STUDIES ON MUSEUMS AND KINDRED INSTLTUTIONS. 



383 



ter, Massachusetts, and at whose establishment 1 saw document 

 cases and record cases in course of construction for the court-house in 

 Baltimore, parts of an order for $60,000. The iron book stacks of 

 this firm pleased me particularly on account of their simplicity, as 

 compared with the ditlorent models which I saw in the libraries of New 

 York, Alban\', Butl'alo, Chicag'o, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, 

 and Cambridge. The figured case for folio volumes which rest upon 

 rollers can be closed })y iron roller shutters. 



With regard to fireproof rooms and their fitting up with iron furni- 

 ture, we in Europe are, at all events, far behind America, and I can 

 not too strongly recommend adopting in our museums and other public 

 buildings such contrivances which are already in very general use 



Fig. 25. — Ca.se for folio volumes, with roller curtain and liook.s on rollers (See p. 382). 



there. One of the aliove-mentioned tirm.s has the motto, •"Anything 

 in metal from a building to a box." It is the more surprising that the 

 American museums have as yet no iron, l)ut only wooden cases and 

 desks for their collections," whereas the former are already i^sed to 

 some extent in Europe. There can be no doubt that the Americans, 

 when once they shall have decided on iron furniture for museums, will 

 be in a position to construct it in a much more perfect manner than 

 we have as yet succeeded in doing in Europe, since their experiences 

 with other iron contrivances have alreadj^ carried them ver}^ far. 



«They have since begun to fit with such the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, 

 and, I believe, other places. 



