File:The American Museum of Natural History - its origin, its history, the growth of its departments to December 31, 1909 (1911) (14586603970).jpg

Identifier: cu31924104089432 (find matches)
Title: The American Museum of Natural History : its origin, its history, the growth of its departments to December 31, 1909
Year: 1911 (1910s)
Authors: Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 1857-1935 Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation. fmo Huntington Free Library. fmo
Subjects: American Museum of Natural History Natural history museums
Publisher: New York : Irving Press
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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hibits, both in anthro-pology and in zoology. Evolutionary Sequence.—^This is the sequence of development. Thevisitor compares primitive races with more civilized races. He fol-lows the progress of eolithic, palaeolithic, and neolithic man, or he tracesthe first steps of nature, the lower into the higher forms of plant andof animal life. He begins with the simple organisms of the waterand traces the evolution step by step into the higher organisms of theearth and of the air. Briefly, it may be said that both the geographical and evolutionaryarrangements, or kinds of sequence, are necessary in a great museum.Sometimes the geographical arrangement is better; sometimes theevolutionary, and sometimes both may be more or less combined.One thing is absolutely essential: a well-ordered museum shovdd presenta natural arrangement which the visitor can grasp and which wUl havethe same influence on the mind as travel or the direct observation ofevolutionary objects in thestate of nature. (132)
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77 ™ Sr/rre-T Jaw. /5/0. Basement. Mechanics, Painters, and Carpenters. (133) HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM Fortunately the original plan of the American Museum by CalvertVaux in 1873, of a great square with intersecting transepts, admirablyprovides for such sequence—both geographical and evolutionary. Infact, with all the advance which has been made in the constructionand design of museum buildings, within the last thirty years, nothingsuperior to the ground plan of the American Musemn has been devised.This is a most fortunate circmnstance. It was undoubtedly arrivedat accidentally—one of those happy accidents which relieves the Trus-tees of a mass of difficulties and embarrassments from which other in-stitutions have suffered. BASEMENT.—^The new Basement Entrance provides not only forthe central distribution of fuel, but also for a receiving and distributingdepartment of everything which enters and leaves the Museum, replac-ing the present South Entrance. A level trolley and track s

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