Final stages of work on the 

 exterior of the dome, looking 

 west from the roof of the east 

 wing. 



had also been accomplished. While the new 

 installation had not been perfected to the same 

 extent in all of the divisions, yet, as a whole, it was 

 so far advanced as to produce conditions vastly 

 superior to those existing at any previous time. 

 Such a result was only made possible by the greatly 

 increased and more convenient accommodations, 

 which permitted the spreading out in an accessible 

 and orderly manner all of the material belonging 

 to each division, and by the employment of 

 temporar) help exceptional progress was made in 

 the work of recording and cataloging specimens. 

 The mechanical and scientific workshops and the 

 offices generally were among the first in the new 

 quarters to be f urnished.^ 



Writing in 1941, the vertebrate paleontologist Charles 

 Gilmore looked back on the transition; 



At the time of my affiliation with the National 

 Museum in 1903^ the bulk of the [O.C.] Marsh 

 collection was stored in rented buildings in 

 southwest Washington. The first floor of a three- 

 story brick building on the west side of 10th street 

 near C street, SW, was then in use as a 

 paleontological laboratory, the cellar and the two 

 upper floors being completely occupied by boxes 

 and crated trays of vertebrate material. The study 

 collections of this period were kept in standard 

 trays arranged in tiers of the balcony in the 

 southeast corner of the present Arts and 

 Industries Building and in the lower part of A- 

 topped exhibition cases in use at that time. These 



collections in storage from 1903 on were rapidly 

 reduced in bulk through preparation and 

 condemnation of worthless material, so that in 

 1910, with the occupancy of the New Natural 

 History Building, the widely scattered storage 

 collections were assembled as a unit. . . . For the 

 first time the preparators were provided with a 

 well-lighted, well-equipped, roomy laboratory (27 

 by 77 feet). These improvements in facilities were 

 almost immediately reflected in an improved 

 quality as well as quantity of output. ' 



The piocess of moving took a few years, for after 

 the transferring of the study collections, the exhibits 

 had to be taken down and reinstalled. While this opened 

 up some space in the Castle, the greatest positive impact 

 was on the old National Museum building. A Depart- 

 ment of Mineral Technology had been established in 

 1904, but lack of space and staff made it a paper or- 

 ganization until natural history left the building. In- 

 dependent divisions of Textiles and Medicine also were 

 created, taking some of the hodgepodge out of the 

 Department of Anthropology. These divisions coa- 

 lesced during fiscal year 1918-19 to form the Depart- 

 ment of Arts and Industries. Precisely when the red 

 brick building came to be known as the Arts and In- 

 dustries Building is not clear, but by the 1920s and 

 1930s most people referred to the buildings as "the 

 Museum" and "the A & I." During the ten years it took 

 Arts and Industries to come into its own as a tourist 

 attraction, the notion of a new and old National Mu- 

 seum disappeared. □ 



36 



The Structure 



