Outer Coin Room.
Outer Coin Room, twenty-eight feet by twenty-seven, for the freer exhibition of coins to properly introduced persons, for the use of artists copying coins or other minute objects, and all other purposes now served by the Medal Room, except the custody of the collection, and work of the department.
Inner Coin Room.
Inner Coin Room, fifty-five feet by twenty-eight, secured by a strong iron door, of which the Keeper, Assistant-Keeper, and Principal-Librarian, would alone have keys.—In this room, to which none but the departmental staff would be admitted, the coins and medals would be preserved, arranged, and catalogued; they would be carried hence by the officers into the Outer Room when required for inspection. The room is somewhat more than half as large again as the present Medal Room; and as the absence of visitors, and of the barriers their presence now requires, would leave the whole space free, there would be ample accommodation for any probable enlargement of the collection. The library of the department might be arranged partly in this, partly in the Outer Room.
Of the apartments reserved as private, two are placed at the south end of the first and second floors, and each of these might, if necessary, be subdivided into two small studies, each twenty-six feet by thirteen, for the use either of officers or students. |Private Rooms in Plan. Others suggested.| Private rooms are, however, required on the ground floor, to replace the female students’ room, and the Assistant-Keeper’s study, proposed to be removed for the new Nimroud and Khorsabad Galleries. The most effectual provision for these and other wants would be one which has been suggested during the present inquiry, namely, to transfer to the Department of Antiquities the several rooms now occupied as the Trustees’ Room and adjoining offices, and to remove the official establishment to new rooms to be erected on the east side of the Museum. Should this be found impracticable, the present Insect Room, and adjoining studies, might, in the event of the transfer of this part of the Zoological Department to the upper floor, furnish the required accommodation. In default of both these alternatives, rooms might be constructed north of the new Assyrian Galleries, though, in the opinion of the writer, this ground should only be built over as a last resort.
Use of basement.
The basement, both of the old and new buildings, would, though unfitted for exhibition, and shut up from the public, be more or less available for workshops, storing-places, retiring-rooms, &c. No part of the existing basement would be made altogether useless, though the rooms under the present Greek Galleries would all be somewhat darkened. |Lighting of basement.| The basement under the new buildings may, with reference to lighting, be divided into three classes:—1. The rooms under the first six or small Greek Rooms, the south end of the Etruscan Room, and the north end of the Greek Galleries, would all have ordinary windows, and be better lighted than any part of the basement now used for the purposes mentioned. 2. The rooms under the Roman Galleries, which would also have windows, would be less well lighted than the preceding, being some feet below the level of Charlotte Street, and being further somewhat obscured by the grating over the area, and the parapet to screen it from passengers in the street, which would both probably be thought necessary. 3. The basement under the Græco-Roman, and greater part of the small Greek Galleries, would receive a partial light from the openings between them. To increase this, however, and to furnish the only light to the basement under the Fourteenth Greek Room, and the apartments adjoining its west side, panels of strong glass or open metal work might be inserted at convenient places in the various floors, and serve rather as an ornament to them. With the aid of some such arrangement, the last-mentioned portions of the basement would serve as storing-rooms; in default of it, they could merely be available for any apparatus used in heating or ventilation.
[Then follows a General Summary of Additional Space provided for the Collections of Antiquities, amounting to a net addition of forty-one thousand nine hundred and fifty-six square feet of superficial area.]
Summary of space for Antiquities.
This is somewhat less than the additional space demanded in the estimate supplied to the Committee by Mr. Hawkins; but it supposes the removal of the Oriental and Ethnographical Collections, which Mr. Hawkins, when considering only the existing department, and not the question of its modification, included in its contents.