By that time the laboratory had completed its work on the Hawaii project. This had involved only seven exhibits, but distance complicated the task. The exhibits not only had to withstand shipment by land and water from Washington, they needed to correlate with other exhibits being produced in Hawaii. Upon arrival the park would install them in the headquarters building on the rim of Kilauea. Dealing with unfamiliar subject matter, the laboratory staff welcomed advice and guidance from Chief Naturalist John Doerr, who knew the park well. Funding came from Hui O Pele, the park's unique cooperating association.

The Federal Hall project entailed quite different problems. Museum Branch involvement with Federal Hall Memorial had begun soon after the Wall Street property became a Park Service responsibility in 1939. Burns established a good working relationship with the Federal Hall Memorial Associates, who were developing a museum there without professional staffing. This patriotic organization sponsored by powerful and publicspirited interests in the Lower Manhattan business community was a welcome tenant in a historic building the Service could not then afford to restore and operate. Burns' aim was to minimize future curatorial or public relations difficulties that its mistakes might engender.

The building, whose vaults had once held much of the gold and silver validating the currency of the United States, was itself a distinguished architectural monument meriting preservation. It occupied the site of an older structure, Federal Hall, where George Washington had been inaugurated president and directed the organization of the national government under the Constitution. These events of the 1780s constituted the interpretive interests of the associates. But Federal Hall in its earlier form as colonial New York's city hall had also witnessed such significant events as the jailing and trial of John Peter Zenger for libeling the imperious colonial governor. Zenger's acquittal on the grounds that his printed statements were true became a landmark in establishing the freedom of the press. In September 1949 the Zenger Memorial Fund, formed by influential newspaper publishers, contracted with the Park Service to underwrite a Zenger Memorial Room at Federal Hall.

The Zenger Room constituted an especially difficult assignment for the Museum Branch. The subject matter to be interpreted did not lend itself readily to museum treatment. Freedom of the press defied concrete visualization. Zenger's appearance was unknown, and no artifacts associated with him survived except copies of his newspaper. Nothing remained of the fabric of City Hall, and pictorial evidence proved scanty. The only known exhibitable specimen related to the trial was unavailable. 23 The room selected for the memorial presented further problems. Tall windows occupied much of two walls, two doors interrupted a third, and monolithic columns supported the ceiling. The exhibit installation would have to leave the stately architecture unimpaired.

The promoters of the memorial did not limit their participation to money. The elderly president of the fund, James Wright Brown, continued to suggest changes affecting the exhibit plan while the work progressed. Another proponent pressed for more emphasis on the role of Zenger's wife, whom he credited with maintaining publication of the newspaper during Zenger's incarceration. The fund also insisted that a New York illustrator named Cliff Young execute some of the exhibits. Burns consequently had to engage in time-consuming negotiations with well-meaning people operating outside their field of professional competence. On some points he could compromise, for example by spotlighting Mrs. Zenger in the jail diorama and assigning two or three introductory illustrations to Young. Other proposals he felt obliged to resist.

Another factor augmented the tension. The location of the Zenger Memorial and its well-connected sponsorship meant that it would address a highly sophisticated, discriminating, critical public. None but the best possible exhibits would do.