I MUSEUMS FOR THE PEOPLE 13 



air, and the readiest access. With how much greater 

 pleasure the workman and his family could spend a day 

 at the museum, if at intervals they could stroll out on to 

 the grass, among flowers and under shady trees, to enjoy 

 the refreshments they had brought with them. They 

 would then return to the building with renewed zest, and 

 would probably escape the fatigue and headache that a 

 day in a museum almost invariably brings on. The 

 public park is the proper locality for the public museum. 



In designing museums, architects seem to pay little 

 regard to the special purposes they are intended to fulfil. 

 They often adopt the general arrangement of a church, or 

 the immense galleries and lofty halls of a palace. Now, 

 the main object of a museum-building is to furnish the 

 greatest amount of well lighted space, for the convenient 

 arrangement and exhibition of objects which almost all 

 require to be closely examined. At the same time they 

 should be visible by several persons at once without 

 crowding, and admit of others freely passing by them. 

 None except the very largest specimens should be placed 

 so as to rise higher than seven feet above the floor, so that 

 palatial rooms and extensive galleries, requiring pro- 

 portionate altitude, are exceedingly wasteful of space, 

 and otherwise ill adapted and unnecessary for the real 

 purposes of a museum. It is true that side-galleries 

 against the walls may be and often are used to utilize the 

 height, but these are almost necessarily narrow, and 

 totally unadapted for the proper exhibition of any but a 

 limited class of objects. By this plan, too, the whole 

 upper-floor space is lost, which is of great importance, 

 because a large proportion of objects are best exhibited 

 on tables or in detached cases. 



Following out this view, a simple and economical plan 

 for a museum would seem to be, a series of long rooms or 

 galleries, about thirty-five or forty feet wide, and twelve 

 or fourteen feet high on each floor, the four or five feet 

 below the ceiling on both sides being an almost continuous 

 series of window openings, while at rather wide intervals 

 large windows might descend to within three feet of the 

 floor. At such distances apart as were found most 



