To achieve such reductions meant concentrating upon one floor the laboratories planned for three floors; eliminating the seminar-type teaching laboratories on two floors; cutting in half the space devoted to the American Registry of Pathology; reducing the working library from 25,000 volumes to 15,000; reducing the facilities for experimental animal research by 50 percent; reducing the Medical Illustration Service by 40 percent; and eliminating the public museum, though retaining the advanced teaching museum area and the
museum laboratories.
On 16 May 1950, the whole subject was presented at a formal Bureau of the Budget hearing, at which Maj. Gen. George E. Armstrong, Deputy Surgeon General of the Army, explained that with these revisions, although the new building would have approximately double the area occupied by the Institute in the old building at 7th and Independence Avenue, it still "would provide space for only the basic activities of the Institute at the time of occupancy" and should, therefore, be designed so that wings could be added to care for expansion.
A Bomb-Resistant Structure
Representatives of the Bureau of the Budget "agreed to support the revised plan and promised to release funds for final planning in the near future' " 10[1]— but there were other obstacles to meet and overcome. On a Sunday morning in June 1950, the North Korean Reds crossed the 38th parallel of North latitude and advanced against the Republic of Korea. The United Nations, led by the United States, came to the aid of the Republic. Presumably, because of a greater awareness of the possibilities of war, and doubtless, sharpened by the fact that the Soviet Union had burst its first atomic bomb, a Presidential directive, passed on by the Budget Bureau to The Surgeon General, required that the new building must be designed to meet the specifications of the National Security Resources Board for bomb-resistant structures.
Final and definite specifications for building bomb-resistant structures had not at that time been completed by the National Security Resources Board but, acting upon an estimate that conformity with the bomb-resistant requirement would add 10 percent to the cost of the Institute building, the Bureau of the Budget increased its May allowance of $6,800,000 by that percentage, to a total of $7,480,000, including the $350,000 for planning and the balance of $7,130,000 for construction.
- ↑ 10 Annual Report, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, 1950, pp. 10, 11
