The Old Patent Office Building in Washington, D.C., completed in 1867, houses two Smithsonian Institution museums—the National Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum. Collections include portraits of all U.S. presidents, along with paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings of numerous historic figures from American history, and the works of more than 7,000 American artists. Following a major renovation, these national treasures, as well as long-hidden architectural features of the 380,000-sf Greek Revival building, can now be viewed in natural light for the first time in decades.
The restoration project Building Team, led by Hartman-Cox Architects, Washington, restored and showcased elements such as the porticos modeled after the Parthenon in Athens, a curving double staircase, colonnades, vaulted galleries, massive windows, and block-long skylights. The effort also restored full visitor access and circulation on all three floors by relocating staff offices to an adjacent building, while opening up 40,000 sf for galleries by removing infill walls and partitions.
The Building Team made extraordinary efforts to use new preservation technologies for restoration of the historic fabric of the building and to re-use historic materials. This included the replacement of the roof with a standing and flat-seam copper exterior. More than 550 windows were replaced, each with an energy shield and UV filter to protect the artworks, while the exterior layer was done in mouth-blown glass, emulating the look of historic glass.
Original marble pavers were salvaged, numbered, restored and reinstalled throughout the building. White oak wood floors consistent with the original design were installed in the remainder of the building.
The project also added several new spaces, two of which are open to visitors—the Lunder Conservation Center and the Luce Foundation Center for American Art. In addition, the Robert and Arlene Kogod Courtyard and the Nan Tucker McEvoy Auditorium, a 346-seat multipurpose space with advanced audio-visual capabilities that was constructed beneath the courtyard, add to the museum's versatility. New monumental stairs and an elevator were added to connect the public entrances at G Street to the auditorium.
A key component of the project was the wholesale replacement of mechanical and electric systems to bring the facility up to current museum standards for lighting and temperature control. As a solid masonry building, however, there was no plenum space in which to place the new systems. The Building Team concealed the M/E components within former ventilation and chimney shafts and under the floors. This set up required modification to the chases to accommodate ductwork and piping. New boilers, chillers, cooling towers, air-handling units, fan coil units, pumps, duct work, and piping were installed so that they would not intrude within the gallery spaces.
Infrastructure modernization included a new telecommunications system with new fiber optic and copper cable, a new fire alarm system (including addressable smoke and heat detectors), and upgrades to the existing fire protection system. A new security system, including glass break and shock sensors, motion detectors, and cameras, will help guard the priceless exhibits.
Restoration of architectural detailing included replacement of worn encaustic and geometric tiles in the Great Hall with handmade, historically accurate, multi-colored replicas produced in England. On the exterior, workers cleaned, patched, and pointed the stone facades.
“The architectural details of the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery restoration were extremely carefully thought out,” said Walker Johnson FAIA, honorary chair of BD+C's Reconstruction Awards program. “The inclusion of mechanical elements within this bearing wall structure is an indication of the length the Building Team went to maintain the original design while still modernizing and restoring the building.”
All told, Hartman-Cox Architects and construction manager Bovis Lend Lease coordinated architects, engineers, and designers from more than one dozen consulting firms representing more than 20 different design disciplines, and prepared four different prime construction contracts for the $283 million renovation. The revitalized building, a major focus of a revitalized downtown Washington, is once again a showpiece for the nation's capital.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
Dream Fields, Lone Star Style
How important are athletic programs to U.S. school districts? Here's one leading indicator: In 2005, the National Football League sold 17 million tickets. That same year, America's high schools sold an estimated 225 million tickets to football games, according to the American Football Coaches Association.
| Aug 11, 2010
Gold Award: Eisenhower Theater, Washington, D.C.
The Eisenhower Theater in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., opened in 1971. By the turn of the century, after three-plus decades of heavy use, the 1,142-seat box-within-a-box playhouse on the Potomac was starting to show its age. Poor lighting and tired, worn finishes created a gloomy atmosphere.
| Aug 11, 2010
Giants 300 University Report
University construction spending is 13% higher than a year ago—mostly for residence halls and infrastructure on public campuses—and is expected to slip less than 5% over the next two years. However, the value of starts dropped about 10% in recent months and will not return to the 2007–08 peak for about two years.
| Aug 11, 2010
Reaching For the Stars
The famed Griffith Observatory, located in the heart of the Hollywood hills, receives close to two million visitors every year and has appeared in such films as the classic “Rebel Without a Cause” and the not-so-classic “Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.” Complete with a solar telescope and a 12-inch refracting telescope, multiple scientific exhibits, and one of the world...
| Aug 11, 2010
Silver Award: Pere Marquette Depot Bay City, Mich.
For 38 years, the Pere Marquette Depot sat boarded up, broken down, and fire damaged. The Prairie-style building, with its distinctive orange iron-brick walls, was once the elegant Bay City, Mich., train station. The facility, which opened in 1904, served the Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad Company when the area was the epicenter of lumber processing for the shipbuilding and kit homebuilding ...
| Aug 11, 2010
Bowing to Tradition
As the home to Harvard's Hasty Pudding Theatricals—the oldest theatrical company in the nation—12 Holyoke Street had its share of opening nights. In April 2002, however, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences decided the 1888 Georgian Revival building no longer met the needs of the company and hired Boston-based architect Leers Weinzapfel Associates to design a more contemporary facility.
| Aug 11, 2010
Silver Award: Please Touch Museum at Memorial Hall Philadelphia, Pa.
Built in 1875 to serve as the art gallery for the Centennial International Exhibition in Fairmount Park, Memorial Hall stands as one of the great civic structures in Philadelphia. The neoclassical building, designed by Fairmount Park Commission engineer Hermann J. Schwarzmann, was one of the first buildings in America to be designed according to the principles of the Beaux Arts movement.
| Aug 11, 2010
Financial Wizardry Builds a Community
At 69 square miles, Vineland is New Jersey's largest city, at least in geographic area, and it has a rich history. It was established in 1861 as a planned community (well before there were such things) by the utopian Charles Landis. It was in Vineland that Dr. Thomas Welch found a way to preserve grape juice without fermenting it, creating a wine substitute for church use (the town was dry).
| Aug 11, 2010
Team Tames Impossible Site
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the nation's oldest technology university, has long prided itself on its state-of-the-art design and engineering curriculum. Several years ago, to call attention to its equally estimable media and performing arts programs, RPI commissioned British architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw to design the Curtis R.
| Aug 11, 2010
Silver Award: Hanna Theatre, Cleveland, Ohio
Between February 1921 and November 1922 five theaters opened along a short stretch of Euclid Avenue in downtown Cleveland, all of them presenting silent movies, legitimate theater, and vaudeville. During the Great Depression, several of the theaters in the unofficial “Playhouse Square” converted to movie theaters, but they all fell into a death spiral after World War II.
