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In 1835, the United States received some startling news. An Englishman named James Smithson, who had never set foot in the United States, had left half a million dollars to the country to establish the Smithsonian Institution.
His desire was “to increase . . . knowledge among men.” Three years later, 105 bags of gold coins arrived. The nation’s leaders were perplexed by the gift. They first debated whether to accept the money and then how to use it. Finally, in 1846 Congress passed an act establishing the Smithsonian Institution to be both a museum and a research organization. The first building was completed in 1852. Today the institution includes 19 museums, 17 of them in D.C. It also includes nine research centers and the National Zoo. A new museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, is scheduled to open soon.
So many of the nation’s treasures are preserved in the Smithsonian museums that the institution has been called the Nation’s Attic.
◀ Ten of the Smithsonian’s museums are located on or near the Mall. That’s an expanse of green lawn that runs from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. Part of Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s original design for the city, the Mall is the site of the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the Blossom Kite Festival, the National Independence Day celebration, and the Million Man March of 1995.▼
The Anacostia Neighborhood Museum is devoted to the history of African Americans. The Griffiths family of Washington, D.C., contributed personal items passed down from generation to generation from the early 1900s through the 1960s. Items such as dolls, old letters, cookbooks, schoolbooks, and old jewelry boxes holding bus tokens and political buttons are a rich reminder of daily life for much of the twentieth century. This mural is from a neighborhood exhibit entitled “Whose Art Is It Anyway?” ▶
◀ Want to see Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone? How about gowns worn to inaugural balls by first ladies? Interested in George Washington’s gold-and-ivory false teeth or Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz? These and thousands of other artifacts of American history and culture are housed in the National Museum of American History.
▲ Exhibits related to the natural world crowd the National Museum of Natural History. At one door, visitors are greeted by a 13-foot-tall African elephant. At another entrance stand two gigantic totem poles carved by Northwest Coast Indians. Inside the museum are dinosaur skeletons, a model of a blue whale, the largest blue diamond in the world, and a live-insect zoo. There you can watch tarantulas being fed, observe a foot-long centipede, and pet a hissing cockroach.
▲ The National Air and Space Museum is the most popular museum in the world. Ten million visitors a year come to look at its historical flying machines. These include the plane Amelia Earhart flew in the first female solo crossing of the Atlantic, in 1932. You’ll also find the Wright Brothers’ first plane. It hangs as high off the ground as it rose on its first flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The Spirit of St. Louis is there, too. Charles Lindbergh flew it on the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic. There’s also the Apollo spacecraft, in which man first landed on the Moon.
◀ Possibly the National Zoo’s most famous residents are Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, two giant pandas on loan to the zoo from China.
