O7 
Tue LABORATORY BUILDING 
The center of the Garden activities and of their administration 
is the Laboratory Building. The original floor plans of the building 
were made by Dr. Gager before he left the University of Missourt. 
Ile spent many hours in working out preliminary arrangements 
for laboratories, classrooms, and offices. These were submitted 
to the architects, McKim, Mead & White, who designed the build- 
ing in 1910. 
Careful attention was paid to determining the architectural style 
of the building because of its relation to the Brooklyn Museum 
Building which was arranged, when completed, to open onto the 
Botanic Garden grounds. The Laboratory Building, with the 
greenhouses, then, had to be fitted in with this general plan. Con- 
sequently, it was located on Washington Avenue and a style of 
architecture was selected which provided for a low type of build- 
ing. Modified Italian Renaissance design was chosen, and the 
plan of a Greek cross with a cupola at the juncture of the cross, a 
motif common to Lombardy chapels, was employed. As viewed 
from various points in the Garden, it is a very attractive structure. 
Dr. Gager worked out a scheme for the treatment of the ex- 
terior of the Laboratory Building to include the placing of names 
of former botanists of note on the frieze and on panels under the 
windows. The selection of these names was the result of a vote 
— 
of prominent American botanists. 
For the chief place of honor, namely, the frieze, the names o 
twenty-two botanists were selected, Linnaeus and Darwin occupy- 
ing the principal positions on each side of the main entrance. The 
names of forty-seven botanists were placed in the panels under 
the windows, and included five American botanists. A vacancy 
under one window was left until 1937, when the name of deVries, 
who had recently died, was carved. 
The building houses the administrative offices, auditorium, 

laboratories, rooms for research, the herbaria, library, and class 
rooms for the work of instruction. 
The first section of the building was completed and occupied 
September 24-26, 1913, and officially opened on December 13, 
