithsonian for a paid
coordinator, on the understanding that in a few years
the scheduling of tours and the training of docents
would be handled by the Institution.

In the mid-1960s the Museum housed most of the
education efforts of the whole Smithsonian. Rooms on
both sides of the foyer served as educational offices,
docent lounges, and class. oms. The program was geared
to all ages, from high school students to preschoolers.
In the fall of 1973, the Smithsonian Office of Education
was reorganized and decentralized. As had happened
with exhibits and building maintenance, the Museum
thereafter ran its own education program.

Tours of the halls led by docents have continued and
expanded. The education staff offers Museum tours
for the deaf, using docents who know sign language.
They have also developed tours for the visually hand-
icapped, and occasionally provide docents for tour groups
speaking foreign languages. An outreach program for
bringing natural history to elderly citizens resulted in
a popular handbook.

During the 1970s the Museum added two new ed-
ucational attractions. The Discovery Room in the north-
west corner of the first floor opened March 5, 1974.
There “elephant tusks, coral, petrified wood, woolly
mammoth teeth, and hundreds of natural history spec-
imens, ordinarily out of reach behind glass or railings
in the museums, could be grasped, turned over in the
hand at one’s leisure, and studied with a magnifying
glass.”'” The Discovery Room, which incorporates some
features of the Children’s Museum in Boston, has been
popular with the public, particularly with families. The
docents observed during the first year that many guards
came in to examine specimens and learn a bit more
about what they had been protecting. More than 100
museums have now copied the Discovery Room.

In 1976 the Naturalist Center was opened in the West
Court building. The aim of the Center is to provide a
few references, appropriate synoptical collections, and
some assistance.'® Amateurs interested in local natural
history come here to see if they can identify for them-
selves the bug, leaf, or stone they have collected. Many
of the simpler requests for identification are resolved
on the spot; more difficult identifications or potentially
novel specimens are referred to the staff of the appro-
priate department. The number of people using the

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Center has grown steadily, and when schools are in
session it is in almost constant use. At least three local
scientific societies hold monthly meetings in the Center.

Over the past twenty years, the side of the Museum
dedicated to the public has more than held its own.
Likewise, there has been considerable improvement from
the scientist’s point of view. The collections are in far
better condition than at any other time in the history
of the Museum. The amount of support help is at an
all-time high. Funding for research has always been a
problem, but in addition to federal and Smithsonian
funds, the Museum receives modest amounts from pri-
vate endowments for certain types of research or
collection-building

Modifications to the Building

The Museum building has been the site of almost con-
tinuous modification. The wings are increasingly being
split up into tiny cubicles, some by temporary walls and
some with cinderblock. The office ceilings in the wings
and the main building were torn up to add smoke de-
tectors. Then they were torn up again to add a sprinkler
system. The main building is being died up with false
ceilings to cover various wires, air ducts, and miscel-
laneous relics of improvement. Asbestos in the attics

Current status of displays on the first floor and second floor

Western

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has to be removed, and unfortunately some of the rel-
atively new air-conditioning piping was coated with as-
bestos. For the last five years, a significant hazard has
been the danger of walking into stepladders scattered
throughout the halls.

One place of great activity during the spring of 1984
was the northeast corner of the main building on the
third floor. Secretary Ripley had established research
offices there upon his arrival in Washington; after his
retirement on September 17, 1984, this became his
headquarters.'’ The area was rebuilt and repainted in
an incredibly short time.

Down the hall from the former Secretary, on the east
north range, Secretary Adams has an area reserved for
his archeological research.'* Some skeletons had to be
displaced to reconstruct office walls where they once
had stood two decades before.

There is one loose end: the enigmatic “Museum of
Man.” The name appears on a plaque at each entrance
to the building, yet this is the only sign of it. During
the days of the Smithsonian Office of Anthropology,
a museum concentrating on man as distinct from nat-
ural history was discussed. It had both proponents and
opponents, but the issue, so far, remains to be
resolved. Oo

The Exhibits

Part Three

ye
PERI IIDI SIDR ep PHRIIOIOT

Chapter 15

Museum
Admiunistration

Ge BROWN GOODE WROTE: “Good administra-
tion is not to be had for nothing. As to the qual-
ifications of a museum administrator, whether it be a
museum of science or a museum of art, it is perhaps
superfluous to say that he should be the very best at-

tainable; a man of ability, enthusiasm, and withal of

experience.”'

The office of the director is on the third floor at the
southwest corner of the building, with windows facing
the Mall and the Smithsonian Castle to the south, and
Twelfth Street and the Museum of American History
to the west. The room is spacious and airy, and ac-
cording to many old-time Washington hands, it is one
of the largest offices in town. For many years this was
a fairly austere place, but over the last two decades it
has been decorated to suit the tastes of the various
occupants. When Porter Kier was director, he added a
stuffed rhinoceros to the furniture.

A major amenity of the director’s office was the large
adjacent bathroom. During the 1960s, its claw-footed
bathtub was replaced by the typical coffee kitchenette
of the modern office building. The bathtub was a stark
reminder of just how beastly hot Washington was in
summer before the days of air conditioning. No high
official could work all day and go to an official function
at night without a bath, and the streetcars could not
get one home and back in time.

Richard Rathbun

Richard Rathbun was the first to occupy this office. ‘To
recapitulate his career, he began as a geologist, but in
1878 became an assistant on Spencer F. Baird’s Fish

Commission. Later he became, as well, a curator of

marine invertebrates, and did both jobs until 1914. A
century ago there were few government scientists, and
a lot of doubling-up was done to fill all the adminis-
trative positions. Rathbun transferred to the Museum
full-time when Goode temporarily took over the Fish
Commiission after Baird’s death; later he switched places
with Goode again. In 1896, after Goode’s death, Rath-

T. Dale Stewart with a human skull (Homo), 1982.

129

bun became an assistant secretary, and was directly in
charge of the National Museum from 1900 until his
death in 1918. “Out of respect to his memory the flags
on the buildings of the Institution were carried at half-
mast. ... Business was suspended and the public ex-
hibition halls were closed on the day of funeral.”* Con-
sidering his close involvement with the construction of
the new National Museum, it is fitting that Rathbun’s
last published paper was a summary of the buildings
of the Institution.

William de C. Ravenel

There is little personal information to be gleaned about
William de C. Ravenel, who took over in 1918 as Ad-
ministrative assistant to the Secretary (rather than As-
sistant Secretary) in charge of the United States Na-
tional Museum. Paul Garber, historian emeritus of the
National Air and Space Museum, describes him only
as a pleasant man and a fine boss. While Ravenel did
champion natural history’s right to its own building,
his major contribution to the Institution was the
strengthening of the staff and exhibits in the old Na-
tional Museum building. When he moved his office to
the south side of the Mall after spending less than a
decade in the new National Museum, Ravenel made
the Arts and Industries Building flourish as much as
any part of the Institution flourished during the 1920s.
He probably deserves the title of grandfather of the
Museum of American History. He retired June 30, 1932,
and when he died the following year, a memorial service
was held in the auditorium. After Ravenel’s retirement,
Arts and Industries came close to becoming a “finished
museum,” mainly because of lack of funding, but crowds
flocking to see Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Lows kept the
building lively.

Alexander Wetmore

In 1925, when Ravenel moved to Arts and Industries,
Alexander Wetmore became Assistant Secretary in
charge, and ran the Museum until well after World
War II. Wetmore was the first to be titled Director of
the United States National Museum. Throughout his

William de C. Ravenel, in a photograph published in local
newspapers in 1918.

tenure he had to contend with inadequate funding and
a limited staff, yet the collections grew and good re-
search was published by those under him. One of the
pieces of furniture in the director's office was the large
desk once used by Secretary Baird; Wetmore was proud
of this heirloom and its owner. Later the desk was taken
back across the Mall and still later returned to the east
wing. It is a prized piece of furniture, for display and
not for use.

During this period it was customary for all inquiries
from the public to be answered officially by the director.
Inquiries were sent to the departments, which prepared
replies for the director’s signature. Over several years
there had been a series of letters from a skilled amateur
collector of Eskimo artifacts. One day an embarrassed
Wetmore brought a stranger to the ethnologist Henry
Collins’s office. The amateur had come to Washington
anxious to meet Dr. Wetmore, for he was impressed
that such a renowned ornithologist could also be so
knowledgeable about Eskimo culture.

“Alexander Wetmore is so familiar a figure to sci-
entists as the dean of American ornithology that it is
difficult to realize that he has been directly associated
with the Smithsonian Institution since 1924,”* Ripley
wrote of him in 1976, on the occasion of his ninetieth
birthday. Wetmore’s activity both in the office and in
the field was only then coming to a close. After his
death in 1979, a British colleague remembered him
with affection and respect: “Dr. Wetmore was, in a
sense, an old-fashioned ornithologist, museum-based,
his field work centred round collecting—one who pro-

130

vides the facts that others use. He did not originate
new theories, seemingly distrustful of the sweeping
generalization, as is often the case with those who are
very familiar with the facts and see, more clearly than
most, the exceptions and difficulties that need be taken
into account."

A. Remington Kellogg

Wetmore was appointed Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution in 1945, but continued to run the Museum
unul May 1948, when A. Remington Kellogg was named
director of the United States National Museum. Kellogg
was the second person to hold this exact combination
of title and position. He moved up to Assistant Secretary
of the Smithsonian Institution in February 1958 and
got a chuckle out of the fact that when he retired in
1962, he was replaced by three appointees—an assistant
secretary, the director of the United States National
Museum, and the director of the National Museum of
Natural History.

“The period of Kellogg’s administrative appoint-
ments was an active one for the Smithsonian,” wrote
Frank Whitmore of the Geological Survey, Kellogg’s
fellow aficionado of fossil whales. The Museum’s col-
lecions grew from 25 million to 56 million specimens;
“almost all of the exhibit halls in the Natural History
Building were modernized, the scientific staff of the
Museum was enlarged, and many new research pro-
grams were initiated; and the new National Museum
of History and Technology ... was built. Despite the
demands of these and many other services, Kellogg
managed to spend part of each day in research on fossil
marine mannals.””

All this is accurate and yet not quite the whole story.
Watson Perrygo stated, “One day A. W. [Wetmore]
asked me who might make a good director and I sug-
gested Kelly.” Perrygo was an outgoing, diplomatic per-
son who had a real way with people, and perhaps his
suggestion did crystallize Wetmore’s thoughts. Later,
Perrygo said, Wetmore told him to ask Kellogg if he
would take the position, but as anticipated, Kellogg
immediately refused. Perrygo was told to persist, and
eventually Kellogg said, “Tell the boss I'll do it.” Kellogg
became director, but he was a reluctant administrator.

Edward Henderson, who rode to work with Kellogg
for years, speculated that the appointment was in part
the result of a common background—both Wetmore
and Kellogg were graduates of the University of Kansas
and of the Biological Survey—and in part a recompense
for the long delay in Kellogg’s advancement within the
Museum. Kellogg spent thirteen years as an assistant
curator of mammals under Gerritt S. Miller, Jr.,° before
being promoted to curator. This was a typical career
pattern for staff members hired between the wars.

Once Kellogg assumed office, he immediately gained
an unofficial title, “the abominable no man.” He char-
acteristically took a dim view of requests for travel funds,

The Museum

Richard Cowan, standing,
examining material collected
mm South America for a plant
hall that never was con-
structed. Stooping is Regin-
ald J. Sayre of the exhibits
staff, and leaning forward is
Thomas Soderstrom, curator
of botany. This was in closed-
off Hall 30—the whale hall
on the south side of the sec-
ond floor—as indicated by
exhibits in the case behind.
Late 1960s.

new ideas for research activities, and administrative
changes, and while most were eventually approved, it
took a long time for them to be argued through the
system. Although exhibit activity reached a crescendo
under Kellogg, he was far more interested in research.
About the only exhibit work he participated in was
supervising the fabrication of the great blue whale, and
he had a terrible ttme making up his mind as to what
he wanted and even what color the model should be
painted. Fenner Chace, a crustacean expert, eventually
decided what color to paint the eyes.

By any measure one wants to apply, Kellogg was a
character. He swore. Indeed, he used profanity so con-
stantly that for him not to use it in a sentence was a
shock to the listener. One time the Smithsonian Insti-
tution made a short movie of scientists at work, dubbing
in the voice of a narrator explaining what each scientist
was doing. The film crew came back to Kellogg very
apologetically and explained that they had to shoot
again, for a lip reader had looked at his segment of the
film and determined that it could not be distributed.

Kellogg was also an eminent scientist. For most of
his career at the Museum he studied living and fossil
whales, building on the work of his Museum prede-
cessor in marine mammals, F. W. True. He was the
American representative to the International Whaling
Commission. Most of what we know of the early history
of Leviathan was described by him in excruciating os-

Museum Administration

teological detail, and a great deal of the recent interest
in marine mammals has come about as a result of his
studies.

The Museum changed dramatically during the Kel-
logg years. To overgeneralize, about all that Wetmore
was able to do, without funds and for nearly three
decades, was to hold the Museum and the Institution
together with litthe more than strength of character.
Under Remington Kellogg, swearing all the way, a largely
new staff, fueled by new money, remade the Museum.

Albert C. Smith

On July 1, 1957, the United States National Museum
was divided into the Museum of Natural History and
the Museum of History and Technology, with Kellogg
remaining as overall director. John Graf retired at the
end of 1957, and Kellogg was appointed an assistant
secretary, while still acting as head of Natural History.
Because of the administrative changes made in 1957,
the distinction of being the first director of the Museum
of Natural History belongs to Albert C. Smith. He took
office in August 1958, under Kellogg as director of the
United States National Museum.

Museum life was definitely changing, and Smith’s
appointment was perhaps the first acknowledgement
by the Institution that post-World War II science was
quite different from science in the earlier days. Smith
had begun his scientific career as a botanist at the New

131

Director Richard S. Fiske in
the vertebrate paleontology
laboratory on the ground
floor, east wing, recewwing a
donation of Miocene fossil
shark teeth (Carcharodon)
from Peter J. Harmatuk,
1981.

York Botanical Garden while attending Columbia Uni-
versity. In 1940 he went to the Arnold Arboretum at
Harvard for eight years. He came to the Museum as a
new staff member in 1948, and for eight years curated
phanerograms (flowering plants) in the Castle, crowded
in with the other botanists. In 1956 he left for the
National Science Foundation, where he was the pro-
gram director for systematic biology. Having acquired
considerable administrative experience there, Smith took
up the directorship of the Museum with new perspec-
tives.

For at least part of the ume that Smith was director,
Kellogg had a desk in the office, concealed behind a
screen. Whenever anyone came to see the director, Smith
would indicate by hand signal whether Kellogg was in
the room. In spite of this, Smith was able to do a good
job of administration, and always seemed to be quiet
and self-contained, with a style quite unlike Kellogg’s.
Many of the staff found him easy to deal with and
sympathetic toward new research ideas that required
funds. When the National Science Foundation (NSF)
came into existence, in the early 1950s, its relationship
to the Smithsonian Institution and to the Museum was
ambiguous. Under A. C. Smith the Museum staff was
given permission to apply to the NSF for funds, and a
number of scientists received grants. Smith was ap-
pointed an assistant secretary of the Smithsonian In-
stitution in 1962, but left after a year for the University
of Hawaii.

Frank Taylor
Also in 1962, Kellogg retired. He was succeeded by

Frank Taylor, who had started his career in the Arts

132

and Industries Building in the early 1920s, but had an
earlier, indirect connection with the Institution, work-
ing as a messenger in the new National Museum for
the Bureau of War Risk Insurance. Taylor’s five-year
tenure as overall director of the United States National
Museum ended July 12, 1968, when the United States
National Museum disappeared as an administrative en-
tity. His office was never in the Museum, but in Arts
and Industries. From 1968 until his retirement, Taylor
served under the ttle of Director-general of Museums.
One of two holders of a Smithsonian sixty-year pin,
Taylor sull comes to work and is currently planning a
museum of the city of Washington.

It is expected, though nowhere explicitly stated, that
the director of the Museum be a scientist involved in
administration, not an administrator. The difference
between a scientist serving as a leader of his peers and
a professional administrator overseeing scientists need
not be belabored, but perhaps the prime reason the
Museum has functioned so well is that scientists have
administered it. Rathbun, Ravenel, and Wetmore were
listed as members of the scientific staff. Curiously, Kel-
logg and subsequent directors have not been listed un-
der a department, but they are always thought of as
coming from a particular department.

T. Dale Stewart

In any event, the botanist A. C. Smith was followed in
early 1962 by the anthropologist T. Dale Stewart, the
only head curator to become director. After a dinner
of the Board of Regents attended by both Smith and
Stewart, it was announced that both would move up
simultaneously. Stewart’s explanation of his selection

The Museum

was that he had served on several committees appointed
by Secretary Carmichael, and that apparently the Sec-
retary liked his approach. Stewart was named an assis-
tant secretary in early 1966 and served briefly before
returning to his first love, physical anthropology.

Stewart first came to the Museum in 1924 as a tem-
porary aide to Alés Hrdlicka. After working and going
to medical school at Johns Hopkins University, he then
spent more than five decades in the Department of
Anthropology. Anyone who survived under Hrdlicka
had to be tough, and had to develop a sense of humor.
Hrdlicka did not like the staff to speak during working
hours. He criticized Stewart one day for talking, but
relented a bit when Stewart said that he was announcing
the birth of his first child. Hrdlicka asked what the sex
was, and when told it was a girl, lost interest, remarking,
“Vell, de first von is generally a veakling.”

Stewart continued in the tradition of physical an-
thropology, developing great skill in forensic interpre-
tations and applying this skill to skeletal remains re-
covered by police. His work for the Federal Bureau of
Investigation would have won him a nod from Sherlock
Holmes. Stewart’s research, like that of many of the
Museum’s curators, has ranged into new fields over the
years, and perhaps his key work has been his contri-
butions to paleoanthropology, which have helped revise
our notions of Neanderthal man.’

Richard S. Cowan

A. C. Smith pointed out to Stewart some of the advan-
tages of additional administrative staff, and advised the
appointment of an assistant director. It was he who
suggested Richard S. Cowan for the position. Cowan,
like Smith, was a postwar hiree, having come to the
Museum in 1952 after four years at the New York
Botanical Garden. He too was a tropical botanist, though
he looked at different plants from those that interested
Smith. Early in 1963 Cowan became the first assistant
director of the Museum of Natural History, and in
March 1966 was appointed director, succeeding Stew-
art. Cowan held the post until 1973, when, accom-
panied by his many office plants, he returned to the
Department of Botany as a Senior Scientist. He con-
tinues to work on South American floras, especially tree
legumes.

During the time that Cowan served as director, there
was a great diversification in the administration of sci-
ence within the Smithsonian, with the establishment of
special offices for anthropology, ecology, oceanogra-
phy, and systematics. In addition to being director, Cowan
was head of the Office of Systematics. The Office held
five memorable summer institutes in systematics, but
the only tangible evidence of the Office was a large
coffee pot.

Donald Squires, from Invertebrate Zoology, was dep-
uty director for several years under Cowan. When he
left, P. K. Knierim, an administrator who had trans-

Museum Administration

A. Remington Kellogg holding the skull of an Amazon
River dolphin (Inia), October 1955.

ferred from the Department of Agriculture, served as
assistant director until he retired in 1972. James Mello
transferred from the U.S. Geological Survey to the Mu-
seum in 1970 to head up Automatic Data Processing,
which had been developed by Squires. When Porter M.
Kier of Paleobiology became director, Mello was ap-
pointed assistant director; he rose to associate director
and then in 1984 gave up administration and trans-
ferred to the Department of Paleobiology to resume
his long-interrupted study of microfossils. To date,
Richard Cowan is the only assistant director to have
become director.

During Cowan’s tenure the name of the Museum was
formally altered once again, to the National Museum
of Natural History. For years, when referring to spec-
imen numbers in a manuscript, the curators had used
the prefix USNM. The Smithsonian Institution Press
decided to adopt the change to NMNH, which lasted
for about two weeks before the curators rose in wrath.
USNM 1s still used to refer to specimens in the National
Museum of Natural History, and mail addressed to the
United States National Museum is still delivered.

Porter M. Kier

Porter Kier, described in a newspaper feature story as
“a razor-thin, hawk-like . .. man whose exuberance for
his work is immediately discernable,” took over as di-

133

Museum organizational
chart, 1984.

MUSEUM SUPPORT
CENTER

Spectal
Assistant

ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTIONS

Administrative Office
Building Manager's Office
Automatic Data Proceasing
Office of Education
Scanning Electron Microscope Lab
Registrar's Office

Office of Exhibits

Handbook of North American Indians

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR

rector January 15, 1973, and served until mid-1979.
After postgraduate work at Cambridge University, a
two-year stint in the U.S. Army, and one year’s teaching
at the University of Houston, he arrived at the Smith-
sonian in 1957. “It was the dream of a lifetime. The
Smithsonian’s famed natural history museum.,is the
Mount Olympus of sea urchin paleontology.”” A scuba
diver and underwater photographer, Kier is one of
those who have studied living animals to bring new
knowledge back to the interpretation of fossils; Ripley
characterized him as “an innovative researcher of al-
most indefatigable energy.”” A decade after joining the
staff, Kier succeeded G. Arthur Cooper as the second
chairman of the Department of Paleobiology. Following
that term, he spent about a year as a full-time scientist
before becoming director.

Kier was the first director to be selected through the
mechanism of a search committee, an essential practice
under present-day Civil Service regulations. He is also
the first department chairman to have been appointed
director. While one may quibble as to the distinction
between Stewart as first head curator and Kier as first
chairman to occupy the office, the difference between
the old style and the new style is tremendous. A “green
hornet” (so named because of the color of its paper
and its thrust) issued by Secretary Ripley in the mid-
1960s announced the abolition of the ttle “head cu-
rator.” The term of a chairman is not to exceed five
years.

The Museum’s exhibits program regained its vigor
under Kier. The most obvious public product of his
administration, however, is the “Kier testimonial” es-
calator leading from the foyer to the rotunda. Its in-
stallation was opposed unanimously by the department
chairmen. Kier was able to obtain money for it as part
of the Bicentennial celebration, arguing—quite rightly,
as it turned out—that the escalator would be needed
to handle the large crowds.

134

DIRECTOR

Special Assistant Special Assistant

Staff Assistant

Anthro~
polopy

Invert.

Paleo— Vert.
blology] [Zoology | | Zoology} |Center

Richard S. Fiske

Kier returned to his echinoids in mid-1979, and on
January 14, 1980, Richard S. Fiske became the fifth
director of the National Museum of Natural History,
and the ninth man to occupy the southwest corner of-
fice. Fiske, like Stewart, received his final training at
Johns Hopkins University. After a few years of post-
doctoral study, he joined the U. S. Geological Survey
in 1964. He spent the next twelve years studying vol-
canoes—live ones in Hawaii and presumed-dead ones
in Washington State—but he gradually became en-
snared in administrative duties. While his colleagues at
the Geological Survey saw him as prime material for
the administrative post of chief geologist, Fiske left the
Survey for the Museum because he wanted more time
for research in volcanology.’°

Upon his arrival in the Department of Mineral Sci-
ences, Fiske was swept into the exhibits program, and
because of his interest soon became head of a revitalized
exhibits committee. One of his early acts as director
was to see that the rhinoceros was moved out of his
office; the beast was replaced by a series of shelves
holding American Indian pots. The eruption of Mount
St. Helens in 1980, and the centenary in 1983 of the
eruption of Krakatau kept Fiske busy combining ad-
ministration and research with lecturing and writing
on both events.

Nothing has been written about the term of the di-
rector of the Museum of Natural History, yet somehow
it has come to be understood that this position, like a
chairmanship, is not a lifetime appointment. On July
10, 1985, Dick Fiske stepped down; James Tyler, an
ichthyologist who transferred from the National Sci-
ence Foundation to the Museum earlier that year, stepped
in as acting director. When the next major volcanic
eruption occurs, Senior Scientist Fiske will be there—
burdened with samples but untroubled by administra-
tive cares. o

The Museum

Some of those who ran the
Museum of Natural History.
Left to right: A. Remington

Kellogg, Director, U. S.
National Museum; A. C.
Smith, Director, Museum of
Natural History; Charles S.
East, taxidermist; Alexander
Wetmore, Secretary Emeritus;
and Watson Perrygo, taxt-
dermist. The occasion was a
retirement ceremony for
Charlie East, held in 1960
on the second floor of the
Castle.

amen Ovni aR
repo beaet tab h: Sty is since ty NG
Boy ieatiyn st ae ial

7
ei

“eH
d
3
ae
we
Ry
2 eee
&
&
i
ps
Be

eT | ad or Bi iene pn we vid te <a <2 i ere es
int. — Ga - , ot eile AR are at es hy i)
Group in the west court, just after the Butler buildings were — Kernan, Group Vice President, Marriott Corporation;
torn down; the west stairwell is behind, projecting into the Ames T. Wheeler, Treasurer, Smithsonian Institution; Paul
court. This is now the site of the West Court Building. Left N. Perrot, Assistant Secretary, Museum Programs; and
to right: Porter M. Kier, Director, National Museum of James F. Mello, Assistant Director, National Museum of
Natural History; Richard O. Griesel, Manager, Business Natural History. This photograph was published in
Management Office, Smithsonian Institution; Richard W. Smithsonian Year 1975.

Museum Administration 135

Chapter 16

The Scientific
Staff

Go EVERY LIBRARIAN, carpenter, and guard,
people currently employed in the Museum of Natural
History. Given constant change and the very size of the
building, that is no surprise. But it is extremely difficult
to determine even the number of people pursuing re-
search in the Museum during any given year, as criti-
cally important as this figure is to any museum director.

“At the beginning of the year the Assistant Secretary
was placed in immediate charge of the Museum, the
direction of which rests with the Secretary of the Smith-
sonian Institution, its keeper ex officio,” Rathbun re-
ported in 1901. “The scientific staff has consisted, be-
sides the three head curators, of 18 curators, 12 assistant
curators, 14 custodians, 10 aids [szc—the customary
spelling in the early days], 4 associates, and 2 collabo-
rators, making a total of 63 persons, of whom, however,
only about one-half were under salary from the Mu-
seum, the remainder serving in a voluntary or honorary
capacity, though nearly all of the latter were in the
employ of other bureaus of the government.”' These
figures included those in the Castle and those in the
old National Museum, and thus encompassed more
fields than natural history.

Staff Numbers Low

Just before the move to the new Museum building be-
gan late in 1909, the scientific staff for the Museum
was given in the Annual Report as seventy-eight, and the
listed administrative staff for the Institution was nine.”
However, the term curator was used for both those
paid by the Museum and those paid by associated agen-
cies; at least two of the curators recorded were not paid
by the Museum and never had offices in either the old
or new Museum buildings. In 1910, one may again
count seventy-eight on the scientific staff (not dupli-
cating those who held multiple appointments), and still
an administrative staff of nine; eight of the scientific
staff were designated aides and nine associates.” From
these figures one can see that moving to a huge new

Doris M. Cochran examining part of the s nake collection
preserved in alcohol, possibly in the 1950s.

it is nearly impossible to pinpoint the number of

137

building did not result in employment of a huge new
staff.

If the move across the Mall did not result in an in-
crease, neither did World War I. In 1920, the formal
managerial positions for the Institution had shrunk to
eight. The staff list for the National Museum contained
eighty-five names; of these eighty-five, nine were in the
Department of Arts and Industries, and one, W. H.
Holmes, was in the National Gallery of Art.* Included
in the seventy-five names for the three natural history
departments, established by Walcott in 1898, are nine
persons designated as aides. This hardly qualifies as a
postwar boom, particularly when it is evident that al-
most half of the increase in staff since 1910 resulted
from the addition of Department of Agriculture bot-
anists.

By 1932 the administrative staff heads for the Insti-
tution had risen to ten; and as before, these people
were responsible for libraries, correspondence, repairs,
and similar activities for all the Smithsonian buildings.
A count of the three natural history departments shows
ninty-eight names. In the Department of Geology, sev-
enteen persons were listed, of which one was a chief
preparator and two were aides. Three associates listed
were not paid by the Museum, nor were two custodians
and one associate curator. The actual scientific staff of
the Department of Geology was eight, and this included
Paul Bartsch, who was really a specialist in modern
mollusks, not fossil ones. Of course, there were Geo-
logical Survey paleontologists in the building, but ex-
cept for two active members and one retiree, they were
not listed.” A decade later the scientific staff of the
Department of Geology still consisted of eight people.

The 1920s and 1930s figures for the other two de-
partments, Anthropology and Biology, were similarly
inflated by the names of “staff” who were not paid by
the Museum. Unless one knows the career of a partic-
ular person, it is risky to assume that a listing means
that he was salaried by the Museum or even had an
office on the premises. As in Geology, the staff in these
two departments remained nearly static for two dec-
ades. During World War II, the staff declined in all
departments.

Mary Jane Rathbun working
on fossil crabs, perhaps in
the early 1920s.

Variations in Staff List
Since the early 1940s the staff list has been published
on a regular basis. One ought to be able to plot the
growth of staff since World War II, but this is more
difficult than it seems. If one counts all the names listed
under scientific staff for those in the Natural History
Building during fiscal year 1955, the figures are: An-
thropology, sixteen; Zoology, fifty-four; and Geology,
twenty-five. In 1960 these figures were eleven, twenty,
and thirteen, respectively; what one sees here is the
effect of a variation in the lisung of exhibit specialists,
collaborators, honorary associates, and others. In 1960,
for just about the first ume, the staff listing was a rea-
sonably accurate indication of the number of scientists
actually paid by the Museum. In 1965, just after the
last of the present departments in the Museum of Nat-
ural History was organized, the count from the staff
listing was: Anthropology, seventeen; Vertebrate Zo-
ology, seventeen; Invertebrate Zoology, sixteen; En-
tomology, nineteen; Botany, nineteen (previously four-
teen in 1955, and twelve in 1960); Paleobiology, fourteen;
Mineral Sciences, six. Some of the departments, par-
ticularly Vertebrate Zoology, list exhibit specialists, but
these figures mostly count only working scientists.
One may generalize that after the growth spurt in
the mid-1960s and a smaller increase in the early 1970s—
effects of big science and the policies of Secretary Ripley—
the scientific staff of the Museum has been close to
static in terms of total numbers. In one department,
the new curator hired in 1971 remained the newest
until 1981; the staff member added that year was a

138

replacement for one who left. The changes in the 1970s
were measured in terms of a few scientific positions a
year. Since the late 1970s, as in most of the federal
government, there has been essentially no growth in
the Museum staff. The numbers of scientists paid by
affiliated agencies reached a peak during the 1960s,
but since then, in a few of those organizations, have
declined.”

In recent years the Office of the Director has kept
figures on the number of Museum scientists. These are
compiled at irregular intervals, but have the advantage
of being assembled by one person using consistent cri-
teria as to who is considered to be on the scientific staff
in a strict sense. The Archivist of the National An-
thropological Archives, for example, is judged a his-
torian, not a natural scientist. The director is counted,
but an assistant, associate or deputy director may or
may not be counted, depending on whether he is a
scienust or an administrator.

In Table 3, the figures for Invertebrate and Verte-
brate Zoology in 1964 show the makeup of the overall
Department of Zoology, which still existed that year.
Expansion of the mid-1960s and problems of the early
1970s are evident in the totals. The large number in
the Office of the Director in 1966 was a consequence
of the assignment of Oceanography to the Museum.
The small staff total in 1970 was an administrative ar-
ufact resulting from the separation of the Office of
Oceanography from the Museum. In the compilation
below they are returned to that office from 1976 on-
ward.

The Museum

Under textbook administrative conditions, a pyram-
idal structure of many younger people below a few
senior older staff is the model, but it seldom happens
that way in the real world, certainly not in the Museum.
Almost without exception, retirees are being replaced
by relatively new graduates, rather than by higher-
salaried, middle-aged scientists, yet the rate of replace-
ment is low. In 1966 the average age of the scientific
staff was 44.0 years; in mid-1984 it had reached 49.6
years. Old-timers largely are of two classes: those few
from the 1950s, who remember the building without
wings and air conditioning; and those from the mid-
1960s. In a few years most of both groups will be gone,
and a different staff with different memories will be in
charge.

Just half a century ago, a Museum employee’s salary
was a tangible item, based directly on hours worked
and distributed from a cash box brought over from the
Castle. When someone went into the field, the Insti-
tution would send a salary check to his bank. In 1934
“a central disbursing agency for all Government estab-
lishments” was organized under the Treasury Depart-
ment, and the Smithsonian’s disbursing office was abol-
ished. Beginning February 1, 1934, salary payments
were made by check instead of by cash.’ For years, even
after government checks were introduced, the staff hiked
across the Mall to the Castle every two weeks and lined
up to be paid. ‘Today the Treasury Department prefers
to mail salary checks to employees’ banks.

Salary Figures

The Museum did not publish salary figures in its annual
reports, but it is possible to draw some parallels from
another agency. In 1894, when L. O. Howard took over
what was to become the Bureau of Entomology in the
Department of Agriculture, he received $2,400. “In
1902 it was increased to $2,750; in 1904 to $3,250; in
1906 to $4,000; in 1911, to $4,500, in 1919 to $5,000;
in 1924, to $6,000 and in 1925 to $6,500. During all
these years the salaries of principal assistants in the
Bureau were being gradually raised from $1,200.”* One
may approximately equate the position Howard held
with that of the director of the Museum, and that of a
principal assistant with a head curator.

In 1930 Howard wrote: “The salaries at the present
time are in marked contrast to those of earlier years.
The chief of the Bureau now receives $8,000. There
are two who receive $6,400 a year each; one who has
$6,000, two have $5,800, six have $5,600, one has $5,200,
two have $5,000, and forty-six have from $4,000 to
$4,600, no less than twenty-eight of these receiving
$4,600 each. Of course, the compensation in other walks
of life has also increased, either correspondingly or
much more greatly. The vastly increased cost of living
brought about largely by ... World War [I] is naturally
responsible for much of these increases. .. .””

The general position of those who administered sci-

The Scientific Staff

Norman Boss, chief preparator in the Vertebrate
Paleontology division, preparing a fossil lizard (Saniwa),
1921 or 1922.

ence in the government was that the wisest course was
to keep a low profile and not ask for too much money.
For example, it was the often-stated policy of John B.
Reeside, Jr., for many years chief of the Geological
Survey paleontologists, that because paleontologists did
what they enjoyed, they should be paid less than other
geologists. Since World War I there has been a trickle
of scientists from affiliated agencies to the Museum
staff. Almost never were such transfers made for fi-
nancial gain, but rather for slightly greater opportu-
nities to pursue research.

Since the late 1950s, performing scientific work for
the federal government has become a recognized func-
tion, and salaries have become reasonably respectable.
Government pay for scientists is more or less compa-
rable to salaries in academia, taking into account the
high cost of living in Washington, D.C., as compared
to the average college town. Fifty years ago the life of
the museum curator in Washington was that of genteel
poverty. Today, if everyone on the suburban block lined
up outside their houses, the museum curator could not
be singled out, except by the parking sticker on the
station-wagon bumper.

Hiring Policies

In the last seventy-five years, the scientific staff of the
Museum has included few women and fewer black em-
ployees. Described by John F. Kennedy as a city of
northern charm and southern efficiency, Washington

139

may be the capital of the nation, but the District of
Columbia is definitely south of the Mason-Dixon line.
The hiring policies of the Smithsonian have been no
more enlightened than those of the area and the times.

Neil Judd wrote in 1968: “My only assistant for this
1911 undertaking and for the accompanying laboratory
work ... was a Civil War veteran who had joined the
staff in 1878. ... In his later years failing health re-
duced the old gentleman’s activities and a Negro, Charles
T. Terry, Jr. was employed as probational aide to mark
specimens—the first to break the segregation barrier
in our division of archaeology. From the beginning any
nonwhite assistant gradually advanced to become an
indispensible member of the organization. He not only
numbered specimens but kept our records of the study
collections so that any given object, if called for by a
visiting scientist could be brought to the laboratory with
minimum delay.” '” Terry’s name did not appear on the
staff lists.

Another black employee, Ulysses Lyons, began as a
laborer in the early 1950s at $1.07 an hour. After a few
months and some struggle, he was able to transfer to
the Division of Ethnology in the Department of An-
thropology as a GS-2, the second-lowest rating in the
General Service scale. Shortly after Clifford Evans be-
came chairman of the Department of Anthropology in
1970, he hired the first black female departmental sec-
retary in the Museum.'! Sophie Lutterlough, hired in
1943 as the first female elevator Operator, eventually
became a preparator in Entomology and stayed with
the Museum for forty years.'~ At the present me, though
other minority groups are represented, there are no
American blacks on the scientific staff.

For the first decade of the building’s existence, there
was only one female professional on the staff—Mary
Jane Rathbun, the “crab lady.” The geologist Julia
Gardner had been in the building since before the start
of World War I, during which she drove an ambulance,

but she did not get a government position until the
early 1920s. In 1919 Doris M. Cochran, the “frog lady,”
was listed as an aide, but it was not until 1927 that she
was promoted to assistant curator. Doris Blake, the widow
of an eminent botanist, was a volunteer in Entomology
who for decades had an office in the rotunda just off
the fourth-floor attics. For years, especially after Dr.
Blake died, the two Dorises were the closest of friends,
and it was the Division of Amphibians and Reptiles that
provided office space for Mrs. Blake from 1962 on-
ward, when the other entomologists left the building.

One interesting phenomenon, now slowly dying out,
is the tradition of the volunteer wife. Perhaps Betty
Meggers, who contributed so much to the anthropology
halls, is the type example. One wife learned to read
Russian so that she could make proper entries in a card
catalogue of species maintained by her husband. There
are nepotism rules, and occasionally wives work else-
where in the Institution if husbands work for the Mu-
seum.

A very few women were added to the staff in the
1940s and 1950s; during the same interval, a slightly
greater proportion of women appeared on the staffs
of the affiliated organizations. Nothing changed until
the 1970s, when some members of the “baby boom”
generation began to be hired. Women scientists are still
very much the exception, but the eight on the present
Museum staff about equal the total that were on the
staff for the first sixty years of the building’s history.

One long-time feminine stronghold is the Office of
the Registrar, first formally established in 1881. These
people account for each specimen in the collections;
currently the museum is approaching 69 million spec-
imens. When the new building was ready, the registrar
moved across the Mall, since most of the new accessions
were of natural history specimens. For decades the
registrar’s office was situated on the south side of the
building near that of the director, and it was run by

TABLE 3: Scientific Staff by Department, 1964-1984

Date Of Dir, Ant. Bot. Ent.
9/1964 : a 1 Ba) )

5/1966 17 10
6/1970 ‘ 16 9
4/1973 16 : 12

4/1974 17 12
4/1976 17 |
4/1977 17 12
4/1978 18 12
4/1979 16 [2
4/1980 15 11
4/1984 16 ly

140

LZ. M.S. Paleo. Total
14 13 85
16 15 105
| 18 96
Vi 18 106
17 18 109
7 18 MIRE}
18 18 116
19 18 119
20 18 Talis)
20 19 1a
18 19 112

The Museum

Staff of the Department of
Anthropology, taken in the
Arts and Industries Building
in 1932. Standing, left to
right: Charles Terry,
museum aide, archeology;
unknown, museum aide,
physical anthropology; Wal-
ter Hough, curator, ethnol-
ogy; George McCoy,
secretary, head office; John
P. Harrington, ethnologist,
Bureau of American Ethnol-
ogy; R. G. Paine, museum
aide, archeology; W. G.
Egberts, chief preparator,
Exhibits Office; Mrs. Loose,
secretary, archeology—one of
the two women to right.
Seated, left to nght: T. Dale
Stewart, assistant curator,
physical anthropology; Frank
M. Setzler, assistant curator,
archeology; Neil M. Judd,
curator, archeology; William
Henry Holmes, head,
National Gallery of Art; Ales
Ardlicka, curator, physical
anthropology; Herbert W.
Kreiger, associate curator,
ethnology; Henry B. Collins,
assistant curator, ethnology.

Staff of the Department of
Anthropology on the south
porch steps in the early
1950s—not a great change
in number from 1932.

Department of Zoology staff
on the Mall steps, September
28, 1949. The fifty-four
people shown include
Secretary Wetmore, director
Kellogg, two retirees, and six
members of the Fish and
Wildlife Service.

The Scientific Staff

Helena Weiss, who retired in 1971.

With expansion of the Smithsonian in the 1960s, the
work of the registrar also expanded, and the office
moved back to the old building, where there was more
space. Finally, in 1976, accessioning and record-keeping
were decentralized and the National Museum of Nat-
ural History gained its own registrar. The office was a
rickety wooden balcony built into the shipping room.
The files were one floor down and a hundred feet away.
Later, the files were moved farther away; then the office
was moved to where the files had been transferred, but
the files moved again. In 1980, when this original area
near the loading dock was decked over to make more
space, the registrar thought that a ribbon-cutting cer-
emony was in order.

Because turnover of the scientific staff is low, there
is little prospect of major changes for blacks, women,
or other minorities in the next decade, unless there is
a substantial increase in the professional staff. ‘The his-
torical record is not one to be particularly proud of,
but efforts are being made to right the balance. In 1980
Secretary Ripley called for “fresh attitudes and stronger
programs ... against discrimination ... whether in-
tentional or not.” He continued, “I am deeply con-
cerned about this serious problem. An end to discrim-
ination in all aspects of our affairs is a fundamental
responsibility of the old and honored institution.”'?

Matters of Dress

In smaller matters such as dress and style the scientific
staff is more difficult to characterize. In the 1950s most
people wore neckties and jackets to work; in the 1980s
most do not. The change has been gradual, although
the appearance of Dennis Stanford, who joined the
Department of Anthropology in 1972, was sull attract-
ing attention in 1977: “Dr. Stanford wears pearl-button
cowboy shirts that may or may not be buttoned down.
You can't tell because that part goes under the beard.
He doesn't wear a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches.
He wears faded denims. He doesn’t smoke a pipe. He
tucks a bit of snuff under his lip.”'* The best word for
the dress code at the Museum today is casual. About
the only three-piece suits left in the place are on the
repairmen for the copying machines.

An Assortment of “Characters”

In 1980 Henry Collins, then long-reured, commented
wistfully that the staff did not contain the number of
“characters” it once did. Certainly the Museum has seen
its share of eccentrics, eccentric behavior, and practical
jokes, many involving stuffed kangaroos, gorillas, or
what have you. On publishing a scientific paper, Hrdlicka
would have his palm read to see how his latest work
would be accepted by his colleagues. Evans once crammed
the office of the archeologist Gus Van Beek so full of
boxes that the door could not be opened; Evans left by
way of the outside window ledge. Kier wrote a memo

142

Bee, Heteranthidium bequarti. Carbon dust on 00 Ross
board (Elaine R. S. Hodges, staff artist 1965-present).

Fossil skull, Meniscotherium chamense. Graphite pencil
on Bristol board (Lawrence B. Isham, staff artist 1953-
1983).

The Museum

Scientific illustrations prepared by Museum artists.

Spotted headstander, Chilodus punctatus. Technical pen Painted pottery jar, representation of an ibex head.
on Bristol board (Marion J. Dalen, staff artist 1962- Crowquill pen and ink on Bristol board (G. Robert Lewis
1970). staff artist 1959-1985).

Lobster, Nephropides caribaus. Diluted India ink wash

’

Spirit weed, Ruellia tuberosa. Crowquill pen and ink on

and graphite pencil on scratchboard (Carolyn B. Gast, staff plastic film (Alice R. Tangerini, staff artist 1972-present).

artist 1959-1985).

The Scientific Staff

143

Bird collections on the north
side of the west wing, third
floor, probably in the 1930s;
the windows open onto the
west court. Herbert Fried-
mann is to the right and his
assistant, to the left.

about a study of cockroach behavior in the Museum
and asked for information on sightings and if possible
the actual specimens. Then he signed Clarke’s name
and distributed it all over the Museum. Clarke was
inundated with specimens.

Roland W. Brown, the paleobotanist of the U.S. Geo-
logical Survey, was a character by any definition. He
came from a very poor background and was one of the
most frugal persons ever to grace the premises. Stories
of his replacing a single shoelace and saving the other,
or putting an edge on old razor blades found in a motel
room, are all true. He cobbled his one pair of shoes
himself, and when his pants became too tight he added
a gusset in the seat of a different color. Brown's great
interest was in Greek and Latin, and he compiled an
invaluable etymological dictionary of the names of plants
and animals. The book was written on the backs of old
letters discarded from Geological Survey files.'”

As in any academic setting, the label “character” sticks
readily to a person who studies one narrow field in
considerable depth throughout his career. Lately there
is not so much monographic (some would say mono-
maniacal) concentration on organisms about which few
people are passionate. But it still is common. Perhaps
to a younger scientist, the older specialist who considers
himself Mr. Average is the real character.

One would assume that the number of characters of
every kind would increase as the staff increased, but in
the view of many staff members, this is not so. There
are as many strong-willed individuals as in the past, but
their impact is lessened by the size of the facility. Until
1960 everyone came in the same entrance and everyone
used the same toilet; any event or interesting comment
spread rapidly. Size of staff and distance between of-
fices have cut down on communication. In 1982, after

144

a series of losses of Vienna sausages from his refrig-
erator, the sponge specialist Klaus Ruetzler painstak-
ingly rigged a time-lapse camera to catch the culprit,
but no one on the floor above, let alone in the east wing,
even heard of this.

Research and Publication

Now, if the staff does not spend its time being “quaint”
so that there are humorous stories to pass on to future
generations, what does the staff do? This is a serious
question and it deserves a serious answer. The principal
occupation of the scientific staff has always been re-
search and publication. Investigation without publica-
tion is a sterile activity. The Smithsonian Institution
issued its first major scientific publication in 1848, and
it has been dedicated to publication ever since. Untl
well into the 1950s, the Annual Report listed the papers
published by members of the staff; they are listed now
in Smithsonian Year. Vhere is no government agency
that provides this degree of individual accountability
to the citizens.

For many years there was a Bulletin of the United States
National Museum, and one extremely crude but easy
method of discussing productivity is to measure the
shelf space it consumed. About ten feet of bound books
were produced until 1909, and about twice that much
during the next sixty years. The Proceedings came a bit
later, adding up to about seven feet before 1909 and
sixteen feet thereafter. Both series included a bit more
than natural history. A slight deduction must be made
for the fact that the Museum also had quite a liberal
policy on who could publish in the Proceedings, so that
not every publication is from a paid staff member. Even
allowing for this, a lot has been published. Papers by
the Museum staff that were published in the now-

The Museum

G. Arthur Cooper typing and
Josephine Cooper picking out
fossils in his office on the
third floor of the main build-
ing’s west wing. The grind-
ing wheel was used for
sharpening needles to do pre-
cise preparation of fossils in
rock. To the right, below a
large tray, is a rock trimmer,
hand powered by twisting the
horizontal wheel. July 1954.

discontinued, Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections would
further swell the total.

In 1969 the Smithsonian instituted a series of Con-
tributions in various fields. Those in the realm of natural
history have amounted to about twelve feet in fifteen
years. None of these figures include publications in
other scientific series or journals.

Staff Organizations

A handful of staff organizations deserve brief com-
ment. The first is the Senate of Scientists, modeled on
a similar organization at the National Institutes of Health.
This group first met in 1963 in the basement of the
ethnologist Saul Reisenberg’s house with Gordon Gib-
son, another ethnologist, as the first chairman. Those
who met felt almost like conspirators. One reason for
organizing was that a number of actions, such as changes
in parking regulations, were taking place without the
affected parties’ having any say. It was evident that
Secretary Carmichael was soon going to retire, and it
seemed more prudent to begin an organization before
a new Secretary arrived than after.’

The senate is the one place where those from asso-
ciated organizations can have a tiny voice concerning
the building they inhabit. As the departments have be-
come larger and the paperwork more complex, the
senate provides a way of focusing on the problems that
divert energy from the goal of research. The senate
once challenged the Institution on its endowment prac-
tices and persuaded the treasurer to modify some of
his policies. The dinner forums organized by the senate
every other month or so are one of the few activities
that cut across organizational lines within the Smith-
sonian complex.

The Smithsonian Museological Association, in spite

The Scientific Staff

ww §

-dd.

oe
a
s
s

of its name, has been confined to the Museum of Nat-
ural History. Technicians tend to be even more limited
to associations in a single department than do the
professional staff. Some of the ideas and concerns of
the technicians have been expressed, through this group,
and there has been exchange of techniques across de-
partments. The organization began in 1974 and is now
dormant. Both it and the senate in a sense are like
volunteer fire departments—organized but not active
until a crisis comes.

A quite different organization is the Guild of Sci-
entific Illustrators. These people are not scientists, nor
are they technicians. ‘They are artists in a highly spe-
cialized field. The illustrators in the Museum founded
the group, which is now an organization of more than
1,000 members, with shows at international scientific
meetings to its credit. The guild is one of the places
where art and science are not in conflict."’

In the 1960s a small group calling itself the POETS
Club met each Friday afternoon at Louie’s Restaurant
on the northeast corner of Ninth Street and Pennsyl-
vania Avenue, NW. It was essentially the closest place
to the Museum where one could get a beer and a sand-
wich. Ernest Lachner and the late James Peters from
the Division of Amphibians and Reptiles could spend
hours enlightening visiting scientists on this and that.
During the days of the Summer Institute in Systematics,
several members of the National Academy of Sciences
were taken to Louie’s. When Louie’s closed in 1983,
the POETS transferred to the Museum. Those who are
newly into curating, the younger technicians, and the
current lowest of the low, the packers for the move to
the Museum Support Center, continue to gather for
mutual support. As they might phrase it, this is the flip
side of the Senate of Scientists dinners. 0

145

Chapter 17

Shared Facilities

HE LIBRARY OF THE Museum of Natural History
has had a curious history within the Institution.
In the vigorous congressional debate before the Smith-

sonian was formed, there were strong proponents of

its taking on the duties of a national library—long be-
fore the Library of Congress assumed that role. In the
early days of Secretary Henry’s regime, the issue of the
relative significance of the library within the Smithson-
ian was still hot. Arguments about what share of the
Smithsonian endowment should go into library activi-
ties continued for years. Eventually the librarian, as-
sistant secretary Charles Jewett, was discharged, and
Henry, although buffeted by the storm of protest that
followed, was able to prevail in his view that the Insti-
tution should be concerned primarily with research.

After Jewett left, most of the Institution’s books were
deposited in the Library of Congress, whence, in the-
ory, they could be recalled as needed. In fact, “so urgent
was the [Smithsonian’s] need for more books that Sec-
retary Spencer F. Baird in 1881 donated his extensive
private library, a valuable collection of standard works
on biology and industry, to supplement the existing
small nucleus of the Museum library.”! This library was
devoted almost entirely to natural history, with a mod-
icum of shelf space devoted to technology, art, and
other pursuits.

In 1911, when the new National Museum was com-
pleted, the library in the main moved in, leaving some
of its holdings in the Castle and the Arts and Industries
Building, and also leaving the chief librarian on the
south side of the Mall. “In view . . . of the more ample
accommodations afforded by the new building and the
fact that the larger proportion of the publications were
included in the transfer [to the new building],” it was
decided in 1912 “that the library there established should
be the central one for the receipt, recording, catalogu-
ing and distribution of all books and for all other prep-
aratory work.”

Taxidermy shop in the east courtyard. Left to right: Charles
R. W. Aschemeier, Watson M. Perrygo (partially hidden
between the two wolves), and William Goodloe. Probably
taken in 1957.

147

Rathbun wrote the following year:
The space assigned to the library in the new
building, located in the ground story of the
northern section of the east range consists of what
was originally a single room with northern
exposure, 107 feet 7 inches long by 21 feet I inch
wide, and a smaller room, facing on the east court.
. The former has been divided into three
compartments for the book stacks, catalogue cases,
and reading accommodations. .. . All of the area is
utilized to the full height of the story, this being
accomplished by [a major internal structural
change:] the introduction of a mezzanine floor in
the stack room and of galleries in the reading
rooms, which are at a uniform height of 7 feet 11
inches above the ground. ... The main reading
room and consulting room has also a gallery
continuous with that in the smaller room .. .
extends along the three walls other than that
occupied by the windows.’

which

The gallery floors did not extend to the windows, so
the exterior appearance of the building was unmarred.
No doubt this gallery provided the precedent for later
changes in the east range and on the west side of the
building.

In fiscal year 1929, the library rooms were repainted,
“new lights and ventilators were installed, a cork runner
was laid the full length of the reference and stack rooms,
and the two large, awkward reading tables were con-
verted into four attractive, small ones.”' During the
1930s, considerable free labor from the WPA and ear-
lier organizations was utilized to improve shelving and
cataloguing.

Despite the privations common to most libraries—
insufficient staff, too little space, and inadequate funds
for purchasing, binding, and repair—the Museums li-
brarians coped well with requests by users. They proved
especially resourceful during World War II, when “rep-
resentatives of about 35 different branches of the war
agencies ... called for assistance or [came] in person
to do research.” Until after World War II, a messenger
took the last elevator trip of the day to bring a book
cart around, dropping off requested items and col-

lecting loan slips. Later, one had to go in person to
request a book, but the library delivered all items until
the early 1960s. In a few respects, the good old days
actually were as good as they are remembered.

By the late 1950s the library had expanded slightly.
All space on the north side of the east north range was
occupied except the large corner office of the curator
of vertebrate paleontology. On the south side, the li-
brary had the first office off the lobby; the National
Collection of Fine Arts used the cooled storage room
just down the hall for paintings. The area from this
point to the anthropology laboratory on the corner was
decked over, with bookshelves on both levels. The hall-
ways on both sides of the range were filled with cases
of fossil plants. The main catalogue, the serials record,
and several desks all fitted into one office on the north
side.

The portion of the Smithsonian library located in the
Museum was treated in the Annual Report as an integral
of the United States National Museum until 1948.
Thereafter, information on the library in the Museum
appeared in a separate library section of the Annual
Report. A major administrative event for the library

occurred in November 1951, when the main office of

the library moved from the Castle to the Museum, and
the Natural History Branch was merged into the Smith-
sonian library.

Additional Space

In terms of physical change, the big event was the com-
pletion of the east wing, which freed a great deal of
space. What had been the anthropology laboratory,
overlooking the east courtyard, now became the main
reading room. The card catalogue moved out into the
hall. Most of the west side of the east range was decked
over for stacks; a sturdy but creaky catwalk crosses the
reading room, connecting the south deck with the west
one. The head librarian moved into the corner office
occupied earlier by vertebrate paleontologists, and some
Open areas on the north side of the east north range
were decked over to complete the stack area. In 1965,
after the Division of Mammals moved to the third floor,
the library expanded into the west north range. The
binding and acquisitions operations went downstairs,
and rows of bookshelves stretching off into the darkness
occupied the upper level.

In May 1983, in a reversion to the general setup of

1910, the Smithsonian Institution Libraries divided, so
that there is now a Natural History Branch in the west
north range, with a separate new-book shelf and check-
out desk. Since the library filled up, many books have
been sent to the general-purpose building on North
Capitol Street and others to the Museum Support Cen-
ter. Much as they prefer to hold a publication in their
hands, the scientific staff will have to depend on the
electronic transport of data to answer some of their
questions.

148

Almost from the inception of the National Museum,
sectional libraries were scattered throughout the build-
ing. During the 1920s the Annual Report listed thirty-
six, twenty-one of which were directly associated with
the activities of the Museum: “The 36 sectional libraries
of the Museum are the immediate working tools of the
curators and their assistants. Many of them contain rich
collections of highly specialized material, some of which
has never been catalogued.”

Specialized Book Collections

In the building today there are specialized collections
in almost all the departments and in many divisions.
Periodically an administrator suggests using the space
for offices, and periodically the curators have apoplexy
over the idea. ‘These caches, not all of which qualify as
libraries, range from 2,000 to 53,000 books. For ease
of bookkeeping, some of these disparate groups are
combined, while others, like hard-to-catalogue collec-
tions of reprints, are officially ignored. In addition to
its departmental library, for example, Botany has a
collection of reprints on grasses of which Agnes Chase
was so protective that she stationed her desk right in
the middle of it. Of course, most scientists have their
own personal collections, usually including a lot of books
checked out of the Museum library.

Only two book collections in the building have plaques
on the door. One is the Kellogg Library of Marine
Mammals, in the east wing. The other, in the main
building, is the John Wesley Powell Library of An-
thropology. In 1981 John Ewers thought it was high
time that something was named after Powell, so he
decided on a plaque and a small ceremony. It seems
that Powell had had a bet with his colleague JW (“No
Stop”) McGee as to who had the larger brain. Both
arranged for their brains to be saved, and when they
were posthumously measured, Powell won. The point
to all this is that John Wesley Powell’s brain was brought
in for the ceremony—a token of affection Powell would
have appreciated, had more of him been present.

Data Processing System

While the library serves the entire Institution, the Mu-
seum has its own Automatic Data Processing system, a
second common facility of great value to many scien-
usts. Data processing in the post-carbon paper sense
has a history of about twenty years at the Museum. In
the early 1960s awareness of the new technology had
grown to the point that a committee was formed to look
into it.

Some scientists, such as James Peters, were imme-
diately enthusiastic about sophisticated statistical tech-
niques as aids to their investigations. “Peters and others
have written programs ... which ... make it possible
to carry Out analyses previously impossible because of
the amount of time required,” Smithsonian Year ob-
served in 1967. “Peters is also developing a computer-

The Museum

—~—1 Ea ia
ih NM ise | 2]

‘

ip fii

Librarian John Murdoch in the United States National Museum, before 1893. This is now the rare-book room for the

Institution.

key to the snakes of Latin America... . Insertion of . . .
basic data. . . results in a print-out of the correct generic
name in less than four seconds.”

The use of computers in individual research projects
is of increasing importance throughout the Museum,
but the greatest impact of data processing has been on
general information processing and retrieval problems.
In 1966 “funds provided by the Office of Systematics
enabled the department of invertebrate zoology to pur-
chase equipment with which one operator can catalog
all the very large number of collections being acces-
sioned by the department, and which at the same time
prints index cards on as many parameters as desired.
In addition, the same operation automatically generates
paper tape bearing the data from the collections, and
these data may be inserted automatically in a central
data center. It has been estimated that as much as 60
percent increase in the efficiency of the cataloguing
operations is gained by having this equipment.”” The

Shared Facilities

concept is fine, even if the language seems quaint in
the light of today’s machines. Paper tape machines were
eventually declared surplus, though one probably should
have been sent over to the Museum of American His-
tory as an artifact.

Data Processing had its first home in Room 206 on
the second-floor balcony; people found the office by
looking to where the elephant’s trunk pointed. Next
Data Processing went to the third floor, adjacent to the
director’s office on the west side of the building. In
1972 it moved several doors down the hall to offices
vacated by oceanographers and ecologists. It is still in
the same area, but the rooms have been partitioned
and repartitioned. Even that has not made sufficient
space, so an additional room has been built out into
the main corridor.

During the mid-1960s cataloguing of selected min-
erals, sea birds, and crustaceans was tried as an exper-
iment, using machines to alleviate the burden of routine

149

work. After this success, Donald Squires obtained funds
for a larger data system that might serve as a model
for other Museums. Shortly after this program started
he moved on, but the test was brought to a successful
conclusion.”

Convincing the Staff

In 1970, when James Mello transferred to the Museum
to continue the Automatic Data Processing (ADP) pro-
gram, his first problem was to convince the staff in
general, not just the enthusiasts, that there was some
merit to a new approach. One technician who favored
leather-bound ledgers assured him that even though
they cost sixty dollars each, her handwriting was so
small that she could enter 50 percent more lines than
anyone and stll have it legible. Mello still recalls his
first week at the Museum, when he was invited to have
lunch with the Fish Division. Just before Mello started
talking about his new program, Lachner wrote on a
blackboard in capital letters, “EXPENSE” “UN-
PROVEN TECHNOLOGY” “MISALLOCATION OF
RESOURCES,” and said not a word during the pres-
entation.

Despite some lack of enthusiasm, the program moved
forward. In 1972 Smithsonian Year reported: “It is be-
coming increasingly evident that the care of such data
is, in its Own Way, as Important as care for the specimens
themselves. The objectives are to capture, store, and
retrieve collection-based information more efficiently
than by conventional means and to produce ultimately
a versatile, easily searchable data base that will be more
responsive to scientific inquiry than are current records
in most of the departments.”'" The program still has
not reached that goal, but records of millions of spec-
imens are not assembled easily. Each year there are
fewer problems with recording and retrieving data.

One early success story was a sequel to the Endan-
gered Species Act passed by Congress in 1973. The
Department of the Interior was required to produce a
list of endangered species of animals and to arrange
for the Museum to make lists of endangered plants.
The computer copy itself was eventually published in
1978, and the listing of plants was done far faster than
anyone had anticipated, thanks to automation.

Smithsonian-wide Inventory Ordered

By the later 1970s an Institution-wide inventory pro-
gram, discussed more fully in chapter 23, had been
ordered by Congress. It officially began in the Museum
in 1978, although some work had been done earlier.
It made good sense for ADP to take on the chore for
the Museum, and a whole raft of young temporary
workers appeared to do the boring work of counting
and recording data, often to the tune of rock and roll
music. Phere was some trauma, but when the first phase
of the inventory was completed in 1983, the officials
were pleased."'

150

An inventory was an absolute necessity before col-
lections could be moved to the Museum Support Cen-
ter. The amount of computer paper required to make
lists of objects and to assign moving schedules and lo-
cations is enough to make any tree nervous, yet there
is NO sense in storing an item that cannot be found on
demand, as the scientific staff would have to agree.
Naturally enough, the emphasis on automatic data
processing and modern trends in systematics has led
to widespread scientific literacy with computers. Not
only is almost everyone who was hired from 1970 on-
ward “into computers,” some of the most senior cu-
rators use them.

Word Processors Abound

The most remarkable change in the Museum, and one
not predicted by the black-box specialists, has been the
spread of word processors. R. E. Grant recalls that when
he joined the Geological Survey in 1962 he asked for
a typewriter and was informed that because he did not
spend 50 percent of his time typing, he was not entitled
to one. In 1972, when he transferred to the Museum,
he was able to obtain a typewriter officially. No one
quite recalls the history of electric typewriters, but it
took at least ten years for them to become moderately
common in the offices. Word processors, on the other
hand, swept the establishment in less than five years,
and virtually every other scientist now has one. The
Museum still requires justification for an electric type-
writer, but no such paperwork is needed for a word
processor, which for some reason is not classed as a
typewriter. Typing on a word processor, while not ex-
actly automatic data processing, is encouraged by the
pro-ADP climate at the Museum. Electronic machines
are here to stay. They have resulted in more sophis-
ucated analyses of data on plants and animals, and they
may provide the answer to the problem of linking sci-
entists at the Mall with collections at the Museum Sup-
port Center.

Scanning Electron Microscope Laboratory

The Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) Laboratory
is a third shared facility. Developed at Cambridge Uni-
versity, the SEM brought a new dimension to science,
and has led to breakthroughs in many fields in which
the Museum is involved. The Museum acquired one in
1969—“a major step in the planned research activities
of our staff,” Smithsonian Year announced. “The mar-
velous new instrument is able to magnify the images of
tiny objects from 20 to 140,000 times and several hundred
times greater resolution than the conventional light-
optical system. ... In only four years since it became
commercially available, it has become a dominant re-
search tool in such diverse fields in biology as pollen
analysis, microfossil identification, and textile fiber-wear
studies. In one area of basic research being done at the
Smithsonian, Dr. R[ichard] H. Benson is using the SEM

The Museum

Kangaroo Miser)! ORES by C. R. W. As chemeiera m the east ie ah taxidermy shop ona Probably 1920s—
1930s.

Shared Facilities 15]

“West Court looking toward south pavilion and rotunda,
and showing the projection of the stair towers,” from
United States National Museum Bulletin 80 (1973).
Presumably the walkways were for strolling in the court, but
no one recalls the door to the court’s being unlocked for the
general public.

for study of the history of a minute fossil crustacean,
the ostracod.”'”

Benson, the first curator hired after Ripley was ap-
pointed Secretary, had worked with the second SEM
sold commercially at the University of Leicester in Eng-
land. He returned convinced that the Museum should
have such an instrument, frightfully expensive as it was
by the standards of the day. By this time several Amer-
ican companies had begun to manufacture them, and
a “Buy American” policy was in effect. After convincing
the Museum that a SEM would be a worthwhile in-
vestment, Benson was able to demonstrate, in a court
trial with the Department of Commerce in regard to
importation, that the depth of field of the Cambridge
instrument was better than that of the new models being
made in the United States.

Once the way had been cleared legally, a machine
was purchased. Benson went around the ground floor
with a pan of water, setting it on the floor and watching
how much the reflection of the lights flickered as a way
of determining the amount of vibration in different
parts of the building. The SEM went into a former
storage area in the northern half of the east range.
There are no windows, but those who work under dark-
ened conditions have no need for windows anyway.
Walter Brown, who was hired to run the SEM, made

152

such a success of it that later the U.S. Geological Survey
put a second instrument in the laboratory under his
charge. Sull later a third was installed, along with many
changes in the kinds of instruments, position of walls
in the area, plumbing, wires, gas cylinders, and other
details. As with ADP, the story of SEM is one of in-
creasing sophistication of machinery.

There is a great deal of skill involved in making one
of these brutes function, let alone function properly.
By 1983, however, familiarity with the machine had
reached the point that the Department of Agriculture
could purchase an instrument for their scientists to
operate themselves, with a minimum of assistance. Until
that time a technician had always sat down with the
scientist to operate the machine. Although one of the
first three is no longer in use, the USDA’s machine 1s
functioning well, and the scientists seem to be enjoying
running it themselves.

The SEM, again like ADP, is not for everyone or for
every problem. But where SEM investigations are used,
they provide remarkable new insight on morphological
detail at a scale no one dreamed of two decades ago.
The SEM is so popular that the biggest problem has
been to accommodate all customers. For a time it was
first come, first served. Then the system changed to
signing up on Friday. When the lines in the hall got
too long, a lottery was instituted. The SEM lab is a
shared facility in the fullest sense of the term, for the
USGS and USDA give Museum scientists part-time ac-
cess to their machines in exchange for maintenance
and technical assistance as needed.

One “first” at the laboratory was the making of a
hologram—a three-dimensional picture—of a one-celled
microfossil, the foraminifer, first cousin to an amoeba.
This enlargement of about a thousand times was nearly
a foot high, and suggests some interesting ideas for
displaying tiny objects to the public. While holograms
may not be the wave of the future, they should certainly
inspire a few novel exhibits.

In 1984 the Museum produced a major temporary
exhibit based on the work of the SEM laboratory. This
show, Exploring Microspace, attracted a great deal of
nationwide attention.’ Most of the exhibit consisted of
greatly enlarged SEM photographs, but its most pop-
ular feature was probably the instrument itself. At cer-
tain times of day, visitors could watch it being operated
by scientists or technicians. The three-month show was
such a hit that a permanent exhibit is being planned.

Travel Services Office

Sull another shared facility is the Travel Services Office,
which like the library, serves the Smithsonian staff at
large. Founded in 1966, the Travel Office is swift, ef-
ficient, and helpful, and the Museum staff has wel-
comed its presence in the building. The Museum is
more involved in travel than any bureau of the Insti-

The Museum

Northwest Indian (Haida) boats in the east courtyard b

tution, and the less distance people have to travel to a
travel office, the better.

The peregrinations of this office give a capsule view
of the changes caused by growth and construction over
the last two decades. The Travel Service began in the
Management Analysis Office in the Arts and Industries
building, but almost immediately moved to the Mu-
seum. It was in one of the glorified closets on the sec-
ond-floor rotunda balcony. Then there was a move to
the third floor of the north wing, near the photographic
laboratory; when the Travel Service left, the photo lab
lapped up the empty space. Next the Travel Service
was moved to the west side of the foyer on the ground
floor. After a time it was hustled from there to an area
on the second floor near where Hall 26, “Western Civ-
ilization,” was being constructed. For its fifth move in
ten years, it went back to Arts and Industries. Finally,
in 1983, the Travel Service people returned to the Mu-
seum. They landed on the ground floor in the north-
west corner of the main building—formerly Division

Shared Facilities

efore 1

958. The shadow may be

of Fishes territory and before that the office of Rem-
ington Kellogg—where they have stayed ever since. By
their standards, this is virtually a permanent home.

East and West Courts

The east court and the west court, in their way, have
functioned as shared facilities. In Rathbun’s account of
the building, there is no indication of any actual or
projected public use of courtyards; they were empty
space, the single most valuable commodity in a mu-
seum. The courtyards, each in turn, were the strong-
holds of the taxidermists. Most of the taxidermists’ work
was for the Department of Biology, but for half a cen-
tury they helped everyone with whatever exhibit work
was done, and they formed the basis for the exhibits
group of the 1950s."

The courtyards are reached by two doors adjacent
to the rotunda stairs on either side of the building. The
east court also has, in its southwest corner, a large en-
tryway from the shop area. Because of this large door

153

Rolland Hower with freeze-
dried animals. In the
foreground are a sunfish
(Lepomis), a cedar wax-
wing (Bombycilla), and a
muskrat (Ondatra); behind
is a Pallas cat (Felis) and a
red-tailed hawk (Buteo).
This was taken in the west
wing of the main building in
November 1967.

and its proximity to the saws, this courtyard first was
used to store stone blocks and slabs awaiting cutting
and polishing. G.P. Merrill solicited them from con-
tractors who shipped building-stone samples to Wash-
ington, only to lose a bid. In 1915, for example, the
Museum acquired stone samples submitted for the Red
Cross Building and for the Memorial Amphitheater at
Arlington."

During World War I, the east courtyard was partially
occupied. ‘Phe Museum’s taxidermists had worked in
a two-story brick structure built near the Castle in 1875.
When it was torn down to make room for the Freer
Gallery, “the building erected in the east court of the
Natural History Building by the Bureau of War Risk
Insurance and turned over to the museum at the ex-

piration of their occupancy of the building, part of

which is intended for use as a taxidermist shop, was
improved by the installation of a galvanized iron gable
skylight on the roof and the replacing of ground glass
in the west section with clear glass.”'° The next year,
1920, “the building in the east court was remodeled by
providing doors and portable glass transoms on the
west side.”'’ Later “the hot-water heating system of the
Natural History Building was extended to the concrete
building in the east court.”"*

Judging from what was done to this building, it could
not have won any architectural prizes, for it was erected
to serve as a ladies’ toilet when 3,000 clerks were in the
building. Nevertheless, this temporary structure lasted
for four decades, about as long as its predecessor be-
hind the Castle. In addition to taxidermy, part of the

154

building was used for storing whale bones, and part
was used as the labor-force locker room. Numerous live
animals were kept in the courtyard to allow the taxi-
dermists to study their movements. A pair of tortoises
lived there, too. While the vertebrate preparators on
the east side of the east range watched girls sunbathe
near the parking lot, the Geological Survey preparators
on the west side climbed out of the windows to eat lunch
in the courtyard and watch the tortoises make love.

Large objects that did not fit elsewhere went into the
courtyard. Totem poles lay there for a time. Merrill’s
stones and slabs accumulated; one large slab of sand-
stone, propped against a wall, sagged after a few dec-
ades. Some war canoes that sat in the yard eventually
were placed on rocks and finally had a roof built over
them. Until the 1950s, large whale bones were parked
here and there around the perimeter.

Eventually another temporary building was con-
structed in the east court. Shortly before World War
II, G. Arthur Cooper had begun to collect limestone
blocks in which the fossils had been replaced by silica.
When the blocks were placed in hydrochloric acid, the
limestone dissolved and the fossils remained. Magnif-
icent collections were prepared by this technique. Cooper
did the work in a tiny, unventilated third-floor room,
and no one considered the effects of acid on pipe fit-
tings. When a guard in the mineral hall below noticed
that one of the suspended light globes was two-thirds
full of an ugly brown liquid, Cooper had to find another
lab.

During the early 1950s the acid operations moved to

The Museum

Susann Braden preparing to N
mount a specimen ona

SEM stub, July 1984. The
ugly gray machine behind is
used to apply a gold/pallad-
wum coating before placing
the stub in the microscope. A
few enlargements of SEM
photographs decorate

the far wall.

a high-roofed shed in the east court. The table, a mag-
nificent slab of granite no longer needed for the ex-
hibits, was its only impressive feature. The building was
not much to begin with and rapidly became worse. Acid
fumes corroded the nailheads, and occasionally a piece
of wallboard fell down. Meanwhile, there was a contin-
uing reaction between the gypsum of the wallboard and
the acid fumes in the air, so that little piles of white
powder accumulated around the walls.

When planning for the wings began in earnest, Cooper
had to move again, and the taxidermy shop in the east
court was vacated and torn down, probably in 1959. Its
place has been taken by a large air-conditioning plant
and cooling tower. This plant has been run continu-
ously since the east wing was completed. On the north-
west corner of the east court and the northwest corner
of the west court, air-intake towers were constructed.
Their boxlike shapes extend above the roof line of the
main building and can be seen from Constitution Av-
enue.

Building the Greenhouse

There is another interesting component to the east
courtyard: a greenhouse, constructed in 1976 atop the
air-conditioning plant. A proper study of taxonomic
botany requires, along with equipment and labs, a large
dried collection in a herbarium, a good library, and
facilities for live plants. The Museum was superb in the
first two but lacked the third. In the early 1970s, a new
fumatorium and drying room were built near the west

Shared Facilities

loading dock, but $25,000 of the money allocated had
not been spent. Robert Read, who had come to the
Department of Botany in 1972 to work on Flora of North
America, was told to build a greenhouse with this money,
and in all innocence he started.

All significant government construction in Washing-
ton has to be cleared through the Fine Arts Commis-
sion. Somehow the appropriate homework was not done
when the air-intake towers were constructed, and the
Institution was not in the good graces of the Commis-
sion. No one had told Read of this litthe matter, and
his greenhouse plans were rejected twice before a de-
sign that would be acceptable when viewed from the
air was finally approved. (The Museum lies in an area
of airspace prohibited to fixed-wing planes, but the
bird’s-eye view had to be approved regardless.) Several
years and a cost overrun later, the greenhouse opened.
It has been an important research facility for the staff.

All Quiet in the West Court

The west court has had a more placid history; for almost
fifty years, practically nothing happened there. After
World War I the Museum acquired the famous NC-4,
the first airplane to cross the Atlantic, or at least part
of it, but this aircraft could not be properly displayed
in the corrugated shed behind the Castle. According
to Paul Garber, there was talk of hoisting it over the
roof of the Museum and into the west courtyard, but
after extended discussion the plan was abandoned. ‘Then

155

Victor G. Springer (without his usual mustache), curator of
fishes, in the west court in front of Office of Exhibits
buildings, October 23, 1963. The cigar is probably an El
Producto.

an art group in Philadelphia offered to design a foun-
tain for the center, but this offer was kindly refused.
A temporary hoist built in the west court in the late
1920s was removed when it was no longer needed.

During the late 1940s the only activity in the court-
yard—according to Lachner, whose office looked out
on it—was the quiet decaying of a few wooden boats.
Charles Handley, the mammalogist, recalls that the grass
was lush and the grasshoppers abundant. Pigeons ate
the grasshoppers and sparrow hawks swept in to eat
the pigeons.

The “Butler Buildings”

In 1957 a series of three connected metal “Butler build-
ings” was put up in the west court, and this became the
home of the rapidly expanding exhibits program. ‘The
west and center buildings housed the exhibits staff and
the displays in preparation; the east one was used mainly
for anthropological storage. When they moved from
the east-court toilet building to the west-court Butler
building, the taxidermists were officially transferred
from the Department of Zoology to the Office of Ex-
hibits. Designers, carpenters, model makers, painters,
and others were all busy with the new halls.

In these buildings, considerable effort was devoted
to such projects as carving sticks into the shape of pa-
pyrus stems to go into the water-buffalo exhibit. Over
about two years the stick-carvers turned out thousands,
inspiring a local reporter to do an Arbor Day story on
people who “made trees.” Another day, a brown recluse
spider in its web and the shed skin of another were

we <A os oy -E
Thomas McIntyre cataloguing specimens of several genera
of squirrels, September 1971. The cinderblock wall is in the
west wing, and the paper tape machine today has value
only as a collector's item.

found in a box of dried African mammal skins. Because
this spider is so poisonous, the building was evacuated
and fumigated.

One major technique was developed in the Butler
buildings: the freeze-drying of specimens. The speci-
men, positioned by wires and other supports, is quickly
frozen with liquid nitrogen and then kept cold until all
moisture evaporates. For some mammals it works quite
well, for some reptiles it is fair, and it requires great
skill to work well with fish. Of course one is limited by
the size of the cryogenic chamber, and no large animals
have ever been freeze-dried.'”

Exhibits Staff Expands

The exhibits group kept expanding. Some workers were
moved into Stone Hall, abandoned by the Geological
Survey when the east wing was completed; others were
assigned to the high-ceilinged rooms in the north wing
of the main building near the north elevators. A lot of
casting of models for exhibits was done there, and ex-
cess plaster kept getting into the sink. Eventually the
pipes were filled solid all the way to the ground floor,
and new plumbing had to be installed when the area
was renovated.

In 1962 and 1963, when the Museum of History and
Technology was substantially finished, much of the ex-
hibits staff went there, though there were still a number
of people in the west courtyard and scattered in still-
closed exhibit halls. When the west wing was finally
completed and the scientists moved in, the ground floor
on the south side of the main building was modified.

The Museum

mt |
Jack F. Marquardt, librarian of the Natural History
Branch, in the decked area of the west north range, ground
floor. Behind him are the various devices that librarians
now use more commonly than pencils. Jack is on his lunch
hour and 1s trying to keep ahead of staff requests by reading
science fiction. July 1984.

While decking on the Mall side was extended, some
decking on the north side, where the old offices of
Fishes had been, was removed. This area became a large
cabinet-making and paint shop for exhibits, and re-
mains so today. Eventually a large share of the exhibits
program moved to “Exhibits Central” at 1111 North
Capitol Street, a catch-all building for a number of
Smithsonian activities.

James Mead’s Project
In 1972, when national concern about marine mammals
was running high, James Mead arrived at the Museum
from two years at a whaling station. Mead was to in-
vestigate strandings of mammals along the East Coast
and to increase the size of the collections. The Division
of Mammals had hoped to develop a center for the
study of marine mammals in the Torpedo Factory in
Alexandria, but this became an artists’ center, so Mead
moved into the Butler building along with a few re-
maining people from Exhibits. He set up a cooking
system for boiling porpoise skulls in a former spray-
paint booth. The exhaust fan moved the smell into the
courtyard, whence it soon was picked up by the air-
intake tower. After that there was more removal of flesh
by hand in preparation of specimens, and less boiling.
The best way ever found to clean bones for osteo-
logical investigation is to remove as much of the meat
as possible by hand and then let dermestid beetle larvae
eat the rest. This standard technique is, to many people,
one of the most curious aspects of the Museum’s work.
For about twenty-five years the “south shed” behind

Shared Facilities

MGHauie Tawney on the third floor of the main building,
west wing, July 1984; the office was formerly part of the
Division of Birds. The move to the Museum Support Center
is accompanied by large amounts of computer paper from
data processing.

the Castle was used for the beetles, the theory being
that if they were kept away from the Museum, the
collections would be safe from their scavenging. Over
the years this facility became increasingly decrepit and
smelly.

In 1975 the dermestid beetles and a laboratory for
the preparation of large specimens, mostly from Mead’s
collecting, were moved into rooms in the Osteo-Prep-
aration Laboratory, a small two-story building in the
east court, between the courtyard wall and the air-con-
ditioning plant. This was a major step up from the south
shed and the Butler building. Not only did Mead ap-
preciate it; everyone else in the Museum did too. One
small whale being brought to the new lab did fall off
a cart in the entryway to the courtyard, and because
there was no way to move it, Mead and others prepared
it on the spot. Air-conditioning engineers who had to
walk past it going to and from work were cranky while
the bones were being flensed.

By 1973, when the Butler buildings were vacated,
the Museum’s marvelous taxidermy staff had shrunk
to one person, yet there was no space for skin prepa-
ration. On the third floor of the Museum, apart from
the private facilities in the director’s office and Holmes’s
old office, there was one large women’s restroom and
one men’s room, each with marble floors, marble walls,
and marble partitions. The decision was made to con-
vert the men’s room for work on skins; this facility is
known as the “marble ballroom.” In the game of win-
ners and losers, male scientists in the main building
now must walk great distances to the wings.

Chapter 18

Shops and

Maintenance

HE MUSEUM IS MORE THAN laboratories and exhibit

halls, specimens and books. Without all its sup-
porting parts it will not work, and without proper main-
tenance it falls apart. When the new Museum was
planned, accordingly, the ground floor of the east wing
was designed for equipment and shops. The people
who worked there, reporting to the building superin-
tendent rather than the director, were necessarily the
first to be in the new National Museum.

The machinery must have been impressive. When
Queen Marie of Rumania visited, Wetmore detailed
Bassler to escort her around, and he showed her all
the ground floor, suggesting that she seldom had a
chance to see how a museum really worked. ‘The new
building’s huge boilers and direct-current generators
supplied heat and electricity for all the Smithsonian
buildings by means of tunnels running under the Mall.'
Each annual report gave meticulous figures on the
amount of coal used and the cost per kilowatt-hour of
electricity. Rathbun, not surprisingly, offered details of
every pipe and fuse.

He regretted, however, that the heating plant “could
not have been located in a separate structure, on ac-
count of the annoyance caused by coal dust and soot
and by vibration produced by certain parts of the ma-
chinery, troubles that can best be remedied by the es-
tablishment of a central power plant for the Govern-
ment buildings in the western part of the city, as has
been proposed.”” Twenty-five years after the heating
plant began operations, it was closed down; no one
missed it. The six permanent and several seasonal work-
ers whose jobs disappeared were resettled in other gov-
ernment positions. The government’s power plant went
into service in 1934, and the Smithsonian thereafter
was content to purchase heat.’

It also stopped manufacturing its own electricity, but

Woodworking equipment in the new National Museum,
probably in the 1920s or 1930s. The belt-driven machinery
was powered by the Museum’s power plant until the mid- :
1930s. The carpentry shop is the only shop that has not
changed its position on the ground floor.

159

this was a different kind of story. The Institution cus-
tomarily had purchased electricity for two months or
so every summer, when its power plant was closed. By
1916 “the amount of electric current generated was
greater than in previous years, as more lights were used
and it has been found necessary to increase the size of
the lamps in most of the exhibition halls.”* By the mid-
dle of the 1920s, some of the needed electricity had to
be purchased year-round. In 1928, the year the small
boiler for hot water to the offices gave out, the engineer
obtained new pistons for his three 250-horsepower en-
gines and was able to produce more current. Demands
for light and power in all the buildings rose steadily.’
By 1931 the number of outside cables had to be in-
creased, and it was evident that the plant could not
cope with demand. In 1934, 191 new light fixtures were
installed in the third-floor laboratories. Judging from
the lighting of the 1950s, it must have been as bright
back then as the inside of a coal mine on a cloudy day.

The switch to purchased power in 1934 did not end
all troubles. “The problem of obtaining additional elec-
tric supply becomes more serious each year, and it will
soon be imperative either to increase the number of
cables entering the Natural History Building or procure
alternating current,” Wetmore wrote in 1938. “The
Smithsonian buildings are practically the only Govern-
ment group in Washington not using alternating cur-
rent, which may be purchased at more economical rates
than direct current.” In June 1940 the Museum finally
began to convert to alternating power, a job that took
about a year. The boilers were finally taken out of the
building.

New passenger elevators were installed about this
time. Ancient as they look today, the ones in the rotunda
were completed in July 1941, and those in the north
pavilion in December, just before the United States
entered World War II. Whether it was lack of money
or the start of the war, the freight elevators were not
changed in 1941. They were still being run by direct
current until the wings were put on, and the converter
had to be turned on before they could be used.

An ice plant was authorized in 1911, ostensibly for

Plan of shops on the ground
floor, east wing of main building,
from United States National

Museum Bulletin 80 (1913).
This was drawn before the ice-
making plant was installed.

the preservation of collections, and was operated for
decades. The Annual Report of the Smithsonian Insti-
tution dutifully recorded that in fiscal year 1947, 186.7
tons of ice were produced at a cost, apart from labor,
of $1.16 per ton. After this entry, all the shops dis-
appeared from the official records, and except for the
opening of exhibit halls or major construction, the
building is no longer mentioned. The ice plant func-
tioned at least unt 1948, but was gone by the early
1950s. Ice was stored in two rooms behind the rotunda
so that a wagon could drive into the tunnel and be
loaded with ice for the other buildings. G. Arthur Cooper
recalls the pitchers of ice he used to keep photographic
solutions cool in the sweatbox of a darkroom in the
corner of his office. For a ume bottled water in iced
coolers was provided for the staff during the awful
Washington summers.

Maintenance

Contractors before World War I were no different from
those of today in leaving problems behind. Consider
this, for a building five years old: “Serious leaks in the
upper story of the building were traced to and neces-

sitated the repointing of joints in the three courses of

stone adjoining the roofs in the west court, and also in
the outer stonework of the west range above the main
cornice. The exterior metal framework and sills of all
the first and second story windows in the courts were
painted, as were the walls of the auditorium which had
become defaced through the seepage of moisture. For
the protection of floors showing wear, a part of the
wood surface in the corridors of the third story was
covered with a preparation of cork, while all of the
cement paving in the corridors in the ground floor was
treated with cement paint.”

All this maintenance work was done by workers in
the shops. While old-timers of the scientific staff think

160

COAL BUNKER HT

STORAGE |

fondly of the days when the ground floor took care of
everything from heat to ice, a look at salaries provides
a rather jarring trip down memory lane. In 1918 the
head of the paint shop got ninety-five dollars a month
(fifty-five cents an hour), and the painters made three
dollars and seventy cents per day. In the sheet-metal
shop, two men made eighty-five dollars a month, one
was paid sixty dollars, and another was paid fifty dol-
lars. To give the wages of the plumbers at that time
would bring tears to the eyes of any present-day home
owner. In 1927 the Annual Report noted the great rate
of turnover of labor, especially among the temporary
help, who got the lowest pay and no leave.

Like everything else in the building, the shops have
changed their locations. The carpentry shop 1s the last
remnant of the old days, both in appearance and lo-
cation, occupying much of the south side of the east
wing in the main building. The sheet-metal and awning
shops at the west end of the carpentry shop have gone,
the awning shop falling victim to air conditioning and
the sheet-metal work moving into the new east wing.
The paint shop at the east end of the main building
also moved to the east wing, and its former place was
decked over for offices and locker rooms. Old-time
cabinetmakers like Mr. Becker and Mr. Fischer are long
gone, and their descendants are now in the exhibits
shops. The area where the plumbing and mechanical
shops once were has been decked over, mainly for of-
fices. On the east end of the main building, where the
electrical shop used to be, are more double-decker of-
fices. The old furnace room now houses the saws used
to section large meteorites and rocks, creating a new
job for the chain hoist that was originally installed to
move carloads of clinkers and ash.

On the courtyard side, an office now occupied by
Buildings Maintenance was a supply room until the
early 1960s. Clayton Ray, a vertebrate paleontologist,

The Museum

has a vivid recollection of Kellogg’s taking him there
and telling him to get whatever he needed in the way
of office supplies. Billy Knowles was the building’s orig-
inal purchasing agent and supply clerk, still remem-
bered by a few for his friendliness and efficiency. He
never wore an overcoat, regardless of the weather, and
one winter he caught a chill and died. Both Henderson
and Perrygo remember what a contrast he made to a
taxidermist who had been to the Arctic with Peary and
could not wait for winter so that he could wear his furs
to work.

Even with the new wings, there was insufficient space
for the shops as the Institution and the Museum grew

during the 1960s. In the 1970s, when the kinds of

exhibit cases changed, the glass shop disappeared. The
electric shop moved several times before ending up in
the old awning shop. The plumbers dispossessed by
sedimentologists who needed the ground floor for lab-
oratories, moved to the basement, only to be dispos-
sessed by ever-growing collections and by volunteer
restorers of old pots. Today it is virtually impossible to
find the plumbing shop. One must go into the east
courtyard and through the air-conditioning building
to enter their cinderblock lean-to. Perhaps the plumbers
feel that if the scientists find out where they are hiding,
they will be dispossessed again.

Painting is more complicated now than in the days
of solid “government green.” The liberalized 1950s
brought a choice of six colors, and now there are 1,200
possible color combinations. Repainting an office or
touching up an exhibit can be a nightmare. The paint
shop has calculated that if the Museum of Natural His-
tory were placed on, say, a three-year schedule of re-
painting, it would require more painters than are now
employed to cope with all the buildings. The Institu-
tion’s growth has not been reflected in a swelling main-
tenance force, only partly because of more-efficient
machinery. Some work is contracted out. While it is
generally agreed that work done by the Smithsonian
shops is better, the waiting list is long.

Since the 1970s, when they started wearing uniforms,
the shop employees have been color-coded. The labor
force wears blue; painters and plasterers, the traditional
white; groundskeepers, green. Mechanics, plumbers,
sheet-metal workers, carpenters, and engineers are in
brown. Anyone with a white shirt is a foreman or su-
pervisor, just as any male guard with a white shirt is a
sergeant or above.

The Main Mail Room

The Museum building remains the center for many
support activities of the Institution, all very important
and all occupying space that the curators would love
to fill. For example, the area of the west loading dock
is the main mail room for all buildings. Mail for the
Museum has increased about 75 percent in the last
fifteen years; mail for the Institution overall has more

Shops and Maintenance

f. fa
Crowded storage near the loading dock on the ground floor,
west wing of main building. January 1950.

than doubled. The mailroom workers, who wear what-
ever they like, are always kind enough to reopen the
last mailbag of the day for scientists running in late
with manuscripts.

“Lanier,” who delivered mail office-to-office in the
1930's, felt that taking responsibility for the U.S. Mail
was important enough to warrant a uniform. On his
days off he played the trumpet at Laurel Raceway to
signal the start of each race, and one day he showed
up at work in his scarlet jacket. A few days later, Wet-
more saw that he was issued a jacket and cap. In spite
of a good memory, Lanier had a problem with his job
in that he could hardly read. He judged names by length.
When he walked in and handed a curator the mail, the
person would shuffle through and hand back the pieces
not addressed to him, being careful to say to whom
those letters were to go.

Housekeeping

Not everyone on the ground floor is involved with the
shops. As a result of reorganization in 1973, the re-
sponsibility for managing the Museum building was
decentralized and came again to be under the director.
Today the building is well managed, and this is no small
task. Of the more than five million tourists each year,
how many are likely to use the public rest rooms, and

161

Frank Braisted cleaning the wall near the living coral reef
at the entrance to Hall 16, July 1984.

just how many cases of paper towels are likely to be
needed? There is a lot of building to be cleaned every
single day. Public areas are cleaned before 10:00 A.M.,
and then offices and nonpublic areas are taken care of.

A couple of amenities have faded out. Unul at least
the mid-1950s, nickel-plated spittoons were regularly
delivered to many of the offices, and the men’s public
toilet had one. There were none in the exhibit halls,
and as late as the 1940s some guards had to go toa
window and spit before answering a tourist’s inquiry.
One of the people who delivered the spittoons walked
in a stately manner from office to office, holding each
vessel daintily between two fingers; he was a church
deacon, and that was the way he held the collection
plate. Towel service, a weekly ritual, was run by the
Smithsonian in cooperation with the D.C. Prison laun-
dry. In the early 1960s the jail doubled its prices, and
the service was discontinued. A few hardy towels—white,
with a blue stripe—are sull in the hands of staff old-
timers who launder them at home. In at least two di-
visions, they are laundered and distributed regularly.

“There was a ume,” Judd wrote nostalgically, “when

162

the National Museum prided itself on spotless exhibi-
tion cases, free from the imprints of sticky little hands
and adult noses. In the archaeological halls, at least,
this cleaning job was one for the ‘bull gang’, five husky
Negroes who worked as a unit and found justifiable
self-satisfaction in their results. Our big floor cases, each
with its three-hundred-pound plate-glass side panels
offered individual challenges despite their similarity.
Two men would lift out the heavy glass and support it
while the others cleaned. As they went about their day-
long task these men frequently broke into song, country
hymns sung with all the rich resonance and harmony
of a church organ. Museum visitors stopped at a dis-
tance to listen, and I shall always believe we lost some-
thing unique and distinctive when ‘the bull gang’ was
discontinued.”

The Museum stil prides itself on being spotless. The
exhibit halls still contain plenty of glass that needs daily
wiping, if not the acres of glass they presented in the
past. Other changes besides the glass have been good
news to the cleaning force. The big event, for them,
was not the addition of the wings, but the replacement
by terrazzo of the wooden floors, which had been made
worse in some areas by cork coverings.

One last housekeeping tale is the story of the yellow
wastebaskets. As a result of “Earth Day” in 1970, aware-
ness of the environment and concern for conservation
began to trickle through the nation, reaching even the
General Services Administration. This agency an-
nounced, in some very obscure place, a program to
salvage paper. One of the scientists in the building hap-
pened to see it, and suggested that the Museum might
save a fair number of trees if a paper-salvage program
were instituted.

The Museum had sponsored scrap-metal and news-
paper collecuons during World War II, but the tradi-
tion of these had long since vanished. The new notion
was for each office to have two wastebaskets, one for
trash and a yellow one for salvage. It took an enormous
amount of time to train some curators on the difference
between carbon paper, which was not saved, and en-
velopes, which were, but eventually they got it. After
a few weeks there was never an apple core in with the
paper to be salvaged.

The only drawback was that this made extra work
for the cleaning people, requiring them to carry two
bags on their carts, one for regular trash and one for
the salvage paper. It would have been easy enough
simply not to bother, but when the program was ex-
plained to the maintenance crews, they agreed to do
it. Not only did they agree, they did it for years. Long
after the General Services Administration lost interest
in the environment, the Museum continued to salvage
paper until the GSA just stopped accepting it. Very few
groups willingly make their daily job a bit harder. There
are still a few yellow wastebaskets around, and the newer
staff have no idea what they once meant. Oo

The Museum

Charles Eblen cutting a
metal strip in the machine

shop, east wing, ground floor.
April 1984.

Building an exhibit case in
the exhibits shop, west wing
of main building; April
1984.

Shops and Maintenance

Robert Gutrick washing
down the north steps before
opening the building, July
1984. To the right is the
access ramp for the handi-
capped. The three lines on
the plaque to the left read,
“Smithsonian Institution,
National Museum of
Natural History, National
Museum of Man.” The small
sign below lists the dates and
tames of summer hours.

163

Chapter 19

Others in the
uilding

Ee THE WAY AFFILIATED organizations have fig-
ured in the story of the Museum, it must be clear
that the building’s various occupants all are part of the
same Museum community and have interests in com-
mon. This concept certainly encompasses those who
work in the shops. Between the systematists and the
carpenters, however, lie several more groups of people
who are important to the building and definitely part
of the community.

This brings up again the persistent question of just
how many people work in the building. The correct
answer is that no one can be sure where the number
stands at any given moment. The last time identification
badges were made, about 1,700 were issued. Because
some of those in the building have badges issued from
other buildings, the number present each day is probably
closer to 1,800. The population fluctuates, with a few
more scientific visitors in the summer than at other
times of the year. At the moment just over 500 persons
constitute the formal, paid Museum staff—less than
one-third of those working there on an average day.

Because they are in uniform, the group of non-
Museum staff that are easiest to identify are the guards.
The Smithsonian from its inception employed watch-
men, whose job originally included running errands
and, in winter, tending fires. By the time the National
Museum opened, in 1881, it was established procedure
to have a person on duty in the public areas. Employees
had to supply their own uniforms, which were modeled
in general on police uniforms of the time. Hours were
long, commonly a twelve-hour shift, and it was not until
1907 that the watchmen were given one Sunday off
per month. The forty-hour week did not arrive until
1945,

Alexander Wetmore, sixteen years after his retirement,
studying birds on the sixth floor of the east wing, November
1969. The light is designed to simulate daylight as closely
as possible. In the foreground 1 is a blue-faced booby (Sula),
but the principal interest is in the series of females and
white-breasted males of the three-wattled bell bird
(Procnius).

The Guard Force

Once the new National Museum opened, it became the
headquarters of the Smithsonian’s guard force. A small
room to the west of the elevators in the north lobby
was the guard office, and in spite of all the changes
that have gone on in the building, it still is. In the 1950s
the foyer, now occupied by the Evans Gallery, under-
went extensive alterations. One exhibit on the east side
was removed, and the area was decked over; the lower
floor became a health room, and the upper floor was
the locker room for guards. When the telephone room
moved from the west north range to the Museum of
History and Technology in the early 1960s, this space
was taken over by the guards and decked. ‘The upper
level became another locker room, and the lower floor
is now a security area where Museum fire-alarm systems
are monitored.

After the new National Museum opened, there were
two companies of guards, one for this large new build-
ing and one for the Castle and the Arts and Industries
building. In 1964 a third company was established for
the Museum of History and Technology. With each
additional building, the company structure of the guard
force has been modified. The Museum’s guards do not
report to the director. Formerly under the office of the
Institution’s buildings superintendent, they have been
part of the Office of Protection Services since 1973.

The guards serve in three watches, the hours of which
have changed slightly over the years. In the early 1940s
about thirty men were on the day shift in the Natural
History Building, and about seven on each of the other
two shifts. The guard force in the building has about
doubled since then, in part because of longer hours
during the summer. As the Smithsonian complex grew,
the number of guards also increased, and they now
constitute the largest single group of employees that is
active in every building of the Smithsonian.

There have been black officers on the force at least
since the 1880s. For many years black officers were
assigned to the night shift, ostensibly because they pre-
ferred it. In the very early 1950s several of these officers
indicated that they preferred to work days. They kept

A docent talking about dinosaurs to a class. Several Phytosaur skulls are in the case behind. Although these still are on

exhibit, this picture shows the revised hall of the 1960s, not the current one.

indicating their preference, and finally they were given
a fair share of day work.

Guards must agree to work on any shift and in any
building. In recent years there has been less shift ro-
tation and less assignment from one building to an-
other, and this has allowed the individual officers to
increase their familiarity with a building. During the
late 1930s, Edward Henderson suggested that because
many visitors asked questions about the gems, it might
be wise to keep the same guard on duty in the gem and
mineral hall so that he could become familiar with the
collection and answer questions better. Wetmore agreed,
and the mineralogists put together a reference book
for the guard. Today the Smithsonian has a pocket
guide for guards telling where the principal attractions
are located in the various buildings. While the guards
are reluctant to repeat some of the silly questions they
have been asked, one does recall a tourist’s looking at
the world’s largest crystal ball and asking if that was
the Hope Diamond.

Being a guard has never been financially rewarding.
Many good employees have been lost to higher-paying
jobs and a few have joined the technical staff of the

166

Museum; yet some have retired after thirty or even
forty years’ service. There is a modest night-pay dif-
ferential; the Museum is particularly drafty and gloomy
late at night and the extra pay is earned. The fire alarms
are tested on Friday nights at 3:00 A.M., and even if
one knows the noise is coming, it still makes one jump.
“Railroad” Harris, who had been on the force thirty-
eight years, recalls taking a new man around to show
him the alarm stations and warning him to stay away
from the sword on “Kaiser Bill,” the German officer
manikin standing at one end of the attic. After one walk
through the attic, the new man turned in his gun at
the office and quit on the spot.

In the 1930s and 1940s each guard was equipped
with a gas billyclub—a billy with a tear-gas canister at
the tp. Since then, guards have been issued revolvers.
In 1951 the Secretary was given legal authority to des-
ignate protection officers who have the right to enforce
regulations and to arrest if necessary. Arrests are sel-
dom made, but they are made.

While today’s large volume of visitors probably pro-
vides extra security for the exhibits, it increases the
problem of pickpocketing and purse snatching. The

The Museum

WSONTAN INST]

TURAL HIS
-BUILDIN¢

R.E. Blackwelder, an entomologist formerly on the staff,
and Waldo Schmitt on the south steps, in 1976. At the
tume, “Uncle Waldo” was in his erghteenth year of
retirement work at the office. The plaque does not mention
the Museum of Man.

guards are always watching for this, but inevitably a
few tourists do suffer losses. Once a young man found
“operating” a self-service elevator and charging tourists
twenty-five cents a ride was escorted from the building
and advised not to come back.

Losses from the exhibits have been very few, and
nothing noteworthy has disappeared. In one incident
from the 1930s, a guard noticed that an African spear
was missing from a wall display, and reported it. The
next day he kept watch, and observed a man moving
another spear slightly upward in its retaining brackets.
Each day the spear was pushed a little higher. The
guard was watching on the day the thief got it loose
and hurled it out the window to an accomplice. Both
were caught.

A few years ago a former employee tried to rob the
museum shop before it opened for the day, but was
caught before he reached the exit. In the 1970s a
professional mineral thief was captured after he re-
moved several screws from a case and set off the alarm.
Not every case 1s equipped with an alarm, but most are.
Security screws are also used on many of the cases.

One fairly new development is the appearance of
women on the guard force. This was not so much a
result of the women’s liberation movement as a con-
sequence of Civil Service reclassification. For about sixty
years the elevators in the building were run by oper-
ators, and since the early 1940s most of the operators
were women. Guards were forbidden to operate the
elevators during working hours, except in an emer-
gency. Eventually, it was decided to abolish the separate
classification of elevator operator, and these women
became part of the guard force. For a time the elevators
were viewed as “perimeter security” because they pro-

Others in the Building

Officer Harrison McPhaul in the Gem Hall, at the west
end of Hall 19, July 1984. Behind him are people lined up
to see the Hope Diamond.

The information desk, aed by oo a on the west
side of the lobby. This desk is normally by the entrance to
the Evans Gallery but was moved for the “Aditi” show of
life in India. July 1985.

167

vided access to the offices on the third floor, and a few

tourists were flustered by the sight of a smiling female
elevator Operator packing a .32-caliber pistol. Other
women have come directly onto the force as guards. In
the recruiting of male and female guards alike, pref-
erence Is given to veterans of the armed forces.

Another new development is the K-9 corps that be-
gan to be used in 1976. Some of the curators expressed
dismay, fearing that the dogs might urinate on speci-
mens in the exhibit halls, but this concern has proved
to be unfounded. Using dogs in the Museum on an
irregular schedule has added an extra measure of se-
curity.

An important recent event in the history of the build-
ing was The Precious Legacy, a temporary exhibit in the
Evans Gallery in 1983. This was the first showing of
objects from the Jewish Museum in Prague. Security
was exceedingly important; should anything have been
lost or damaged, it could have had political ramifica-
tions. When the Israeli ambassador toured the exhibit,
the building was sealed.

Large crowds were expected, but they exceeded all
estimates. Lines ran from the rotunda through Hall 8,
down the Constitution Avenue steps, across the lobby,
and finally into the Evans Gallery. Often the wait was
more than an hour. In addition, a ticket system for
admission at stated times was instituted. Throughout
all this the guards remained poised, and no one was
hurried through the exhibit. One of the officers com-
mented that the Office of Protection Services had been
involved in the planning from the beginning, and that
this was the first ime their views and suggestions were
seriously considered. The net effect has been that the
guards, more than ever before, feel like part of the
establishment.

168

The Discovery Room, 1980.
Amidst the children are a
parent in the foreground, a
volunteer midway, and a
staff member behind.
Everyone seems to be
enjoying learning.

The Importance of Volunteers

One of the remarkable aspects of the Museum and the
Institution is the large number of volunteers. The
Smithsonian is one of the few places in the world where
people seem willing to stand in line to volunteer. The
volunteer hours contributed over a year approximate
those of paid staff.”

The Museum’s information service, run from desks
in the rotunda and the lobby, is entirely a volunteer
operation. The desks are staffed from 10:00 A.M. to
4:00 p.M. throughout the year, with sixty-two time slots
to be filled each week. This is a lot of hours, yet the
desk is never unattended. All sorts of questions are
asked and answered. Certainly the tourists, and the
scientific and other visitors who have to be announced
before proceeding to behind-the-scenes destinations,
would put an overload on the guard force, were it not
for these volunteers.

Another place where volunteers are extremely im-
portant in Museum work is the docent program. These
volunteers lead school groups from one exhibit to the
next and make certain the visit is a learning experience,
not just a vacation from the classroom. For fiscal year
1983, in the Museum of Natural History, 310 docents
put in more than 30,000 hours.’ As a reflection of
changing times in America, the docents now include a
growing number of men.

In addition to docents who roam the halls when school
is in session, there are two educational areas in the
building that are staffed year-round by volunteers. The
Discovery Room is staffed almost entirely by volunteers,
about fifty-five of them in all. Two part-time paid staff
members are responsible for the room and its speci-
mens and for overseeing the volunteer program.*

The Naturalist Center attracts the even more scien-

The Museum

The Naturalist Cent
to teach. He is holding a slab containing fossil ferns (Neuropteris and Alethopteris).

tfically-inclined volunteer. In general, these workers
are people who are interested in specimens and in shar-
ing their interest with others. At least one member of
the current staff, Donald Davis in Entomology, traces
his interest directly to volunteer work done when he
was in high school.

Gus Van Beek, a specialist in Middle Eastern ar-
cheology, has been extremely successful in obtaining
volunteers to work at archeological sites. Reasoning that
others might like to help even if they were not on a
“dig,” he put out a call for assistance over ten years
ago, and gota volunteer group that has gathered weekly
ever since to fit potsherds together. They met in one
closed exhibit hall, then another; then in the basement
of the west wing and finally in the east wing basement.
This is the longest continuously running program of
volunteer scientific work at the Museum, but some de-
partments have received as much as eight years of part-
time assistance from a constantly changing cast of vol-
unteers. In fiscal year 1983, 247 behind-the-scenes vol-
unteers contributed 59,043 hours of work. Annually
they receive a pat on the back as their principal reward,
plus a great deal of inner satisfaction. Volunteer work

Others in the Building

twice a week

extends the efforts of the scientists and has become a
significant facet of Museum operations in some de-
partments.

From volunteers working in the collections, it is a
short step to retired scientists, or, more correctly, un-
paid scientists. Most retirees are from the staff or af-
filiated organizations, but retirees from the Depart-
ment of Agriculture find a home in Botany or
Entomology, and occasionally scientists from further
afield come to the Museum for a year or more. Henry
Collins has been coming in to the Museum for sixty-
one years, as has T. Dale Stewart, if one counts the
time Stewart took off to go to medical school. Edward
Henderson has been coming in fifty-six years and G. A.
Cooper for fifty-five.

At the other end of the scale are students. There are
students of all ages in the Museum. About twenty-five
each year are supported by the Smithsonian, ranging
from lowly undergraduates to distinguished Regents
Fellows. There are usually at least twice that many other
students and special visitors in the building who have
come to study the collections for a day or more.

169

Chapter 20

Visitors

HE NATIONAL MUSEUM HAS ALWAYS BEEN a public

museum, and so far as one can determine, there
never has been an instance of anyone’s being refused
admission during visiting hours. Because most mu-
seums in America either charge a fee or ask for a do-
nation, visitors expect to pay admission, but no one’s
money has ever been accepted. This is nota trivial point,
for some years ago, under a Conservative government,
the British Museum of Natural History was ordered to
install a turnstile and charge admission. At that time
the Conservatives had already lost much support, but
to charge for a public museum was the final straw. A
few months later the Labor Party came in, and the
turnstiles went out. After the Labor government lost
and the Conservatives returned to power, no one at-
tempted to reinstate the charge for entry into that
government-supported museum.

If the National Museum of Natural History were to
charge an admission fee of, say, three dollars, it would
bring in enough money at least to maintain the building
and exhibits. However, in exchange for a few cents
apiece from their taxes, the people of America may
enjoy for free the exhibits in all the Smithsonian mu-
seums, have their priceless national collections cared
for, and, through scientific publication, reap the fruits
of the Museum’s research.

The American people seem to respect the Smithson-
ian Institution and all it stands for, judging from the
behavior of the visiting public. There is virtually no
trash on the floors, and graffiti on the walls are almost
nonexistent. Some of the older staff members cannot
quite get used to the casual dress of the tourists; when
they were young, going to a museum was a serious
business, requiring one’s best clothing. Nevertheless,
casual dress is now a way of life throughout the world.
Some of the older guards have noted that the noise
level since the 1950s seems to be much higher, but this
is probably a result of the great increase in tourism.

Visitors lined up along Constitution Avenue to see the
Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit in the foyer, March 1905.
Behind the young man standing near the east driveway ts
the walkway to the east door of the wing, never opened.

171

The number of visitors to the Museum of Natural
History and the other Smithsonian buildings has always
been closely watched. When the Institution was still
fairly young, an anonymous clerk compiled annual at-
tendance figures for the Castle and the National Mu-
seum. These show the dramatic increase that resulted
from the opening of the new National Museum, es-
pecially after Sunday hours were instituted:

One of the most important events of the year
[1911], if not in the history of the Museum, was
the beginning of Sunday openings to the public,
whereby the privileges of the establishment were
extended equally to all classes. First advocated by
the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution at
least 50 years ago, the means required for the
additional heating and watchmen only became
available in the provisions made for maintenance
since the completion of the new building. This
innovation applies for the present only to the new
building, with hours from 1:30 to 4:30 o’clock in
the afternoon. ... On the first date of opening,
October 8, 1911, the attendance reached the
almost unprecedented figure of 15,467. It fell to
4,570 on the second, to 3,885 on the third, and to
3,280 on the fourth Sunday, with an average for
all Sundays of 1,666 visitors, as against a week-day
average of 693 visitors. There is no doubt,
therefore, that the step has been fully justified,
and it is hoped that the provision of an additional
place to which people may resort on Sundays for
instruction and diversion has not been without
some moral influence. !

The Sunday openings were a success from the very
beginning, and for thirty years, in spite of its shorter
hours, Sunday consistently drew more visitors than any
other day of the week. When there were sufficient funds
to open the other Smithsonian buildings on Sunday,
they too proved popular. During World War II Sunday
became a full day, and eventually the Museum was open
the same hours every day of the week. With the five-
day work week, Sunday is no longer the one big day,
but shares the weekend crowds with Saturday.

Fiscal
Year
1910!
191]
1912
1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919°
1920
192]
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
193]
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947

li.
2)
3:
4
5

TABLE 4

Museum of Natural History
Attendance 1910-1984

Number of
Visitors

50,403
Lol, 112
281,887
319,806
329,381
o21,¢12
381,228
407,025
401,100
132,859
422,984
467,299
441,604
508,518
540,776
557,016
581,563
561,286
618,773
650,815
625,326
631,498
600,535
519,977
507,948
606,145
635,561
702,657
750,307
#09, 139
809,661
803,466
622,989
424,055
493,239
Do 1,7 12
606,310
637,917

Fiscal
Year
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969:
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976?
(S77
1978
1979
1980
198]
1982
1983
1984

Number of
Visitors

650,704

689,233

724,948

757,126

854,463

830,775

861,955

905,292
1,007,578
1,160,041
1,401,772
1,957,747
2,218,747
2,047,973
2:019,053
2,200,007
2,012,006
3,051,472
2,988,006
3,409,957
3,257,957
2,916,749
3,269,791
3,456,755
3,404,571
3,905,836
3,067,694
4,442,611
6,435,654
5,111,049
5,366,159
5,594,748
5,202,864
4,998,736
4,961,180
5,650,406
6,096,282

Government fiscal year July 1—June 30, until 1977.

. Building open for only three months of the year.

Building closed Mondays October 21, 1968—April 7, 1969.

September 30.

. Extra 3 months added to this fiscal year.
. Government fiscal year changed to October 1—

The Museum used to close on Christmas and New
Year’s days. During World War II a determination was
made to keep the building open on New Year’s Day,
so that now the only day that it is closed is Christmas.
The change from the original hours of 9:00 A.M. to
4:30 P.M. to the current hours of 10:00 A.M. to 5:30 P.M.
took place in the 1950s.

From the fall of 1968 through the spring of 1969,
the Smithsonian buildings were closed to the public on
Mondays as an economy measure. There was not enough
money to pay the guards needed to patrol the exhibit
halls, and unul the requisite funds were appropriated,
many tourists who planned to see the Museum were
turned away. In retrospect, it seems strange to spend
millions of dollars on displays and not spend a few
thousand to allow them to be seen, and it is tempting
to trot out an epigram by Frank Wigglesworth Clark,
an honorary Curator appointed in the 1880s: “The gov-
ernment will spare neither time nor money in the pur-
suit of economy.”

A happier development beginning in the 1970s has
been the lengthening of visiting hours during the sum-
mer. Various combinations of months and hours have
been tried. For a while a six-month extension of visiting
hours was in effect. Then it was limited to the summer
months, and finally a few weeks in April were also
included. At the beginning of this experimentation the
hours were extended until 9 p.M., but after several ad-

justments, closing ime was fixed at 7:30 P.M. Because

of the extra hours in the evening, one cannot exactly
compare attendance figures from the pre-1960s with
those of later decades, but the chances are good that
had the evening hours not been added, the Museum
would be even more crowded during the day. In the
summer, it is better to visit the Museum of Natural
History late in the day or in the early evening. By then
most of the tourists who started out at the crack of
dawn have collapsed either from the heat outside the
buildings or from a nonfatal disease known as “museum
fatigue” or the more localized “museum feet.”

Counting the Visitors

The annual reports and Smithsonian Year have kept track
of a variety of facts and figures, but the one item that
has never been omitted is the number of visitors. The
Smithsonian’s officials all are very much aware of the
importance of the public exhibits in maintaining public
tax support for the Institution. If for some bizarre rea-
son the Smithsonian should ever close forever, the last
activity to stop would be the guards’ clicking their me-
chanical hand-counters to tally each visitor entering
each building. Visitor counts have been compiled since
the National Museum first opened in 1881.

It took five years for the new National Museum to
log its first million visitors, the total by the end of fiscal
year 1915 being 1,618,576. It took another nine years
to reach the five-million mark, the cumulative count by

The Museum

Emperor Hirohito examining a slit shell (Pleurotomaria)
in the office of F.M. Bayer on the third floor of the west
wing. The late Joseph Rosewater, curator of mollusks, and

the end of fiscal year 1924 being 5,157,694; fiscal year
1984 alone drew almost a million more than that. In

the early days of the Smithsonian there was a surge of

visitors every four years as crowds came to Washington
for the presidential inaugurals, but by 1910 this phe-
nomenon was no longer evident in the annual atten-
dance figures. Clearly transportation was improving so
that people could vacation any year. By the late 1920s
the miracle of radio permitted people to hear the po-
litical speeches without making a trip.

By the end of fiscal year 1933, 10,504,483 visitors
had been counted since the building opened. ‘The pub-
lic hours continued to be 9 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. Since most
of the staff arrived by 8:45 A.M., a few guards acciden-
tally counted staff members who came in after 9, but
by then the number of visitors annually was so large

The Visitors

Professor Hidemi Sato, University of Pennsylvania, are
between them. This photograph appeared in Smithsonian
Year 1976,

that the minuscule staff would not have added signif-
icantly to the total, even if every one had been counted
every day. By the close of fiscal year 1935, as the twenty-
fifth anniversary year began, a total of 11,618,576 peo-
ple had come through the doors. The small annual
attendance figures for 1934 and 1935 reflect the Great
Depression.

At the close of fiscal year 1955, 25,620,085 tourists
in all had entered the building since it opened. In the
annual figures one sees the dramatic impact of World
War IT in reducing attendance, and the gradual postwar
rise to prewar levels. Fiscal year 1956 marked the first
time the building had received a million visitors in a
year. After fifty years, at the close of fiscal year 1960,
a total of 33,365,970 visitors had been logged, a three-
fold increase over the first quarter-century.

~I
oo

A Major Milestone
By 1968 a major milestone had been passed: a grand
total of 51,966,091 by the end of that fiscal year. It had
taken forty-five years for the first 25 million visitors to
have come into the building, but only thirteen years for
the second 25 million. America had become a nation
in motion.

In only twelve more years the total doubled again.

By the close of fiscal year 1980, the grand total of

visitors to have entered the Natural History Building
was 104,207,166. In the midst of the general increase
in numbers each year, one can see in the sharp decline
of fiscal year 1974 the effect of the oil embargo. At-
tendance could reach 200 million by the end of the
century, if present rates persist.

The figures alone do not tell the whole story, for they
have to be taken in the context of visits to the entire
Smithsonian complex. One might assume that from
1920 through 1960 the Natural History Building was
the place to visit, but this was not so. The Arts and
Industries Building consistently outdrew Natural His-
tory, with three visitors on the south side of the Mall
for every two that came across to see the animals and
the minerals. Three reasons are generally given for this.
First, the installation of the Lindbergh airplane in 1928
had an enormous impact; everyone wanted to see it.
Second, as interest in this phase of aviation waned, the
interest in World War II aviation grew. Third, the First
Ladies’ gowns in Arts and Industries were the largest
single draw in the Smithsonian.

During the 1950s, visits to Natural History did pull
ahead, but with the opening of the Museum of History
and Technology early in 1964, attendance in the Mu-
seum of Natural History stagnated. Although visitors
continued to pour in, there was a feeling that Natural
History was no longer the drawing card of the Smith-
sonian. When the National Air and Space Museum
opened in 1976, the pattern changed again. The num-
ber of visitors to the Smithsonian increased dramati-
cally, for people flocked to Air and Space, and continue
to fill that building to overflowing most of the time.
The National Museum of Natural History is sull num-
ber two in attendance, having edged ahead of the Na-
tional Museum of American History (History and Tech-
nology). There has been no serious attempt to tabulate
numbers of foreign visitors, but they are slowly in-
creasing every year. Of the cassette tours recorded in
Spanish, German, French, and Japanese, Spanish 1s
requested more often than all the others combined.

Mall Door Is Busiest

The guards report that the Mall door is about twice as
busy as the Constitution Avenue door. This is a pattern
of long standing; most tourists visit more than one mu-
seum, and the easiest way to do it is by moving along
the Mall. In the early days many visitors probably went
to the Castle, Arts and Industries, and the National

174

zyogodo 2) Ltt | pe th tht
2209000
2)0q000
2009000
1900000
1800000
700200
1600000
1500,000
(400000
1300000
(200.000
109000

1009000

Graph of attendance from the opening of the United States
National Museum in 1881. The effect of the Great
Depression is evident at the end of the line. Smithsonian
Archives RM 157, box 16.

Museum within a few hours and were counted in each
building. Today there are more museums than can be
covered in so short a time; the museums compete for
the visitor’s me, and the visitor must choose. Thus the
great increases of the last decade may reflect some in-
crease in interest in natural history, rather than just a
general increase in tourism.

In the 1920s August was the busiest month, as a
popular time for a family’s major vacation of the year.
August continues to be busy, but in the last two decades
it has been beaten out by April. “T. S. Eliot notwith-
standing, April this year was anything but cruel to SI
museums, shops, and theaters,” read an article in The
Torch. “Always the first quarter’s busiest month, April
1984 has outdone itself . . . [with] a 15 percent increase
over April 1983. ... As usual, the crowds were largest
during the week preceding Easter.”* The writer of this
prose must never have spent time at one of the doors.
While it is marvelous to see people coming in droves
to explore the Museum, the noise level, after a few days’
close contact, suggests a thundering herd of buffalo.

The abundance of tourists in April may be attrib-
utable in part to the growing custom of a senior trip
for high school students across the country, as well as
to the Cherry Blossom Festival. April is the most pop-
ular month, but all of the summer is busy, as is a good
part of the fall. For some unknown reason, the busiest
day of the year since 1978 has been the day after

The Museum

20Q000 Bae es
190000 HEE
18Q000 eae]
170,000 BEES
160000 | | VIN] Bens
150,000 TTA T EAB
140,000 | 7 | else) ea
130,000 E71 _| HBRe
120000 Be pees)
110,000 Be reeset
100000 Eg Pelee)
90000 Be BEBE
80000 BE Bene
70000 | {| NE@B
6Q000 | {| BeBe
50000 BE || NJ
40900 el ee

dune
duly

Average monthly attendance of visitors in United States
National Museum (compiled from the period 1920 to 1931
inclusive). This graph, from the Annual Report for 1931,
includes visits to the Arts and Industries Building and the
Aircraft Building as well as the Natural History Building.

Thanksgiving. Most likely this is because the schools
are out, family and friends are in town, and it has been
months since there was a chance to go anywhere. The
day after Thanksgiving is definitely not the time to
come to the Museum.

On July 4, 1976, a new phenomenon came to the
Smithsonian. The Arts and Industries Building became
so full of visitors that the doors had to be closed for a
time until some of them left. The National Air and
Space Museum, which has been attracting close to a
million visitors a month, has to shut its doors tempo-
rarily at fairly frequent intervals during the summer.
In 1983 this phenomenon spread to the Museum of
Natural History, and the building was briefly closed
twice. No doubt this will happen more often in the
future. Even on a normal day in particularly popular
places such as the gem hall, gridlock occasionally sets
in.

Some Famous Visitors

The humble and the famous come to the Museum,
though no one remarks on the humble except in the
total count. President and Mrs. Herbert Hoover used
to be fairly frequent visitors, walking down from the
White House on Sundays. When Harry Truman visited,
he was brought in through the ground-level entrance
beneath the Mall steps. The Museum’s budget was so
tight that only one of the curved passageways into the
building could be painted. Truman was led along the
painted one, but the walls of the opposite corridor were
touched up as far as his glance was likely to travel. The
staff was given half a day off, which was just as well,
for it was impossible to work: Secret Service agents put
seals on the cases to make sure no one put a bomb in
a drawer.

The Visitors

Average attendance by month 1971-1982

700,000,
650,000,
600,000
555,000,
500,000,
450,000}
400,000
350,000
300,000,
250,000,
200,000
150,0005
100,000 |
50,000

Ma
June.
July
Aug...
Sept.;
Oct.

Average monthly attendance in the National Museum of
Natural History (compiled from the period 1971 to 1982
inclusive). Not only has the attendance increased
dramatically and the peak month shifted, but the difference
between hand-lettering and more modern drafting methods
is Obvious.

During the Johnson administration, one Alfred C.
Glassell, Jr., donated a record black marlin (Makaira
indica) and provided funds for a reception at its un-
veiling. When he insisted that President Johnson be
invited, there were gales of laughter from the staff at
the notion that the President would come to see a dead
fish, no matter how large. No one knew that Glassell
was a Texas oilman and a friend of LBJ. When the
President showed up for the unveiling, the Museum
security people were in a panic.

One Sunday during the mid-1950s Senator Theo-
dore Green of Rhode Island, who was then in his nine-
ties, showed up in the north lobby. Only one elevator
operator worked on Sunday, and she was on a break.
Senator Green complained to a guard because he wanted
to get to the exhibits. There are two versions of what
happened next. In one the senator explained who he
was and indicated that he was on the appropriations
committee, and an elevator operator appeared in five
minutes. In the other, more likely version, the guard
listened to this disgruntled elderly tourist and then told
him to write his congressman.

Perhaps the most famous visitor ever was Emperor
Hirohito of Japan, who came to the building in 1975
on his visit to America.” He was escorted to the office
of F. M. Bayer. The Emperor happens to be a marine
biologist, and when he is not on duty he studies coe-
lenterates, which are also Bayer’s specialty. After a half
hour, the State Department officials indicated that it
was time for the party to leave. The Emperor replied
that he had not finished examining specimens to clarify
some species in his own collection, and that he was not
about to leave until that was completed. An hour later
he finally left Bayer’s office. This may be one of the
few times that protocol has given way to natural history.

175

Officer Kenneth Wise
observes early-morning tour-
ists examining a porcelain
horse in the Evans Gallery
exhibit Treasures of the
Shanghai Museum,
November 1984. The
escalator to the rotunda 1s
in the background.

“ee Sea : 2 nae aoe Zz ae =. i : =
Tourists in the rotunda heading toward the giant squid, July 1984.

176 The Museum

to the left.

who comes into the building and why, but they have
not revealed any surprises. Most persons visit either
because they have an interest in natural history or be-
cause they want to see all the tourist attractions in Wash-
ington. Annual reports repeat the obvious: “Most of
these visitors come to the Museum to be entertained,
or to learn. All expect to see on display objects they
have encountered at home or abroad, or heard about,
or seen in the movies or on television, or read about
ina book. Among the objects they come to see are many
unique national treasures.”*

In 1969 one person came deliberately to do harm

The Visitors

Tourists in the West Court building heading toward the sale in the Museu

and decapitated the snakes in two exhibits, using a hatchet
to break the cases and a butcher knife on the speci-
mens.’ Afterward he told the guards that one of the
snakes had borrowed $20,000 from him the year be-
fore. In May 1984, some vandal decided that he needed
to have the head of a tree sloth, and so destroyed a
specimen in Hall 6, robbing all future visitors of the
opportunity to see it. Still, the number of tourists each
year is so large and the amount of damage done to
specimens on exhibit is so small, that one must be im-
pressed with the good sense and good manners of the
visitors.

177

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7h:

Chapter 21

Public
Places

N ADDITION TO THE SCIENTIFIC FACILITIES shared

by the staff, the Museum offers several special spaces
for public use, apart from the exhibit halls themselves.
The auditorium and, until fairly recently, the foyer on
the ground floor of the north wing, have been available
at the request of individual groups. The north lobby,
the new West Court building, and of course the rotunda
are invaluable starting, meeting, and resting places for
one and all.

The International Congress on Tuberculosis that
“christened” the Natural History Building well before
its opening was in every way a success and an excellent
start. One of those present at this most important meet-
ing was Robert Koch, discoverer of the tuberculosis
bacillus.

“[Tomorrow’s] proceedings will begin with an assem-
bly of delegates in the auditorium of the Museum build-
ing at 11:00 o'clock,” the Washington Post reported on
September 27, 1908. “The hall has been decorated with
the flags of the countries represented. Music will be
furnished by the Marine Band. . . . The diplomatic corps,
the spokesmen of the various nations, officers of the
Congress, honorary presidents, and section Presidents
will meet in the office of Dr. Henry C. Beyer on the
second floor of the building at 10:40 o’clock.”’ There
were numerous exhibits on hygienic products, such as
pasteurized milk; five technical sections met in the var-
ious halls. For the finale on October 9, Bishop O’Con-
nell of The Catholic University of America stated that
“scientific men must walk hand in hand with the reli-
gious bodies of the world if the crusade against tuber-
culosis is to come to a successful termination.”*

The Annual Report for 1909 noted that “about 100,000
square feet of the building on the first and second
floors, exclusive of the south wings, were used for the

The rotunda (Hall 1), looking east into Hall 2 at the
Zeuglodon, from United States National Museum
Bulletin 80 (1913). The specimen was mounted for
mstallation in the new building. Other views taken at the
same time show that a giraffe was in the center of the
rotunda.

purposes of the congress. ... By November 3 all traces
of the convention had been removed and the building
was again ready for the resumption of construction
operations. About $25,000 was expended in fitting up
the building for the congress”—$15,000 less than had
been appropriated.’

The next major event in the auditorium occurred
two years later: “For the public sessions of the National
Academy [of Sciences] at its annual meeting in Wash-
ington from April 19 to 21, 1910, temporary arrange-
ments were made in one of the exhibition halls in the
Museum building, accommodations for the business
meeting being furnished in the Smithsonian building.”*

There is a story behind these few words, for the
National Academy of Sciences had had no home ever
since it was founded during the Civil War. Joseph Henry
was the first president of the Academy, and, like so
many organizations, it just somehow got under the wing
of the Smithsonian. For practical purposes the Acad-
emy was a couple of file drawers and an annual meeting
that wandered from hall to hall. In 1916, during their
sessions at the Museum, the academicians elected Sec-
retary Walcott as their president. After World War I,
Walcott was among those who helped raise funds for
the Academy building at Twenty-first Street and Con-
stituuon Avenue, NW. It is from this headquarters that
the National Academy of Sciences has grown to be such
an august body.

According to the Annual Report for 1911, the Mu-
seum’s auditorium was used that year for three meet-
ings and two lectures. Thereafter it was a very busy
place. In 1912 “the new building was used ... for a
number of meetings and other functions held under
the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution or of or-
ganizations having kindred objects. Besides the audi-
torium in this building, which has a seating capacity for
565 persons, two adjacent rooms have been fitted up
for small gatherings.”” Despite its stuffiness and naked
ductwork, one of these, Room 43, was heavily used for
many years by local scientific societies.

It soon became evident that the foyer or the rotunda
was the place in Washington to hold a reception for

“Auditorium in ground story of the south pavilion, looking
toward the platform,” from United States National
Museum Bulletin 80 (1913). The seats are now
somewhat more comfortable.

scientific or cultural events, particularly if a lecture was
to be presented. The auditorium, one of the few in
Washington, was in such demand that by 1917 a special
fireproof booth had been built for the motion-picture
and stereopticon machines.

The auditorium was used not only by the scientific
public; various government departments used it for
meetings. As the First World War approached, the sub-
ject matter of governmental meetings gravitated toward
food production and economics, and during the war
the auditorium, like the rest of the building, was given
over to other purposes.

After World War I the auditorium was back in full
swing. During the 1920—21 season, for example, there
were meetings of groups from the Northern Nut Grow-
ers Association to the National Academy of Sciences to
the American Federation of Art. The Bureau of Public
Health Service conducted an Institute on Venereal Dis-
ease Control, and the Bureau of Plant Industry showed
movies to its staff. The big event of 1922 was President

Harding’s appearance at the second annual meeting of

the Business Organization of the Government. The
meeting facilities were used on 110 occasions in fiscal
year 1926, and on 131 in fiscal year 1930. Fifteen years
later, the figure had doubled.

One of the developments after World War I was the
use of the auditorium for memorial meetings. A tribute
to Charles Doolittle Walcott on January 24, 1928, was
one of the first. There were two in 1933, when Holmes
and Ravenel died. ‘The custom lapsed from the 1940s
to the 1970s, but was reinstituted. Alexander Wetmore,
Waldo Schmitt, and Clifford Evans were all accorded
this mark of respect by the Museum, though Wetmore’s
memorial was held in the Castle.

180

Auditorium Named for Baird

The auditorium has been modified slightly on several
occasions by the installation of better seats, improved
lighting, and proper projection equipment. The room
had its moment of glory in 1971, a year that marked
the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Fish Com-
mission by Spencer F. Baird,” as well as the 125th an-
niversary of the Smithsonian Institution. In connection
with the celebration of the role of fisheries, a bust of
Baird and a brief account of his work were installed
directly in front of the auditorium. On November 16,
1971, in a ceremony honoring Baird, the auditorium
was named for him. When the installation of the es-
calator obscured the bust, it was moved inside and to
the rear of the auditorium, where, unfortunately, not
many people saw it. Subsequently the bust was put in
storage, but it has been returned. Visitors seldom see
the plaque on the low pedestal of the bust.

The Institution began a lecture series even before
the Castle was built, and lectures in one form or another
have been given ever since. The current weekly series
of lectures and films, organized by the Office of Ed-
ucation, has been running in the Baird Auditorium for
eleven years. Audiences vary with the subject and the
time of year, but it is not unusual to find 250 people
in the room during a weekend noon hour.

In the hallway outside the auditorium are several
cases Of Birds of the District of Columbia, a nice exhibit of
some historical interest as the most-moved public dis-
play in the Museum. Originally Secretary Langley had
a children’s room in the Castle where local specimens
were on view, including the largest and smallest local
birds. Later the collection was installed on the second
floor of the new Natural History Building. During World
War I it was moved in with the whales, and then to at
least one other location. After World War I three rooms
not far from the auditorium were devoted to local fauna,
including the birds—a sort of proto-Naturalist Center.
The collection had to be moved again when the foyer
was rebuilt in the 1970s, and there may have been
another move before the D.C. birds finally found their
present roost.

The north wing that extends from the auditorium
to the Constitution Avenue entrance has almost always
had temporary shows in its central foyer. Most of these
were not recorded in detail, so it is difficult to know
the nature of the exhibits or how long they stayed. One
significant exhibit of 1916 was in honor of the centen-
nial of the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Another was
“Safety First,” to which many government bureaus con-
tributed, and which one day drew 9,000 people. In 1917
a National Park conference, held under the auspices
of the newly formed National Park Service, was accom-
panied by an exhibition of forty-five paintings. This
led to the formation by Secretary Walcott of the Na-
tional Parks Association, a citizens’ lobby.

Possibly the most important show of this time was

The Museum

J ~gh ae 4 —
Building the dome, probably 1910. Workmen built this
wooden floor and then erected scaffolding to construct the
inner dome. The inner and outer domes rest on brick piers

mounted in honor of President Wilson’s inauguration:
“Much space is devoted to aeronautics and aviation.
This is enclosed in a large case, beginning with the early
experiments of Langley, and his steam flying machine
up to the Wrights, Curtiss, and others. A full-size copy
of Langley’s experimental steam flying machine is dis-
played.”” Although Langley’s machine had been on dis-
play in the Arts and Industries Building, many more
people were made aware of it by this exhibit.

The first phase of foyer exhibits ended with the clos-
ing of the building in 1918. After World War I much
of the foyer, particularly on the east side, was devoted
to the War Collection. As one case of uniforms was
being installed, the Marine lieutenant supervising the
work for some reason wanted the glass removed after
it had been put on the case. The contractor warned
that it might break in the process. The lieutenant in-
sisted, and after the glass broke, berated the contractor
and ordered him to pay for it. An elderly gentleman
stepped up, explained that he had seen and heard the

Public Places

— J

with space between them. “F lying buttresses” of tile tre the

two structures together.

whole thing, introduced himself as Charles D. Walcott,
and offered to talk to the Marine Commandant as to
who was to pay for the glass. The contractor, who later
joined the staff and worked his way up to assistant
buildings manager, was forever grateful to Secretary
Walcott.

War Portraits Collection
It is important to mention again the War Portraits Col-
lection, which “comprised 21 canvases by American ar-
tists, portraits of distinguished leaders of America and
of the Allied Nations during the World War, and is to
form the nucleus for a National Portrait Gallery.”” They
were shown for three weeks in May 1921 in Hall 10
and then were circulated to a few other cities. After
their return, some hung for almost a decade in the
foyer.

After the War Collection left it in 1930, anywhere
from twelve to sixteen shows a year were held in the
foyer. Space was allocated by the building superin-

18]

— ee sl
West side of the rotunda, showing statuary, probably after
1930. Note the mounted heads in the west stairway. To the
left is a statue of an Indian with an eagle, titled Indian
with Eagle.

tendent, and the rules were fairly simple. Each show
had one month at most, which included time to install
and dismantle. Shows that signed up for space for two
years running tended to become annual events. Thus,
shows by local art groups were hung year after year,
and often occupied half the available exhibit space.
In the early 1930s a colonial room donated by Mrs.
G. D. Webster was installed on the east side of the foyer.
Every item in the place had a large number in front of
it, so that many of the objects were essentially hidden.
When Malcolm Watkins arrived in the late 1940s and
wanted to make some changes, he was told that he could
not, because the donor came in periodically to examine
the display. Upon investigation, Watkins found that for
some years the donor’s chauffeur had come in to look
at it. Sull further invesugation turned up the fact that
Mrs. Webster had died in the early 1940s. Watkins
finally was given permission to dust and install smaller
numbers. Later the exhibit was dismantled and in-
cluded in “Everyday Life in Colonial America.” The
foyer space it once occupied was the area that later
housed the health room and a guard’s locker room.
Before this health room was put in, minor cuts and
scrapes were treated by guards who knew first aid; Dr.
Hrdli¢ka or Dr. Stewart was called in the event of a
serious problem. Eventually the Smithsonian hired a

182

physician and a nurse. They were moved from the foyer
to the second floor near the elevator, and then the
doctor went to a proper dispensary in the Museum of
History and Technology, while the first-aid room and
nurse moved to the lobby. The service is available to
anyone, but most of the people who go in are Museum
employees, not tourists.

During World War II, the foyer was devoted mainly
to shows concerned with the war. These included Brit-
ish war posters, photographs of the U.S. Navy in action,
and a host of similar items. Some wartime exhibits were
prepared in the Museum, beginning with one on the
history of firearms, and soon including displays on ex-
otic parts of the world where fighting was taking place.
An exhibit that drew a particularly large crowd was one
that showed survival gear.

After World War II the foyer reverted mainly to local
art shows. A major exception was the four-day autumn
show of the Potomac Rose Society, which was presented
each year from 1932 until the late 1950s. Old-timers
sull remember the scent of roses that hung on for a
day or two after the show closed.

Noteworthy Foyer Shows

During the 1960s the character of the shows in the
foyer changed. Instead of local art shows, objects, pho-
tographs, and drawings were exhibited. The most note-
worthy of these new shows was the Dead Sea Scrolls, a
landmark exhibit for the Museum. It had taken almost
four years for Gus Van Beek to arrange for the ma-
terial, and when the display opened there was such
incredible public interest that the foyer had to be kept
open evenings. During three weeks in the winter of
1964, 200,000 people came to see the scrolls, standing
in lines all the way to the corner of Ninth Street and
Constitution Avenue. The Museum Shop quickly sold
out of the book The Meaning of the Dead Sea Scrolls. There
was a mistake in the replacement order, and the shop
sold several dozens copies of the Russian novel, Dead
Souls before the error was reported.

In 1967 the centennial of the Alaska Purchase was
noted by a large display. The Right of Existence, opened
in December 1968, focused on extinct and endangered
species. The centennial of John Wesley Powell’s trip in
1869 down the Colorado River was the subject of an-
other major exhibit. Some of these new shows were
from inside the Museum, and some were traveling ex-
hibits from elsewhere. One of the most successful of
the latter was Masada, an exploration of the last Jewish
stronghold against the Roman army.

Just as the central display space of the foyer changed,
the side rooms also changed in the late 1960s. The
Travel Service moved into part of the area where the
fauna of the District of Columbia had been. Most of
the area on the east side was decked over and was used
for classrooms. Much of it was taken over by the Smith-
sonian Office of Education, which remained until the

The Museum

Colonial furnishings on the
east side of the foyer in 1949.
These were moved to Hall
25, and later to the Museum
of History and Technology.

foyer was dismantled in the 1970s. In 1975 the foyer
changed again, with the installation of the escalator and
the permanent exhibit Our Changing Land. Room 43
and all the others disappeared. A large meeting room,
the Ecology Theater, was installed on the east side.

Beginning in the 1980s, the character of the foyer
was altered once more with the installation of the Evans
Gallery. This is an excellent place for temporary shows,
the largest such space within the Smithsonian complex.
The Museum was concerned that the gallery might be
deluged with shows not germane to natural history, but
that has not happened.

Three major “in-house” exhibits have been prepared.
First, in 1982, came Jnua, a display and study of Eskimo
artifacts collected a century ago by E. W. Nelson of the
Biological Survey. The scanning electron microscope
exhibition of 1984 was next. In 1985, a show celebrating
Lieutenant Charles Wilkes’s round-the-world expedi-
tion marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the build-
ing. The Evans Gallery’s handsome wood floor, worn
by the feet of millions of visitors, has already been
refinished twice, and may have to be replaced within
the next few years.

The Lobby

Little has been recorded about the lobby, or portico,
to the north of the foyer. For many years a huge paint-
ing by Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,
hung on the south wall of the west side, next to the

Public Places

men’s restroom—where, incidentally, spittoons were
cleaned. The painting of the World War I diplomats
on the east side was not nearly so large or impressive
as Moran’s work.

There are occasional references to displays in the
lobby. In 1929 “the two Feathered Serpent Column
models, the mutilated originals of which are still in place
in the portal of the Pyramid Temple known as the
‘Castillo’ or castle, in Chichen Itza, Yucatan, were re-
moved from the lobby to the second floor, thus taking
their place with the archaeological collections to which
they pertain.” The columns were replaced by a striking
holly-wood mantelpiece and fireplace that remained
there until after World War II. Tecumseh, a statue por-
traying the death of the Shawnee chief, stood near the
stairs on the east side from the 1920s until the National
Museum of American Art opened. Near the elevator,
a couple of cases that did not fit in well anywhere else
were filled with silver, or miniature paintings, or lace
fans. During the 1950s a few temporary cases replaced
these relics. There used to be a clock on the west wall.
This later was replaced by a grandfather clock, and still
later that disappeared. “Can you tell me the time, please?”
is another common question asked of the guards.

Today the lobby still contains the guard room and
elevators in their original positions in the northwest
corner. A tiny room on the northeast side of the lobby—
once a storeroom, then an education office—now func-
tions as a checkroom. The stairway is unchanged, but

183

Entrance to t

Ke Bee 2 Z PSS Soper aa
he 1946 Smithsonian centennial exhibit in the
foyer, looking south. Each alcove was devoted to a general
area of activity, such as publications, research, or art.

what was for thirty years the only public telephone in
the building has disappeared from under the stairs.
Tucked against the wall at the foot of the stairs is a
much-photographed floral display, emphasizing or-
chids from the Museum’s living orchid collection. This
garden, begun in 1980, has brightened up the lobby.
The flowers are changed once a week.

On the east wall, where the fireplace used to stand,
is a large case used to summarize the work of selected
staff members. This changing exhibit, a nice touch, was
instituted by the Smithsonian Women’s Committee. On
the east side of the lobby is a women’s restroom, and
the information desk is on the west, just at the entrance
to the Evans Gallery.

Public Amenities

Public amenities were few when the Museum opened.
There were public restrooms in the lobby, each with a
large expanse of marbled space. This was good enough
planning in 1910, but for the child whose parents had
taken him to the second floor to look ata whale skeleton,
it was torture to have to walk so far. In 1913 water
faucets were replaced with what were called “sanitary
bubbling fountains.” Iced-water fountains did not come
into the building until well after World War II. The

184

Museum Shop did not open in the foyer until the early
1960s. With the addition of the wings, rest rooms finally
became available on the first and second floors at the
north juncture with both wings.

In 1976 the Museum made some major Bicentennial
gifts to the public. In the north-entrance lobby, which
had previously contained a couple of hard wooden
benches and an umbrella stand, “a spacious lounge area
with comfortable sofas and soft rugs opened for foot-
weary visitors.”'” The sofas and rugs move out from
time to time when an Evans Gallery show spills over
into the lobby, but when they are there they may be
the most appreciated objects in the building.

The West Court building, completed in 1976, filled
up the entire courtyard. It gave some ground-floor
offices in the main building a view of solid wall, but its
three floors added 48,328 square feet of space and some
long-overdue creature comforts. Sixty-six years after
the Museum opened, it finally became possible for staff
and visitors to sit down to a meal. There are two places
to eat on the ground floor, which is entered by steps
down from the ground floor of the main building. The
employees’ cafeteria, entered from the west range, serves
about 700 staff members a day. That figure is slowly
rising, a good sign for the outside concession that han-
dles the food service; the kitchen also does the catering
for various affairs within the building, including, in
1981, the Inaugural Ball. The Associates Court, whose
entrance is near the auditorium, is reserved for mem-
bers of the Smithsonian Associates, and serves about
350 lunches a day in cool weather. In summer, breakfast
too is served and the Museum is open longer, so the
figure nearly doubles. Some meeting- and classrooms
on the first floor are continually in use both day and
evening.

The West Court building’s second floor, which houses
the Naturalist Center, lies between the ground and first
floors of the main building. The third story opens off
the rotunda near the west stairway and is level with the
main building’s first floor, so that one is not aware of
leaving one building and entering another. It is a meas-
ure of the traffic that the Mexican floor tiles installed
in 1976 had worn down to the cement in spots before
being replaced in 1984. The third floor contains several
attractions—another set of rest rooms; another lounge
area; the Museum Shop, selling books on natural his-
tory, Jewelry, postcards, toys, mineral specimens, and
a whole host of things and a public cafeteria with plastic
seats attached to tables in the “fast-food” architectural
style of late-twentieth-century America. The food and
the setting are not nearly as sumptuous as in the As-
sociates Court below, but after a couple of hours of
touring exhibits, this is an oasis.

Between the cafeteria and the Museum Shop is one
other attraction that cannot be overlooked: a huge In-
dian tiger, presented to the Museum in 1969.'' The
tiger, which formerly had been displayed in the foyer

The Museum

The rotunda decorated for
the first annual Smithsonian
Kite Festival, March 1967.

and in the lobby, is magnificently mounted, supported
by only one hind leg and a small pipe. The animal had
been a man-eater and had to be destroyed; yet, de-
lighted as the Museum was to receive it, public concern
for endangered species made the dedication a slightly
strained occasion. The mount originally showed the
tiger pouncing on a frightened antelope, but the scene
upset so many children that the victim was removed.

The Story of the Rotunda

What would the Natural History Building be without
the dome, its most familiar feature? Hall 1 by Rathbun’s
number system, the rotunda floor beneath the dome
is a favorite meeting place for both visitors and staff;
the logical place to begin any tour; literally the heart
of the Museum and its exhibits. It is true that this majes-
tic space never “worked” until the installation of the
elephant. But aesthetic points fade into quibbles before
the real story of the rotunda—the fact that the great
dome is still standing.

To catch up with its history, one must go back to the
early years of the building. According to Rathbun’s
architectural description, “the covering of the rotunda
consists of an inner and outer dome. ... the former
constituting the ceiling, the latter the roof of this part
of the building. Both of these domes rest, indepen-
dently of each other, on the brick masonry of the drum
which is concealed from view.”'* But trouble surfaced
early, and Ravenel, in 1922, wrote about it in detail:

Public Places

Shortly after the completion of the Natural
History Building, it was noted that the keystone in
the east arch of the rotunda was slightly out of
place. As years passed the same thing occurred, in
a lesser degree, in the west arch, and a slight
separation appeared in the joints of the balustrade
on the fourth floor, just below the stone arches.
These joints were plastered up from time to time,
but owing to the inaccessibility of the keystones, no
steps were taken either to put them back in place
or to fill the exposed openings. The condition of
these keystones, although not considered
dangerous, distinctly marred the appearance of the
rotunda. The location of the east keystone
continued to change, however, and it was deemed
advisable this year to have a thorough investigation
made. As a result of two examinations of the dome
and the great piers supporting the dome, it was
found that the displacement of the stone arches
which span the piers, the opening of the joints on
the end of the balustrades under these arches, and
in the fourth story floor at the ends of piers have
all been brought about by a movement at the end
of the piers in a direction away from the center of
the rotunda. As there is no indication of
movement of the piers in the lower portion of the
building, it appears that they have simply leaned
outward at the top, doubtless caused by the
eccentric application of the weight of the dome.
Since the piers are fully braced by a large number

185

of steel beams to the walls of the building and no
movement of the outer walls has been observed, it
is assumed that the walls are successfully resisting
the pressure from the piers and that the
movement of the latter will probably not continue
much farther, if at all. In the meantime an
ingenious method of measuring the exact location
of the keystones has been devised, and careful
observations will be made at intervals of a few
months to determine what, if any, further
displacement occurs.'*

Two years later, the report was that “the keystones
in the four arches supporting the walls under the dome
of the Natural History Building have been subject to
periodical inspection, and recent measurements of the
east arch indicate a further lessening of the downward
movement.” '' If there was anything serious going on,
no one really wanted to face it. In the east range on
the first floor, a crack ran the length of the building,
but when Edward Henderson suggested that a gauge
be put on it to measure the rate of opening, the building
superintendent objected that this would interfere with
cleaning the floors.

A few years after he joined the staff, while working
in the west attic, Watson Perrygo saw the gap above
one of the keystones and later noticed that the gap was
getting larger. He and William L. Brown, his supervisor
in Taxidermy, wrote a memorandum about the prob-
lem, and shortly thereafter a more serious investigation
took place. Repairs were undertaken, but the work was
far more complex than anyone had anticipated; as a
further complication, the original contractor went
bankrupt. The Annual Report for 1929 described the
process:

Two great bands of steel were placed around the
four huge piers that support the dome, one at the
level of the floor of the attic, and one near the
tops of the piers in the ceiling above. Between
them steel beams were installed extending
vertically from band to band behind the piers, with
a series of screw jacks between the beams and the
bodies of the piers proper. Tension was placed on
these jacks in such a way as to bring even strain all
around, holding the piers from any possibility of
spreading at the top. The delicate operation of
adjusting the screw jacks required nearly three
weeks for completion and was performed with the
cooperation of a corps of engineers from the
Bureau of Standards. The work was of a highly
specialized nature and attracted considerable
attention from engineers.’

A workman who did not know that the topmost part
of the inner dome surrounding the central eye of the
dome was only plaster started to cross the ceiling of the
inner dome and broke through, but was able to hold
on by his outstretched arms till other workmen got a

186

rope around him. The fall to the rotunda floor 125
feet below would have been certain death.

By July 1929 the work was finished. After a thorough
cleaning, the rotunda was reopened to the public on
October 23, after being closed for nearly two years.
The repair operation apparently was a complete suc-
cess. When a similar dome on the main building of the
Army War College at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C.,
developed comparable problems in the 1970s, an ar-
chitect spent a few days peering into the Museum dome
to see what had been done. A sheet of plastic has been
inside the dome, under the skylight, since 1983 to pro-
tect the elephant from water leaking through the dome
during heavy rains. There is a great deal more to the
rotunda than what is on its floor. Because of the ex-
tension of the south portico, there are little offices to
the east and the west on the south side of the rotunda.
On the third floor, these two spots have been used as
temporary offices by zoologists and anthropologists.
They take some getting used to, since the greatest di-
mension in the office is height; the doors are taller than
the office is long.

Adjacent to the elevators are two other rooms, used
for dead storage. Within them are the data files on
seabird distribution, the only sign of the considerable
effort undertaken by the Pacific Ocean Biological Sur-
vey Project, financed by the Department of Defense.
It ultimately turned out that the department was con-
cerned with distribution of animals as a facet of bio-
logical warfare. The issue of classified scientific work
in the Natural History Building was fought on this
battlefield, and now officially every study engaged in
by the staff must be publishable in the open literature.

The rotunda offices on the second floor are as small
as those on the third floor, but noisier and even more
high-ceilinged. At least one of these rooms has been
used to store whale bones. Currently they are occupied
by some people involved in Information Resources
Management, an office formed in 1981.

Following the modification of the will of Henry Ward,
which permitted his collection to be rearranged, some
of his life-size bronze statues were moved to the second-
floor rotunda balcony, where they are shifted from spot
to spot. After the National Collection of Fine Arts re-
moved its paintings from this balcony in the 1960s, the
area became a place for temporary exhibits. These ex-
hibits, changing every few months, always have some
sort of natural history theme. Most commonly they are
photographs or scientific illustrations by non-
Smithsonian artists; and because of the prestige asso-
ciated with having a show at the Museum of Natural
History, there is a considerable competition for the
space. One exhibit of 1984 celebrated the fiftieth an-
niversary of the publication of Roger Tory Peterson’s
A Field Guide to the Birds; in 1979 the 100th anniversary
of the U.S. Geological Survey was celebrated with a
display of the scientific illustrations of William Henry

The Museum

Temporary exhibition case on
east side of lobby. This case,
changed from time to time,
features the work of staff
members. It is sponsored by
the Women’s Committee of
the Smithsonian Associates.

i ise) 2 3500 sf SEN ere a ™ zi
Behind Baird Auditorium on the east side, showing part of the most-moved exhibit within the Museum.

the Associates Court, plus a lounge area for tourists. A pril 1984.

On the west side is

Public Places 187

Stairway on the east side of the lobby, April 1984. The
orchids and floral display were installed in 1980. Years
earlier, the only public telephone booth in the Museum was
under these stairs. The statue Tecumseh, now at the
National Museum of American Art, stood near the foot of
the stairs.

Holmes. Temporary exhibits are no different from per-
manent ones in that there is always a last-minute rush
to open the show. While one person guided the direc-
tors of the Museum and the Geological Survey around
the Holmes exhibit very slowly, the final two cases were
installed by the rest of the crew.

The ambulatory on the first floor, under the balcony,
also is used for occasional temporary exhibits, partic-
ularly when a number of halls are closed. Its moment
of glory came in 1958, when for three weeks the Na-
tional Collection of Fine Arts, in connection with the
Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service,
displayed a portrait of Sir Winston Churchill, together
with thirty-five of Churchill’s paintings. That year, for
the first time, the Institution recorded over five million
visitors. April was the busiest month ever, and on ei
97, the first Sunday of the Churchill exhibit, 42,524
people visited the Natural History Building."

There are small front offices off the rotunda as on
the floors above, but with even higher ceilings. Not
much is known of their early use, except that like most
other corners of the place, they have been used for
storage. During the early 1960s, Paul Gardner of the
National Collection of Fine Arts occupied the west of-
fice, before leaving for the Division of Ceramics in the
Museum of History and Technology. In 1969 the west
office was used by “By-Word,” a concession that offers
self-guided recorded tours.'’ The first season, the com-
pany hired dozens of college students on commission,
and no tourist or staff member could enter the building
without being approached by at least three of them.
After that the operation became more sedate, and the
concession is now run from a desk on the southwest
side of the rotunda.

During the early 1970s, the west office was used by

188

Associates Court on the ground floor of ie West Court
building, 1984. To the left on the wall are a paddle and a
Polynesian navigation map.

the staff of the Discovery Room. Itis now a cloakroom—
a much-needed improvement, since for years the only
checking facilities in the building were wooden um-
brella stands at the north door and in the rotunda.
Although checking was at first a duty of the Museum
guards, it was contracted out in the 1980s. Probably the
single largest problem experienced by the checkroom
staff is convincing some tourists that there really is no
fee for the service.

In the late 1960s the east office functioned briefly as
a book store. Then it became a space-planning office
for the Museum, and was decked over to provide more
room. There is usually at least one employee in there
poring over blueprints.

Also in the late 1960s, two additional elevators were
put in on the southwest side of the rotunda. This was
something of a noisy process, but it was nothing com-
pared to the echoing din of 1982, when two smaller
doorways were drilled in the south facade on either
side of the main entrance. These new doors are helpful
as extra exits, though many tourists persistently grav-
itate toward the right-hand center door. Some of the
granite cut away was saved, and when James Mello
stepped down as associate director in 1984, he received
“a piece of the rock.” It may be appropriate to add the
Rathbun-like detail that a metal shade is pulled down
on these two new doors when the bronze gates are
closed over the center doors.

In the southeast area of the rotunda is a large in-
formation desk staffed by volunteers. This installation
was another positive step of recent years. Originally the
desk was a doughnut-shaped affair in the northeast
corner, where those on duty were confronted daily by
the rear end of the elephant. In 1983 the former in-
formation corner was taken over temporarily by a giant

The Museum

A complete view of the
rotunda, taken with a “fish
eye” lens in the late 1970s.
The banners to each of the

halls are in place, and an
information desk is on the
floor. The mounting around
the elephant has been
changed—he now is walking
through grass.

squid in a very large tank of alcohol—the first ever
displayed in a museum.

Beginning with the first Smithsonian Christmas party,
the rotunda has been the site of a number of memorable
festivities held by many groups besides the Institution,
especially the GOP. It has been common practice to
decorate the elephant, and if it were not dead already,
some of the garish displays might have killed it. One
year when helium balloons were used, a few came loose
and clung to the dome for several days before losing
gas and descending. ‘True scientists are tireless seekers
after knowledge, and observers at the time noted that
after a brief whiff of helium, one person’s “Mickey
Mouse” voice was much the same as another’s.

In 1967 Paul Garber organized the first Smithsonian
kite day, and the rotunda was festooned with kites. Ten
years later, at the suggestion of Harry Hart, then head
of Exhibits, “colorful banners showing the title and
stylized symbol of a hall were hung at entrances to
exhibit halls. The banners identify each hall, add a note
of gaiety and warmth to the rotunda’s gray granite
facade, and make it easier for the visitor to find his way
through the Museum without becoming lost or con-
fused.”'* The rotunda is not granite-trimmed, and some

Public Places

tourists get confused no matter what, but the banners
are a fine touch.

This leads to one last rotunda story, dating from the
1930s. At one time there was a revolving door into the
rotunda, but during the summer it was removed and
the other doors were propped open to let some air into
the building. Many pigeons flew in and made them-
selves at home up in the dome. This nuisance was tol-
erated until the wife of a congressman got splattered
by a pigeon passing overhead. Something had to be
done, and Perrygo was assigned the job of correcting
the problem.

A few days later he appeared at the Museum very
early, with his shotgun, and got a number of the birds.
One pigeon swooped into the gem and mineral hall
with Perrygo in hot pursuit. Although the building su-
perintendent was supposed to have notified everyone,
the guard on duty there had not been told. When this
man with a shotgun came running in, the guard went
running out for reinforcements. Moments later, swarms
of guards with pistols drawn were on the scene. For-
tunately, one of the sergeants from the day shift rec-
ognized Perrygo before shots were fired by either
side. O

189

oer Serer ee mete ee

Chapter 22

Outside
the Building

N°? PLACE, WITH THE EXCEPTION of the floating city
of Gulliver’s third trip, exists without a physical
setting. When the walls of the Museum were in place
and the collections moved, more remained to be done
“for the completion of the new building of the United
States National Museum and its surroundings, namely,
the construction of roads and walks, grading and sod-
ding, construction of a waterproof granolithic platform
along the outer walls of the building, and the painting
of the interior walls.” Writing in the Annual Report for
1911, Rathbun stated the cost as seventy-seven thou-
sand dollars.'

At the turn of the century, the Department of Ag-
riculture had gardens on part of the Mall. These in-
cluded grafted trees, and near the Museum was a tree
that blossomed on only one side. Other areas of the
Mall were moderately wooded, but during 1934 many
of the trees except those adjacent to the Museum were
cut down to improve the vista from the Capitol to the
Washington Monument. Some of the largest and oldest
trees remaining on the Mall side of the Museum are
two bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) across Madison
Drive from the south steps. They have not developed
the “knees” typical of native cypress growing in south-
ern swamps, and as a result many people do not rec-
ognize them.

“Uncle Beazley”

Not far away from the cypress trees stands “Uncle Bea-
zley,” a life-size model in fiberglass of the dinosaur
Triceratops, made in 1967 for a television show that
featured many Museum employees as extras in a few
scenes. Uncle Beazley was presented to the Museum
the following year, and except for one trip to the An-
acostia Museum, he has remained in place on the Mall.
It is a tribute to the strength of fiberglass that Uncle

Vendors at the B Street Centre Market, looking southwest
from the present site of the Department of Justice building.
The iron fence and large stone gateposts in front of the
Museum may be seen. Post-1910 and pre-1931, the
photograph was probably taken before World War I.

19]

Beazley has withstood the effects of thousands of chil-
dren climbing up and sliding down. A few years ago a
Victorian-style metal link fence was put around him,
but this was entirely for the aesthetic effect. Uncle Bea-
zley is the only part of the Museum that can be visited
by the public very late at night.

A sarcophagus that used to stand near this spot was
moved to the south side of the Mall in the 1940s or
1950s. It puzzled tourists, as did a monumental urn
dedicated to Andrew Jackson Dowling, a landscape gar-
dener generally given credit for the first attempts at
beautifying the Mall. The inscription was badly worn,
and tourists were left to wonder. The urn was removed
in the 1960s, and now sits in front of the Castle.

Below the south steps of the Museum is a large stor-
age vault, mostly used for drums of alcohol. Few people
go into the vault, but the drums of alcohol are all care-
fully accounted for; years ago, one disappeared and
the FBI was called in to catch the thief. In the early
1960s Buildings Management carted out of the vault a
number of wooden boxes that belonged to the O. C.
Marsh dinosaur collection. After several hours of heated
exchanges and searching of files, Lewis Gazin found
an agreement arranged by his predecessor Charles Gil-
more, stipulating that the boxes were to be brought to
the new building and stored under the steps. The boxes
quickly were put back.

The vault opens into the side of a short auto pas-
sageway that runs below the south steps, connecting
the east and west parking lots. Across from it, on the
other side of the passageway, is a door into the Museum
that has been used occasionally to let dignitaries into
the building, as in the case of President Truman. It was
originally designed so that ice could be taken out of
the adjacent ice rooms and moved to the other build-
ings. The passageway is called “the tunnel,” and was
designed for a horse and wagon. During the 1960s it
became a macho event to drive a small car like a Volks-
wagen through it as fast as possible. The tunnel is short,
but visibility is limited. After one close call, speed bumps
(“Boardman bumps,” in some circles) were installed at
either entrance to the tunnel, and the sport stopped.

South drive of the new National Museum in the 1930s,
looking west into the tunnel below the south steps. A
boxwood hedge (Boxus) is to the right, and what parking
there was was parallel to the bank on the left.

As the Museum was originally built, the driveway
made a U-shaped loop around the building. Trash tra-
ditionally was collected from the east side, but most of
the supplies and the mail went to the west loading plat-
form. All along the south side a boxwood hedge was
planted, and what few cars were present parked parallel
to the hedge. Because this area had been excavated well
below the level of the Mall, the grassy slope from the
Mall was steep, and most of the driveway was hidden.

In 1926 eighty-seven feet of the driveway running
from B Street was repaired. More road work was done
in 1930, and parking gates were put on both the east
and west entrances. Clearly, traffic control was becom-
ing a problem. During the mid-1930s, parking became
more difficult as a few of the younger staff finally man-
aged to buy automobiles. Offering to pay for the nec-
essary labor and paving, the staff petitioned to have
the hedge removed so that the space could be widened
and they could park at right angles to the building. The
request was refused on the grounds that this would
injure the appearance of the building.

When the wings were put on, the hedges disappeared
in the twinkling of an eye, and much of the area im-
mediately surrounding the wings on the east and the
west is now paved. No one objects, for one of the most
desirable things in Washington is a parking space. More
anguish has been suffered over who has parking and

192

who does not than over any scientific problem. As one
indication of the bustle and growth of the Smithsonian
Institution, on one summer day in 1984, 695 exits and
entrances by Smithsonian trucks, vans, cars, and Cush-
mans (powered carts used by the grounds people) were
logged through the east gate. There is nothing re-
markable about the vehicles, except that there are per-
haps a few more pick-up trucks than on the average
government parking lot. For a time one car whose owner
worked with mollusks had the license plate SNAIL, and
a paleontologist had PALEO. One truck bore a bumper
sticker saying, “I’m proud to be an avian paleontolo-
gist.”

In the great rainstorm of 1969, water poured down
the ramp into the basement of the west wing. Now each
ramp has a “sleeping policeman”—an asphalt bead—
across the top to slow down any further floods. Ap-
parently these have some effect, for there has not been
as severe a rain since they were installed. Unfortunately,
in the event of a future torrential downpour they would
provide little protection, and the staff hopes that speci-
mens in the basement will be moved elsewhere before
the next great flood.

Outdoor Exhibits

As noted earlier, the War Collection consisted in part
of field guns placed on the west side of the building
and the gun from the USS Magnolia on the east. Not
much is known about how long this artillery stayed
there, or what else was on display, but it was not the
first outdoor exhibit. Some large samples of ores were
positioned on the east side of the building about the
time it was completed. A giant copper boulder from
Michigan was outside for a time. These large rocks were
present during the 1940s, and then just vanished. Noth-
ing is recorded of their installation, only one passing
mention is made of labels for them, and nothing 1s
recorded of their being moved.

On the west side of the building where the west wing
now stands was a small park. This was the place where
a Museum football team was organized in the 1950s.
The lawns and the park were maintained by the Na-
tional Park Service; it was only after the wings were
constructed that the Museum assumed responsibility
for the grounds.

Cleaning the Outside

In August 1922, the District of Columbia Fire Depart-
ment washed the building. “The appearance of the
building was materially improved as a great amount of
dirt had accumulated, including nests of caterpillars
and other insects not readily dislodged. . . . In attempt-
ing to get water for this purpose the Fire Department
discovered that all the fire hydrants in the Smithsonian
Park were in bad condition and of an antiquated type,
leaving the buildings practically unprotected in the case
of fire.”*

The Museum

—

Three Red Lines, a mobile by George Rickey, on the
south steps, probably in 1972. Earlier, this sculpture was
on the east side of the National Museum of History and
Technology. It is made of lacquered stainless steel and sways
in the wind; a gust unfortunately drove it to the ground,
and two points were bent. The piece now stands on the
north side of the Hirshhorn Museum.

The building was washed at least once more by the
firemen before being professionally cleaned during the
1950s. As a result of that cleaning and the subsequent
gradual darkening of the wings, the wings now match
the main building quite well in color, although the lower
stories of the wings are getting much dirtier than the
upper two-thirds.

The windows in the main building are unsightly. Be-
cause they are no longer functional, they have been
ignored. The edge of the steel decking that cuts across
the window line on the ground floor of the north side
is not seen by many people, but tourists walking along
the Mall can see the windows that formerly opened into
exhibit halls. A few are cracked, some have curtains,
and there are several different hues of opaque glass.
A covering material is now being tested on the outside
of one of the windows to see how it looks and holds
up. If the tests go well, the main part of the building
will be given a uniform, if blank, appearance in the
next few years.

The most interesting part of the environs of the
building is the north side. The building originally had

Outside the Building

fe Ps Bs oa }
Uncle Beazley (Triceratops) on a fine day in early spring
before the crowds begin. The banners over the portico
announce two shows in the Evans Gallery, The Art of
Cameroon and Exploring Microspace. April 1984.

an iron fence, at least on the B street side, with enor-
mous stone gateposts in front of the north door. These
disappeared before the end of the 1920s, and the only
proof that they ever existed is found in a few old pho-
tographs. The National Zoological Park still has similar
gateposts. Lieutenant Bell of the police force there re-
calls being told that the gateposts on Connecticut Av-
enue, and those formerly at the Harvard Street en-
trance to the Zoo, came from the Museum downtown.

Outside the Museum

Directly across B Street from the Museum was the old
Centre Market. Although European museums were set
in stately parks, the Natural History building had noth-
ing that could be described as a formal setting. There
were pigs and potatoes, horseradishes and horse-drawn
wagons. A few of the old-time independent grocers in
Washington got their start at this market. In the early
1930s, G. A. Cooper saw a calf run from the market
into the foundation of the Internal Revenue Service
building.

Ohio Avenue, which cut diagonally through the mar-
ket area, was devoted to adult male entertainment.
George P. Merrill, taking this shortcut one day, was
shocked to be solicited by a young woman who was one

193

Loss of a large American elm on the west side of the north
entrance, May 1984.

of his students at George Washington University. Once
when Edward Henderson was walking on Pennsylvania

Avenue, a very proper lady called out, “Young man, if

you are a Christian, don’t go down that street!”

In the early 1960s, there were not many plantings
around the new wings. Shortly after Secretary Ripley
arrived in Washington, he asked Richard Cowan to find
specimens of the dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostro-
boides). This is a redwood tree originally described from
a fossil and thought to be extinct, until a few living trees
were discovered in China in 1941. Later the species was
introduced into cultivation. Cowan found some trees
in a Department of Agriculture nursery and had six
planted—three each on the northeast and northwest
corners of the Museum grounds. They were originally
about seven feet high, and some are now approaching
fifty feet. In the fall they shed their needle-covered
branchlets, and the bare limbs in winter look much like
those of the native bald cypress.

Between the main building and the wings are large
southern magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora), and near the
north corners of both the main building and the wings

194

y up a trunk of Araucarioxylon before
raising ut to the east plinth. On March 15, 1985, the
United States Navy Band played on the steps while the
specimens on the plinths were formally unveiled to celebrate
the seventy-fifth anniversary of the building.

i) ea, :

Riggers standing 1

are handsome specimens of American holly trees (Ilex
opaca). A line of beautiful, pink-flowering crabapple
trees (Crataegus malus) borders both the east and west
parking lots; most of them were planted in the 1970s.
On the south side of the Museum, the steep slope be-
tween the Mall and the parking lot is lined with azaleas,
two species of dogwood (Cornus), and magnolias. At the
top of the slope are some oak (Quercus) and some syca-
more maple (Acer pseudoplatanus) trees. In 1984 a few
young gingko trees (Gingko Biloba) were planted adja-
cent to the east and west driveways into the basement.

The Museum’s nice surroundings are a recent de-
velopment, and stem from the hiring in 1972 of the
Smithsonian’s first horticulturist, James Buckler. On
the east and west sides of the wings, katsura-trees (Cer-
cidiphyllum japonicum) were planted, and the flower beds
beneath them are used for spring bulbs and summer
annuals. In April and May when the dogwoods and
crabapples flower, the grounds are at their best. The

The Museum

—

Riggers moving a cut and polished log of fossil wood (Araucarioxylon) onto the east parking lot, July 1984. The main
building is to the left, with the east-wing freight entrance and guard’s kiosk behind.

beds of summer annuals on the east, west, and north
sides not only are pretty, but equally important, provide
a source of nectar for the bees that fly out each day
from the Insect Zoo.

A sad story is the plight of the American elm trees
(Ulmus americanus) along Constitution Avenue. They
are dying one by one from Dutch elm disease. In the
1960s, one in front of the north entrance died. Late in
the 1970s one died at the northwest corner, toward the
National Museum of American History. In May 1984,
another near the north entrance died. Before its stump
was removed, one of the scientists counted the tree rings
and found that it dated from about the time of the Civil
War. In 1983, when the Washington Redskins won the
Superbowl and thousands came to a victory parade on
Constitution Avenue, Smithsonian guards had to clear
people from the younger trees to save the trees from
being damaged. Other elms along Constitution Avenue
are about fifty years old. In anticipation of the death
of a giant elm on the southeast corner, a hackberry
(Celtis) has been planted nearby next to the dawn red-
woods.

Outside the Building

When the new Museum was erected, Rathbun noted
that it was parallel to the axis of the Mall but at a slight
angle to B Street. Constitution Avenue is now parallel
to the north side of the building, but the building does
not sit squarely on its lot. There is a bit more of a border
on the west side of the building than on the east, though
itis not obvious. Ninth and Twelfth streets used to cross
the Mall but now pass under it in tunnels, which en-
hances the appearance of the grounds. A large copper
European beech (Fagus sylvatica) is on the southeast
corner of the parking lot. The District of Columbia
highway engineers had it marked to be cut down so
that they could build their Ninth Street tunnel with a
minimum of fuss, but the conservationists won, and the
Museum kept its tree.

Next to the north entrance are Korean azaleas (Rho-
dodendron mucromulatum). Buckler is particularly proud
of these, for their very early, delicate purple flowers
bring dozens of telephone calls from the public each
year. The shrubs are deciduous, and flower each spring
before any leaves develop.

Although the overall setting of the Museum has im-

195

we
True’s beaked whale (Mesoplodon mirus) on the east
parking lot in August 1977.

proved with the development of the Federal Triangle
across the street, the north entrance itself has deteri-
orated. Several lamp posts near the door have been
moved. The curve of the steps has been filled in, and
material of a different color extends to the driveway.
Some of this was done during the Carmichael era. The
latest modifications, on the other hand, have been for
a good cause. There are now ramps from the sidewalk
up the steps, and inside the entryway another ramp
leads to the central automatic door. This entrance is
fully accessible to the physically handicapped. Those
in wheelchairs are a minute part of the tourist popu-
lation, but their numbers have increased every year.
The north side of the building is the only place to
see the flag. One has to stand back some distance from
the north entrance to get a glimpse of it, a couple of
stories up. This modest flagpole is the only one on the
premises of the Museum, whereas many of the neigh-
boring buildings have imposing flagpoles on their

196

grounds. A number of picture postcards of the 1930s
showed a huge flag flying over the east side of the
building, but this never existed.

The north and south entrances are regularly fes-
tooned with banners announcing temporary exhibits.
The banners, produced commercially, are handled by
riggers employed by the Institution. Some say these
banners give a tawdry appearance; some say they pro-
vide an air of gaiety. Good or bad, they are probably
a permanent addition. The banners began during the
Bicentennial when the Mall side flew one showing a
dancing elephant balancing the Museum on its trunk.

One really must return to the south steps, the main
entrance to the Museum. During the 1960s metal
guardrails were added to assist people walking up or
down. In the early 1970s a young man was walking on
the outer ledge, showing off for some young ladies,
and fell to the driveway below, breaking an arm. As a
precaution against a similar event with a more unhappy
ending, nets were slung on either side below the wall,
extending out from the roof of the tunnel. Of course,
these nets are full of beverage cans and paper trash,
but there does not seem to be any cure for that.

The south entrance is closed by massive bronze gates
that retract laterally into the walls; there used to be
similar gates on the north side. Originally the gates were
closed by steam power and later they were hydraulic.
Now, in the electrified era, a guard simply touches a
button. Few people see these gates, because they are
out of sight during public hours, but they are impres-
sive.

Decorating the Plinths
There is one last point to mention about the south
entrance. Between the two runs of steps is a pair of
large dies, the tops of which are level with the south
entryway. In his description of the building, Rathbun
indicated that they were designed to serve as pedestals
for statuary. Except for the stone lions displayed on
them during the George Washington bicentennial in
1932, they seem not to have been used. With that pre-
face, it is necessary to return for a moment to the de-
veloping exhibit on fossils in the west part of Hall 2.
In 1980 inquiry was made to a mining company in
Minnesota to see if a large sample of red jasper could
be obtained. This quite ancient rock, also known as
banded iron formation, shows alternating darker and
lighter layers. This layering may be related to con-
sumption of oxygen from the atmosphere as the ancient
iron was first oxidized. A slice of the rock was needed
for the exhibit on early life and the origin of the at-
mosphere. After several letters and telephone calls, a
large glacial boulder of this ore was located. The local
Army Reserve unit helped bring it down a hill and place
it on a truck. Eventually the eleven-ton rock arrived in

The Museum

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Washington. It took about twelve hours of cutting with
a large wire saw to prepare a slice. In this operation a
slurry of water and abrasive is used; the wire simply
carries the abrasive across the piece. The wires have to
be replaced periodically, but because the iron layers are
alternating hard and soft, cutting of the boulder went
fairly fast.

There was some material left over after the necessary
slice was taken out, namely a piece of about seven tons.
Considerable discussion ensured as to the advantages
of using this leftover as an outdoor display, in the gen-
eral context of waste not, want not. Someone finally hit
on the idea of placing the rock on the south steps. That
immediately raised the question of whether the area
would hold the weight.

Almost immediately that raised the next question—
what to put on the other side for balance. Eventually
this was settled by deciding on two logs of petrified
wood. Frances Hueber, a paleobotanist, was dispatched
to Arizona to obtain them. Adjacent to the Petrified

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Forest National Monument, there are fossilferous beds
exposed on private land that has been a source of pet-
rified wood for decades. Hueber measured a number
of specimens in the field but finally settled on two al-
ready collected from the area. One was donated, and
the other was sold to the Museum for fifty cents a
pound, the price the previous buyer had paid for it.
The city of Holbrook, Arizona, offered its good offices,
and a local rigger loaded the specimens at cost, throw-
ing in the red carpet that they were wrapped in for the
trip to Washington.

The larger piece of wood took twenty-eight hours of
sawing time and used up fourteen wires. It took weeks
more to polish the cut surface. The other tree was a
bit smaller and took less time to cut. The Museum
accessioned these three large specimens, including the
rock. After the paperwork was completed and the prep-
aration finished, the riggers moved them to the dies to
be unveiled. One tree lies on its side, and the other
stands again after nearly 200 million years.

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Chapter 23

Collections

| ine WHATEVER ASPECT ONE CHOOSES to consider
the Museum, one inevitably returns to the collec-
tions. James Smithson left a legacy to found the Insti-
tution, but this legacy even on the surface was mor~
than money, for his mineral cabinet and library were
included. From the time of the Institution’s founding
by Congress, the individuals associated with the Smith-
sonian have been collecting and preserving objects. The
exhibits should not be considered as separate from the
collections; they are just a tiny part of the Museum’s
holdings, put on display for the general public. Phil-
osophical questions of what to display, how much and
in what manner, whether originals or copies, and a host
of other important issues, are, in the final analysis,
secondary matters. No collections really means no ex-
hibits.

Some aspects of science undergo periodic “revolu-
tions.” Once a new concept has been introduced, earlier
concepts are discarded. One need only look at the value
of last year’s computer to be aware of the frenetic rate
of change in some areas. In marked contrast, other
aspects of science are cumulative. The study of history
naturally has acumulative approach, and historians aim
in theory to save every scrap of the past, or at least
representative samples of it. Natural history likewise is
additive. Ideas and approaches change, but the objects
of study themselves have a value that does not diminish
through time.

“The Nation’s Attic”

Spencer Fullerton Baird, the second Secretary, was a
demon of a collector and infected many others with his
enthusiasm. It was under his tenure that the term “the
nation’s attic” was first applied to the Institution. This
was not meant to be a compliment and indeed it had
a pejorative connotation, for it aptly characterized
buildings bursting at the seams, unopened crates, and

Labrador Eskimo wory dominoes for gambling, accessioned
in 1886. While there is no “average” specimen, this is
representative enough in terms of size, complexity, and
problems of preservation.

199

inadequately studied collections. For half a century, the
press tended to view the Smithsonian, and especially
its natural history endeavors, as a jumble. Those who
worked with the collections never saw them in that light,
but after all, the average person does not work in a
museum.

A large part of museology, the study of museums, 1s
concerned with the mechanics of adequate storage of
objects. Inadequate funding for collection storage brings
with it a host of problems. The new National Museum
provided a typical example: “With ample basement
storage available for the first time in many years, steel
racks and drawers were ordered for the heavier stone
specimens in geology and anthropology. But the con-
tractor who submitted a low bid on the steel racks was
too high in his bid for the accompanying drawers. Con-
sequently, two bids were let, one for the racks and one
for the drawers. And the low-bid storage drawers, too
narrow and too light weight for their intended purpose,
buckled and dropped off runners in the low-bid racks.
I [Neil Judd] do not know how much our administrators
saved on that transaction, but forty years passed before
the last of that ill-advised purchase was surreptitiously
replaced.”'

In the public mind, collections are kept in cigar boxes,
and indeed a number in the Museum actually were;
remember that for decades such boxes were abundant,
and were free—the best possible price for a museum.
Now these boxes are themselves collectors’ items. As a
piece of trivia in connection with containers, during the
late 1940s A. R. Loeblich in Geology decided that the
marine-bottom samples dredged years earlier by the
Fish Commission steamer Albatross should be trans-
ferred to bottles of uniform size for easier storage and
handling. Every evening he would discard old jars, and
every morning Malcolm Watkins in Anthropology would
carry a number of them away for /vs collections.

The fine points of collection storage have evoked
some florid prose at the Museum, much of it concerning
fossils:

With fossils, one is not troubled by evaporation.

... One is not conerned with material drying to

powder. Except for rare specimens replaced by
pyrite, fossils do not pick up moisture from the
air. Fossils are not edible and though occasional
labels and locality numbers may be lost to
particularly desperate cockroaches or rats, such
events have been fairly rare. ... Fossils do not
change color after years of storage, nor do they
smell.

About the only obvious and painful drawback to
fossil storage is weight. The average collection of
fossils, microfossils excepted, is heavier than the
average collection of almost anything else in a
museum. One drawer, 28 inches by 22 inches, full
of particularly stony fossils... requires complete

attention during a moving operation. Drawers of

fossils can be stored to a height of 9 feet, but an
administrator before making a decision for high-
level storage, should be required to carry at least
one drawer to the floor. There is a general rule of
nature (Gumperson’s Law) that the heaviest

drawers are always at the top; for any case over 5

feet high this may become hazardous. It is also

well known that museums that stack drawers
rather than place them in cases, keep a needed
specimen in the bottom drawer of a stack

(Saunders’ Corollary).°

‘The Saunders for whom the corollary is named came
to the Museum in 1948 and has been curating collec-
tions for the U.S. Geological Survey ever since. Harold
Saunders remembers the location of thousands of col-
lecuons and hundreds of birthdays; almost every one
of the old mers annually receives a birthday cigar or
box of Cracker Jack from Harold Saunders. Cleaning
and rearranging collections is a full-time job, and with-
out those who do it the Museum collections would be
in a sorry state.

Collections have to be stored, and they have to be
stored in some meaningful way. A major preoccupation
of any museum is files to keep track of specimens. One
used to use a pen to write on the three-by-five-inch
cards kept in the shoebox (shoeboxes are free); later
the cards were typed. Today word processors produce
enormous sheaves of paper printung the same data—
that the camel-saddle rugs from Egypt are in aisle 3,
case 10, and those from Kuwait are in case 19.

It was not very long after the new Museum opened
that the hallways on the third floor became the storage
area for a large part of the collections. By the time the
wings were built, there were collections in the offices,
in the halls, in the attics—and wherever there was space.
At one time there were some paleobotanical specimens
in the east attic, some in Stone Hall, some on the first
floor underneath exhibit cases, some stacked in the
corridor of.the east north range by the library, and
some in the former boiler room. Simply finding out
what was where, let alone getting one’s hands on it, was
not easy. When the exhibits were modernized in the

200

1950s and 1960s, the space between the new cases and
the windows was used for storage by almost every de-
partment; soon these areas were full. Ten years after
the wings were completed, space there was already at
a premium.

Perhaps worst of all for storage are the three attics
of the main building, which can be entered from the
fourth floor of the rotunda or from a stairway in each
wing. Originally the east attic was for Geology, the west
attic for Biology, and the north attic for Anthropology,
but they all contained a bit of everything. Paul Garber
recalls finding Chinese kites from the Philadelphia Cen-
tennial. The attics were fantastically cold in the winter
and incredibly hot in the summer; a large fan at one
end of each attic provided only noise. The Old World
archeological collections contained a round-bottomed
pot in which some resin had solidified several thousand
years ago. The attic was so hot that the resin slowly
began to flow. Periodically Van Beek would roll the pot
around so the resin would not flow out; eventually a
stand was made to hold it upright. One need not explain
what such conditions did to wood and fibers. Since 1960
the air conditioning has elevated working conditions
from inhuman to unpleasant. Because of the space they
provide, the attics are an important component of the
building, but no one ever goes to the fourth floor with
enthusiasm.

Care of the Collections

Care, along with storage and arrangement, 1s another
facet of curating collections. What constitutes proper
care depends on the kind of material being stored.
Those who study plants and animals have problems of
drying, evaporation of alcohol, and destruction by pests.
Those who study ethnographic material have even more
serious problems with deterioration. No collections, even
rocks and fossils, can simply be stuck in a drawer and
ignored; they all must be checked periodically.

Every museum in the world has stories about the
technician who drank alcohol from specimens. Occa-
sionally these stories are true, but it is not clear whether
the Museum ever really had an alcoholic sharing the
preserving liquid with the fish and the invertebrates.
One time during the early 1930s, somebody experi-
mented with adding sugar to inhibit evaporation and
ended up with a few exploding jars. Newer jars and
better storage limit evaporation, but somebody still has
to “top off’ or replace the liquid in the wet collections
or the specimens will be ruined.

Everyone is afraid of pests, and fumigation and poi-
soning of collections, now more sparingly prescribed,
were once carried out routinely. Harry Oberholser of
the Biological Survey had a favorite moth-eaten wool
shirt that he kept in a moth-infested office wardrobe
when he was not wearing it. Wetmore pleaded with
Oberholser to discard it because of the danger of moths
to the collections. Oberholser refused, but when he

The Museum

“Attic of west wing,” from United States NeuOnel
Museum Bulletin 8O (1913). The specimens on view
are sponges—specimens in alcohol to the left and dried

went to the field the following summer, Wetmore had
the whole wardrobe removed from the premises.

From time to time materials on display required re-
pairing, and the taxidermists, who were called on for
this, became fairly skilled at working outside their im-
mediate field. It was not until the early 1960s, when
the African hall was being constructed, that the an-
thropologists faced up to the issue of conservation and
opened a laboratory for that purpose. It soon became
apparent that a number of specimens of all kinds were
in need of repair. The pianos were just then leaving
the building for the Museum of American History, and
they provided a glaring example of the need for con-
servation. The result of this new interest was that con-
servation became an important concern in both the
Museum of American History and the Museum of Nat-
ural History, and analytical laboratories were installed.
Conservation and restoration, well-established special-
ties in the art world, are now significant in the Museum
of Natural History as well.

If collections cause such problems of storage and
arrangement and preservation, why do museums go to
the trouble they do? Part of the answer, especially from
the perspective of Washington, is legal responsibility.

The Collections

2 ea a

specimens in three-foot- high cases to the right. Evaporation
from the alcoholics must have been formidable in the attic.

The Museum is the national repository for natural his-
tory objects. In presenting this point, the 1879 law clearly
established one fundamental function or “mission” for
the Museum of Natural History: Specimens to which
the government has title are to be retained. Once a
specimen has been accessioned by the Museum into the
collection, it is a laborious formal procedure to have it
deaccessioned and discarded. The national treasures
are preserved, and will be preserved forever.

When George Brown Goode spoke of a museum of
record, preserving government material was part of
what he meant. However, he meant a great deal more
than that, for he recognized the importance of a rep-
resentative sample, no matter who obtained it. Records
are of all kinds and for all purposes, and it is as im-
portant to record where elm trees once were as to find
out where they are now. Goode would have been pleased
with the uses to which old samples have been put. De-
termining mercury levels in old bird feathers and by
the thickness of old eggshells is a well known example
from the era of environmental awareness. No one can
say what novel use might next be made of old Museum
material.

Although the Museum is legally the official keeper

201

of all collections made by government agencies, no one
is particular about when and how custody is trans-
ferred. Since the inception of entomological studies in
the Department of Agriculture, the collections have
been turned over to the Museum. Each year, one piece
of paper transfers title to hundreds of thousands of
insects. Collections of the Biological Survey were always
in the new National Museum, but until the 1940s they
were kept separate. When Wetmore wanted to examine
certain birds, he would approach Oberholser, who would
unlock the appropriate case and later relock it. The
Geological Survey retains large collections in the Mu-
seum and elsewhere. At irregular intervals it transfers
large loads of fossils to the Museum, but it promptly
transfers all’specimens illustrated for publication.

Members of the public often donate or sell specimens
to the Museum. Donations are extremely important to
the Museum, and a major reason for an annual report
was to list the donors of specimens. The whole business
of accessioning collections is to ensure legal title and
proper record-keeping. Periodically, people who have
donated material, or whose relatives have donated, come
to the Museum to see those specimens, which will be
found for them.

One of the sad trends of the last few decades is a
decrease in the number of places in America that main-
tain natural history collections. A considerable amount
of collection growth during the past few years has been
by salvage of specimens from universities and other
insututions going out of the business. Natural history
material with proper documentation should never be
discarded, and the Museum performs a valuable service
in becoming the repository for these major collections
suddenly thrown into limbo. Specimens that are de-
scribed in a scientific paper assume international sig-
nificance. Government scientists are required to place
such specimens in the Museum, but there are no such
restrictions On anyone else. Fortunately, many scientists
have come to see the merit of a national center, and a
large number of type specimens are presented annually
to the Museum.

The Issue of Value

Purchase of specimens is an exceedingly delicate area.
In the traditional view, each object, be it natural or
man-made, is unique, and because it is unique is either
priceless or valueless. Neither concept assigns it any
monetary worth. Some objects do have value in the
nonmuseum world, but it was a tragedy for natural
history when interior decorators began to frame slabs
of fossil fish and hang them on walls. An unfortunate
consequence of this fad of the decorator/collector crowd
is that there is now a monetary interest in many natural
history objects. Because of the possibility of theft, even
the most humdrum of specimens are being put under
lock and key. Security is important, but there is concern
among some curators that overemphasis on security

202

may inhibit scientific investigation.

Value created by scarcity, not “collectibility,” is an
even more serious problem. Many objects that once
could be collected in profusion can no longer be readily
obtained, and may not be obtainable at all. No amount
of money or expense can produce additional specimens
of the passenger pigeon.

To study passenger pigeons or anything else, it is
necessary to see specimens. A large number of people
now come to the Museum because they cannot make
their own collections of what they would like to study,
and for the same reason, lending specimens has become
a big enterprise—perhaps twenty-five times what it was
thirty years ago. Specimens sent on loan must be re-
trieved from the collections, listed, counted, and
wrapped. When sent back, they must be unwrapped,
listed, counted and returned to the collections.

Because of this whole issue of value, one major preoc-
cupation of the Museum during the past decade has
been an inventory program. The Museum of American
History suffered some well-publicized losses, particu-
larly in the pistol collection and the Early American
silver collection. The loss drew attention to the fact that
there was no proper inventory, and spurred Congress
to order an inventory program throughout the Smith-
sonian.

Benefits of the Inventory

It is one sort of problem to count airplanes or even
paintings, and another sort of problem to count beetles.
Half the kinds of living things in the world are insects.
Most curators were loath to be involved with the in-
ventory, yet it had to be done. The program was con-
ducted in a variety of ways by the different depart-
ments. Some inventoried almost every specimen, some
inventoried only types, and some inventoried selected
collections. On balance, most of those who participated
see the inventory program as having been beneficial.
It accomplished some improvements in the arrange-
ment of the collections that would never have been
financed otherwise. The curators now have more data
on distribution to “massage” than would otherwise have
been compiled. Were it not for the Automatic Data
Processing system, the program could not have accom-
plished what it did.

One consequence of the inventory program is that
there now are periodic audits in which auditors look
for parucular specimens. To move a specimen from
one drawer to another now requires much filling out
of forms, and some curators worry that desire to win
an auditor’s report that every jar is in the right place
may overshadow the desire to investigate the contents
of the jars.

One good consequence of the inventory was that some
of the young helpers who survived it found permanent
jobs in the Musem, and will be the next generation of
technicians and research assistants. Another was that

The Museum

Mimi Kajencki inventorying
skulls of Alaskan brown
bears (Ursus) on the third
floor of the rotunda, proba-
bly 1978 to 1980. The
inlaid floor is not seen by
tourists.

the program crystallized the concept of a collection
manager. More interest in loans meant more filling out
of loan papers. More specimens coming in meant more
accessioning and more label-writing. More visitors meant
more moving of material to and from storage. ‘'wenty-
five years ago curators handled all such transactions,
but today this is not the case. The curators are expected
to conduct research programs, and the collections are
largely curated by technicians. The scientific visitor who
wishes to study particular specimens can probably be
accommodated more readily now than at any time in
the past.

No matter what one writes about a collection, the
true impact of the specimens is not fully communicable
by the written word. There is nothing like seeing row
upon row of jars or case upon case of fossils to impress
one with the enormous amount of human effort that
these specimens represent. Yet vast as the collections
are, they are an inadequate sample of the world’s di-
versity and the endlessly subtle complications it con-
tains. It is the study of variation within these collections
that is so important. Ripley has written, “The truth
exists in objects. ... They cannot lie. ... They can be
handled, touched, thought about and reflected over,
and in so doing convey a sense of truth beyond per-
adventure.”

The curators do reflect on the objects and to varying
degrees do look after collections, but increasingly they
are concerned with a particular specialty, rather than
a wider group of organisms. However, each curator
contributes specimens, adding to the stock of the past.
The activities of the present generation of “foragers”
have been described in some detail,’ but generally
speaking, collections obtained by staff members in the

The Collections

past were larger than those being made by present
workers: Setzer’s operations in trapping small mam-
mals were like those of a field marshal; Cooper brought
in seventy-two tons of rock to treat with acid; the Indian
Ocean Exploration employed dozens of ships.

Why Collections Grow

With such large collections already in hand, why go out
into the field in search of more? No matter what anyone
says, one reason 1s that to most scientists, field work is
more fun than being in the office. Another answer 1s
that one cannot always solve new problems when lim-
iting oneself to old collections; additional specimens
and data on behavior and mode of occurrence must be
obtained to resolve some questions. Also, curators are
expected to add to the collections. If the research being
pursued by a curator has nothing to do with collections,
why should he or she be at the Museum in the first
place? Collections will grow until collectors become
extinct. New things always turn up.

The expansion of collections within the Museum is
not an issue that many scientists care to belabor. All
one can do, is to plead for adequate space and the
money to support it. Fortunately, the collections have
proven their worth so many times that Congress sees
the merit of continuing research, even if this is linked
to continuing growth.

The growth of the collections has been studied.’ An-
nual reports provided solid information on the number
of specimens accessioned each year, and the growth
curves turned out to be exponential. On May 1, 1971,
in advance of the inventory, the grand total of speci-
mens in the seven departments in the Museum of Nat-
ural History was supposed to have been 54,215,643."

203

Storage of human bones and
skulls on the fourth floor of
the south pavilion, just off
the rotunda; the hat gives
some indication of tempera-
ture. Invariably the needed
material is in the lowest of
the stacked drawers. January
1950.

“oe

Storage of bones in the rotunda, February 1977. The drawers are in racks, a major advance over stacking them.

204 The Museum

Storage of fish mn old-style crocks, to the left, and in new —
tanks on wheels, to the right. There is little evaporation
from the tanks. Late 1960s or early 1970s.

A realistic estimate in the light of the growth study was
that by the year 2010, 125 million specimens should be
on hand. Whatever the exact numbers of specimens
might be, it did not take much to realize that the build-
ing would not hold them.

During the 1960s, when Richard Cowan was director,
there was considerable concern about future crowding
in the Museum, in spite of the new wings. As one so-
lution, Cowan suggested the idea of moving part of the
staff and their collections to the Agricultural Research
Center in Beltsville, Maryland, where there would have
been space to construct a suitably large building to ac-
commodate both staff increase and collection growth.
The departments to be moved were those of Botany,
Entomology, and Invertebrate Zoology. There were
positive aspects to the plan, but it was not approved,
in part because removing so many of the scientific staff
from the Mall area would have meant splitting the
Museum.

In the early 1970s, committees studied the future
space requirements of the Museum of Natural History
and of all the Smithsonian museums. Eventually the
notion evolved of moving some of the less-used collec-
tions, general facilities such as the Oceanographic Sort-
ing Center, and the preservation and conservation lab-
oratories to Silver Hill, Maryland, where the Smithsonian
owned land and already had some storage facilities.
During Porter Kier’s directorship, this crystallized into
what has now become the Museum Support Center. As
Kier recalls the crucial conversation, he went with Rich-
ard Grant of Paleobiology, then head of the Senate of
Scientists, to discuss the matter of a major new facility
with Secretary Ripley. After extended discussion, Rip-
ley summarized, “You mean to saddle the Institution
with the incubus of ever increasing collections,” to which
Grant responded, “Yeah, I guess that’s about it.”

The Collections

Frozen fish in a freezer in the basement of east wing.

Museum Support Center

Whatever was the deciding factor, the process of
congressional authorization and appropriation was
started. “The Museum Support Center, as it is titled,
all 308,566 square feet of it, will be opened in 1983,”
Ripley wrote in Smithsonian Year 1981. “Say what one
may, the ‘trip’ has been necessary. . . . the Smithsonian
must realize its destiny to build a storage and retrieval
center second to none.”’

The facility was dedicated on May 16, 1983. The
building itself cost $29,000,000, and storage and lab-
oratory equipment will bring the total to $50,000,000—
about twice the cost of the wings, air conditioning, and
refurbishing of the Museum during the 1960s. The
newspapers got it right in dubbing this facility “the
nation’s closet” and not harping on cost.” After all, no
one keeps a mink coat in a hot drawer during the sum-
mer, and that was fundamentally what the Museum
had been forced to do with the collections.

The Museum Support Center is two stories high and
covers four and one-half acres, most of the area being
taken up by four huge storage “pods.” Each of the pods,
described as “giant thermos bottles” by the center’s di-
rector, Vincent Wilcox, is roughly the size of a football
field. They are air-conditioned to seventy degrees and
humidified to fifty percent by fourteen cooling units
weighing twenty-five tons each. About 300 people work
at the Support Center. Specimens are treated and stud-
ied in fifty-five laboratories fitted with special glass
plumbing pipes which, unlike the old pipes in the Nat-
ural History Building, will not drip into the light fix-
tures.

An “Ode to the Museum Support Center” was read
over the radio the day of the dedication. The third
verse ran:

205

Museum Support Center, Silver Hill, Maryland.

The place at Suitland, Maryland,
is made of concrete blocks,
And here now the Smithsonian
will keep its extra stocks
Of everything it doesn’t really need
now right away
But thinks that very likely
it will want to use some day.’

The transfer of collections to the Smithsonian’s Sup-
port Center is not the same as the move from the Castle
to the first National Museum, the journey across the
Mall in 1910, or the spreading into the wings. The first
three were expansions of previous activities; this is a
new concept. It is a fairly safe prediction that the major

events of the next twenty-five years in the history of

the Museum of Natural History will be linked to his
new facility.

New space provides new opportunities and presents
new problems. ‘The Museum Support Center will be a
museum of record like none before. It will certainly
bring out new approaches to the collections. The ques-
tion of what is to be moved and what is to stay has
already generated a great deal of controversy and will
generate more, but the nation’s treasures are being
preserved for posterity in better condition than could
ever have been realized in Rathbun’s attics.

206

Finale

In seventy-five years, the Museum of Natural History
has gotten bigger, and in many ways it has gotten better.
Its halls have shaken out the hodgepodge of its first
fifty years to achieve a steady focus on natural history.
It is entertaining and educating over six million visitors
a year. It gathers millions of fresh samples from nature
every year, and has learned to keep track of them.
During three-quarters of a century, the workers within
its walls have given good service in performing the
functions of record, research, and exhibit, and it “re-
mains the nation’s most important center for systematic
research.”'’ In the final analysis, because the Museum
is a government bureau, the Congress must decide
whether the taxpayers it represents have gotten their
money’s worth. On the other hand, it may be equally
appropriate for the Museum to question the nation.
Perhaps both nation and Museum would pass the two-
way test proposed by George Brown Goode, again cap-
italizing as he did on the rare occasions when he thought
it important: “THE DEGREE OF CIVILIZATION
TO WHICH ANY NATION, CITY OR PROVINCE
HAS ATTAINED IS BEST SHOWN BY THE
CHARACTER OF ITS PUBLIC MUSEUMS AND
THE LIBERALITY WITH WHICH THEY ARE
MAINTAINED.”"! Oo

The Museum

Notes

1. The United States National Museum
1. Goode, G. B. 1893. The genesis of the United States

Smithsonian Institution, documents relative to us origin and
history 1835-1899 (in two volumes). ‘The

National Museum. Report of the United States National
Museum for 1891, part 2:273—380. Although there is
a lot of quoted material in a fine type size that strains
the eyes, this is an interesting historical account that
demonstrates that the times and the resources have to
be right for a good idea to succeed.

excruciating detail by Rhees, W. J., 1901, The

207

sesquicentennial might provide an opportunity for
later editors to put an approximate date on some of
the old pictures, develop more precise chronologies,
and offer some of the Rhesian type of detail
concerning the great expansion of the Smithsonian
between the 1950s and the 1980s.

. The question of just when the Museum began has 5. Logan, Mrs. John A. 1901. Thirty years in Washington or
been debated for decades. Smithsonian Deputy life and scenes in our national capital. Hartford: A. D.
Archivist William A. Deiss provided a great deal of Worthing & Co., 752 pp.
data in his memorandum to me of January 27, 1981. 6. Rathbun, op. cit., 263.

In my view, the National Museum began in 1858 7. I have drawn my account of the career of Goode from
when Henry convinced the Congress that support ofa Oehser, P. H., 1949, Sons of science: The story of the
museum was an appropriate expenditure of public Smithsonian Institution and its leaders (New York: Henry
funds. An early sign over exhibits in the Castle is Schuman). Oehser is a poet who for many years was
illustrated in Karp, W., 1965, The Smithsonian the chief editor for the Smithsonian. Perhaps his view
Institution (Smithsonian Insutution, Washington, D.C.). of the Smithsonian is a bit romanticized, but as one of
The book has considerable merit but is no longer in those people dedicated to the Institution, he certainly
print. is qualified to view it in this light. If Oehser writes
Rathbun, Richard. 1905. The United States National that it happened, one can be certain it happened. His
Museum: An account of the buildings occupied by the book is out of print, another loss that should be
national collections. Report of the United States remedied.

National Museum for 1903, pp. 177-309. This is 8. Merrill, G. P. “An historical account of the

virtually the only information on the small brick Department of Geology in the U. S. National

building whose direct descendant is Exhibits Central, Museum.” This is a rough draft of an incomplete

and on the Armory, whose direct descendant is the manuscript prepared by Merrill and located in the
Museum Support Center. Department of Mineral Sciences library. It includes

. Because the centenary of the Smithsonian Institution material written at several different times. As there is
occurred shortly after the close of World War II, mention of the appointment of Alexander Wetmore as
virtually nothing was written in a historical vein except director, it is probable that this copy was in
a series of papers in a centennial issue of Scence (vol. preparation during 1926-27; Merrill died in 1929.
104, August 9, 1946); this was curtailed because of a Unfortunately, there is no comment on the death of
paper shortage. A brief general account was prepared C. D. Walcott, which occurred early in 1927. The
for the public, with what were for its time profuse manuscript is a mine of detail about the Department
illustrations, by True, W. P., 1946, The first hundred of Geology, and is one reason that department is
years of the Smithsonian Institution, 1846-1946, 64 pp. mentioned more than others. A few additional drafts
True was an editor for the Smithsonian, the son of F. and other papers are associated with it. The quote,
W. True, Assistant Secretary at the time the Museum about how bad the old museum was, was taken by
of Natural History was built. Since the 1950s, a great Mason (see note 2, chap. 2) from a pencil-written
deal has been written and illustrated about the sheet; perhaps Merrill died before it was completed,
Smithsonian, much of it delightful to look at and a or perhaps he decided not to include it, though he
pleasure to read. A scholarly account of the early days certainly spoke the truth.
that sheds a bit more light on federal funding is that 9. Goode, G. Brown. 1895. The principles of museum
of Washburn, W. E., 1977, “A national museum,” pp. administration. Annual report of the Museums Association
20-27, in The Smithsonian Experience (New York: W. W. for 1895: 1-73.

Norton & Co.). I he first fifty years of the 10. Rathbun, op. cit., 250.
Smithsonian Institution, including the early years of Me ; ens ene
fhe United States National Museum: are chronicled in 11. Willis, Bailey. 1947. A Yanqui in Patagonia. Stanford

University Press, p. 32.

Rathbun, R. 1905. Report upon the condition and progress
of the U. S. National Museum during the year ending June
30, 1903. For years Rathbun wrote the annual reports
of the Museum, and I have read every one he wrote
in this century, as well as those by his successors. Most
of the information cited stems from these reports. Not
every fact has to be documented, but I am old-
fashioned enough to believe that the sources of quotes
should be cited. I also recognize that giving the full
title and the number of pages in each report would be
more than is needed. In fact, these should be cited as
“Appendix to” the Smithsonian annual report, but
that would indeed be sterile scholarship. Other annual
reports by Rathbun and his successors are cited in a
more abbreviated fashion. Further, some of the

material is taken from departmental reports written by

Hough, Merrill, True, and the various head curators
who succeeded them, but it is expedient (even though
not correct) to cite Rathbun or his successors.

The New Building

. Rathbun, R. 1913. A descriptive account of the

building recently erected from the departments of
natural history of the United States National Museum.
United States National Museum Bulletin 80:16.

Mason, B. 1975. Mineral sciences in the Smithsonian
Institution. Smithsonian Contributions to the earth sciences
14:1-11.

Girouard, M. 1981. Alfred Waterhouse and the Natural
History Museum. London: British Museum of Natural
History.

Building the Building

Rathbun, R. 1906. Annual report for the year ending June
30, 1904, p. 13.

Ibid., 12.

National Museum. Washington Sunday Star, Aug. 13,
1905.

Girouard, M. 1981. Alfred Waterhouse and the Natural
History Museum. London: British Museum of Natural
History, p. 7.

Rathbun, R. 1906. Annual report for the year ending June
30, 1906, p. 7.

Washington Post, October 28, 1906.

Rathbun, R. 1907. Annual report for the year ending June
30, 1907, p. 15.

Willis, Bailey. 1947. A Yanqui in Patagonia, p. 32.
Rathbun, R. 1909. Annual report for the year ending June
30, 1908.

. Rathbun, R. 1909. Annual report for the year ending June

30, 1909, p. 13.
Ibid.
Ibid., 14.

Rathbun, R. 1911. Annual report for the year ending June
70, 1910, p. 13:

Moving into Valhalla

. A history of the Division of Mollusks is being written

by Harald Rehder, curator emeritus, who joined the
staff in 1932. He generously allowed me to examine
his manuscript and draw from it.

Ibid.

Rathbun, R. 1909. Annual report for the year ending June
30,1909; p. 15:

4. Ibid.

. Gilmore, Charles W. 1941. A history of the division of

vertebrate paleontology in the United States Museum.
Proceedings of the United States National Museum 90:305—
77.

The National Gallery of Art

. Rathbun, R. 1909. The National Gallery of Art:

Department of fine arts of the National Museum.
United States National Museum Bulletin 70.

. Rathbun, R. 1907. Annual report for the year ending June

30, 1907, pp. 7-8.

. Holmes, W. H. Quarters for the National Gallery of

Art, undated seven-page typescript. Filed under
National Collection of Fine Arts-History in the Library
of the National Museum of American Art/National
Portrait Gallery.

. Walcott, C. D. 1911. Annual report to the Board of

Regents of the Smithsonian Institution showing the
operations, expenditures and condition of the Institution for
the year ending June 30, 1910.

Henderson, H. B. 1912. The art treasures of Washington.
Boston: L. C. Page & Co., p. 210.

Rathbun, R. 1913. Annual report for the year ending June
30, 1912.

. The “Random Records” of William Henry Holmes

consist of fourteen volumes of documents, notes,
watercolors, pictures, and other miscellanea that
provide a wealth of detail on his life. Many facets of
Smithsonian history not otherwise recorded can be
found here. Why Holmes has not been the subject of
a major biographical study is a mystery to me. I have
not given references to the individual volumes, for all
are carefully indexed, and the various items can be
found easily.

Holmes, W. H. 1926. Report on the National Gallery
of Art including the Freer Gallery of Art. Annual
Report for the year ending June 30, 1925, p. 52.

Holmes, W. H. 1931. Report on the National Gallery for
1931, pp. 43-44.

. Holmes, W. H. 1924. Report on the National Gallery for

£924, p..57:

. Taylor, J. C. 1978. National Collection of Fine Arts,

Smithsonian Institution. 40 pp.

Affiliated Organizations

. Bartlett, R. A. 1962. Great surveys of the American west.

Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Hinsley, C. M., Jr. 1981. Savages and scientists: The
Smithsonian Institution and the development of American
anthropology 1846-1910. Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press.

. Rabbitt, M. C. 1979. Minerals, lands, and geology, for the

common defence and general welfare. Vol. 1, before 1879.
Washington: U. S. Geological Survey. (Vol. 2, 1879-
1904, was published in 1980; vol. 3 is anticipated in
1985, and vol. 4 is in preparation.) Vol. 1, pp. 283-84,
gives in full the text of the section of the act
establishing the Geological Survey.

. Dupree, A. H. 1957. Science in the Federal government: A

history of policies and activities to 1940. Cambridge:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. This is the
reference for anyone who has a passing interest in
how science and public policy interact. It should be
required reading for all budding government scientists

who wonder why the government does the variety of
things that it does, and how that came about.

5. Chapin, Ray D. 1933. Science in the Department of
Commerce. Scientific Monthly 36:193—99.

. Sabrosky, C. W. 1964. Taxonomic Entomology in the
U.S. Department of Agriculture. Bulletin of the
Entomological Society of America 10(4):211—20.

7. Sterling, K. B. 1977. Last of the Naturalists—The career

of C. Hart Merriam. New York: Arno Press, p. 70.

8. Howard, L. O. 1930. A history of applied entomology
(somewhat anecdotal). Smithsonian Miscellaneous
Collections, vol. 84:165. It is a pity that Howard was
not in the Museum building, for he surely would have
been a source of good stories. Between his history and
the book by Sterling, one gets a fairly good notion of
the difficult life of a federal scientist before World
War I. It might be noted, in these days of advanced
technology, that Howard’s book was published in
November 1930, and includes comments written
earlier that year.

9. Spilman, T. J. 1984. Vignettes of 100 years of the

Entomological Society of Washington. Proceedings of the

Entomological Society of Washington, 86:1—10.

10. Sabrosky, C. W. 1964. Taxonomic Entomology in the
U.S. Department of Agriculture. Bulletin of the
Entomological Society of America 10(4):211—20.

11. Fisher, R. D. 1982. Museum section, U. S. Fish and
Wildlife Service. Association of Systematics Collections
Newsletter 10:29-31.

12. Judd, Neil M. 1967. The Bureau of American Ethnology,
a partial history. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, p. vil. Judd wrote in his preface, “The present
writer, never a member of the B. A. E., knew most of

its scientific staff from 1910 forward and held most of

them in high regard. Because the majority of that
staff have since passed to wider horizons and because
their contributions will have more meaning in future
years, it seems appropriate to record at this time at

_ least a partial history of the Bureau and the people
who made it what it was.” This and Judd’s later book
are outstanding informal histories, preserving names
and details that would otherwise be lost.

7. New Exhibits, New Offices

1. Rathbun, R. 1913. Annual report for the year ending June
90) LIZ els:

2. Rathbun, R. 1912. Annual report for the year ending June
30, 1911, pp. 18-19.

3. New Exhibits Ready. Washington Sunday Star, Oct. 15,
1911.

4. Merrill, G. P. An historical account of the Department
of Geology in the U. S. National Museum (see note 8,
chap. 1), p. 56.

5. Ibid., 130.

. Ibid., 123.

7. J. E. Pogue, 10 May 1913. Division of Mineralogy and
Petrology, U. S. National Museum, A record of its
arrangement and activities, pp. 1—2. This is a twenty-
page manuscript found with the Merrill manuscript in
the library of the Division of Mineral Sciences.

8. Ibid.

9. Lay figure ethnic groups of the National Museum.
Washington Sunday Star, August 24, 1913.

10. Rathbun, R. 1913. Annual report for the year ending June
30, 1912, pp. 20-21.

Notes

11. Judd, N. M. 1968. Men met along the trail: Adventures in
archeology. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, pp.
48-51.

12. Rathbun, R. 1915. Annual report for the year ending June
30, 1914, p. 79.

13. Rathbun, R. 1913. Annual report for the year ending June
30, 1912, p. 54.

14. Ibid., 54—55.

15. Forbes, J. R. 1966. In the steps of the great American
zoologists: William Temple Hornaday. New York: M.
Evans & Co., p. 79. The account of the installation of
the buffalo group in the National Museum is quoted
in this book from the Washington Star, March 10, 1888.

16. Rathbun, R. 1915. Annual report for the year ending June
30, 1914, p. 114.

17. Ravenel, W. de C. 1919. Annual report for the year
ending June 30, 1918, plates 1 and 2.

18. Blackwelder, R. E. 1979. The zest for life or Waldo had a
pretty good run; the life of Waldo LaSalle Schmitt.
Lawrence, Kans.: Allen Press.

8. The Great War and Its Lingering Aftermath

1. Rathbun, R. 1918. Annual report for the year ending June
30, 1917, p. 90.

2. Merrill, G. P. An historical account of the Department
of Geology in the U. S. National Museum (see note 8,
chap. 1), p. 62.

3. Ibid., 70.

4. Rathbun, R. 1918. Annual report for the year ending June

30, 1917, p. 14.
. Ravenel, W. de C. 1919. Annual report for the year
ending June 30, 1918, pp. 50-51.

6. Ibid., 14-15.

7. Ravenel, W. de C. 1920. Annual report for the year
ending June 30, 1920, p. 22.

8. Ibid., 26.

9. Interregnum

Le lbid:; V5;

2. Ravenel, W. de C. 1923. Annual report for the year
ending June 30, 1923, p. 3.

3. Walcott, C. D. 1925. Annual report for the year ending
June 30, 1925, p. 2.

4. Wetmore, A. 1925. Annual report for the year ending
June 30, 1925, p. 26.

5. Snow, D. W. 1979. Obituary—Alexander Wetmore.
Nature 278:490.

6. Stewart, T. D. 1982. Reminiscences. In Plains Indian
Studies, a collection of essays in honor of John C. Ewers and
Waldo R. Wedel, ed. D. H. Ubelaker and H. J. Viola.
Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 10:40—42.

7. Wetmore, A. 1930. Annual report for the year ending
June 30, 1930, pp. 30-31.

8. Wetmore, A. 1933. Annual report for the year ending
June 30, 1932, p. 51.

9. Wetmore, A. 1931. Annual report for the year ending
June 30, 1931, p. 34.

10. Wetmore, A. 1933. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1932, p. 10.

11. Wetmore, A. 1935. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1934, pp. 8-9.

12. Wetmore, A. 1936. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1935, p. 9.

209

13.

10.
. Wetmore, A. 1943. Annual report for the year ending

10.

—_

Wetmore, A. 1939. Annual report for the year ending
June 30, 1938, p. 10.

. Wetmore, A. 1941. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1940, pp. 10-11.

World War II

june 30, 1942, p. 11.

. Wetmore, A. 1946. Annual report for the year ending

june 20, 1945, p. 7.

. Wetmore, A. 1943. Annual report for the year ending

june 30, 1942, p. 11.

s bid: 59,
. Wetmore, A. 1944. Annual report for the year ending

june 30, 1943, p. 8.

. Wetmore, A. 1945. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1944, pp. 8 and 9.

. Wetmore, A. 1944. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1943, p. 8.

. Wetmore, A. 1945. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1944, p. 6.

. Wetmore, A. 1944. Annual report for the year ending

game FO, 1993p. '9.

. Ibid., 29.

. New Faces, New Funds, New Exhibits
. Wetmore, A. 1939. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, T938, p. 3.

. Fenton, W. N. 1982. John Canfield Ewers and the

great tradition of artists and ethnologists in the west.
In Plains Indians Studies, a collection of essays in honor of

John C. Ewers and Waldo R. Wedel, ed. D. H. Ubelacher

and H. J. Viola. Smithsonian Contributions to
Anthropology 10:218.

. Van Beek, G. Unpublished obituary of Clifford Evans,

in the author’s files.

. Ripley, S. D. and Steed, J. A. Alexander Wetmore.

National Academy of Sciences: Biographical Memoirs.
(In press.)

. Fire damages Indian Exhibit at museum. Washington

Post, May 26, 1965.
Carmichael, L. 1955. Annual report for the year ending
June 70, 1954, p. I.

. Donnelly, T. 1954. The Smithsonian keeps up with

the Joneses. Washington Daily News (April 13);
McDade, M. 1954. Institution shakes off old tradition.
Washington Post and Times Herald (April 18).

. Ewers, J. C. 1956. New ethnological exhibits United

States National Museum Washington, D. C. Museum 9
(1):28.

. Exhibit depicts early America. The Washington Post and

Times Herald, Jan. 20, 1957.

Kellogg, A. R. 1958. Annual report for the year ending
une 20,1997 pi. 9:

. Forbes, J. R. 1966. In the steps of the great American

zoologists: William Temple Hornaday. New York: M.
Evans, pp. 107-8.

. Beggs, T. M. 1959. Annual report of National Collection

of Fine Arts for 1958, p. 108.

. I grew my beard in 1959, and was the subject of Dr.

Friedmann’s comment. I have pondered it often since
that moment, but I have never been able to frame an
appropriate reply.

210

14.

18.

13.
. Taylor, F. 1964. Annual report for fiscal year 1963,

Kellogg, A. R. 1962. Annual report for the year ending
June 30, 1961, p. 11.

. Gunnerson, J. H. 1982. Waldo R. Wedel, archeologist:

Perspectives that grew in the plains. In Plains Indians
Studies, a collection of essays in honor of John C. Ewers and
Waldo R. Wedel, ed. D. H. Ubelaker and H. J. Viola,
Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology 10.

. Ripley, S. D. 1968. Smithsonian Year 1965, p. 11.
17,

Anonymous. Herbert Ward (1863-1919).
Unpublished four-page document in Department of
Anthropology files.

Ross, N. L. 1967. Spirited exhibit opens, Washington
Post (Aug. 26).

. New Wings and a New Elephant
. Fénykovi, J. 1956. The biggest elephant ever killed by

man. Sports Illustrated, June 4.

. Brown, W. L. Steps in mounting the Fénykévi

elephant. Two-page typescript in the files of the
Division of Mammals.

. Deaton, N. N. “The Fényk6évi elephant.” Five-page

typescript in the files of the Division of Mammals.

. Rathbun, R. 1918. Appendix N. The Smithsonian

Institution and National Museum, in Public buildings in
the District of Columbia. 65th Congress, 2d session.
Senate Document 155:361—97.

. Wetmore, A. 1928. Annual report for fiscal year 1928,

p. 7.

. Natural History Building wing enlargement sought.

Washington Post, March 31, 1930.

. Wetmore, A. 1930. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1930, pp. 5-6.

. Smithsonian Archives RM 157, Building Management

Department, 1881—1973 records, Box 16, I 2.

. Beggs, T. 1963. Annual report of National collection of

fine arts for 1962, p. 4.

. Kellogg, A. R. 1962. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1961, p. 4.

. Taylor, F. A. 1964. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1963, p. 4.

. Kellogg, A. R. 1962. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1961, pp. 5-6.

. Ripley, S. D. 1968. Smithsonian Year 1965, p. 89.

Priority of publications is a concern of many scientists,
particularly those in taxonomy. For many years, the
Smithsonian Library stamped the date of receipt in
the front of books. This is how I know when the 1965
Yearbook was published. Such information is not of
much use when matters of priority are not involved,
so other yearbooks will be cited by the date given on
the title page, except for one or two I have seen that
are stamped with a different date of receipt.

Big Science: Deep Space, Deep Waters

p. 86.

. Ripley, S. D. 1968. Smithsonian Year 1965, p. 37.
. Ripley, S$. D. 1971. Smithsonian Year 1971, p. 34.

. “Modern Times”
. Taylor, F. A. 1964. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1963, p. 3.

. Ripley, S. D. 1969. Smithsonian Year 1968, p. 79.

12.
13.

. Smithsonian Institution. 1971. General hearings before

the Subcommittee on Library and Memorials of the
Committee on House Administration, House of
Representatives (Hearings held in Washington, D. C., July
1970). 91st Congress, 2d session, 2 vols. p. 181.

. Ripley, S. D. 1970. Smithsonian Year 1970, p. 30.
. Ripley, op. cit., p. 9.
. Park, E. 1976. Around the Mall and beyond.

Smithsonian 7 (1):1180.

. Harney, T. 1974. ‘New Wave’ of NMNH exhibits to

show fundamental concept. Torch (January).

. Ibid.

. Ripley, S. D. 1974. Smithsonian Year 1974, p. 78.

. Park, E. Around the Mall and beyond. Smithsonian 6 (8).
. Exhibits such as the Splendors of Nature are best

illustrated by color. By far the most lavish book on the
present Museum exhibits, profusely illustrated, is by
Kopper, P. 1982, The National Museum of Natural
History (New York: Harry N. Abrams), 496 pp.

Ripley, S. D. 1979. Smithsonian Year 1978, p. 47.

1980. Dale Crowley, Jr., Individually and in his capacity as
Executive Director of the National Foundation for Fairness
in Education, et al., Appellants, v. Smithsonian Institution et
al. No. 79-1193. 636 Federal Reporter, second series:
738-44.

. Harney, T. 1980. Undersea creatures living in lab.

Torch (October).

. Ripley, S. D. 1975. Smithsonian Year 1974, p. 75.
. Madden, J. C. 1978. Bridge between research and

exhibits—the Smithsonian Naturalist Center. Curator

21 (2):159-67.

. It has been traditional that the Secretary of the

Smithsonian be a productive scientist, and S. Dillon
Ripley has maintained that tradition. His activities and
accomplishments as Secretary have been much
commented upon, but somehow little note has been
taken of his work in ornithology. Probably the most
balanced newpaper account of his activities as
Secretary is given by Lardner, J., S. Dillon Ripley,
Keeper of the Castle, Washington Post, November 7,
1982. An important record of some of the events
during the first few years of the Ripley era is the book
by Paul H. Oehser, 1970, The Smithsonian Institution
(New York: Praeger Publishers). In 1983 a revised
edition of 224 pages was written with the assistance of
Louise Heskett, and published by the Westview Press,
Boulder, Colorado.

. Some of the prior research and field work of Robert

McC. Adams is listed in Smithsonian Institution Research
Reports number 42, Spring 1984.

. Museum Administration
. Goode, G. B. 1891. The museums of the future.

Report of the United States National Museum for 1888—
1889, p. 437.

. Ravenel, W. de C. 1920. Annual report for the year

ending June 30, 1919.

. Ripley, S. D. 1976. Appreciations, vii—viii, in Collected

papers in avian paleontology honoring the 90th birthday of
Alexander Wetmore, ed. S. L. Olson, Smithsonian
Contributions to Paleobiology 27.

. Snow, D. W. 1979. Obituary—Alexander Wetmore.

Nature 278:490.

. Whitmore, Frank C., Jr. 1983. Remington Kellogg

Notes

1892-1969, in Geology and Paleontology of the Lee Creek
Mine, North Carolina I, ed. Clayton E. Ray, Smithsonian
Contributions to Paleobiology 63:19—20.

A tribute to Miller was presented by a number of his
colleagues who prepared vignettes of his life and
encounters with them; appended to this is Miller’s
bibliography of 400 papers. 1937. Gerrit Smith Miller,

Jr. Journal of Mammalogy 35 (3):317—29.
. Angel, J. L. 1976. T. Dale Stewart. American Journal of

Physical Anthropology 45:521—30. In only two pages,
followed by Stewart’s bibliography, Angel summarizes
nicely the work of this physical anthropologist for a
Festchrift issue of the journal, an honor in any field.
Additional information comes from Who’s Who, where
he is listed as starting with the museum in 1927.

. Zinman, D. 1971. Fortunately for sea urchins—

perhaps for all of us—there still exist many who want
only to find out all there is about sea urchins.
Washington Post, Potomac Magazine (Jan. 3).

. Ripley, S. D. 1973. Smithsonian Year 1973, p. 3.
. Churchman, D. 1983. Husband heads a museum in

D.C., and so does the wife. Baltimore Sun (Nov. 24).

. The Scientific Staff
. Rathbun, R. 1901. Annual report for fiscal year 1901,

p. 41.

. Rathbun, R. 1909. Annual report for the year ending June

30, 1909, pp. 63-64.

. Rathbun, R. 1911. Annual report for the year ending June

30, 1910, pp. 73-74.

. Ravenel, W. de C. 1920. Annual report for the year

ending June 30, 1919, p. 8.

. Wetmore, A. 1933. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1932, pp. iv—vi.

. Nelson, C. M., and Yochelson, E. L. 1980. Organizing

federal paleontology in the United States, 1857-1907.
Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural
History 4:607-18.

. Wetmore, A. 1935. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1934, p. 15.

. Howard, L. O. 1930. A history of applied entomology

(somewhat anecdotal). Smithsonian Miscellaneous
Collections, 84:180.

. Ibid.
. Judd, N. M. 1968. Men met along the trail: Adventures in

archeology, pp. 52-53.

. Van Beek, G. Unpublished obituary of Clifford Evans.
. From elevator to entomology. Torch, April 1983.
. Maxfield, D. M. 1980. Smithsonian maps new hiring

goals. Torch (June). The Smithsonian Torch began as a
letter to Credit Union members. It expanded a bit
and became an Institution-wide newsletter. It ceased
publication at least twice because of a shortage of
funds, but has been printed monthly for about a
decade. Current circulation of about 6,000 includes
news media, though probably no libraries carry this
newsletter. It is useful as a source of dates and
information not given in Smithsonian Year.

. Park, E. 1977. Around the Mall and beyond.

Smithsonian 8 (2):34; Thomson, Peggy. 1977. Musewm
People. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. A

nice account, though mainly about parts of the
Smithsonian outside the Museum of Natural History.
The sections on Rolland Hower and Tom Simkin give
a fair sample of the people involved in natural history.

211

15:

Brown, R. W. 1956. Composition of scientific words.
Published by the author. Although Dr. Brown
approached several commercial publishers, they
wanted to modify his work to such an extent that he
finally decided to publish it himself. The first edition
was printed in 1954 and distributed before Brown
realized it contained too many errors. He then had
the book reprinted, again at his own expense.
“Brownie” had kept track of purchases, and he
replaced each copy he had sold of the first edition, an
action that cost him about $25,000. All copies of the
first edition were taken to his farm and burned in his
fireplace for heat. Upon Roland Brown’s death,

the remaining stock of the book was willed to the
Smithsonian Institution for sale. After a few years,
foolishly, the books were remaindered. Eventually
there was such a demand for this unique work that
the Smithsonian Institution Press reprinted it.

. Pamela Henson, an oral history specialist at the

Smithsonian Archives, has studied this organization in
some detail and prepared a summary of its early
history. She has also contributed information from
various oral histories to confirm some of the items of
human interest.

Elaine R. S. Hodges, wife of Ronald Hodges of the
Department of Agriculture, played a leading part in
forming the Guild, and I have drawn from a general
short account she prepared of the organization.

. Shared Facilities
. Clark, L. F. 1946. The library of the Smithsonian

Institution. Science 104:143—146.

. Rathbun, R. 1913. Annual report for the year ending June

30, 1912, p. 108.

. Rathbun, R. 1914. Annual report for the year ending June

30, 1913, pp. 110-111.

. Tolman, C. 1944. Annual report of the National Collection

of Fine Arts for 1943, p. 27.
Wetmore, A. 1944. Annual report for the year ending
June 30, 1943, p. 11.

. Wetmore, A. 1930. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1930, p. 29.

. Ripley, S. D. 1968. Smithsonian Year 1967, pp. 29-30.
. Ripley, S. D. 1968. Smithsonian Year 1966.
. Squires, D. F. 1970. An information storage and

retrieval system for biological and geological data.
Curator 13:43-62.

. Ripley, S. D. 1972. Smithsonian Year 1972, p. 53.
. St. Thomas, L. 1983. First phase of inventory

complete. Torch (July).

. Ripley, S. D. 1969. Smithsonian Year 1969, p. 15.
. Bond, C. 1984. It came from inner space. Smithsonian

153(3):

. Very little has been written about the technicians and

preparators at any period of time. An excellent
reference is a short paper by Shufeldt, R. W. 1922,
“Artisans of the National Museum,” Museum Work,
including the Proceedings of the American Association of
Museums, vol. 5 (3):49—54.

. Rathbun, R. 1916. Annual report for fiscal year 1915,

p. 118.

. Ravenel, W. de C. 1920. Annual report for the year

ending June 30, 1919, p. 16.

. J. E. Pogue. 1913. Division of Mineralogy and

Petrology, U.S. National Museum, A record of its

18.

18.
. Rathbun, R. 1909. Annual report for the year ending June

—

(oy)

arrangement and activities, p. 18.

Wetmore, A. 1944. Annual report for the year ending
June 30, 1943, p. 20.

. In 1960 and 1961 Harold T. Merryman, the inventor

of the technique wrote several articles in Curator.
Rolland Hower, the perfector of the method, in 1962
prepared a small information leaflet, which grew into
his book Freeze-drying biological specimens, 1979
(Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press).

Shops and Maintenance

30, 1909, p. 13

. Rathbun, R. 1913. A descriptive account of the

building recently erected from the departments of
natural history of the United States National Museum.
United States National Museum Bulletin 80, p. 79.

. Wetmore, A. 1935. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1934, p. 15.

. Rathbun, R. 1917. Annual report for fiscal year 1916,

p. 14.

. Wetmore, A. 1928. Annual report for fiscal year 1928,

p. 31.

. Wetmore, A. 1939. Annual report for the year ending

jJume 30, 1938, p. 16.

. Rathbun, R. 1917. Anual report for fiscal year 1916,

p. 13.

. Judd, N. M. 1968. Men met along the trail: Adventures in

archeology, p. 53.

. Others in the Building
. Kopper, P. 1982. Volunteer, oh volunteer—a salute to the

Smithsonian’s unpaid legions. Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press. 46 pp.

. Volunteers of 1983, we salute you. Torch, January

1984. For the past several years the January issue has
devoted four pages to volunteers.

. These figures are compiled by the Independent

Volunteer Placement Service, Smithsonian Institution.

. Questions worth asking about the Discovery Room. Leaflet.

April 1977.

. The Visitors
. Rathbun, R. 1913. Annual report for the year ending June

30, 1912, pp. 15-16.

. Torch, April 1984.
. Park, E. 1975. “Around the Mall and beyond.

Smithsonian 6 (6).

. Kellogg, A. R. 1962. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1961.

. Torch, April 1969.

- Public Places

. Washington Post, September 27, 1908.

. Washington Post, October 9, 1908.

. Walcott, C. D. 1909. Annual report for fiscal year 1909.

. Rathbun, R. 1911. Annual report for the year ending June

30, 1910, p. 68

. Rathbun, R. 1913. Annual report for the year ending June

30, 1912, p. 78.

. Kask, J. L. 1971. Fisheries Service has often been

foster child. National Fisherman 52 (2):4A, 13A.

12.

23%
. Judd, N. M. 1968. Men met along the trail: Adventures in

10.

. Washington Post, March 7, 1917.
. Ravenel, W. de C. 1921. Annual report for fiscal year

1921, p. 29

. Holmes, W. H. 1929. Annual report of the National

Gallery of Art for 1929.

. Smithsonian year 1976, p. 101.
ne

Seltzer, R. 1969. Local Nimrod gives tiger to
Smithsonian. Philadelphia Inquirer, (Oct. 19).

Rathbun, R. 1913. A descriptive account of the
building recently erected from the departments of
natural history of the United States National Museum.
United States National Museum Bulletin 8O, p. 52.

. Ravenel, W. de C. 1922. Annual report for the year

ending June 30, 1922, p. 18.

. Ravenel, W. de C. 1924. Annual report for the year

ending June 30, 1924, p. 19.

. Wetmore, A. 1929. Annual report for the year ending

June 30,1929, p. 29.

. Carmichael, L. 1959. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1958, p. 6.

. Wetmore, A. 1929. Annual report for the year ending

June 30, 1929.

. Harney, T. The National Museum of Natural History.

Thirty-nine-page typescript in the files of the
director’s Office

. Outside the Building
. Rathbun, R. 1912. Annual report for the year ending June

30, 1912, p. 17.

. Ravenel, W. de C. 1923. Annual report for the year

ending June 30, 1923, p. 17.

The Collections

archeology, p. 49.

. Yochelson, E. L. 1969. Fossils—the how and why of

collecting and storing. In Natural History Collections—

Past—Present—Future. Proceedings of Biological Society of

Washington, 82:585—-602.

. Ripley, S. D. 1972. On museum objects, truth, and

education. Reflections of the Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution upon the one-hundred and twenty-fifth
anniversary of us founding. Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press.

. Harney, T. 1978. The magnificent foragers. Washington:

Smithsonian Exposition Books, p. 233.

. Leslie, P. 977. “A report on the management of

collections in the museums of the Smithsonian
Institution.” 131 pp., plus appendices; unpublished.

. Ibid., A-47.
. Ripley, S. D. 1982. Smithsonian Year 1981, pp. 3-4.
. McCombs, P. 1983. The $50 million closet. Washington

Post (May 10).

. The quote is verse three of a nine-verse “Ode to the

Museum Support Center” read by Charles Osgood on
the CBS radio network, May 16, 1983. The full text is
in the Torch, July 1983.

A comment made in 1984 by David Challinor,
Assistant Secretary for Science.

. Goode, G. Brown. 1185. The principles of museum

administration. Annual report of the Museum Association

for 189), p: 73.

Notes

About the author

Ellis L. Yochelson, a paleontologist with the U.S. Geo-
logical Survey from 1952 until his retirement in 1985,
has had an office over the years in the National Museum
of Natural History building; since 1967 he has been a
research associate in the Museum’s Department of Pa-
leobiology. A specialist in extinct mollusks, concen-
trating on the evolution of gastropods, Dr. Yochelson
received B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of
Kansas and a Ph.D. from Columbia. He is a native of
Washington, D.C., who attributes his interest in fossils
to a mid-1930’s trip to the Natural History Building
where he saw the dinosaur exhibit for the first time.
Dr. Yochelson has written some 200 articles, reviews,
and professional papers on paleontology. The many
offices he has held include: president of the Paleon-
tological Society; secretary of the Society of Systematic
Zoology; organizer of the First North American Pa-
leontological Congress; secretary-general of the Ninth
International Carboniferous Congress; and, currently,
secretary of the History of Earth Sciences Society.

213

Index of Personal Names

Abbot, Charles Greeley, 9, 37, 72, 83,
102, 117, 124

Adams, Robert McCormick, 11, 126,
211

Aldrich, John M., 74

Alexander, Carl, 119

Anglim, John E., 88

Aschemeier, Charles R.W., 146

Baird, Spencer F.,°9, 15, 16, 47, 48, 125,
129, 130, 147, 180, 199

Bartsch, Paul, 35, 72, 74, 85, 137

Bassler, Ray S., 74, 80, 85, 159

Bayer, F.M., 173, 175

Bean, Barton A., 72

Becker, Ralph, 160

Benn, James, 74

Benson, Richard H., 150, 152

Blackwelder, R.E., 167

Blake, Doris, 140

Blush, Leonard, 90

Boardman, Richard S., 191

Boss, Norman, 139

Brademas, John, 115

Braden, Susann, 155

Bradley, James C., 104

Braisted, Frank, 162

Brown, Roland W., 52, 85, 144, 212

Brown, Walter P., 150

Brown, William L., 99, 101, 186

Buckler, James, 194, 195

Buechner, Helmut, 114

Burch, Beatrice, / 13

Carmichael, Leonard, 10, 88, 89, 92, 101,

117, 133, 145, 196

Carter, Payson D., 169

Catlin, George, 44, 45

Chace, Fenner, 112, 131

Challinor, David, 213

Chapin, Edward A., 74

Chase, Agnes, 50, 148

Churchill, Winston, 188

Clark, Austin H., 72, 125

Clark, Roy E., 116

Clarke, J.F. Gates, 81, 91, 112, 115, 144

Cochran, Doris M. 72, 108, 136, 140

Cole, F.H., 57

Collins, Henry B., 72, 77, 130, 141, 142,
169

Cooper, G. Arthur, 74, 85, 92, 94, 106,
134, 145, 154, 155, 160, 169, 193, 203

Cooper, Josephine, 145

Cowan, Richard S., 10, 112, 1317, 133,
194, 205

214

Italicized numbers refer to illustrations

Dall, William Healy, 35, 72
Davis, Donald R., 169

Deaton, Neal, 100, 101

Deiss, William A., 207
Desautels, Paul E., 92
Dowling, Andrew Jackson, 191
Duckworth, W. Donald, 119
Dunkle, David, 92

Dutton, C.E., 42

Fast, Charles S., 135

Eblen, Charles, 163

Egberts, W.G., 141

Elliott, John, 45

Evans, Clifford, 86, 88, 121, 180

Evans, William T., 44

Ewers, John C., 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 118,
148

Feldmann, H. Adair, 1/3, 113

Fényovi, ].J., 99

Fiori, Charles, 110

Fischer, Herbert, 160

Fiske, Richard S., 11, 132, 134

Foshag, William F., 72

Freer, Charles, 42

Frederick, Leon, 90

Fredrikkson, Kurt, 1/0

Freidmann, Herbert, 74, 86, 89, 90, 94,
112, 144

Garber, Paul, 129, 155, 189
Gardner, Julia, 82, 140
Gardner, Paul, 86, 188
Garfield, James A., 16

Gast, Carolyn, 108

Gazin, Lewis C., 92, 181
Gellatly, John, 44

Gibson, Gordon D., 94, 96, 145
Gilmore, Charles W., 36, 62, 75, 92, 191
Girault, A.A., 50

Glassell, Alfred C., Jr., 175
Glenn, Leroy, 121

Glover, Townsend, 50

Goode, George Brown, 9, 15, 16, 18, 19,

86, 129, 201, 206
Goodloe, William, 146
Gore, Ronald, 122
Graf, John, 72, 131
Grant, Richard E., 150, 205
Green, Bernard L., 24, 29
Green, Theodore, 175
Greenwell, Frank, 90, 101
Gutrick, Robert, 163

Handley, Charles O., Jr., 156

Harding, Warren G., 71, 180

Harmatuck, Peter J., 132

Harrington, John P., 1/41

Harris, Robert, 166

Hart, Harry, 188

Hayden, F.V., 42

Henbest, Lloyd G., 85

Henson, Pamela, 212

Henderson, Edward P., 72, 73, 75, 80, 92,
111, 130, 161, 166, 169, 186, 194

Henry, Joseph, 9, 15, 16, 41, 42, 125,
147, 179, 207

Hickey, Leo J., 119

Hirohito, Emperor, 173, 175

Hitchcock, A.S., 50

Hobbs, Horton Jr., 112

Hodge, F.W., 37, 53

Hodges, Elaine R.S., 212

Hodges, Ronald M., 212

Hogen, Helen, 45

Hollister, Ned, 72

Holmes, William Henry, 9, 42, 43, 44, 45,
53, 58, 61, 62, 63, 72, 89, 92, 96, 102,
137, 141, 157, 180

Hoover, Herbert, 75, 175

Hornaday, William T., 61, 62, 91, 92, 186

Hornblower, ].D., 24

Hornblower and Marshall, 19, 29, 99

Hotton, Nicholas II], 94, 106

Hough, Walter, 43, 147, 208

Howard, L.O., 50, 51, 139, 209

Hower, Rolland, 92, 154, 211, 212

Hrdlicka, Alés, 43, 62, 104, 133, 141, 142,
182

Hueber, Frances M., 197

Jewett, Charles, 147

Johnson, Lyndon B., 175

Johnston, Harriet Lane, 41

Judd, Neil M., 59, 63, 94, 140, /41, 162,
209

Kajencki, Mimi, 203

Kellogg, A. Remington, 10, 72, 88, 91, 94,
96, 101, 102, 106, 107, 130, 131, 132,
133, 135, 141, 153, 161

Kennedy, John F., 139

Kier, Porter M., 11, 102, 122, 129, 133,
134, 135, 142, 205

King, Clarence, 47

Knez, Eugene I., 94, 96

Knierim, P.K., 133

Knowles, William, 161

Knowlton, Frank H., 72

Index of Personal Names

Koch, Robert, 179
Kreiger, Herbert W., 72, 88, 90, 118, 141
Krombein, Karl V., 74, 79, 81

Lachner, Ernest A., 86, 108, 145, 150,
156

Langley, Samuel Pierpont, 9, 14, 16, 19,
19, 24; 29, 43,-57,.62, 125, 180, 181

“Lanier”, 161

Laybourne, Edgar G., 84

Lingebach, Carleton, 90

Loeblich, A.R., 199

Lutterlough, Sophie, 140

Lyons, Ulysses, 140

Mamay, S.H., 52, 106

Marquardt, Jack F., 157

Marsh, O.C., 191

Martin, Glenn, 45

Mason, Otis T., 14, 19

Matternes, Jay H., 92, 94, 96

McCoy, George, /4/

McGee, J W, 148

McIntyre, Thomas, 156

McPhaul, Harrison, 167

Mead, James G., 157

Meek, Fielding Bradford, 42

Meggers, Betty J., 86, 88, 121, 140
Mello, James F., 11, 133, 135, 150, 188
Mellon, Andrew, 43, 44

Merriam, C. Hart, 50, 51

Merrill, George Perkins, 9, 24, 37, 57, 58,
61, 62, 65, 72, 74, 80, 154, 194, 207,
208

Merryman, Harold T., 212

Miles, Beth, 119

Miller, Gerritt S., Jr., 130, 211

Mills, Petticourt and Mills, 104
Mirguet, John A., 35

Moodey, Margaret W., 38, 66, 73
Moran, Thomas, 183

Morrow, Dwight, 71, 72

Morton, Conrad V., 104

Muesebeck, C.F.W., 50

Murdoch, John, 149

Nelson, E.W., 183

Oberdorfer, Louis F., 124
Oberholser, Harry, 200, 202
Oehser, Paul H., 207
Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 19
Osgood, Charles, 213

Index of Personal Names

Paine, R.G., 141

Paridoso, John, 53

Pawson, David L., 96

Pell, Alfred Duane, 44

Perrygo, Watson M., 76, 79, 81, 82, 86,
90, 90, 92, 130, 135, 146, 161, 186, 188

Peters, James, 145, 148

Peterson, Roger Tory, 186

Powell, John Wesley, 46, 47, 148, 182

Rathbun, Mary Jane, 39, 63, 74, 82, 138,
140

Rathbun, Richard C., 9, 19, 23, 24, 24,
27, 29, 30, 31, 35, 37, 41, 44, 59, 61,
62, 67, 72, 75, 102, 105, 122, 129, 132,
137, 147, 159, 185, 191, 195, 196, 208

Ravenel, William deC., 9, 67, 71, 129,
130, 132, 180, 185

Ray, Clayton E., 160

Read, Robert W., 155

Reeside, John B., Jr., 62, 139

Rehder, Harald, 208

Reisenberg, Saul, 94, 145

Resser, Charles E., 74, 85

Ridgeway, Robert, 74

Riley, C.V., 50

Ripley, S. Dillon, 10, 81, 117, 118,
125, 126, 130, 134, 138, 142, 152,
194, 203, 205, 211

Roosevelt, Theodore, 62

Rosenbusch, Louise, 45

Rosewater, Joseph, 173

Ruetzler, Klaus, 144

Saarinen, Eero, 43

Saunders, Harold, 86, 200

Sayre, Reginald J., 1/6, 131

Schmitt, Waldo L., 63, 81, 83, 85,
108, 111, 112, 167, 180

Schultz, Leonard, 108

Scollick, W.E., 69

Setzer, Henry W., 92, 203

Setzler, Frank, 80, 90, 141

Simkin, Thomas, 211

Smith, Albert C., 10, 94, 131, 132,
135

Smithson, James, 15, 102, 199

Snodgrass, R.E., 86

Soderstrom, Thomas, 131

Spaatz, Arnold, 104

Springer, Victor G., 156

Squires, Donald, 133, 150

Stanford, Dennis J., 142

Stejneger, Leonhard, 9, 37, 61, 65,
76, 82, 92

Stern, William L., 108

Stewart, T. Dale, 10, 72, 74, 77, 81,
94, 112, 128, 132, 133, 134, 141,
169, 182, 211

Steyskal, George, 112

St. Hoyme, Lucile, 83

Surling, Matthew, 83

Sturtevant, William, 53

Switzer, George S., 92

Tawney, Madeline, 157

Taylor, Frank, 86, 107, 132
Terry, Charles, /4/

Thompson, Eugene E., 65
‘Tolman, Ruel P., 43

True, F.W., 9, 61, 131, 207, 208
True, W.P., 207

Truman, Harry S, 175

Tyler, James C., 11, 134

Ulrich, E.O., 48, 62, 106

Van Beek, Gus, 142, 169, 182, 200
van Lerius, J.H.F., 45
Vaughan, T. Wayland, 35

Walcott, Benjamin S., 65

Walcott, Charles Doolittle, 9, 18, 19,
A2* 61,655.71. 92) 124 2b aliSi7e
179, 180, 181, 207

Walcott, Mary Vaux, 71

Wallen, Eugene, 113, 114

Ward, Henry, 96, 186

Washington, George, 76

Watkins, Malcolm, 76, 90, 94, 182,
199

Weaver, John, 96

Webster, G.D., 182

Wedel, Waldo, 77, 83, 92, 94, 96

Weiss, Helena B., 142

Wetmore, Alexander, 9, 10, 72, 74,
76, 80, 82, 83, 85, 86, 88, 102, 104,
111, 117, 118, 129, 130, 131, 132,
135, 141, 159, 161, 164, 166, 180,
200, 202

Whitmore, Frank C., Jr., 130

Wilcox, Vincent D., III, 205

Wilkes, Charles, 183

Willis, Bailey, 18

Wilson, Woodrow, 65, 181

Wise, Kenneth, 176

Yochelson, Ellis L., 210, 273

Sources of Illustrations

Photographs were assembled from a variety of sources within
the Institution. Unless otherwise indicated, the negatives are
in the Smithsonian Photographic Services and are indicated
by number. An asterisk indicates a copy negative made from
a print. Phe current numbering system includes the date, but
does not differentiate between views taken during the year
and copy work. A double asterisk indicates a gloss-plate neg-
alive.

Front cover, MNH 84-74; Back cover, 85-4046*; Half title page, MNH 19087;
Title page, MNH 825251.

Part One: The Structure

13, 21571**; 14, 57929**; 17 (lop), 6090**; 17 (bottom), 2599**; 18, SA-742*:
19, Library National Museum of American Art; 20 (fop), 11305**; 20 (bottom),
2958**; 21 (top), 9646**; 21 (bottom), 16846**; 22, MAH-16229*;24, 85-4021*;
25 (lop), 75-12392*; 25 (middle), 75-12388*; 25 (bottom), 75-12386*; 26 (le/t),
Smithsonian Archives; 26 (right), Annual Report for 1913, p. 16, 17; 27,
Smithsonian Archives; 28, 18309**; 30, MAH-16235*; 31, National Museum
of American Art; 32 (lop), 17531**; 32 (bottom), 18546**;33 (top), 20207**; 33
(bottom), MNH-9941; 34, SEA-1275*; 36, 21599**; 37, 82-3221*; 38 (top), SIA-
1273*; 38 (bottom), SIA-1271*; 39 (top), MNH-26552; 39 (bottom), 1272; 40,
31122-C; 42 (left), National Museum of American Art; 42 (right), 23752**; 43,
National Museum of American Art; 44, National Museum of American Art;
45, 18052-E; 46, 64-a-13a*; 48, 85-4022*; 49, From Washington, the Beautiful
Capital of the Nation, © 1922 by William Olsen, National Aero-View Publishing
Company, Washington, D.C.; 50, 85-4023*; 52 (top), 85-4024*; 52 (bottom), 85-
4026*; 53, 85-4025%.

Part Two: The Exhibits

55, 45429; 56, 28589**: 58 28196**: 59, 28596**: 60 (lop), 24872**; 60 (bottom),
28602**; 61, 27073**; 63, 28592**; 64, 85-4027*; 66 (top), 85-4028*; 66 (bottom),
23904**; 67, 23905**; 68, Library National Museum of American Art; 69 (lop
lef), 9716-D; 69 (top nght), 26914-C; 69 (bottom), Division of Amphibians and
Repules; 70, 85-4029; 73, National Museum of American Art; 74, 85-4035;

75 (left), 85-4030*; 75 (right), 85-4032*; 76, 85-4031*; 77, 28259**; 78, 28537;
80, Smithsonian Archives; 81, 41942; 82 (top), NH 33835-C; 82 (bottom), 28537;
83, MAH 30634-A; 84, 36818-A; 87 (top), 24875**; 87 (bottom), MNH 035; 88,
John Ewers; 89, 27073; 90, 85-4034*; 93, Library National Museum of American
Art; 93, Betty |. Meggers; 95, MNH 200; 97, MNH 893; 98, 85-4037*;

100, 85-4035*; 101 (top), Women’s Committee; 101 (bottom), Women’s Committee;
102, 85-4038; 103, 43047; 104, 85-4039*; 105, 85-4040; 107, MNH-955-C;
109 (top), MNH-776; 109 (bottom), P 63336-B; 110, MNH-783-C; 112, MNH
837-D; 113, MNH-1448-B; 114, 85-4041*; 115 (top), 85-4042*; 115 (bottom),
MNH 837; 116, 76-1260-7; 119, 78-9817-8; 120, 78-15802; 122, 76-5049-34;
123, 85-4043*; 124, 77-3249-10; 126 (left), 85-4044; 126 (right), 85-4046.

Part Three: The Museum

127, 85-12069/26; 128, Thomas Harney; 130, 21314; 131, 1819-C; 132, 85-
4071-10; 133, 78-3701*; 134, Office of Director NMNH; 135 (top), 436A; 135
(bottom), 75-6927-2; 136, MNH-1092; 137, 85-4047*; 138, 85-4049*; 141 (top),
85-4050*; 141 (middle), 42016; 141 (bottom), 85-4048*; 142, Elaine Hodges; 143
(top lef), Author original; 143 (bottom right), Author original; 143 (top right and
bottom left), Elaine Hodges; 144, 11055-C; 145, 85-4051*; 146, 85-4052*; 149,
3666%**; 151, 85-4053*; 152, SIA-1276; 153, 85-4054*; 154, 85-4056*; 155,
85-4074-0; 156 (left), 85-4055*; 156 (right), 71-310; 157 (left), 85-4075-13; 157
(right), 85-4075-12; 158, 85-4057*; 160, U.S. National Museum Bulletin 80;
161 38851-F; 162 85-4072-20; 163 (top), 85-4077-17; 163 (middle), 85-4076-5;
163 (bottom), 85-4077-10; 164, 85-4058*; 166, 85-4059*; 167 (left), 85-4060*;
167 (top right), 85-4074-14; 167 (bottom right), 85-4079; 168, 85-4059*; 169,
Naturalists Center; 170, 3669; 173, Thomas Harney; 174, 85-4061; 175 (Left),
85-4062; 175 (right), 85-4063; 176 (top), 85-4036; 176 (bottom), 85-4074-17; 177,
85-4074-5; 178, 85-4065*; 180, 28235**; 181, 21258**; 182, 85-4066*; 183,
MAH 388801-C; 184, 37443-D; 185, 85-4064*; 187 (top), 85-4077-82; 187
(bottom), 85-4077-15; 188 (left), 85-4077-4; 188 (right), 85-4077-14; 189, Victor
Krantz; 190, 24939; 192, MAH 30680-B; 193 (left), National Museum of American
Art; 193 (right), 85-4067; 194 (left), 85-4071-5; 194 (right) 85-6370-25; 195, 85-
4072-11; 196, 85-4068*; 197, 85-4073-10; 198, MNH-778; 201, 27184**; 203,
Thomas Harney; 204 (top), MNH 38851-N; 204 (bottom), 77-2089-27; 205 (left),
2477-A; 205 (right), MNH 2477; 206, 85-4069; 213, Roy Clark.

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