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
]]>Designed by Cluss & Schulze and built to house the international exhibits left over from the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, the Smithsonian Institution's Arts and Industries Building reflects the three principal requirements of buildings constructed to house world's fairs and other 19th-century expositions: to enclose a very large area; to present a tasteful, dramatic, and pleasing exterior; and to employ inexpensive construction technology.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: November 11, 1971
National Historic Landmark: November 11, 1971
]]>The Smithsonian Institution Building was designed by prominent New York architect James Renwick, Jr. and erected between 1847 and 1855 on the Mall. It was built to house the Smithsonian Institution, which had been chartered by Act of Congress in 1846. The Smithsonian was established following the generous bequest of approximately $500,000 by James Smithson, an English scientist and the illegitimate son of the Duke of North Cumberland.
By the terms of the will, Smithson's estate was to pass to his nephew following Smithson's death in 1829. If the nephew should die without direct heirs, the will ordered, the estate was then to become the property of the United States government. The United States acquired the funds when the contested bequest was settled in the British courts in London in 1838 after the death of Smithson's nephew, but disagreements over Smithson's intentions for the money—which he had merely stated was to be used for the "increase and diffusion of knowledge," with no indication as to how this was to be achieved—delayed the chartering of the institution until 1846.
As the first building created for the new institution, this structure—now known as the Castle—was designed to house many types of activities, including a large storage room on the first floor designed for the exchange of scientific publications with other institutions and museums, a suite of rooms for the family of the Institution's Secretary, various natural history research rooms and laboratories, a reading room, a library, and a large lecture room. Two small rooms saw use as a museum of scientific instruments and an art gallery. Both of these rooms were occasionally used as minor lecture rooms for meetings by scientific organizations.
The first story of the building consisted of an enormous room to be used as a museum, although it remained empty in 1855 due to lack of exhibit cases. Joseph Henry, the first Secretary of the Smithsonian, referred to this room in 1855 as "in appearance one of the most imposing rooms in this country." The floor of the middle part of this great hall was laid in cut stone, the remaining floor being of wood.
An 1865 fire destroyed much of the young Institution's collection and caused extensive damage to the upper floor of the building. Renovations were completed by Adolf Cluss. With the expansion of the Smithsonian Institution, the original building has come to be used primarily for administrative and visitor services.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: October 15, 1966
National Historic Landmark: January 12, 1965
]]>The Old Corcoran Gallery, now the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, began construction in 1859 from designs by James Renwick Jr. and Robert Auchmutz. It was one of the first buildings in the United States erected exclusively as an art gallery, and is the oldest gallery in the District of Columbia. In the late 1890s, a new Corcoran Gallery of Art opened just south of its original location.
Conceived in the French Second Empire style, the Renwick Gallery is a deliberate emulation of the design of the then-new additions to the Louvre in Paris. The relatively modest scale of this building, the date of its construction, and the excellence of its architectural detail give this building a seminal position in the development of the Second Empire style in the United States. Originally constructed between 1859 and 1864, the Renwick was restored between 1967 and 1970 and again between 1985 and 1986.
From 2013 to 2015, the Renwick Gallery was rehabilitated and continues to serve as the Smithsonian Institution's museum for contemporary craft and decorative arts.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: March 24, 1969
National Historic Landmark: November 11, 1971
]]>The United States Gundelo Philadelphia is the only surviving gunboat built and manned by American forces during the Revolutionary War. Further, the vessel is one of the 15 small craft with which Benedict Arnold fought 29 British vessels in the battle of Valcour Island, Lake Champlain, on October 11, 1776. The year of grace won by the building of Arnold's "fleet" and the battle off Valcour Island paved the way for the decisive American victory at Saratoga in the fall of the following year.
Little more than a rowboat compared with modern vessels, the Philadelphia was one of the hastily-built fleet constructed in early summer of 1776 at the present Whitehall, New York. On September 23, 1776, the fleet took position in the small bay west of Valcour Island, about seven miles south of what is now Plattsburg, New York. The sound between the Island and the mainland was about three quarters of a mile wide, divided by a high bluff projecting from the west side of the Island. Arnold's fleet formed its line south of the bluff and in this position fought the heavier British fleet to a standstill on October 11. The American force was badly damaged in the action, and only with considerable luck was Arnold able to elude the enemy and escape southward during the night.
In 1935, the Philadelphia, remarkably well preserved by the cold water, was identified and salvaged from the sandy lake bottom near the mid-channel of Valcour Bay. In addition to her guns, hundreds of other relics were found on the vessel, including utensils, tools, buttons, buckles, and human bones.
Since 1964, the Philadelphia has been a part of the collection of the National Museum of American History.
DC Inventory: March 3, 1979
National Register: October 15, 1966
National Historic Landmark: January 20, 1961
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