THE MUSEUM BUILDINGS. 
125 
plaster—were perhaps not altogether appropriate to its Greek 
style. 
The proposals made by the Asiatic Society in reference 
to the transfer of its collections and their arrangement in 
this building had originally included.one whereby accom¬ 
modation should be found also for the Society itself, for 
its library and meeting-room ; but this ultimately proved 
impracticable and the Society remained in the house it still 
occupies—and has occupied for over a century—at no 1, 
Park Street. It is this house that is represented in the 
frontispiece to the present volume. 
The next of the Museum buildings to be constructed was 
a block of four floors running along Sudder Street behind the 
Main Quadrangle, with which it is connected by two bridges. 
Under the lower of these passes the Sudder Street entrance 
into the Museum compound. The building of this block 
was commenced in 1888, in order that it might hold the 
“economic” collections (including those of ethnography) 
and the offices attached to the Economic and Art Section 
The collections were removed to it in 1891 ; part of the 
ground floor was occupied later by the chemical laboratory 
referred to in chapter vi. The building is in red brick and 
does not correspond in style with the Main Quadrangle, with 
which, however, it is not in architectural continuity. 
A second block of three floors was erected in 1894 at 
right angles to the Sudder Street one, to contain the offices, 
laboratories and store-rooms of the Natural History Section. 
Half this building was actually consigned on its completion 
to the Geological Survey, to which it was wholly transferred 
in 1912. 
The recent improvements in the main building are due to 
the interest taken by Lord Curzon while he was Viceroy of 
India both in the Museum and in the public buildings of Cal¬ 
cutta. In 1904 he obtained for the Trustees a government 
grant of Rs. 5 lakhs (£33,333). Moreover, he himself, with the 
assistance of the late Mr. Banks Gwyther, Superintending En¬ 
gineer, Bengal, drew up a design for a new front. This design 
was based on the original one by Granville that was left un¬ 
completed in 1877. It was grandiose in style with copper 
