18 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1925 



adjusting ventilation in the halls a number of them have been 

 broken. Fully 360 of the total of 480 of these arms were remodeled 

 during the year at a cost of $580 and the balance will be completed 

 during the coming year. Minor repairs consisted largely in painting 

 walls, ceilings, and floors in exhibition halls ; installing molding for 

 hanging pictures in various rooms ; installing ventilators in windows ; 

 painting of all tin gutters on roofs ; repairing cracks in plaster walls, 

 and repairing runways. 



In the Arts and Industries Building all windows in the laboratory 

 in the north pavilion were remodeled to improve ventilation facili- 

 ties, and the exterior wood work of all of the windows in the build- 

 ing was repaired and repainted. The lower roofs over the rotunda 

 and the sloping roofs on the northeast and southeast, together with 

 the galvanized-iron room on the roof for use of the photographers, 

 were painted. The concrete water tables at the base of the building 

 on all sides were pointed up and repaired. 



The wooden floor in room 155, which had been undermined by 

 white ants, was removed, and a new concrete base covered with 

 Georgia pine flooring installed. New wooden floors were put in the 

 editor's offices. Minor repairs were made also in various parts of 

 the building, as the painting of skylights, walls, and floors, pointing 

 up and painting walls in various offices, changing of fite plugs and 

 hose, and installing deflectors over ventilators to protect the walls. 



For several years the plaster ceiling of the main hall, on the third 

 floor of the Smithsonian Building, occupied by the Division of 

 Plants, a room 200 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 31 feet high, had 

 shown signs of disintegration. During the year 1923-24, so much 

 plaster had actually fallen and so many more sections were ready to 

 fall that it was deemed necessary to remove all plaster and to re- 

 place it with sheet metal. Preliminary estimates indicated that it 

 was impossible with the funds available to do all of this work by 

 contract. Bids for furnishing the beaded-metal sheets and attach- 

 ing them to the ceiling rafters were obtained, and a contract for 

 this work was let for $2,112. The Museum force was utilized to 

 build the scaffolding, remove the plaster, and paint the metal sheets, 

 as this was the most economical method by which the wcrk could be 

 handled. To avoid moving the thousand or more herbarium cases 

 from the hall, a small movable scaffold about 16 feet square was 

 built which was moved about on the tops of the storage cases. By 

 this arrangement all of the cases were left accessible to workers in 

 the herbarium at all times during progress of the work, thus avoid- 

 ing serious interruption to the work of the Division of Plants. A 

 stationary scaffold built over the entire hall would have cost 

 more than the contract for the metal w^ork so that the saving; effected 



