14 MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN. 
original appraisal of $125,160.00 to $227,185.94. When 
the property came under the charge of the Trustees it was 
a country home on which for some years inadequate 
expenditure had been made for maintenance. The streets 
about it were without sidewalks, and the walks within were 
of such construction as to be impassable in wet frosty 
weather. The surrounding walls were crumbling, the 
plant houses were limited in capacity, of antiquated and 
inadequate construction, and very badly out of repair, while 
the residence assigned to the Director was found by a 
committee of physicians to be in a most unsanitary condi- 
_tion and a little museum that had been maintained for 
many years had so deteriorated under the care of house- 
hold servants that the Director was advised to close it. 
The provision of room for administration, library, her- 
barium and research purposes also confronted the Board as 
an immediate necessity, as did provision for a supply of 
city water, improvement of existing temporary sewers, and 
some arrangement other than open grates for heating the 
residence and museum building. 
On these needed improvements the Board have heen 
compelled to spend large sums of money. The full length 
of the Garden front on Tower Grove Avenue has been ter- 
raced, provided with a granitoid sidewalk and planted to 
an avenue of maples,—already becoming beautiful and 
yielding in summer a pleasing shade,—while cinder paths 
have been maintained along the Shaw Avenue and Magnolia 
Avenue sides; the larger of these improvements costing 
$3,087.56. The principal walks of the Garden have been 
suitably remade; the expenditure for this and the replace- 
ment of much of the brick edging amounting to about 
$3,000.00. The gate-house, walls, and fences were put in 
repair at a cost of $5,056.03. The area covered by plant 
houses has been more than doubled, at a cost of $29,608.45 — 
the new houses being of modern construction, except for 
two small temporary structures, and permitting the growth 
