FIFTY FIRST CONGRESS, 1889-1891. 1319 
SMITHSONIAN Institution, U. 8S. Natronan Museum, 
Washington, April 29, 1890. 
Sir: I have the honor to lay before you certain considerations setting forth the 
necessity of an additional building for the National Museum, and respectfully request 
your attention to them and your recommendation to Congress that the money neces- 
sary for this purpose be appropriated. 
A set of provisional plans for the proposed new building has already been prepared, 
and I understand that these are in the possession of your committee. They have 
been prepared with the utmost care and represent the results of exhaustive study, 
which has extended over several years, of the plans of the best modern museum 
buildings in Europe and America, nearly all of which have been personally inspected 
by officers of the Smithsonian Institution. 
The proposed building will contain about 220,000 square feet, and the net area 
available for exhibition space and for storage and office room would be between five 
and six acres. The exhibition space would thus be nearly three times as great as in 
the present buildings, in which only 80,000 square feet are available both for exhibi- 
tion and storage purposes. 
The total cost of the present building was $315,400, including expenditures for 
steam heating apparatus, marble floors, water and gas Siri and electrical appa- 
ratus. 
The proposed building can, I believe, be constructed at a proportionately smaller 
cost. Iam not prepared to state the exact sum which would be necessary for its 
completion, but from estimates already furnished by responsible contractors I feel 
sure that $500,000, if not sufficient to complete it, would be all that would be required 
to be expended during the present year, and I would earnestly urge the desirability 
of appropriating this amount for the purpose in question. 
The necessity fora new museum building is caused by the large increase in the acces- 
sions to the collections. In 1882, the first year of active work in the present build- 
ing, the Museum contained less than 195,000 specimens. This number has now been 
increased to nearly 3,000,000 specimens, and the increase during the past eight years 
has been more than half as large again as during the previous twenty-one years. 
The collections of the Smithsonian Institution and of the Government are especially 
rich in representations of the natural history of thiscountry. A careful estimate made 
at the end of the last fiscal year showed that there were at that time in the zoolog- 
ical collections 1,850,721 specimens; in the botanical collections 48,637 specimens; in 
the geological collections 106,766 specimens, in the paleontological collections 172,540 
specimens; in the anthropological collections 651,868 specimens, and in the various 
collections illustrating the arts and industries 43,540 specimens. Since this estimate 
was made, it is probable that more than 50,000 specimens of all kinds have been 
received. 
The natural history collections include the zoological collections, the botanical col- 
lections, and the geological collections, in which are contained not only all the geo- 
logical and mineralogical specimens, but also the greater portion of the paleontolog- 
ical material, the study of fossil animals and plants forming an essential feature of 
modern geological work. 
The anthropological collections illustrate the history of mankind atall periods and 
in every land, and also serve to explain the development of all human arts and indus- 
tries. There are in addition considerable collections illustrating the processes and 
products of the various arts and industries, as well as the historical collections, which 
are of especial interest to a very large number of the visitors to the Museum on 
account of the associations of the objects exhibited with the personal history of repre- 
sentative men or with important events in the history of America. 
It is also noteworthy that among the accessions of more recent years many collec- 
tions of great extent have been received. Among these are the bequest of Dr. Isaac 
