Museum
Smithsonian Arts + Industries Building
Gothic Revival hall built to swallow sixty boxcars of Centennial Exhibition donations, later Garfield's inaugural ballroom.
0:00≈ 2 min
Location
0:00≈ 2 min
About this audio guide
This guide to the Smithsonian Arts + Industries Building in Washington, D.C. begins with sixty freight cars of leftover donations rolling in from Philadelphia's 1876 Centennial Exposition, and Secretary Spencer Baird's scramble to find somewhere to put them. It follows the hasty new building he got from Congress, whose first night hosted not science but President Garfield's inaugural ball, and traces how a century of leaks and neglect eventually shut its doors. Listen for what the decades-long renovation team found when they opened the walls back up.
This audio guide was created using AI.