ADDRESS 



AS PRESIDENT .OP, THE CHEMISTS' BUILDING COMPANY 

 ON THE OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE CHEM- 

 ISTS' BUILDING, MARCH 17, 1911 



I RISE to welcome you on behalf of the directors and stock- 

 holders of the Chemists' Building Company, and to thank 

 you for the interest which your presence indicates in the 

 formal opening of a building which we believe to be the first 

 of its kind, not only in this country, but on earth. It is true 

 that Berlin possesses in the Hofmann-Haus a home for the 

 German Chemical Society and that London owes to the mu- 

 nificence of the late Ludwig Mond its Davy-Faraday Labo- 

 ratories for Chemical and Physical Research. But this new 

 building in which you find yourselves is planned to serve 

 under one roof the social, intellectual and practical needs 

 of the chemical profession not of New York alone, but of our 

 whole beloved country. 



The means for its construction have been furnished by 

 men, many of whom can expect to share to but a slight degree 

 in the benefits of The Chemists' Club, which occupies so 

 much of its floor space. These shareholders see in it the in- 

 carnation of some of the ideals that led them to the pursuit 

 of chemistry, pure or applied, as their lifework. 



For, strange as it may seem to the layman, who has seen 

 the ugliest blots on a landscape designated as chemical fac- 

 tories, who has sniffed with disgust a chemical odor, has been 

 urged to believe that the chemist's shadow contaminates 

 pure foods, and has been taught in school that alchemy 

 spelled fraud and sorcery, our science is one calculated to 



1 Reprinted from Met. and Chem. Engineering, 9, 177 (1911). 



