Plan New Museum of Peaceful Arts

Business Men to Erect Institution for Industrial Education.

MAY BE IN CENTRAL PARK

Incorporators Hope to Give Impetus to Inventive Genius in America.

As soon as a site can be obtained and plans completed there will be built in New York a Museum of Industrial Arts that will be the most comprehensive institution of its kind in the world. Already $1,500,000 has been pledged for the building and equipment.

The Association for the Establishment and Maintenance for the People in the City of New York of Museums of the Peaceful Arts is the name of the organization formed to build the museum. The papers of incorporation were received recently and the first meeting was held yesterday in the Lawyers Club, 115 Broadway.

The directors present were George F. Kunz, Frank A. Vanderlip, Charles H. Strong, A. Barton Hepburn, Louis Livingston Seaman, Job E. Hedges, Calvin W. Rice, Marston Taylor Bogert and John A. Stewart. Among the other directors and incorporators are Jacob H. Schiff, Elbert H. Gary, Nikola Tesla, Henry R. Towne, Melville E. Stone, H. J. Hardenbergh, Alexander C. Humphreys, Thomas A. Edison, Thomas Commerford Martin, H. E. Huntington, Theodore N. Vail, Robert Underwood Johnson and R. E. Peary.

The idea of the museum was conceived about five years ago, when plans were begun for the celebration of the centenary of the signing of the Treaty of Ghent. John A. Stewart, one of the incorporators, is chairman of the executive committee of the American celebration committee, and the museum is designed to be incidentally a memorial of the century of peace.

Among the suggestions which were sent to the American committee of means for observing the long peace was one, “that a museum of the industrial arts be erected in New York city and dedicated to the uses of the people as a place of public meeting for the promotion of the peaceful arts and sciences and friendly international intercourse.”

“Many hold the view,” said Mr. Stewart yesterday, “that industrial education in this country is inadequate; that the present inclination is toward cramming students with a lot of useless trash, and that, as a result, the professions are becoming overcrowded. It is to provide a remedy for this condition, to give the greatest inventive country in the world a museum where the development of industries may be studied, and to give a renewed impetus to inventive genius, that the museum is to be built.”

Dr. George F. Kunz, one of the backers of the movement, has collected data of 400 institutions formed on the plan of an industrial museum. Only the Museum of Industrial Arts in Dresden is regarded as a fitting model for the proposed museum here.

The New York museum will consist of several buildings which will be devoted to permanent exhibits in the following industrial and peaceful arts: Electricity, steam, astronomy, navigation, safety appliances, aviation, mechanical arts, agriculture, mining, labor, efficiency, historical records, health and hygiene, textiles, ceramics and clays, architecture, scenic embellishment, gardening, roads and road building materials, commerce and trade, printing and books.

Models of locomotives, automobiles, aeroplanes and machinery of all kinds will be placed in these buildings, and where possible they will be of working size. They will be arranged so that one wishing to study say the development of transportation will be able to do so by having all the steps in this development before his eyes.

“Do you realize,” said Mr. Stewart, “that if a man wished to study that subject now there is not a place in the United States, or in any place save Dresden, where he could find a historical arrangement of models?”

Mr. Stewart said that in Dresden if a student wishes to see a cloth weaving machine in operation all he has to do is to go to the museum and press a button starting a motor.

There also will be a library building in which will be books and periodicals giving information about the subjects covered by the museums, and a building which will contain a hall for popular assemblies. The directors want, too, to build a stadium for the use of the people of the city.

The site for the museum has not been settled, but the directors have considered two locations. One is the Central Park reservoir, which is to be superseded by the new aqueduct system. The other is on the upper West Side near the Hudson River. It is vacant property owned by a man interested in the museum who has intimated that he will offer it to the association.

Calvin W. Rice, consulting engineer of the General Electric Company and secretary of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, has been acting as secretary of the association.

The next meeting of the directors will be held in the Lawyers Club April 25.