CHAPTER IV
Broadening the Base
The Ford's Theater building was at best a makeshift home for the Museum, the Library, and the historical records of the Surgeon General's Office, and with the passage of time and the growth of the collections, it became less and less suitable. By 1880, it has ceased to be adequate for the Museum alone, even if all its space had been available for museum purposes. As it was, the Museum was confined to the crowded and cluttered third floor, the books of the Library were packed two and three rows deep on the shelves on the second floor, and the hospital records of the Civil War, with the clerks at work on them, filled the ground floor to overflowing. "In time," wrote Maj. Charles Smart, Surgeon, U.S. Army (fig. 31), who was assigned to complete the work on the medical volumes of the History after Dr. Joseph J. Woodward's disability, "there came to be no room for even the storage of books and specimens, not to speak of facility of reference or advantageous display." 1 [1]
There was, moreover, distinct danger of utter destruction of irreplaceable records and materials by fire. The floors were of noncombustible materials, it is true, but the roof was not, and the walls were so weak and so much out of plumb as to threaten imminent collapse in case of fire. Indeed, the ordinary use of the building was limited by a prohibition "against putting heavy articles in the upper floor for fear of pushing out the west wall." 2[2]
Inadequate Quarters
In his annual report for 1880, Surgeon General Barnes "invited attention to the overcrowded and unsafe condition" of the 10th Street building. Growth of the collections, he wrote, had made "the space available for their preservation quite inadequate, not merely for their proper display, but even for satisfactory
- ↑ 1 Smart, Charles: The Army Medical Museum and the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office. Journal of the American Medical Association 24: 577, 20 April 1895.
- ↑ 2 Congressional Record, 48th Congress, 2d session, p. 1767. [That fears for the safety of the Ford's Theater building were not exaggerated was demonstrated on 9 June 1893, when the floors fell through to the basement with a loss of 22 lives and 68 injuries.]
