Stairway on the east side of the lobby, April 1984. The 

 orchids and floral display were installed in 1980. Years 

 earlier, the only public telephone booth in the Museum was 

 under these stairs. The statue Tecuniseh, noiv at the 

 National Museum of American Art, stood near the foot of 

 the stairs. 



Associates Court on the ground floor of the West Court 

 building, 1984. To the left on the wall are a paddle and a 

 Polyyiesian navigation map. 



Holmes. Temporary exhibits are no dif ferent from per- 

 manent ones in that there is always a last-mintite rush 

 to open the show. While one person guided the direc- 

 tors of the Museum and the Geological Survey around 

 the Holmes exhibit very slowly, the final two cases were 

 installed by the rest of the crew. 



The ambulatory on the first fioor, under the balcony, 

 also is used for occasional temporary exhibits, partic- 

 ularly when a number of halls are closed. Its moment 

 of glory came in 1958, when for three weeks the Na- 

 tional Collection of Fine Arts, in connection with the 

 Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, 

 displayed a portrait of Sir Winston Churchill, together 

 with thirty-five of Churchill's paintings. That year, for 

 the first time, the fiistitution recorded over five million 

 visitors. April was the busiest month ever, and on April 

 27, the first Sunday of the Churchill exhibit, 42,524 

 people visited the Natural History Building."" 



There are small front offices off the rotunda as on 

 the floors above, but with even higher ceilings. Not 

 much is known of their early use, except that like most 

 other corners of the place, they have been used for 

 storage. During the early 1960s, Paul Gardner of the 

 National Collection of Fine Arts occupied the west of- 

 fice, before leaving for the Division of Ceramics in the 

 Museum of History and Technology. In 1969 the west 

 office was used by "By- Word," a concession that offers 

 self-guided recorded tours.'' The first season, the com- 

 pany hired dozens of college students on commission, 

 and no tourist or staff member could enter the building 

 without being approached by at least three of them. 

 After that the operafion became more sedate, and the 

 concession is now run from a desk on the southwest 

 side of the rotunda. 



During the early 1970s, the west office was used by 



the staff of the Discovery Room. It is now a cloakroom — 

 a much-needed improvement, since for years the only 

 checking facilities in the building were wooden um- 

 brella stands at the north door and in the rotunda. 

 Although checking was at first a duty of the Museum 

 guards, it was contracted out in the 1980s. Probably the 

 single largest problem experienced by the checkroom 

 staff is convincing some tourists that there really is no 

 fee for the service. 



In the late 1960s the east office functioned briefly as 

 a book store. Then it became a space-planning office 

 for the Museum, and was decked over to provide more 

 room. There is usually at least one employee in there 

 poring over blueprints. 



Also in the late 1960s, two additional elevators were 

 put in on the southwest side of the rotunda. This was 

 something of a noisy process, but it was nothing com- 

 pared to the echoing din of 1982, when two smaller 

 doorways were drilled in the south facade on either 

 side of the main entrance. These new doors are helpful 

 as extra exits, though many tourists persistently grav- 

 itate toward the right-hand center door. Some of the 

 granite cut away was saved, and when James Mello 

 stepped down as associate director in 1984, he received 

 "a piece of the rock." It may be appropriate to add the 

 Rathbun-like detail that a metal shade is pulled down 

 on these two new doors when the bronze gates are 

 closed over the center doors. 



In the southeast area of the rotunda is a large in- 

 formation desk staffed by volunteers. This installation 

 was another positive step of recent years. Originally the 

 desk was a doughnut-shaped affair in the northeast 

 corner, where those on duty were confronted daily by 

 the rear end of the elephant. In 1983 the former in- 

 formation corner was taken over temporarily by a giant 



188 



The Museum 



