The Smithsonian Quadrangle features four buildings in a campus-like setting on the south side of the National Mall: the Smithsonian Castle (1847-55), the Arts and Industries Building (1879-81), the Freer Gallery of Art (1923), and the largely underground Quadrangle Building (1983-87). The Quadrangle Building houses the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, National Museum of African Art, and S. Dillon Ripley Center, each with its above-ground entrance pavilion. The Haupt Garden covering the main roof of the building also incorporates the Renwick Gates, the Downing Urn, and nineteenth century lampposts and garden furnishings from the Bicentennial Victorian Garden that once occupied a portion of the site.
The Quadrangle Building occupies the area historically known as the “South Yard.” For many years, the Castle and its sparsely planted back yard served as an incubator for fledgling museums and research programs. Over time, the yard became a convenient place for various utilitarian structures and uses. In the 1870s, it served as a museum construction yard; in the 1880s, bison were kept in a paddock, awaiting the opening of the National Zoo in 1889. After the bison left, an astrophysical observatory was built, followed by various sheds and annexes. A taxidermist shop appeared in 1917, and the same year, the Army erected a metal building for wartime repair of aircraft engines. By 1920, that structure was repurposed with public displays as the Aircraft Building, and in 1946, it became the National Air Museum, whose public displays grew to include a startling outdoor collection of rockets.
The 1960s urban renewal of Southwest, and its transformation of Independence Avenue into a formal row of federal office buildings, rendered the jumble of the South Yard embarrassingly obsolete. The Smithsonian’s then Secretary, S. Dillon Ripley began to envision the Yard as a more formal space in keeping with the redeveloped Independence Avenue. By 1980, the American architectural team of Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Abbott (SBRA) was hired to implement Japanese architect Junzo Yoshimura’s design. However, architect Jean Paul Carlhian is credited as the principal designer of the Quandrangle Building, since there were significant redesigns of Yoshimura’s building plans. Carlhian’s key collaborator in designing the Haupt Garden was landscape architect Lester A. Collins.
The Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission played key roles in reviewing the design of the project. For seven years, between the initial stages of design until the building’s completion, the design review bodies critiqued and approved the complex, element by element. The Haupt Garden, the finishing touch, opened to the public in May 1987, followed in September by the underground museum spaces.
DC Inventory: April 27, 2017
]]>Federal Office Building No. 6, now known as the Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building, received its original moniker as one of fifteen new office buildings of the 1956 plan for federal government facilities in Washington, DC.
The National Capital Planning Commission's (NCPC) early 1950s plans acknowledged the difficulty of further federal expansion into DC’s Northwest quadrant. The new General Services Administration (GSA), created in 1949 to handle construction and logistics for the expanding bureaucracy, prepared a comprehensive plan for new construction, as well as additions and rehabilitation of federal buildings in and around DC. The GSA coordinated closely with NCPC, which anticipated additional projects in Southwest since NCPC identified as an approproate area for urban renewal.
GSA selected two DC architecture firms for the office building development: Faulkner, Kingsbury and Stenhouse and Chatelain, Gauger and Nolan. Directed to maximize efficiency, the firms' architects provided a floor plan to accommodate 2,900 employees with no wasted space or superfluous ornament. Around this time, the Modern architecture movement became popular among American designers, as it encouraged this type of efficient work space. In addition to satisfying NCPC and Congress with a proposed design, GSA had to submit the project for review by the US Commission of Fine Arts (CFA). An immediate concern of CFA’s was the length of the building and the "commercial office building" facade. CFA encouraged the building be set back in a plaza, giving it an impressive approach and out of the Maryland Avenue vista to the Capitol. Despite budget constraints, the project team engaged prominent landscape architect, Lester Collins (1914-1993), to design the surrounding plaza and terraces; the most notable feature is a sunken fountained courtyard.
The Federal Office Building No. 6 was the first built in the larger development project. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as well as the Departments of Health, Education, and Welfare, served as the building's first occupants.
In March 2026, it was announced that the downsized Department of Education, the longtime tenant, would vacate the building, and that the Department of Energy would move in.
DC Inventory: March 23, 2017 National Register: January 24, 2017