National Building Museum

The Great Hall.

This well known landmark was completed in 1887 as the home of the Pension Bureau, where a disabled civil war vet or a widow could wander in and pick up a wad of cash on occasion, as long as you were on the Union side.   No such luck for the Confederates.  The stunning building with giant internal Corinthian columns was designed, in part, after two buildings in Rome, a palace and a church, designed by Michelangelo in the 1500s.  The Great Hall, 316 feet long with a ceiling 159 feet high, hosted social and political gatherings for decades, including many inaugural balls, before the building fell into disrepair by the 1960s.  Amazingly, Congress came to the rescue in 1980 by passing a bill to restore the building and establish the museum.  We joined a small group for a free tour, then browsed the many exhibits on our own.