478 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1903. 



decks, one above the other. They are immediately l)ack of the deliv- 

 er}^ room on the second story (Plate 30). 



This room, 144 feet long and 53 feet wide, runs across the entire 

 building- and opens immediatel}' upon the principal stairway, consti- 

 tuting- with that stairway the most splendid feature of the building. 

 It is decoi-ated in the richest manner with marble and glass mosaics, 

 especially in the high central cupola, which is 38 feet in diameter at 

 its base and 11 feet high (36 feet abov^e the floor). Perhaps nothing 

 similar to it has been produced since the fourteenth century. At the 

 northern end of the second stor37^ are the rooms for the veterans 

 (memorial hall, assembly hall, etc.). There is here inserted a mezza- 

 nine story. Over this, in the third story, is the great reading room for 

 current periodicals and newspapers (Plate 31), which, like the deliv- 

 ery room, runs across the entire ])uilding, together with the reference 

 room. The reading room has 415 seats and about 1(>() standing places 

 at the newspaper racks, and the reference room, including the adjoin- 

 ing rooms, has 225 seats; ^' the former is 36 feet high, 144 feet long, 

 and 60 feet wide; the latter is 33 feet high, 144 feet long, and 42 feet 

 wide. The collective area covered by all the rooms of the library, 

 throughout all the stories, amounts to two and a half acres. At various 

 places, as has been already mentioned for the north end of the second 

 story, mezzanine stories are inserted, which has been ingeniousl}^ done 

 without injury to the facade (Plate 28) b}^ placing the floor of the 

 mezzanine behind the crossbar of a window and covering it, at the 

 same time painting it dark below, so that from without it is almost 

 invisible. The arrangement and designation of the remaining rooms 

 are shown on the ground plans. The rear court, on the western side, 

 which is open as an entrance for carriages to Garland place, is later to 

 be built over, so that in the place of the now open right angle which 

 appears in the plans of the second and third stories, there will be built 

 three stack rooms which will di recti}' adjoin similar rooms in the flrst 

 stor}" behind the delivery room. 



The vast machinery plant is placed in the basement. The public 

 library is entirely independent, in that it supplies its own electric 

 powe-r, heat, and light (26 arc and over 7,000 incandescent lamps), and 

 it also has its own water reservoir, rendering it independent of the 

 city supply, if necessary' , and suflicing for its normal wants for thirty 

 hours. The arrangements of this underground world of machinery 

 are admirable. Even in these regions there rules a high degree of 

 elegance and magnificence. It is a faulty however, that the powerful 

 engines stand in the building itself, and therefore shake it. In the 

 evening, when they are working with their full power, there is at 

 certain places a strong tremor not only disagreeable to feel, but very 



«A total of a thousand persons can work at the same time in the public library. 



