group, with its accessories, has been prepared so as to 

 tell . . . the general visitor . . . the story of the buffalo, 

 but care has been taken ... to secure an accuracy of 

 detail that will satisfy the critical scrutiny of the most 

 technical naturalist.")'' Unfortunately, Hornaday had 

 clashed with Langley and left in 1897; the new exhibits 

 could have used him. Taxidermy was so important to 

 the department that for a few years there was a de- 

 partmental positifjn of chief of exhibits, at that time the 

 only official recognition of exhibition design within the 

 establishment. 



Graced by Hornaday's newly mounted specimens, an 

 African buffalo group, and some individual African 

 specimens Theodore Roosevelt had collected after leav- 

 ing the White House, the mammal hall was formally 

 opened on April 22, 1913. Some of the biological ex- 

 hii)its on the second floor had already opened the pre- 

 vious year; others were still being worked on. By the 

 end of June the entire area allotted to natural history — 

 the wings and ranges in the first and second stories — 

 was open l<> the public. 



During the lollowing year, Rathbun noted, "the di- 

 vision of plants has for the first time been represented 

 lo die public by an exhibition of flower studies in water 

 color . . . embrac[ing] a wide range of domestic and 

 foreign |jlants as well as cultivated varieties.""' There 

 still were many cases to be installed, but the dramatic 

 phase of opening new halls was over. Because a great 

 deal ot space was now open in the old brick Museum, 

 nuuh of the Ainiiuil Rcjiorl was devoted to the change 

 ol exhibits there. 



It was a phenomenal achievement for the reference 

 collections to have been moved, and for so many new 

 display halls to have been opened, in a relatively short 

 lime. By way of comparison, the Freer building did not 

 open until two years after it was completed, and that 

 was a far smaller operation. A published plan of the 

 Museum's exhibit halls indicates that all five acres of 

 display space was filled by 1917.'' By any criteria one 

 cares to applv, the staff had done a remarkable job, 

 and deser\ecl at least to pause on their laurels. 



Offices and Storage Space 



There was a \ ast amount of space in the massive new 

 building apart from what the exhibits occupied. Most 

 of the ground floor, except in the north wing, remained 

 to be filled, and the third floor provided acres of new 

 of fices and seemingly unlimited storage space. As head 

 curator of geology, Merrill rated a large office on the 

 southeast corner, the same size as the office of the 

 director on the southwest corner, except that Merrill's 

 was full of steel cases that divided it into several cub- 

 byholes. The remainder of the Geology Department 

 had adjacent offices facing the Mall, and the large min- 

 eral collection was at the north side of the east wing. 

 The chemical laboratory overlooked the east court. 



Paleontologists of the Geological Survey filled most 

 of the offices on the third floor of the east range, con- 

 venient to the Geology Department. E. O. Ulrich and 

 a young }. B. Reeside were among those who moved 

 from the l^ooe Building to share an office overlooking 

 the east courtyard. Late one afternoon Ulrich was 

 studying the fossil brachiopods in a large collection and 

 dividing them into three piles, each a different species. 

 Reeside arrived early the next morning and was there 

 to see Ulrich come in and begin shouting that someone 

 had mixed up the piles during the night. Deciding and 

 then changing one's mind as to how much variation 

 there is within a species continues to be a major preoc- 

 cupation of a large number of people in the building. 



The vertebrate paleontologists were on the ground 

 floor, partly because they needed more space and high 

 ceilings to assemble large specimens, and partly because 

 they needed ironwork from time to time to mount a 

 skeleton; this could be obtained from the nearby ma- 

 chine shop. C>harles W. Ciilmore had the northeast cor- 

 ner off ice. The library, on the east north range between 

 his office and the lobby, did not even occupy all the 

 space of that range. The saw for meteorites and the 

 stone-cutting and polishing equipment were also on the 

 east side adjacent to the shops and the east court. The 

 shops occupied most of the east wing. 



Holmes had his office on the Constitution Avenue 

 side of the third floor, adjacent to the elevators in the 

 north wing. It was not as spacious as Rathbun's and 

 Merrill's south-side rooms, and on windy days there 

 was a racket from the halyard whipping back and forth 

 on the flagpole outside the window. But Holmes as an 

 artist liked the north light of the office, which also 

 chanced to have a marble-lined private bathroom. Sev- 

 eral other ethnologists were in the east north range; 

 Ales Hrdlicka and the physical anthropology collections 

 occupied the courtyard side. They were separated from 

 another group of ethnologists scattered in the east side 

 of the north wing closer to the rotunda. Anthropology 

 had a potsherd and casting laboratory in the north 

 range on the ground floor, around the corner from 

 the vertebrate paleontology laboratory; since both op- 

 erations used a fair amount of plaster in restoring miss- 

 ing fragments of bones or pots, the association was 

 convenient. 



The Department of Biology was both the most split- 

 up and the largest in staff. The entomologists- — that is, 

 the Department of Agriculture employees — were in the 

 west side of the north wing and in the west wing. Mol- 

 lusks were in the west range, along with a few Geological 

 Survey folk who worked on fairly young fossils. The 

 Museum's bird division and the ornithologists of the 

 Biological Survey were in the west north range and the 

 courtyard side of the west wing. In later years the head 

 curator of biology had the first office in the east wing 

 nearest the rotunda. It is not a particularly distin- 



62 



The Exhibits 



