West ivitt^i^ and west side of 

 the Ndtional M useum of 

 Natural History, looking east 

 from the roof of the National 

 Museum of American 

 History, April 1984. The 

 flagpole is to the left, on the 

 north wing. The west-side 

 loading dock and entrance to 

 the mail room are in the 

 parking lot on the 

 lou'er right. 



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for the west wing, though no one can say exactly what 

 each wing cost. Hyman Construction bid on the west 

 wing and was also awarded that contract. This was a 

 lucky break for both the Institution and the company, 

 since the same blueprints could be used; all the engi- 

 neers had to do was reverse them. Mirror images often 

 confuse people, and some of the staff who spent much 

 of their time in one wing get lost when they venture 

 into the other. The differences between the wings are 

 minor. A different company supplied passenger ele- 

 vators for the west wing, and whereas the east wing has 

 mostly soapstone work sinks in each office, the west 

 wing has mostly small porcelain hand basins. 



Each wing was supposed to add 259,903 square feet 

 to the building — a precise enough number to satisfy 

 any bean-counter, though each time the wings are men- 

 tioned officially, a slightly different figure is given. 

 Rathbun had estimated that the main building had 

 158,989 square feet for laboratories and collections, 

 and 75,856 for all other nonpublic purposes. The wings 

 almost doubled the laboratory and storage space, as the 

 new National Museum had done half a century earlier. 



"The general arrangement of each floor in the new 

 wings is essentially standardized," ran a 1962 report. 

 "There will be a central area for the appropriate ref- 

 erence collection, surrounded on the three outside walls 

 of the wing by a series of workrooms and laboratories. 

 . . . All such rooms will have excellent daylight and will 

 contain the facilities needed for the intended use as 

 designated by members of the scientific staff, who in 

 each case have designed the details of their own areas. 

 On the average, each floor will have between 20 and 

 30 workrooms or laboratories, and each division will 

 center its activities with a well-demarcated area.'"' 



Lost Storage Space 



Fairly early in the planning, the curators thought that 

 the support pillars would be one foot square. Instead, 

 the pillars turned out to be round and nearly three feet 

 in diameter. As a consequence, about 10 percent of the 

 central space anticipated for storage cases was lost. Also, 

 the Fine Arts Commission required that the top floor 

 be set back, which pared the floor space in each com- 

 pleted wing to 209,000 square feet. 



The architects did a good job on the exterior design 

 in matching the wing to the old building, from which 

 it is set back a few feet on the north side. At the lower 

 level the granite has the same hue, but the surface is 

 not so strongly rusticated as in the main structure. Un- 

 like the ten-inch-thick granite of the main building, the 

 stone of the wings is a veneer. The metal-framed win- 

 dows pivot to open, and are placed in groups of three. 

 These window groups are about as wide as the window 

 openings in the main building. Rectangular metal pieces 

 of the same color as the window frames and above each 

 window add to the illusion of long windows, as in the 

 main building. Because the top floor is set back behind 

 a parapet, the windows there do not contrast with the 

 prominent stone molding around the windows on the 

 third floor of the main building. The f reight elevator 

 does not run to the sixth floor because the Fine Arts 

 Commission judged that its extension above the sixth 

 floor would give an unacceptable appearance to the 

 roof line. 



At the east and west ends of the wings there are 

 double doors, locked except during fire drills. On the 

 north side, sidewalks lead irom Constitution Avenue 

 to an entry way and lobby. Duiing the first tew months 

 of (Kcupancy these doors were open in the east wing, 



New Wings and a New Elephant 



105 



