and Laboratory Methods, 2221 



The Museum. 



IV. INTERIOR PLAN. 



The interior arrangement of halls, corridors, lecture rooms, etc., admits of 

 variation determined by character of exhibits and building, and is naturally 

 influenced by particular aims in the management, or original purpose of the 

 museum. For museums generally, however, some useful, fixed plan and relation 

 of parts can be insisted on. 



First, a well lighted basement extending under the whole building is indis- 

 pensable. This basement contains heating and ventilating and power plants, 

 and usually the direct supply from a basement of heat and power will be found 

 more convenient and economical than the erection of an outer building for both. 



Into such a comfortably and carefully divided basement, all incoming freight 

 may be delivered, recorded, unpacked, and prepared for treatment in the labora- 

 tories, or made ready for direct introduction on the exhibition floors. The 

 avoidance of a great deal of dust and dirt is thus made possible, and a general 

 inventory secured of all receipts and shipments. 



Material from the departments should be forwarded from the basement, and 

 here the store rooms, carpenters' shops, and, if the position is a dry one, the 

 duplicate rooms be maintained. An allotment of one or more rooms to each 

 department for the rougher preparation of specimens, mounting, and cleaning 

 can be located in the basement. 



It seems feasible to place in the basement, at extremities where area-ways can 

 be constructed for their full illumination, the rooms of taxidermy, modelling 

 rooms, the disinfecting and poisoning apparatus, dessicating rooms for skins, 

 bones, bleaching baths, etc., and even the boxes for study collections. In this 

 way the noxious, unhealthy, and intolerable suffusion of odors (accompanied 

 also by destructive gases) through a museum can be sensibly diminished or 

 entirely banished. 



If the basement is thus serviceable for the installation of the preparatory 

 mechanical and shipping work of the museum, the top floor should be reserved 

 for offices, laboratories, and administrative chambers, unless, as in art museums, 

 the top floor is cut up into galleries. Art museums, from their diffuse structure, 

 and their freedom from the annoying features of organic preparations and their 

 preservation, can readily devote dry, airy, and lighted basements to the use of 

 general offices as well as of freight and storage rooms. 



This provision of rooms for labor in the bottom, and rooms for research and 

 direction in the top of the museum will be found helpful. Frequently, by reason 

 of the towers used to diversify or assist in the construction of museums, small 

 useful office rooms are formed on every story. These, of course, can be used for 

 curators, but it seems preferable to make some other use of them, keeping the 

 working staff segregated at the top or bottom of the building. It facilitates 

 intercourse, communication, etc., and is a better system for the public and special 

 visitors. 



