National Portrait Gallery (United States)

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National Portrait Gallery
(U.S. National Historic Landmark)
The National Portrait Gallery shares the Reynolds Center with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. A construction crane used to build the new Kogod Courtyard is visible.
Location:	F and G Sts. between 7th and 9th Sts., NW Washington, D.C.
Designated as NHL:	January 12, 1965
Added to NRHP:	October 15, 1966
NRHP Reference#:	66000902

The National Portrait Gallery is an art gallery in Washington, D.C., administered by the Smithsonian Institution. Its collections focus on images of famous individual Americans.

It resides in the Old Patent Office Building (now renamed the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture), located just south of Chinatown in the Penn Quarter district of downtown Washington. The third oldest federal building in the city, constructed between 1836 and 1867, the marble and granite museum has porticoes modeled after the Parthenon in Athens, Greece.

The building was used as a hospital during the Civil War. Walt Whitman worked there and used his experiences as a basis for The Wound Dresser. The Bureau of Indian Affairs moved into the building after the war ended. Whitman worked as a clerk for the bureau until 1867, when he was fired after a manuscript of Leaves of Grass was found in his desk.^[1]

It was spared from demolition by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1958 and given to the Smithsonian, which renovated the structure and opened the National Museum of American Art (later renamed the Smithsonian American Art Museum) and National Portrait Gallery there in 1968.

It is the namesake for the Gallery Place Washington Metro station, located across the intersection of F and 8th Streets, Northwest.

The National Portrait Gallery was closed for extensive renovations and expansion in January 2000; it reopened on July 1, 2006. Its director is Marc Pachter.

[edit] References

^ Weeks, Christopher (1994). AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C. (3d ed.), pp. 76-78. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-4712-5.