The National Mall Building
Gyo Obata of Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum (original building); Quinn Evans (renovation) (Gyo Obata 1923 to 2022) · 1972 to 1976; renovated 2018 to 2026
From the Mall the museum reads as four great stone blocks joined by walls of glass, a rhythm of solid and transparent that runs the whole length of the block. The blocks hold the galleries and the glass bays hold the largest aircraft and rockets, so that from outside you can see wings and fins hanging in the light. The new Jefferson Drive entrance on the far side, added in the renovation, is a curving canopy of steel and glass that shelters visitors before they pass into the Milestones hall. On the plaza outside stands Ad Astra, a tall stainless steel spire by Richard Lippold, pointing at the sky.
The original building was designed by Gyo Obata, a Japanese American architect who had spent part of the war years excluded from the west coast. He chose pink Tennessee marble to match the National Gallery of Art across the Mall, and made the glass bays deliberately huge so that a Skylab or a Saturn V engine could be seen from the street. The museum opened on the first of July 1976, three days before the bicentennial of the United States, and drew ten million visitors in its first year. Look at the way the hall ceilings rise more than twenty metres, high enough for aircraft to hang at the angles they fly.
By 2018 the marble was falling off and the mechanical systems had failed, so the museum began a renovation of the whole building while staying partly open, replacing every stone panel, every window and every gallery inside. The west half reopened in 2022, the central halls in 2025 and the east half on the fiftieth anniversary in July 2026, with the final two galleries due in the autumn. The result is the same silhouette on the Mall but a new museum within, and the bays of glass are once again full of flying machines.
Did You Know? The building opened on the first of July 1976 with President Ford watching a signal from the Viking spacecraft, then on its way to Mars, cut the ribbon.
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