Chapter 2 



The New 

 Building 



^ ^ Tn the designing of the building," Rathbun 

 X. wrote, "two principal objectives were kept in view, 

 first, to secure the largest possible amount of available 

 space and second, to produce a substantial and digni- 

 fied structure. . . . Planned as a great shell . . . the build- 

 ing contains few permanent walls, and by giving ex- 

 ceptional width to the main mass an unusual extent of 

 floor area as compared to the extent of the outer walls 

 has been obtained. Other notable features are the ab- 

 sence of the customary monumental staircase, and the 

 minimizing of dark spaces as also of distracting archi- 

 tectural details in the interior. The construction is en- 

 tirely fireproof."' 



Although it is impossible to get from one place to 

 another within its walls without getting lost, the basic 

 plan of the building is simple. Picture an inverted, fat 

 T having the horizontal member twice the length of 

 the vertical. This is the south side of the building, facing 

 the Castle across the Mall, with the Capitol to the east 

 of it and the Washington Monument to the west. The 

 shorter, vertical member of the T points north. From 

 the north or Constitution Avenue entrance, two nar- 

 rower segments called ranges extend eastward and 

 westward parallel to the Mall. Each range then turns a 

 right angle and runs south to join the main wings, thus 

 enclosing a hollow rectangle on each side of the north- 

 south segment. The rotunda marks the intersection of 

 this north with the east-west wings at the front of the 

 building. Even with this plan in mind, it is not partic- 

 ularly easy to visualize locations such as, say, the south 

 side of the north range, no matter how many years one 

 walks around inside the two-square-block structure. 



The two open courts, each 128 feet square, were a 

 vital part of the building's design. They provided two 

 commodities seldom spoken of today — fenestration and 

 ventilation. Electric lights were in fairly common use 

 by the turn of the century, but no intelligent person 



July 9, 1904: Digging the foundation, for the new National 

 Museum on the east side oj the building, using an 

 authentic steam-powered steam shovel and mulepower to 

 haul the dirt. 



would have expected them to take the place of daylight, 

 especially if one wanted to see the true colors of objects. 

 The coLuts were a necessity if the inner part of the 

 Museum were to be light enough for the exhibits to be 

 seen and the staff to work. In addition, everyone knows 

 that cross-ventilation is far better than just opening a 

 window. Windows on both sides of the building were 

 one way to ameliorate the Washington summer heat. 

 The courtyard walls are faced with light-colored brick, 

 and the windows are framed with granite from Wood- 

 stock, Maryland. 



The exterior walls of the Museum are built of solid 

 red brick, hidden from view by a f acing of granite blocks 

 ten inches or more thick. The exterior walls are quite 

 massive; on the east side they measure seven feet in 

 thickness. The new Museum was built to last, and it is 

 strong. For twenty years the east attic contained several 

 hundred 500-pound steel cases full of fossils, giving a 

 total weight of approximately half a ton per square 

 yard, yet there was never any doubt that the building 

 could support such a load. 



The McMillan (Commission had decreed that gov- 

 ernment buildings were to have a light-colored exterior, 

 a reaction against the red-brick style that had domi- 

 nated Washington during the last quarter of the nine- 

 teenth century. The Patent Off ice and Tariff buildings, 

 two early government structures (one occupied, and 

 one soon to be, by the Smithsonian) were f)f limestone 

 and local sandstone. They had not stood up well. I hat 

 left granite as the logical facing material. 



Three different kinds of granite were used on the 

 outside of the building. The ground-floor stone is f rom 

 Milford, Massachusetts; this is called pink granite, but 

 the color is light gray, the stone developing a pinkish 

 cast when wet with rain. The first and second floors 

 and the dome are built of white granite from Bethel, 

 Vermont. The third floor uses another white granite 

 of a different hue, from Mount Airy, North Carolina. 

 (Perhaps, half a century after the Civil War, it was good 

 politics to have some stone from north and some from 

 south.) Had any cost/benefit ratio been seriously con- 

 sidered, it is unlikely that granite would have been se- 



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