The museum has a large open exhibit space area that hosts various temporary exhibits, like types of fencing, an Amish barn raising, green designs, etc. The National Building Museum also possesses an excellent bookstore where you can find almost all types of books on architecture, engineering, urban planning, and other fields on which the museum focuses on. The museum is housed in the former Pension Bureau building, which is a brick structure that was completed in 1887 and was designed by Gen.
Montgomery C. Meigs who was the U.S. Army quartermaster general. The unique feature of the National Building Museum is its several architectural features that include the magnificent interior columns and a frieze carve by Caspar Buberl. This frieze stretches around the exterior of the building that depicts the American Civil War soldiers in fighting scenes that somewhat reminds of those Trajan’s Column in Rome and the Horsemen Frieze of the Parthenon in Athens.
The museum’s vast interior measures about 316 feet × 116 feet, and has been used to hold inauguration balls since the building’s construction. A Presidential Seal is placed into the floor near the south entrance of the museum. In brief, Meigs, the designer of the National Building Museum, based his design of this building on Italian Renaissance, significantly trying to create a look somewhat similar to that of Rome's Palazzo Farnese and the Palazzo della Cancelleria. The building is sometimes also referred to as “Meigs Old Red Barn”.
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