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The first rough plans for the laboratory building and plant 
houses were prepared by the present director of the Garden at 
Columbia, Missouri, in January, rg1o, and submitted to the archi- 
tects, Messrs. McKim, Meade & White for study and elaboration. 
The appointment of the director, made in February, 1910, took 
effect on July 1, of the same year. On the 14th of the preceding 
February the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of the city 
of New York was requested to issue corporate stock of the city 
for the erection of the building, and the plans and specifications 
for the first section were advertised for public letting during 
October and November, I9QII. 
On January 18 the contract was awarded to Cockerill & Little 
Co., the lowest bidders. The building was to be completed in 
150 working days from April I, 1912. Excavation began on 
Apirl 8, but owing to numerous exasperating delays the Garden 
staff was not able to occupy the first section of the building until 
September 24, 1913, approximately one year after the date 
specified for the completion of the contract. 
The work of the Garden, administered for over three years 
from a temporary office in the Brooklyn Museum, had reached 
such proportions that the small first section was quite outgrown 
before it was occupied, The small plant houses became greatly 
overcrowded, both with plants and with classes; our one lecture 
room and class room made it possible for us to respond to only 
a fraction of the demands made upon us by the schools and the 
oe public; part of our library and thousands of specimens of 
our herbarium were packed away in storage, inaccessable for 
daily use; of laboratory accommodations we had almost none; 
further growth was impossible, stagnation was out of the ques- 
tion, for the Botanic Garden was a living institution, young and 
vigorous. 
The state of the city’s finances, resulting from the enormous 
cost of necessary public improvements made it necessary for the 
most efficient Board of Estimate and Apportionment the city has 
ever had, to administer the public funds with the strictest economy, 
making appropriations of corporate stock only for necessary or 
very urgent purposes. This was the situation confronting our 
Garden in May, 1915, when the chairman of our governing com- 
