XX REPORT OF THE ARCHITECTS. 



ported that careful survey forced upon them the conviction that "the 

 original construction of the building as a whole was very defective and 

 unsuited as a receptacle of valuable records. The two wings and con- 

 necting ranges, which were not injured by the fire, are defective in ma- 

 terial and construction. The floors in some cases, though covered with 

 flagging, rest upon wooden beams, which are decayed, and in a few 

 years the interior of these parts will require removal." 



The Eegents decided that the restoration should in all parts be inde- 

 structible by fire, and intrusted Adolf Cluss, architect, with the plans 

 and superintendence of the work, which was carried on shortly after 

 the close of the war, when material and labor had risen to the highest 

 mark. 



The second story of the center building was fitted up as a hall for 

 Government collections, and was covered with an iron and slate roof; 

 five towers were fitted up with iron and brick floors, partitions, and roofs, 

 and with iron stairs. This work was completed in the season of 1867. 

 Fire-proof floors were substituted in 1871 for the decayed lower wooden 

 floors of the west wing and of the northwest arcade, and in 1873 a steam- 

 heating apparatus was put in the building. 



The east wing, then called the chemical wing, was originally arranged 

 for one large lecture-room, provided with seats for 1,000 persons, and 

 the adjoining range was fitted up for two apparatus rooms in close prox- 

 imity with the lecturers' table. When the improved lecture-room in the 

 main building was completed in 1854 there was no longer any use for 

 the now antiquated room which absorbed the whole east wing. Hence, 

 this wing was temporarily divided into two stories, with wooden floors, and 

 studded, lathed, and plastered partitions. The lower floor was arranged 

 in a large room for handling all articles of exchange, &c. The second 

 story was fitted up with a suit of rooms for the accommodation of the 

 Secretary of the Institution, in accordance with the original intentions 

 of the Eegents, and the high space above was left unfinished as a loft. 



The fenestration became, in the newly arranged two stories, most 

 anomalous. The tall windows of a lofty lecture-room being subdivided, 

 the old frames came to be in the lower story very near to the ceiling, 

 and almost on a level with the floor in the upper story. The connect- 

 ing wing, as altered, accommodated simply two middle-sized offices, with 

 the cloister along the exposed north front, through the open arches of 

 which rain and snow drifted, and rotted the wooden floor-joists so much 

 that they had to be temporarily supported from the cellar. Before long 

 the open arches of the cloister had to be filled in with temporary wooden 

 windows, which barely kept the weather out. 



Above the first story of the range there was a second stoiy, of no 

 practical value, since the external architecture limited the size of its 

 windows to bull's-eyes of 2^ feet in diameter, i&c. 



The museum was shut off from the eastern main entrance by direct 

 obstructions and by floors on two different levels. 



