Moving herbarium cabinets from the old administration at Missouri Botanical Garden

For 100 years, botanists accumulated their collections in the old Administration Building at Missouri Botanical Garden.  There was no central air conditioning, and the basement was damp.  After we carried the plant collections to new compactors in the Lehman Building, and got them reorganized, we were staring at 600 empty steel herbarium cabinets.

At the request of Director Dr. Peter Raven, I arranged a discount sale of herbarium cabinets to Universities throughout the midwestern United States.  Botany faculty and graduate students flocked to St. Louis.  The buyers and I carried the huge cabinets down from the second and third floors, but only when we had to.  The old marble stairways were easily nicked.  Buyers wanted to pick up their cabinets on weekends, which meant we needed to move the cabinets more quickly.

I rented this and another elevator to help, and coordinated the arrival of herbarium case buyers, in between driving a truckload of lichens to the Smithsonian, and my regular duties as a research assistant for Dr. Tom Croat.  ~ April 1973.