PART V 



VICINITY OF THE MUSEUM 



Three main problems are here presented which we have found 

 very perplexing, and the best solution of which we do not yet 

 feel confident that we have found. One problem is that of the 

 appearance of the Museum building in relation to its surroundings 

 and of those surroundings in relation to it. The second problem 

 is that of the most effective use, for the purposes of the Garden, 

 of the area immediately surrounding the Museum and lying 

 between it and Conservatory Range No. I and westward to the 

 railroad. The third is that of making a far better impression 

 upon the great number of visitors who enter the Garden in this 

 vicinity, both from the rapid transit lines and by automobile; and 

 at the same time, while making such a strongly agreeable im- 

 mediate impression, inducing them to disperse rapidly to various 

 parts of the Garden instead of congesting near the entrances. 



As to the first, our frank opinion is that the present conditions 

 are esthetically very bad. Considered simply as a piece of 

 architecture, apart from relation to surroundings and without 

 allowance for any limiting conditions which may have necessitated 

 the present design, the exterior of the Museum building could not, 

 we believe, be regarded by any competent critic as an artistic suc- 

 cess. The story above the main cornice is peculiarly unfortunate 

 in its effect on the silhouette and general proportions of the building. 

 And for a building situated, as this is, in a large open landscape, 

 the high-shouldered effect thus produced is particularly unhappy. 

 Looking forward to the time when extensive additions will be 

 made to the north, it would seem worth while seriously to con- 

 sider the total elimination or radical change of the present top 

 story at that time. It may even be worth while to consider, 

 in connection with the possibility of very extensive future addi- 

 tions, whether the present building could be entirely enclosed 

 in and masked by such extensions, with a radical change of 

 architectural character; as was done with the original ugly units 

 of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 



The effect of the building is very much worse as seen from a 

 westerly direction, where the ground falls away rapidly from the 

 basement level of this high building-mass and where there are 

 no supporting trees near it, than as seen from southerly and 

 southeasterly directions, where the ground is more nearly level 

 and there are numerous large trees to compose with it. 



It was doubtless this rapid falling-away of the ground to the 

 westward which dictated the narrowness of the formally sym- 



