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Civil War to Civil Rights
Downtown Heritage Trail
e.7 The National Building Museum
The nation's only museum dedicated to American achievements in architecture, urban planning, construction, engineering, and design is appropriately housed in one of the most extraordinary structures in the nation's capital.
Constructed between 1882 and 1887 in the style of an Italian Renaissance palace, the building was designed to house the Pension Bureau. The bureau, forerunner to today's Veterans Administration, managed thousands of pensions owed to Civil War veterans and to the families of those who died. It was designed by an engineer, Major General Montgomery C. Meigs, who had served the Union cause as Quartermaster General. General Meigs himself lost his son, John Rogers Meigs, in the Civil War. Some have called this building, with its symbolic parade of Union Forces, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial of the Pension Building's day.
Although modeled on Rome's Palazzo Farnese, its provisions for light, air circulation, and fireproofing made it the federal government's first modern office building. Built in red brick rather than the white sandstone and marble of other federal buildings, it was ridiculed by many at the time. "It's too bad the damn thing is fireproof," said General William Tecumseh Sherman.
A 1,200-foot-long terra cotta frieze encircles the entire building, depicting all the Union forces in the Civil War -- infantry, cavalry, and artillery troops, and naval, quartermaster, and medical personnel. Inside, massive 75-foot-tall columns, made of brick and finished to look like marble, punctuate a 300-foot-long Great Hall. A favorite venue for presidential inaugural balls, the Great Hall hosted its first for Grover Cleveland in 1885, even before the building was completed.
Threatened with demolition in the 1960s, the building was saved by citizen action. It became home to the National Building Museum by an act of Congress in 1980. |