A renovated US history museum retains its boxy essence
Heroic efforts to make the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History a more lovable building have been made, and the building has just as determinedly resisted them.
The renovated space that opened on Nov. 21 after an $85 million overhaul is an improvement in many obvious ways. Light flows in. The wings of the building connect with each other and a central core more logically. There will soon be a cafe with windows facing onto Constitution Avenue, linking the building to the city, and there are new restrooms, information centers, and an elegant stairway that ties the whole space together. On a purely architectural level: Mission accomplished.
But this building's will to ugliness is profound. It will not give up the fight easily.
When it opened in 1964, it was dubbed the Museum of History and Technology, and it is more the spirit of machines and science than of history that defines the space. From its hard edges and boxy shape to its institutional cleanliness of materials, it wants to tell you about the rational side of life, how man has tried methodically to improve his world. It has little patience with the irrational enthusiasms and sentimentality of history.
The architectural firm that designed the original space was the successor firm to McKim, Mead & White, the late-19th-century giant that helped define classical elegance in American civic architecture. Jaws drop when people new to Washington architecture learn this odd fact. McKim, Mead & White was all about coffered ceilings, Corinthian columns, gold leaf, sumptuous colors, dark wood, and dizzying but comforting allusions to the grandeur of old empires. When the firm unveiled the Museum of History and Technology, it was clearly the last gasp of a venerable but vitiated giant.
Read entire article at Philip Kennicott in the WaPo
The renovated space that opened on Nov. 21 after an $85 million overhaul is an improvement in many obvious ways. Light flows in. The wings of the building connect with each other and a central core more logically. There will soon be a cafe with windows facing onto Constitution Avenue, linking the building to the city, and there are new restrooms, information centers, and an elegant stairway that ties the whole space together. On a purely architectural level: Mission accomplished.
But this building's will to ugliness is profound. It will not give up the fight easily.
When it opened in 1964, it was dubbed the Museum of History and Technology, and it is more the spirit of machines and science than of history that defines the space. From its hard edges and boxy shape to its institutional cleanliness of materials, it wants to tell you about the rational side of life, how man has tried methodically to improve his world. It has little patience with the irrational enthusiasms and sentimentality of history.
The architectural firm that designed the original space was the successor firm to McKim, Mead & White, the late-19th-century giant that helped define classical elegance in American civic architecture. Jaws drop when people new to Washington architecture learn this odd fact. McKim, Mead & White was all about coffered ceilings, Corinthian columns, gold leaf, sumptuous colors, dark wood, and dizzying but comforting allusions to the grandeur of old empires. When the firm unveiled the Museum of History and Technology, it was clearly the last gasp of a venerable but vitiated giant.