The National Building Museum is a cultural institution that commemorates, analyzes, and tells the stories of American construction, engineering, architectural design, and urban planning. Located in Washington, D.C, its great hall, tall corinthian columns, and terracotta friezes represent a family-friendly destination with free annual festivities, exhibitions, and programs.
The National Building Museum is also a fundamental platform for sharing knowledge and ideas about architecture and urban growth. The building that houses it, however, was initially built after the Civil War for three reasons: to act as the headquarters of the Pension Bureau, to honor the soldiers who fought on the side of the Union during the civil war, and to act as an elegant space for social and political functions in Washington. The building was authorized by Congress in 1881 to address the rising need for office space for federal workers attending to the growing number of pension claims.
U.S. Army veteran Montgomery C. Meigs acted as both the architect and engineer for the building, which was begun in 1882 and completed in 1887. Congress instructed Meigs to use metal and other fireproof materials to carry out the project in order to keep veteran records safe. As a result, the scale of the project resulted in a regional scarcity of bricklayers, as Meigs convinced many skilled workers from nearby cities to take up his project and abandon their current work. Many notable people criticized the building, but by the time Meigs completed it in 1887, it housed roughly 1500 public officials who used the space to sort through over 800,000 pension claims that were taking up one-third of the government's budget.
The building also hosted unique events and balls by notable personalities such as Theodore Roosevelt and William McKinley. However, due to public outrage, the Woodrow Wilson administration decided to stop hosting them there. In 1930, due to upheavals from World War I, the Pension Bureau moved out of the building and turned it over to the General Accounting Office. The GAO renovated the building by putting in cubicles with glass ceilings on the ground floor, and this agency resided in the building until 1950.
Other government agencies occupied the building in the 1960s, but it had fallen into a state of dilapidation, and the government was considering the option of demolishing it. In 1967, Chloethiel Woodard Smith, an influential architect in Washington, D.C., submitted a report to the government stating a number of possible ways the building could be used, including a museum devoted to the building arts. Other conservationists such as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Herbert Franklin, Dr. Cynthia Field, and Beverly Willis consolidated Smith’s efforts. Due to their work, the government added the building to the National Register of Historic Places in 1969, and Congress passed a resolution in 1978 that preserved the structure as a national treasure. Congress backed this up with a 1980 act that created the private nonprofit institution known today as the National Building Museum.
This act of congress led to a period of thorough and precise restoration. In 1985, the museum opened with an inaugural exhibition called “Anatomy of a Bridge: Seven Steps in Constructing the Brooklyn Bridge.” In 1997, the government officially renamed it the National Building Museum.
