and Laboratory Methods. 



•ill: 



The Museum. 

 II. 



To arbitrarily group into classes the methods of imparting architectural value 

 to the museum, is open to criticism, exception and apparent disproof. Embel- 

 lishment plays an important part in the two first methods as in the last, and 

 both the first and second can be and are combined. 



It is evident in looking at designs of museums that the windows form attrac- 

 ive temptations for the architect ; they can be built up as recesses (Kensington) 

 with mural pillows, they can be muUioned and transomed and obscured at their 

 summits with Catherine wheels and gothic apertures. It seems desirable to 

 change all this. Windows should be large openings, generally rectangular, with 

 shallow or no set-backs, and provided with as large sashes and single glasses or 

 panes as possible. The ideal museum construction in windows could be advo- 

 cated, of making them sub-convex, giving the sash a depressed bay-window 

 effect, as in a series, excellently designed, in the Macy department store in New 

 York (Fig. 7). 



Fig. T. 



The impression left in examining the disposition of windows in mu- 

 seums where the institution reaches imposing proportions is that they were 

 regarded less as entrances for light than ornamental incidents upon which the 

 architect has expended some pains to destroy their original purpose. In this 

 respect the windows of the New York Museum form enviable models. On the 

 exhibition floors the recess from the outer wall scarcely exceeds eighteen inches, 

 they are in double sashes, varied on the third floor by a plain transom of dressed 

 granite. No clustering columns, and no projecting exterior pillars, as in the 

 Provincial Museum, Hanover, obstructs, deflects or baftles the free admission of 

 the light. The vertical walls are broken by semi-cylindrical stone pillars rising 

 to the eaves and surmounted by conventional pediments carrying torches, but 

 these pillars are removed from any proximity to the windows, and make no 

 interference with the latters' natural use. (See Fig. 11.) 



The windows in the Brooklyn Institute seem favorable, but there is no con- 

 ceivable reason for cutting them up into so many minor panes. 



