382 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1903. 



tirm, where everything is of iron. It has done some very excellent 

 work in several Government buildings in Massachusetts, about which I 

 shall speak under Boston. The authorities of the United States, for 



BricK Partition Walls 



'steel Curtain^^^^'^^'Tteel Curtain &teei turtain 



Fig. 23.— Ground plan of the room shown in figs. 21, 22. 



the sake of greater security against tire, are turning more and more to 

 iron furniture, which is preferable to wood also on account of its 

 general appearance. Iron is prepared for this purpose with much 

 better machinery than among us, and is, in consequence, in spite of 



higher wages, much cheaper than 

 in Germany. It has at the same 

 time the advantage of an elegant 

 exterior. Especially perfect is 

 the varnish, which is obtained by 

 triple burning. B}' its use the 

 iron becomes as if enameled. It 

 is, moreover, adorned with 

 bronze, brass, marble, painting, 

 and the like. 



There are several larger firms 

 of the same sort in the United 

 States, as, for example, Snead & 

 Co. Iron Works in Louisville, 

 Kentucky, which, among other 

 things, constructed the remarka- 

 ble iron book stacks in the Li- 

 brary of Congress, to which I 

 shall refer in a later report; 

 there is also J. B. and J. M. Cornell, Twenty-sixth street and 

 Eleventh avenue in New York (also Cold Spring in New York), who 

 manufactured the furnishings of the county court-house in Worces- 



FiG. 24.— Document case, with double-roller 

 curtain. (Seep. 381.) 



