The British Museum, unrivalled in the world for the richness and variety of its contents, occupies a huge building of various dates, which is entered from Great Russell St., in Bloomsbury, a few yards north of New Oxford St. A pigeon-haunted forecourt separates the street from the colonnaded main facade (South), in the pediment of which are allegorical sculptures, by Westmacott, representing the Progress of Humanity and various personified Arts. In this building are the Art and Ethnographical Departments and the Library; Natural History Department, see Walk 41.
HISTORY. The British Museum was founded in 1753 by an Act of Parliament to purchase (from the profits of a state lottery) the Harleian manuscript and Sir Hans Sloane's Collections and to add them to the Cottonian manuscript (transferred to the public in 1702) in a suitable repository. Montagu House, built on this site by Puget in 1686, was purchased and opened in 1759, George II. having meanwhile presented the royal library collected by his predecessors. The Civil War Tracts (1762), Sir William Hamilton's Greek Vases (1772), the Cracherode Books, Prints, and Coins (1799), the Egyptian Antiquities (1802; the result of victories in Egypt), and the Towneley Marbles (1805) swelled the collections, and a new wing was addedied In 1815 came the Phigaleian Marbles, in 1816 the famous Elgin Marbles, and finally, after the acquisition of the King's Library (i.e. George III.'s) from George IV., an entirely new building became necessary. The present Museum was designed by Robert Smirke (afterwards Sir Robert) in 1823 and, beginning with the King's Library (east wing) and concluding with the demolition of Montagu House and the erection of the present south front, was complete by 1852. The great expansion of the library by purchase, by deposits under the Copyright Acts (1842 seq.), and by the bequest of the choice library of the Rt. Hon. Thomas Grenville in 1847, and the results of excavations by A. H. Layard at Nineveh (1851-60) and by Sir C. T. Newton at Halicarnassos (1855-60) made considerable extensions necessary. In 1857 the circular domed Reading Room and the surrounding 'Iron Library,' designed by Sir Anthony Panizzi, the Principal Librarian, were opened. In 1884 the 'White Wing' at the south-east angle was built from the bequest of William White. Finally, in 1914, the 'King Edward VII. Galleries,' on the north, were opened at a cost of �200,000, a fourth of which was provided by a bequest from Vincent Stuckey Lean. This addition designed by Sir J. J. Burnet, is the first of a projected series of three galleries on the east, west, and north, for which the land was acquired in 1894. The Natural History Collections were removed to South Kensington in 1883 and the files of provincial newspapers to Hendon in 1902.
