Excerpt from Petition of Franklin Webster Smith: For the Site of the Old Naval Observatory for the National Galleries of History and Art
The United States is the only civilized nation that has not National Galleries for illustration of history, architecture, and ai t.
In oceanic separation from the remains of historic nationalities, the American people are deprived of the objective illustration available to European nations.
The wealth of the United States, greater than of any other nation, should create an institution, surpassing all others, for illustration of human progress and civilization.
It is earnestly desired to promote immediately National Galleries of History and Art, in accordance with the Design herewith ; which, while it equals in grandeur the National Capitol, is composed of the most simple and durable constructions, viz., galleries of one story, terraced upon a hillside.
Its eight Courts are ranged below American Galleries, for the history of the United States, surmounted by a Parthenonic temple to contain a Ilall of the Presidents of the United States ; an American Walhalla, like that upon a hill-top of the Danube, a proud monument of the Bavarian people.
Its colonnade should range the horizon in counterpart of the dome of the Capitol-the one an expression of the highest Constitutional wisdom, the other of its resultant intellectual development of a nation. (See p. 6S.)
In recognition of the demands of modern education for object teaching, the Galleries enclose courts for types of ancient dwellings, as of late have been shown the modern homes of mankind ; and other structures, civil and religious, in whole, in part, or by model, as now illustrated by the Pompeian House at Saratoga.
The Galleries are to be filled with mural paintings, panoramic and inexpensive, in chronological history of the ancient nations like that of Bavaria in the National Museum in Munich ; corridors being filled with casts for study, and for sale at cost; as now supplied by the British Museum and the Louvre to the world.
The Galleries to be of sand-concrete, tested in the great hotels at St. Augustine, the Stanford Museum, and the Plouse of Pansa at Saratoga, in which concrete has cost less than ordinary brickwork. Roman columns, imperishable, are cast for $20.00 each, which in stone would have cost $300.00. Concrete was the principal material of ancient Rome (Ency. Britta.).
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