ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
BULLETIN 
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Published by the New York Zoological 4 'Society ' , 
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Volume XXV 
JANUARY, 1922 
Number 1 
A GREAT IMPROVEMENT AT THE AQUARIUM 
By C. H. Townsend 
T HE New York Zoological Society has come 
to the relief of the New York Aquarium 
with $75,000 of its private funds. 
Of this sum $65,000 has been expended in the 
re-construction and modernizing of the mechan¬ 
ical department. The basement on the landward 
side of the building has been deepened, water¬ 
proofed, lined with white tiles and provided with 
windows admitting both light and air. Small, 
easily coaled, low-pressure boilers have replaced 
the huge high-pressure boilers, while small, elec¬ 
trically driven, rotary pumps have taken the 
place of the old, cumbersome steam pumps. 
When the new machinery is set in motion, the 
old plant on the main floor, with its boilers, 
pumps, filters, air compressors, water-heaters 
and refrigerator, will be removed entirely, and 
the space thus vacated made available for new 
exhibits. 
The Aquarium has waited many years for 
relief from conditions verging on the intolerable, 
but which the City has not been disposed to 
undertake. It is nineteen years since Mayor 
Low’s administration offered the management of 
the Aquarium to the Zoological Society. Dur¬ 
ing all these years our firemen have worked in 
a low ceilinged, dark, illy-ventilated furnace 
room, periodically flooded by the tides, often 
shoveling wet coal into the furnaces from half- 
submerged wheelbarrows. At such times the 
tide water invaded the ash-pits underneath the 
furnaces, sometimes rising to within a few 
inches of the fires. During these monthly periods 
of high water, the return pumps were overflowed 
and stopped, with the result that steam heat 
was cut off from the building, sometimes in very 
cold weather, to the discomfort of employes and 
visitors alike. The nuisance has at last been 
abated. 
The New York Aquarium, being of necessity 
a big pumping plant, it seems incredible that 
the heavy work necessitated by its four water 
systems has been carried on successfully day 
and night for twenty-five years, under condi¬ 
tions so adverse that they would not be tolerated 
for a single year by any department of the 
City’s service making claim to efficiency. 
The Aquarium claims to have done its work 
as the largest and best patronized aquarium in 
the world, in, spite of all drawbacks. It has 
made progress in its work and improved its 
exhibits, without increase in space for new col¬ 
lections or additional working equipment. 
The public museums, aquariums, and zoo¬ 
logical gardens of the world are hereby chal¬ 
lenged to produce a record like that of the New 
York Aquarium, which, at an average annual 
cost of $45,000, has maintained in one hundred 
tanks more than two hundred kinds of fishes and 
other aquatic forms, represented by from six to 
eight thousand specimens and having had over 
forty-seven millions of visitors in twenty-five 
years. 
As a result of the Zoological Society’s im¬ 
provement of the equipment, the Aquarium will 
be able not only to maintain its extensive living 
collections more easily and safely, but will be 
able to increase its exhibits by fully one-fifth. 
When the new pumping plant is started, the 
work of removing the old one and erecting in 
its place tanks for new exhibits will begin. On 
the ground floor the new glass-fronted tanks will 
be larger and deeper than any now in the build¬ 
ing. The balcony space above will be specially 
arranged for the keeping of fresh-water toy 
fishes of the tropics, which the Aquarium has 
not hitherto exhibited for lack of proper equip¬ 
ment. 
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