24 ANNUAL REPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 31 



ADDITIONS TO THE NATURAL HISTORY BUILDING 



In the report for last year there was a discussion of the Smoot- 

 Elliott bill authorizing the extension of the Natural History Build- 

 ing by adding wings at the east and west ends at a cost of $6,500,000, 

 which was approved by the President on June 19, 1930. As men- 

 tioned above, the second deficiency bill for 1931 carried $10,000 for 

 the preparation of preliminary plans for these additions. The Allied 

 Architects Incorporated, of Washington, D. C, have been selected by 

 the executive committee of the Smithsonian Institution to prepare 

 preliminary plans which will be ready for consideration at the time 

 this report is published. Briefly it is planned to add to the present 

 building so that it will extend through the available space from 

 Ninth Street to Twelfth Street, the additional construction to dupli- 

 cate in general arrangement the present building, with the ground 

 floor and third floor devoted to offices and laboratories and the two 

 intermediate floors given over to exhibits. In so far as modern 

 advances in museum design are found applicable to our needs, they 

 will be incorporated in the plans, and various facilities not at present 

 available will be arranged. It is desired to so schedule the appro- 

 priations covering this important matter that funds for the com- 

 mencement of this work will be provided in the bill for the coming 

 fiscal year. Delay will be highly embarrassing, since our collections 

 in natural history have increased to a point where exhibition and 

 laboratory space is now badly crowded, and under present conditions 

 we must at times make refusal of valuable material that should be in 

 the national collections. In recent years various expedients to pro- 

 vide more space have been adopted, until now we have reached our 

 limit of resources without additional construction. It will be 

 observed in further paragraphs of this report that additions to the 

 exhibition and study collections contained in the Natural History 

 Building in the present fiscal year have reached the vast number of 

 nearly 1,000,000 specimens. 



If the building program indicated can be carried out at this time 

 there will be provided adequate quarters for the natural history col- 

 lections. It must not be overlooked, however, that consideration 

 must soon be given to further construction to house our highly 

 valuable materials in arts and industries and in history. 



COLLECTIONS 



Additions to the collections of the National Museum during the 

 fiscal year reached the total of 1,022,850 individual specimens, the 

 major part of these coming, as in previous years, to the department of 

 biology. The additions are far in excess of those of any previous 



