Arts and Industries Building (National Museum Building)

1879-1881, Adolf Cluss and Paul Schulze

The first building created solely to house the National Museum began with a plan by General Montgomery C. Meigs submitted to Congress on January 24, 1877. The United States National Museum had previously been housed in the Smithsonian Institution Building. After an architectural competition, the Board of Regents selected the architectural firm Adolf Cluss and Paul Schulze for the new building. Since Congress did not appropriate funds until March 3, 1879, the project came under the adminstration of the second Smithsonian Secretary, Spencer Baird. Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry having died in 1878, Secretary Baird, General Montgomery C. Meigs, General William T. Sherman and Congressman Peter Parker composed the National Museum Building Commission which oversaw the project. General Meigs, a civil engineer educated at West Point, supervised the structural system and conducted a study of public museums in Europe.

On April 17, 1879, ground was broken for the new museum building. The foundations and main walls were completed during the first year of construction. By the end of 1880 the roof had been completed and parts of the building were already in use by Smithsonian Institution staff. The United States National Museum opened to the public in the new building in October 1881. The National Museum Building was designed with a symmetrical plan, composed of a Greek cross and central rotunda. The exterior was composed of geometric brick patterns of red, black, buff and blue. Each façade faced a cardinal direction and had an entrance in the center which led to naves directed towards the central rotunda. A sculpture of 1881, Columbia Protecting Science and Industry, by Caspar Buberl was placed above the north entrance. The interior of the building was divided into windowed ranges and covered courts with skylights and clerestory windows. The naves, courts and ranges were divided by arcades of round arches resting on piers. In 1883, the walls were changed from a uniform gray color stone to a more colorful scheme using a maroon color up to twelve feet with gray above and stencils on the walls of the central rotunda.

During the last decades of the nineteenth century, numerous changes and modifications were made to the interior space of the National Museum Building. In 1884 storage and work rooms were carved out of the public space of the four courts; an annex was erected on the east side for a lunch room; the wooden floors of courts and ranges were replaced by marble and a second floor was added to the south-east range. In 1901 a tunnel was constructed between the buiding and the adjacent Smithsonian Institution Building. In 1902 the walls were repainted with a red color up to fifteen feet with ivory above. The rotunda was painted in olive and ivory and new stencils were designed by interior designer Grace Lincoln Temple. The National Museum Building was renamed the Arts and Industries Building in 1910 when the natural history collections were moved to the newly completed Museum of Natural History across the Mall. In 1964 the remaining Arts and Industries Collection was moved to the Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History). The Arts and Industries Building was closed from 1974 to 1976 when it reopened with the exhibit, "1876: A Centennial Exhibition."

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