The nation’s only museum dedicated to American achievements in architecture, urban planning, construction, engineering, and design occupies a building constructed between 1882 and 1887 to house the Pension Bureau, which managed thousands of pensions for Civil War veterans and for the families of the dead. Designed in the style of an Italian Renaissance palace by engineer Major General Montgomery C. Meigs, who had served the Union as Quartermaster General and lost his son John Rogers Meigs in the Civil War, the structure has been likened by some, with its symbolic parade of Union forces, to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial of the Pension Building’s day. Although modeled on Rome’s Palazzo Farnese, its provisions for light, air circulation, and fireproofing made it the federal government’s first modern office building. Built in red brick instead of the white sandstone and marble used for other federal buildings, it was widely ridiculed at the time. A 1,200-foot-long terra cotta frieze encircles the building, depicting all the Union forces in the Civil War, including infantry, cavalry, artillery, naval, quartermaster, and medical personnel. Inside, massive 75-foot-tall brick columns finished to look like marble define a 300-foot-long Great Hall, which became a favorite site for presidential inaugural balls and first hosted one for Grover Cleveland in 1885, before the building was completed. After facing demolition in the 1960s, the building was saved by citizen action and became home to the National Building Museum through an act of Congress in 1980.
