DC -- Smithsonian Institution Building (The Castle) -- Exhibit: Preview: The Smithsonian: A Story of Discovery and Wonder:
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- Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- DISCOV_220630_01.JPG: Castle of Curiosities
The Castle Owls and Their 15 Minutes of Fame
- DISCOV_220630_05.JPG: Castle of Curiosities
When the Castle Stood Alone
- DISCOV_220630_09.JPG: Castle of Curiosities
Crowdsourcing Since 1849
- DISCOV_220630_12.JPG: Castle of Curiosities
A Most Unusual Bequest
- DISCOV_220630_20.JPG: WHY A CASTLE?
Congress decreed that the Smithsonian would include an art gallery, a library, a chemical library, a lecture hall, and a museum.
A 28-year-old architect named James Renwick Jr. won the competition to create a building that could house all these diverse functions. There was no similar building in the United States in 1846.
Renwick designed the Smithsonian Building (now known as the Castle) in a medieval revival style with Gothic and Romanesque details. The style was intended to evoke the cloistered, scholarly atmosphere associated with such venerable English colleges as Oxford and Cambridge. The dark red stone was a shocking choice for the capital city, where most public buildings were classical in style and built with marble or light Aquia sandstone. The building became a major landmark in American architecture.
The cornerstone of the Castle was laid on May 1, 1847, in a grand Masonic ceremony that was attended by a reported 7,000 people. The president, vice president, and mayor of Washington DC were among the many dignitaries present.
When the building was finally completed in 1855, it houses all the functions of the fledgling institution: chemistry laboratory, natural history laboratory, library, a scientific demonstration room, administrative offices, lecture hall, art gallery, natural history museum, and even living quarters for the Institution's first Secretary and his family.
Joseph Henry's Living Quarters in the Castle
- DISCOV_220630_28.JPG: Castle of Curiosities
Taxidermist Turned Conservationist
The Man That Saved the Bison
- AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
- Description of Subject Matter: Preview: The Smithsonian: A Story of Discovery and Wonder
March 20, 2015 – Indefinitely
Preview the upcoming exhibition: The Smithsonian: A Story of Discovery and Wonder. The upcoming exhibition will introduce the history of the Smithsonian and explore its museums, research, and public programs in art, culture, history, and science.
The exhibit will emphasize the unique capacity of the Smithsonian’s collections and research centers to
* spark discovery
* tell the Smithsonian’s story
* tell America’s story
* inspire lifelong learning
* and reach people everywhere.
- Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
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- Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].
