GEOPHYSICAL LABORATORY. 85 



GEOPHYSICAL LABORATORY* 



Arthur L. Day, Director. 



NEW LABORATORY. 



In December, 1905, at the annual meeting of the Trustees of the Carnegie 

 Institution of Washington, the sum of $150,000 was appropriated for a 

 geophysical laboratory. In the subsequent allotment by the Executive Com- 

 mittee, $100,000 was assigned to the purchase of a site and the erection of 

 a building, and $50,000 to its equipment. It has proved practicable to pro- 

 vide for these within the sums allotted, in spite of the generally increasing 

 cost of everything during the period intervening between the preparation of 

 the estimates and the completion of the expenditures. 



Site. — A site w-as purchased in the spring of 1906 upon a somew^hat 

 isolated hill in the northwest section of the city of Washington, only a short 

 distance from the Bureau of Standards. The site itself includes 5 acres of 

 land and is protected on three sides by the steep contour of the hill from the 

 disturbing encroachments of future building operations. The land on the 

 fourth side is pennanently occupied by the Sisters of the Holy Cross, who 

 expect to erect upon it several buildings for educational purposes. The tract 

 is situated about 1,500 feet away from the nearest street-car line, and the 

 geological formation is such that mechanical disturbances from without need 

 not be feared. Reasonably convenient access to the site is now obtained by 

 a temporary road through the adjacent property of the Sisters of the Holy 

 Cross, but this must be abandoned in the near future on account of the 

 extensive building operations contemplated by them. A permanent en- 

 trance-way would naturally be provided by the proposed continuation of 

 Upton Street described in the street-plan adopted for the District of Columbia, 

 which forms the southern boundary of the laboratory grounds. All the 

 land required for continuing this street past our property, a distance of about 

 1,200 feet, has been dedicated to the District of Columbia without cost, and 

 a formal request for the extension has been made. Its construction is now 

 dependent upon favorable action by Congress. 



Laboratory Building. — The design of the building w^as placed in the hands 

 of Wood, Donn & Deming, architects, of this city, to be developed from 

 tentative plans which had been prepared in the Laboratory and presented 

 to the Executive Committee for examination the previous year (1905). 

 Their problem was further complicated by great uncertainty in the cost of 



* Situated in Washington, D. C. Grants Nos. 353 and 405. $190,000 for site, building, 

 equipment, and investigations. (For previous reports on geophysical v^orlc see Year 

 Book No. 3, p. 80; Year Book No. 4, pp. 224-230; and Year Book No. 5, pp. 177-185.) 



