Arts: Numbered Stones

The most important event in the history of the Metropolitan Museum is without doubt the opening of the new American Wing. It has long been felt that there should be an organized attempt to preserve somewhere in that temple of Art examples of the finest native work in the architectural and utilitarian Arts.

The effort has been to create in the new wing an atmosphere of intimacy. You are taken as much as possible out of the museum atmosphere. Careful reproductions have been made of rooms of the early periods of American growth. Old newspapers, advertisements, have been studied in the interests of verisimilitude. Fireplaces, furniture, decorations are minutely in harmony. The rooms actually present the illusion of having been lived in.

The exterior of the wing has been the result of an ingenuous engineering feat. There stood from 1822 to 1914 one of the most beautiful façades in America—that of the old U. S. Assay office. Business caused its destruction. Art has preserved it. Every stone of the façade was carefully numbered, transported to the museum. It has been reproduced as the South Façade of the American Wing.