Abbott's Guide to Ottawa and Vicinity/Victoria Memorial Museum
VICTORIA MEMORIAL MUSEUM.
This imposing building is situated on McLeod street, at the foot of Metcalfe street, and may be reached by Elgin street car. In design it is simple but effective. This simplicity emphasizes most successfully the massiveness and spaciousness of this impressive pile of masonry. On either side of a heavy central tower and rotunda extend T-shaped wings, while behind is a semi-circular extension for lecture amphitheatre and library. The exterior of the building is decorated with carvings in stone of Canadian mammals. The name of the building over the tower doors is elaborately carved.
The building houses the Geological Survey with its extensive natural history and anthropological collections, and the National Art Gallery. The eastern wing, on the first, second and third floors, is occupied by art, the rest of the building by the Geological Survey. On entering the building one finds one's self in a large rotunda from which one gets an impressive view of the exhibition halls on each side, and of the successive floors and galleries above. Opening off the rotunda at the rear is the spacious lecture ampitheatre.
The basement of the building is divided into store-rooms and work-rooms; on the ground floor the western halls will be devoted to collections illustrating Canadian geology and minerals, mining districts and mining products; the eastern halls to collections illustrating the ancient life of Canada as recorded in the rocks, and to modern mammals. On the first floor the extreme western wing will be given to anthropology, the central halls to biology, and the extreme eastern wing to an art collection. The second floor is divided into offices and library, except the eastern wing, which is occupied by the National Art Gallery as a hall of sculpture. The third and top floors will house scientific collections, and the eastern wing the collection of paintings of the National Gallery (see p. 24). The installation of collections has not yet been competed and will still occupy some time.
The Director of the Geological Survey is Mr. R. W. Brock, F.G.S., F.R.S.C.