Collections

By Laura Hicken, Assistant Registrar The Collections Department getting in the spirit of springtime with this playful illustration in our Washington National Cathedral Collection. Noted illustrator Grace Norcross Fisher designed this whimsical guide for the Bishop’s Garden, which includes a list of “Interesting Plantings” which...

By Laura Hicken, assistant registrar When visitors to the National Building Museum learn of the more than 130,000 architectural drawings in our permanent collection, they frequently think of blueprints and other technical drawings. They’re not wrong: we definitely have a soft spot for our thousands...

BY LAURA HICKEN, ASSISTANT REGISTRAR The Museum collects artifacts related to the history of our building and its various uses since it was first built in the 1880s. Sometimes these artifacts come from former tenants and other D.C. historians, but more often than not they come...

By Laura Hicken, Assistant Registrar Tis’ the season to highlight a couple of festive and unexpected artifacts in the National Building Museum’s permanent collection- wrapping paper! While both of our wrapping paper artifacts are in the Washington National Cathedral Construction Archives Collection, they could not be...

By Laura Hicken, Assistant Registrar The historic home of the Museum was built between 1882 and 1887 in part to house the headquarters of the United States Pension Bureau in the years after the Civil War. The passage of time and onset of World War...