all those other societies. Get them to join their forces and unite to form one society—call it the Academy of Science and Art of Pittsburgh, if you please—and I will furnish accommodations for them when I come to build the library in Pittsburgh. We can treat with one central organization better than with half a dozen different societies. Some of these societies are forming collections of books, historical objects, natural history specimens. These things ought to be kept in fire-proof quarters. That is another point on which I am sound. I believe in fire-proof construction. There are your butterflies, for instance. Such collections should not be exposed to the risk of fire. "When I build the library I will provide a good place in which to keep them." So the plan was unfolded and its outlines sketched while the leaves rustled and the birds sang overhead.
Nine years took their flight, and at last the dream was transmuted into stone and marble. The structure which the fancy had outlined stood revealed in the beauty of architectural form and the still greater beauty of definite purpose and usefulness. When on November 5, 1895, the edifice was formally presented to the city of Pittsburgh by its donor it was found to contain accommodations for a great central library, with provision for the administration from this center of a number of branch libraries, for the erection of which ample funds had been provided. Under the same roof was a music-hall, one of the most perfect of its kind in the United States, an art gallery of noble proportions and, forming the southern wing of the great building, the Museum, on the first floor of which was provided a spacious lecture-hall adapted to the uses of the learned societies, which, in pursuance of the suggestion of the founder, had been merged into the Academy of Science and Art of Pittsburgh.
Prior to the opening of the building arrangements were made by the Academy of Science and Art to gather together a collection of objects suitable for exhibition in a museum. The Curator of the Academy, Dr. Gustave Guttenberg, labored strenuously to place the material in proper order, and was aided by his associates, who freely gave their time and generously contributed of their means to make the exhibition worthy of the occasion. The result revealed, as all such attempts in our great cities are certain to show, how large an accumulation of really choice specimens exists in the hands of individuals who are possessed of artistic and scientific tastes. Ethnological, mineralogical and zoological collections of no small merit were rapidly brought together from the homes of scores of citizens, whose interest had been awakened, and the collections in the possession of the Western University of Pennsylvania were laid under heavy contribution to fill up any gaps, which required for the time being to be closed, in order to replenish the cases and dress the halls.
