70 
THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART 
entire upper story of the main building, as well as the central 
main towers on both the north and south sides. Fortunately 
the floor between the two stories was fire proof, which prevented 
the extension of the fire to the lower main hall and the two 
wings. The contents of the upper gallery were almost entirely 
destroyed. These, as before explained, consisted mainly of the 
Indian paintings by J. M. Stanley, Charles B. King and others, 
probably other paintings, and the marble copy of the Dying 
Gladiator. 
The period subsequent to the fire of 1865 
In 1866, the year after the fire, the library of the Smithsonian 
Institution was, by authority of Congress, placed in the custody 
of the Library of Congress, and the Marsh collection of prints 
and art books was sent with it, as a temporary deposit. A simi- 
lar disposition was subsequently made of other parts of the art 
collection in connection with the Gallery of Art which bears the 
name of its generous founder, Mr. William W. Corcoran, and of 
which Secretary Henry and later Secretary Baird were members 
of the board of trustees. The original building at the corner of 
Pennsylvania Avenue and Seventeenth Street, begun just be- 
fore the civil war, but occupied by the Government until 1869, 
was not put in final condition for its intended purpose and 
opened to the public until the beginning of 1874. Cooperation 
with the Gallery had been anticipated by Secretary Henry, and 
in 1873 the Board of Regents of the Institution, after a conference 
with Mr. Corcoran, authorized the loan of such objects as were 
desired, subject to recall at any time. They also proffered the 
aid of the Institution, through its extensive foreign correspond- 
ents and agencies, in collecting valuable works of art abroad. 
The deposits were made principally in 1874 and 1879 and, as 
enumerated in the Smithsonian reports at that time, comprised 
the following works : 
Portraits in oil. — Guizot, President Tyler, and Senator William 
C. Preston, by George P. A. Healy; George Washington, by 
Charles Willson Peale; Prof. Joseph Henry, by Thomas Le 
Clear. Engravings . — Lioness and young, and two of deer, by 
J. F. Ridinger; Silenus, by Bolsevert; Hercules, by Rottsseler; 
a Centaur instructing Achilles, by Bervic, after Regnault; an 
