forty thousand citizens, asking that a building be erected by the City. 
Manhattan Square, consisting of eighteen acres, was at that time a re- 
mote and almost inaccessible tract of land. This land was granted as the 
site for the first building. The corner-stone was laid, I well remember, 
in the presence of the President of the United States, accompanied by 
members of his cabinet, the Governor of the State, and the Mayor of the 
City. On the twenty-second of December, 1877, the building was 
formally opened. 
“The contract entered into at that time between the City and the Trus- 
tees of the Museum has subsisted without change for forty years. Con- 
tracts of the City with other great institutions such as the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art and the New York Zodlogical Society have been closely 
modeled upon it. The policy embodied in this contract secures equal 
advantage to the institution and to the public. It provides for the per- 
manent occupation by the American Museum of all the buildings 
erected or to be erected in Manhattan Square, and for a free exhibition 
within the buildings of all our collections, under regulations agreed 
upon. The City of New York, therefore, is the absolute owner of the 
buildings, and the American Museum is owner of the collections—an 
arrangement which has fostered delightful and beneficial relations, 
steadily growing more close and cordial, between the Museum and the 
people. 
“Now the American Museum has grown with incredible speed to 
wholly unexpected magnitude, and I have every reason to believe that 
it is now regarded, and in the future will be still more highly valued, as 
one of the great educational institutions of the City, worthy of the sup- 
port of its citizens and quite as important as the public schools, as an 
institution whose maintenance shall be provided for out of the public 
funds.” 
287 
