pre-Civil War armory situated in a neighborhood long 

 since eradicated by urban renewal, between Sixth and 

 Seventh on B Street, SW.' 



Without too much prodding. Congress agreed to give 

 the National Museum a building of its own. Ground 

 was broken on the east side of the Castle on April 17, 

 1879. The square brick structure was a cheap one, cost- 

 ing only $315,400. Familiar now as the Arts and In- 

 dustries Building, it houses a facsimile of the 1876 Ex- 

 position put together for the nation's Bicentennial. A 

 reconsti uction of the Smithsonian Institution display 

 may be seen on the east side of the south hall.^ 



On March 4, 1881, the nearly completed United States 

 National Museum l)uilding was used for James A. Gar- 

 field's Inaugural Ball. After the bunting was taken down, 

 the floors swept, and a few minor repairs made, the 

 building was opened to the public. For the first time 

 there was some additional s])ace for permanent ex- 

 hibits. 



George Brown Goode 



Meanwhile, Secretary Henry had died. In 1878 Baird 

 succeeded him and eventually promoted George Brown 

 Goode to Assistant Secretary, in charge of the National 

 Museum. Goode, who had come to the Institution in 

 I87.'5, was by training an ichthyologist. While he never 

 |)ul the fishes entirely behind him, he rapidly became 

 <i "museum man." When the Centennial Exposition in- 

 spired a whole series of major fairs and shows, Goode 

 sent exhibits to them. In his time he was widely re- 

 garded as the New World's leading specialist in museum 

 administration and in exhibit preparation, which he 

 developed into a field in itself. After Baird's death in 

 1887, Samuel Pierpont Langley, an astronomer, be- 

 came Secretary of the Smithsonian. He was not partic- 

 ularly interested in collections, but Goode, being steeped 

 in the Baird tradition, continued to acquire material. 



Most of it went into the National Musetnn, but the 

 Castle retained a sizeable display, described in a con- 

 temporary account: 



Case after case through one of its great halls is 

 filled with birds of all feathers, mounted so 

 skillfully that they exhibit not only the 

 characteristic poses of the birds but in many cases 

 their habits in life. They vary in size from the 

 smallest hunmiing bird to the largest ostrich. . . . 

 Another large hall is devoted to insects collected 

 from an equally-wide area and presenting as great 

 a diversity in size and color. . . . Here also is a 

 marvelous collection of birds' eggs, varying in size 

 all the way from the hemeopathic pellet to a 

 football. The collection of shells, of sponges, of 

 coral, and other curious organisms of the sea is 

 enormous.^ 



Goode as administrator delineated three roles he saw 

 for a museum. He recognized that, first, it served as a 



museum of record; and if material is to serve as a stan- 

 dard of comparison, it must be kept safely. Today we 

 might refer to this as a data bank of objects. Second, 

 Goode noted the museum of research; and people who 

 work in science, just as in any other field, must have 

 the proper facilities. Today we might refer to this as a 

 research institute, but Goode made clear in his various 

 writings that study of the collections, not abstract theo- 

 rizing, was what he referred to as research. Finally, 

 there was the museum of education; and without col- 

 lections, museums have no objects to exhibit. Today as 

 always, the display halls are what the average visitor 

 considers a museiun. 



There are examples of museums that, without any 

 collections, do well at one or another of these various 

 functions. As Goode saw it, however, the basic reason 

 for a museum was to accimiulate and maintain collec- 

 tions. Collections were like the platform of a stool, with 

 the three functions Goode distinguished acting as the 

 legs. The trick was — and still is — to keep these "legs" 

 in perfect balance. Because this is almost impossible, 

 one aspect of the history of the Smithsonian Institution 

 has been the emphasis on different museum functions 

 at different times. None of the three approaches has 

 ever been ignored. 



Goode knew that this new building was incapable of 

 showing the diversity of nature and the handiwork of 

 man in a coherent manner, let alone storing the moun- 

 tains of natural-history specimens that kept piling up 

 in Washington. In his Annual Report of 1882, Secretary 

 Baird acknowledged "the inadequacy of the Museum 

 building, then scarcely more than a year old, to house 

 the rapidly increasing national collections."" One of the 

 basic facts of muscology is that there is never sufficient 

 space to house the collections. Regardless of this, the 

 dedicated museum worker brings them in. 



In the course of his day-to-day work, Goode devel- 

 oped many of the techniques still used in the Museum. 

 He improved the accessioning and cataloguing pro- 

 cedures, standardized case and drawer sizes, issued in- 

 structions on collecting methods, and oversaw a myriad 

 of other seldom-considered details. Goode died at the 

 age of forty-five, almost certainly from overwork.^ 



'The death of Secretary Baird in 1 887, while a serious 

 blow . . . was felt less by the Museum force in general 

 than was that of Dr. Goode in 1896," the head of the 

 Department of Geology wrote in the 1920s. "The loss 

 of the last named was seemingly quite irreparable and 

 for a time created a panic among those who had been 

 looking forward to a life profession in Museum work 

 under his guidance and with his cooperation."^ 



George Brown Goode summed up his lifetime of 

 experience in a one-sentence aphorism that to this day 

 is quoted by museum authorities seeking increases in 

 their budgets. He wrote, in capitals: "A FINISHED 

 MUSEUM IS A DEAD MUSEUM AND A DEAD MU- 

 SEUM IS A USELESS MUSEUM. ""^ 



16 



The Structure 



