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The museum as seen from the south, with The Great Hall—formerly the railroad offloading area
the railroad bridge crossing in front of it. when the building was a warehouse.
Photo © Alan Karchmer Architectural Photographer Photo © Alan Karchmer Architectural Photographer

end of a flatiron-shaped infill building on an irregular lot beside At the eastern end of the great hall, Keyes Condon Florance’s
the railway within the bounds of the original L’Enfant Plan, just a 1980s addition has been replaced with a circulation core that connects
couple of blocks south of the National Mall’s museum row. the museum’s eight levels in what Greenbaum describes as a vertical
In speaking of the inspiration behind Washington’s latest hub-and-spoke configuration: From the monumental staircase and
cultural attraction, SmithGroupJJR vice president David elevator bays, visitors can radiate westward to the various galleries
Greenbaum, FAIA, LEED BD+C, who served as lead architect on and attractions housed within the museum walls. Greenbaum refers
the project, refers often to the notion of a palimpsest. This metaphor— to the circulation hub as a “sorbet between the intense exhibit
one of a document from which original writings have been erased experiences.” The exhibitions are organized by floor relating to the
and written over, but through which traces of the original still show— themes of “Impact,” “Stories,” and “History,” and within these
snugly fits the building, whose own history has been overwritten categories, there is a broad range of exhibitry from traditional vitrine
several times. object displays and hanging artwork to fully immersive environments,
The Terminal Refrigerating and Warehousing Co. constructed including fully a dozen theaters. In fact, there is so much content in
this brick-and-concrete cold-storage building in 1923, and its structure, the museum’s 430,000 square feet that Greenbaum estimates an average
which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, serves as visitor would take nine eight-hour visits to see it in its entirety.
the architectural skeleton into which the vibrant organs of the Museum Above the monumental stair, which hangs on steel rods from
of the Bible have been inserted. In 1983, the terminal building had the top floor, to vertiginous effect, is a skylight that infuses the
expanded to become the Washington Design Center, with a circulation space with illumination. That’s just a preview of the
160,000-square-foot mid-block addition by Keyes Condon Florance light-soaked environment of the curved glass-and-steel, double-
Architects—a D.C.-based firm that would later merge with Smith, height enclosure atop the original terminal building. Internally
Hinchman & Grylls Associates, which is now SmithGroupJJR. known as the Galley, this addition affords northward panoramic
In its heyday, the terminal building enclosed a spur off the views spanning from Capitol Hill to the Washington Monument
main rail line; the new museum entrance reopens an aperture— from the promenade between the circulation hub and the World
sealed off in the Design Center era—through which train cars would Stage Theater. Along the Galley, reconfigurable banquet halls can
arrive in the warehouse to unload goods. These goods would be host functions of up to 450 people for pre-theater festivities. The
redistributed throughout the city by truck via loading docks that World Stage Theater seats 474 within a concrete performance hall
now receive museum objects and stage sets. The ground floor sheathed in acoustic membranes where, as Greenbaum puts it,
reimagines what would have been the central offloading track as a “We got serious about projection mapping”—17 projectors can
double-height great hall supported by 12 pairs of columns, where program digital work to create a fully immersive experience to
visitors can embark upon their biblical learning beneath a 140-foot complement the action onstage. Re-emerging from that atmosphere
programmable LED ceiling that changes its digital imagery constantly. into the Galley, visitors’ eyes can adjust back to natural light through
A mezzanine level, which preserves the original floor-to-floor glazing with a variable ceramic frit, in 20-, 40- and 60-percent
height of the terminal building, houses a café lined with artwork opacities that helps to reduce solar gain within the space without
that tells the building’s history. The rest of the building tells the interfering with the scenery.
history—or multiple histories—of the Bible. While the city views are expansive, the real spectacles are a few
floors lower, where an enormous budget for exhibit technology—

20 A DC MUSEUM OF BIBLICAL PROPORTIONS