TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL REPORT 131 



is far in the lead. Various plans submitted for its improvement 

 from time to time have been approved — a)id 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 of!ice, 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 



