National Building Museum
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The National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., is a museum dedicated to "architecture, design, engineering, construction, and urban planning." It as created by an act of Congress in 1980, and is a private non-profit institution.
It is housed in the former Pension Bureau building, a brick structure completed in 1887 and designed by Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, the U.S. Army quartermaster general who modeled it on Michelangelo's Palazzo Farnese in Rome. The building is notable for several architectural features including the spectacular interior columns and a frieze sculpted by Casper Buberl stretching around the exterior of the building depicting Civil War soldiers in scenes reminiscent of those on Trajan's Column in Rome. The vast interior, measuring 316 ft. (96 m.) × 116 ft. (35 m.), has been used to hold inauguration balls since the building's construction and a Presidential Seal is set into the floor near the south entrance.
External link
Source
- Weeks, Christopher, AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C., 3rd ed., Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, pp. 73-74