Collections

The Collections Department has been busy preparing for the Museum’s newest exhibition, Flickering Treasures: Rediscovering Baltimore’s Forgotten Movie Theaters. The exhibition features a survey of Baltimore’s movie theaters from 1896 to the present. The Museum has roughly 250,000 artifacts in its permanent collection. Still, with...

By Laura Hicken, assistant registrar As November is Historic Bridge Awareness Month, we were reminded of one of our favorite artifacts in  the Alan Rose Collection. In 2014, paper model creator Alan Rose donated his personal archives of paper models, art boards, and assembled model...

Since Washington, D.C. is feeling the dog days of summer, we decided to showcase some of the good boys found in the National Building Museum’s permanent collection. Architectural Toy Collection Dogs make many appearances in our Architectural Toy Collection, on blocks or as playing pieces...

By Laura Hicken, Assistant Registrar In the 1960s and ’70s, Jay Swayze’s Underground Home Company set out to convince Americans to invest in luxury fallout shelter, arguing that the Cold War and other security threats warranted the move. Why settle for a bare and sterile...

By Nancy Bateman, Registrar The Quartermaster General The National Building Museum’s historic home, the Pension Building, was the last and most important architectural work of U.S. Army Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs. A graduate of West Point Military Academy, Meigs began his ascent through the U.S....