TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT Bi 
is far in the lead. Various plans submitted for its improvement 
from time to time have been approved—and placed on file. The 
present outlook is no brighter than it was before the war. 
A material increase in exhibition space is possible without 
encroachment on the limited territory of Battery Park, while the 
daily operation of the mechanical department is still conducted 
under conditions verging on the intolerable. A disadvantage of 
long standing is a fire room subject to serious flooding during the 
neap and spring tides of each month. At such times the firemen 
wear rubber hip boots and shovel wet coal into the furnaces from 
half submerged wheelbarrows. 
The administrative work of the Aquarium is carried on with- 
out the space necessary for effectiveness. The office space is lim- 
ited, while feed room, repair room, and storage room are all mere 
make-shifts. 
The external appearance of the Aquarium has long been the 
subject of unfavorable comment. Its light, wooden superstruc- 
ture, already weakened by the cutting of skylights at various 
times, should be replaced by something more in keeping with 
heavy walls of a building originally constructed as a fort. The 
remedy for the general retardation of the Aquarium lies in the 
shifting of all machinery to an unused basement, the conversion 
of the space thus vacated into exhibition tanks, and the addition 
of a third story for administrative purposes.” 
On account of the condition of the building and its inade- 
quate maintenance for several years past, the efforts of the 
director and employes of the Aquarium have been confined to the 
keeping up of its mechanical department and the maintenance of 
its exihibits, the improvement and repair of the building being 
quite impossible under existing circumstances. 
The contract of the Zoological Society with the City, so far 
as concerns the structure itself, has clearly not been fulfilled: 
“The party of the first part (i. e., the City of New York) shall 
at all times keep in repair and good condition the said building.” 
The Director despairs of seeing the Aquarium placed on a 
basis comparable with those of other museums in the City. It 
has done its work so far actually without respectable housing, so 
ruinous are its roof, basement and comfort rooms, and so limited 
its office, storage, laboratory and feed-room space. The mis- 
treatment of the Aquarium building is of such long standing, that 
the improvement of the shaky roof alone, an acknowledged and 
expensive necessity, begets the fear that improvement might end 
there and leave the Aquarium no better in other respects. Has 
