Ohio History Journal

656       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

tees to go forward with the completion of this building,

and it has been decided to ask the Legislature at its next

session for an appropriation sufficient to carry out that

policy. That having been decided, the next step in the

project is to prepare a tentative plan upon which to base

estimates in asking for the necessary appropriation.

General Orton, having done such a remarkable piece of

work for this organization as Chairman of the Building

Committee for this Memorial Wing, was designated to

continue at the head of the Building Committee, to go

forward with this plan. He has a tentative plan in hand,

which he will now explain to the Society at large.

 

GENERAL EDWARD ORTON, JR.,

spoke as follows:

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: While the folders

explaining this project for completing the building are being

passed among you, I may say that you will perhaps wonder

how a photograph of a building not in existence could be shown

as is the case in the folder. If you will look at the upper pic-

ture on page 2, you will see a life-like view of just how the

Museum and Library building will look when that south wing

is completed. It was made from a photograph of the north

wing reversed and retouched to get rid of the entrance, steps

etc. I had the fun of mystifying our good Director, Mr. Mills,

for a moment, as to how such a thing could be done. He was

somewhat like the farmer when he first saw the giraffe in the

New York Zoological Gardens -- he watched it walking about for

quite a long time, speechless, but finally ejaculated, "There ain't

no such animal."

As President Johnson has told you, the Trustees have for-

mally committed themselves to the policy of completing this

building. He has asked me not only to explain the plan to you,

but also to present some ideas about the best way to proceed to

get the necessary funds. It will get us nowhere to make drawings

of the building we would like to erect, unless we are equally

skilful and persistent about finding ways and means to turn our

drawings into brick and steel and stone.

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Forty-First Annual Meeting             657

 

Before I take up the financing proposal, I will ask you kindly

to look at the folder, and go with me over the floor plans. Con-

sidering first the plans for the first floor you will notice that the

two wings already built are shown in black, while the proposed

new wings, completing the square, are shown in light shading.

You will also observe that as the plan of the old part of the

building is drawn, it is different from the building as it now is.

The present offices on the first floor were not intended to be per-

manent, and all the partitions are made to be easily removed.

leaving a big exhibit hall on the south end, an exact counter-

part of the room on the north. Museum space on the first floor

front is too valuable to be used for offices permanently, and now

that the time is ripe for a change, the offices are to be moved

upstairs into the south wing. If this plan is carried out, it will

mean that the basement, the first floor and second floor of the

whole east wing of the Museum, the most valuable space we have,

will be devoted to exhibits. Next, look at the south wing on the

first floor plan, you will see the Library reading room on the

southwest corner. It will be the same size as this room except

there will be no space cut out of the corner for stairways, as was

done with the room we are now in. Around the walls will be

bookcases for the commonest reference volumes. The center

space will be filled with reading tables. A noiseless floor covering

should be installed. The vast majority of the books, all of the

rare and valuable ones, will be in the stack-room, occupying the

rest of the new south wing. This stack-room will be two stories

high, the book stacks starting on the basement floor and running

up to the ceiling of the first floor giving room for four tiers of

metal stacks. The total capacity of the room, thirty-three feet

wide, one hundred and thirty feet long and twenty-eight feet

high, will be approximately 360,000 volumes.

Compared to the twenty or thirty thousand books we now

have, this seems a very great expansion, and the question comes

to your mind, do we need so much extra capacity as that? Re-

member that the State of Ohio is a going concern. It never stops

nor will its wants stop. Remember that this Society represents

the State, and its work will progress more and more actively as

the decades roll by. It is our business now to provide a structure

which will take care of this more and more rapid growth for a

considerable period. Most of you have not seen the collection

of newspaper files Mr. Galbreath has been accumulating. If

you will go down to see the room in the south end of the base-

ment, which he has filled in something less than a year, I think

you will no longer doubt the need of so large a room for our

future book stacks.

Vol. XXXV -- 42.

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658       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

 

The Library of this Society has hardly made a start, thus

far. Nothing has been done yet in Ohio to preserve the archives

of the State. After records get old and out of active use, they

are in the way and are cast aside and stuffed into every nook

and cranny of all the office buildings of the State. These records

are priceless for posterity but terribly in the way just now. We

need an archives department badly, and the archives of the State

would fill such a Library as is here planned very quickly. For

this purpose alone, if there were no other, the expenditure is

fully justified.

But, besides the present general historical Library, and our

big file of Ohio newspapers, and the archives of the State alone,

and not touching the job of caring for obsolete records of the

eighty-eight counties, there is still the State Library to consider.

A large part of its work belongs closely with the Legislature --

reference material for the use of committees. Also, there is a

large and active circulating library department doing good work

among Ohio communities. But there is a great accumulation also

of valuable material, not of use for Legislative purposes, or gen-

eral circulation, and greatly in the way of both. This material

also should come here for care as it is the very kind of material

here needed. Here it would find use.

All of these considerations will sufficiently explain, I think,

why space for 360,000 volumes is now suggested. It errs, if any-

thing, on being too low, rather than too high.

With a library of 360,000 volumes, and an adequate reading-

room for their use, a place where the physical work of condition-

ing books can be done must be provided. A space 50 x 50 feet

in the basement is set apart for that use. With what is shown

on this plan, we should have a library barely commensurate with

what is done in this field in many other States.

On the plan as drawn, this room will remain, for the time

being at least, the Auditorium of this Society. The staircases in

the southeast corner of the room will be removed. The stair-

way is a temporary affair, made necessary by the State laws when

this wing was erected, but as the new wings go in, the require-

ments will change. The passageways shown on the drawing will

permit people to make a complete circuit of the building, without

entering either the Auditorium  or Library, which is as it

should be. There will be many times when this room will be

filled with people listening to a lecture or holding a meeting,

while other crowds interested in seeing the collections, will pass

by without interfering in any way. This applies to the Library

also.

The future requirements of the Society may demand an

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Forty-First Annual Meeting             659

 

auditorium of larger size than this. We can seat two hundred and

fifty to three hundred people comfortably in this room, but we

may come to the place where we will want to seat a thousand--

if so, the court in the interior of this proposed building could be

utilized. That question has been raised and the plans so far made

will easily permit such a use of that space, if it becomes necessary

or desirable, so that, as we go along now, using this room, we are

not shutting off our future possibilities for expansion in this

respect.

In the west wing you will see provision made for the serv-

ices -- stairways, toilets and a fine elevator, from which every

floor of the building can be reached, including the roof. Provi-

sion is made for a small room on the roof, in which the prepara-

tion of skeletons and skins desired for the Natural History exhibit

can be done.

I shall not go over the other floors in detail. On the second

floor plan you will note a row of offices is planned: the Board

of Trustees, the Director's office, the Secretary's office, the clerks

and stenographers, offices for the Curators and Field Staff, etc.,

so that under this plan, the entire administrative force of officers

will be located on one floor, and will be able to work to much

better advantage.

On the last page of the folder are given a few ideas as to

what getting this addition will mean to the work. Anyone inter-

ested in the Society's work in any one of its branches, can see

what is needed. In the past, we have never, as a group, made a

united effort to push our projects through. I do not believe, with

some six or seven hundred life members, we have ever been able,

in any serious or effective way, to marshal ten per cent. of man

and woman power back of any single project. And we must get

together, if we expect to complete this building.

When we planned this World War wing which we are now

occupying, we had the tremendous inspiration of the World War,

and the appeal of the soldiers, in our favor. We went to the

Legislature, with men wearing uniforms speaking for the soldiers

of Ohio, demanding the building of a War Memorial. We have

no such appeal in asking for the completion of the building.

Furthermore, remember that we had a donation amounting to

the sum of fifty thousand dollars, which provided the art fea-

tures of this Memorial Wing; that money came from the Camp

Sherman fund, and was a powerful argument, because we did

not go to the State empty-handed. We asked it to complete what

we had already begun.

That idea is still capable of use. We can say we have here

one-half of a complete building and that we need the other half.

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660       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications

 

The Legislature will ask why, and it is up to you to show why

we want it and why we should have it.

On the question of cost, the architect's estimate is $282,000

to complete the structure, with no fancy fleatures included.

That does not provide for the book-stacks or fixtures or furnish-

ings. We do not need to build the entire book-stack at once. I

have estimated that at the beginning we can get along with $15,000

or $20,000 worth of stack; with $30,000 we can do much more.

If the bare building is to cost $280,000, we shall want $300,000, to

cover equipment of the offices, and the Library. That should

be the amount asked, I think--$300,000.00.

Director Mills told you a little about the Natural History

Museum this morning but he didn't say enough about it. There

is a tremendous field there. He now has lots of material still

packed in boxes. The amount of space he will get for arch-

aeology in the new building, as it is planned, will not let him un-

pack more than half of the material he already has. Mr. Gal-

breath has filled a room in one year with material of the greatest

historical value--files of newspapers of the State, going back

many years--the source material for future histories.

The sad fact is, that the historic material in Ohio is rapidly

being lost and dissipated. The acquisition of what material is

still extant in the state, much of which can be had for the ask-

ing, and which can be had by the use of energy and organiza-

tion, will soon become impossible. This material is steadily

getting less through the acquisitions of collectors from  other

states, who come here to garner what we neglect. If we do not

act now, in another generation our opportunity will be lost.

Now is the time to act.

Senator Fess told us yesterday that the car-loadings in this

country in the last fifteen weeks amounted to more than one

million full car-loads each week, and last week to one million one

hundred and fifty thousand. There never has been in any coun-

try, anywhere in the history of the world, anything approaching

traffic of that magnitude. That traffic means that commodities

are being moved; that means money is being made, that there is

labor for all; that this country is more prosperous than any other

country has ever been. Now, therefore, when the country is

prosperous, is a good time to go to the Legislature, and tell them

that we want to save this historical material while it can be saved;

we want to accumulate it before it is gone, that we want the State

of Ohio to appreciate its past as other states appreciate theirs.

That is your job. A real effort on the part of the members of

this Society, each seeing the members of the Legislature in his

own district, will bring success.

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Forty-First Annual Meeting             661

President Johnson then introduced Mr. Walter D.

McKinney, a life member of the Society, who had pre-

viously presented the rare original painting of Simon

Kenton, and who had brought to the meeting a painting

of Thomas Walker Cridland. Mr. McKinney came for-

ward with the painting in its pioneer frame, which he

presented to the Society in the following interesting and

informing address.

 

THOMAS WALKER CRIDLAND

Two years ago it was my privilege to place in the custody

of this Society, the portrait of Simon Kenton, the Kentucky and

Ohio pioneer, which had been in the family of Thomas Walker

Cridland for almost ninety years.

At that time, I made some remarks about Kenton, also about

the portrait, the hand-made frame and the man who made it, and

who had preserved the portrait. These remarks were published

in the QUARTERLY of January, 1925.

Today it is my added privilege to place in the custody of

this Society, the portrait of the man who made the frame around

the portrait of Simon Kenton and also that around his own por-

trait, and who also was a Kentucky-Ohio pioneer, Thomas Walker

Cridland, of Lexington, Kentucky, and Dayton, Ohio.

This portrait and frame, like the others, have at least three

qualities which should make them of value and acceptable to the

Society, namely: The historical value of the subject, the artistic

value of the portrait, the workmanship of the frame.

I shall speak briefly on these in reverse order.

 

THE FRAME

The frame, like the one on the Kenton portrait, was designed

and made by Cridland; the processes were fully described in the

QUARTERLY before mentioned, but to those who have not read the

article or who may not have access to it, I desire to. say that the

frame was made of rough pine, two by four studding, carved into

form by hand; the ornamentation was made of glue putty, from

hand-made originals and then covered with gold leaf, making the

beautiful frame you see. Such a frame required about two

months to make and as it was made some eighty years ago and

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