The National Building Museum

My day started with several shots of Novocain and an hour in the dentist’s chair. After that, I decided that I wanted to something a little different for my museum experience today. I toyed with the idea of the Sackler and Freer galleries and even thought about walking around the mall to view some of the memorials that I haven’t seen yet (still too hot). After a bit of consideration while trying to drink coffee without dribbling on my shirt, I decided that today was the day for the National Building Museum (www.nbm.org/)

The National Building Museum

I have walked past it numerous times since one of the best coffee shops in the city is around the corner (Chinatown Coffee Co.) and admired the building. The outside, as beautiful as it is, doesn’t compare to the four story columned atrium inside. It is one of the most beautiful spaces I’ve seen in DC. I was absolutely giddy when I walked in and immediately thought of some of the beautiful paintings by Turner showing the sun-soaked columned courtyards in Italy. The National Building Museum is housed in the original National Pension Bureau building, built between 1882 and 1887. The building was actually modeled after two Roman palaces, the Palazzo Farnese and the Palazzo della Cancelleria.

The Great Hall

Earlier this year, the museum had hosted an exhibition on Parking Garages. Sadly (no sarcasm, truly), I had missed that, but I was in time for LEGOs. Yes, LEGOs. There are a very few people in the world who have earned the designation “LEGO certified professional”. These are not LEGO employees, but folks who really love their LEGOs enough to have their work recognized by the LEGO Corporation. Check it out…some of the artwork will blow you away.  (http://www.lego.com/eng/info/default.asp?page=affiliates)

2 World Trade Center

World Trade Center,
Empire State Building
Sears Tower

One of these professionals, Adam Reed Tucker, created replicas of approximately a dozen planned or real life buildings from around the world. Each piece is a scale model of the subject building and each took dozens of hours plan and complete. At the end of the exhibit is a large room filled with LEGOs and, more importantly, filled with kids and grown-ups, playing with them. I think the kids are really just there as beards for the adults who want to dive on in to some LEGO action.

The other current exhibit details the history of the development of Washington from the historical act that designated Washington the capitol to L’Enfant’s plan for the city to the remodeling of the city over the years. One of the stories detailed in the exhibit was the moving of the city’s first synagogue in the 1960’s. The Adas Israel Synagogue was first built in 1876 and was moved, for the first time, in 1969. It has since become the Lillian and Albert Small Jewish Museum, on the list for this year. I went to check out the museum after my visit to the building museum, but found the gates locked. I hadn’t realized until sitting down to write this evening, why it was closed, but after researching, I discovered that the synagogue is slated to be moved again.

Lillian and Albert Small Jewish Museum

More on the Small Jewish Museum later (I hope). Until then, make haste to go visit the Building Museum even if all you chose to do is take a little trip to Italy by sipping espresso in the courtyard.

LEGO model of the courtyard