Ante Up! Paying to get in the Smithsonian

Updated on Saturday, November 13, 2010 at 12:01PM by Tim Krepp

It's one of the greatest things about visiting Washington, DC. Visitors from all over are amazed at the cultural wonderland that is the Smithsonian, and even more so that it's free! It says something great about our country that we give as a free gift to our own citizens and visitors this peerless experience.

However, for those of you watching national news, you might have heard that the Federal budget deficit has been getting a little press recently. A bipartisan committee has recently come out with a series of recommendations to close it, a cause I can get behind in theory. However, in the report is a little blurb that's getting a lot of attention in Washington this morning: a proposal to save $225 million a year by charging admission to the Smithsonian.

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National Building Museum - Best DC Kids Museum?

One of Washington, DC's conspicuous gaps, culturally speaking, is the lack of a museum dedicated to kids.

It wasn't always the case; we once had a perfectly serviceable National Children's Museum located on H St Northeast. Unfortunately, the Museum closed; ironically, just as H St started becoming a destination in it's own right, albeit more for its excellent collection of bars and less for visiting families. And please, don't anyone bother to tell me it's reopening in 2013. Not here, it ain't. It'll be in some ridiculous place called "National Harbor", a development that is to urban design what McMansions are to home building and virtually inaccessible without a car.

But I digress. With the abandonment of Washington by the Children's Museum, those of us looking to entertain our kids need a little guidance. As one of our readers, Stacie, asks:

We are visiting DC for 3 days with our children. Wondering about the appropriateness of the museums for that age group (5-10 yrs old). Obviously the Natural History and Air and Space will be great for them...but the others?

Stacie has mentioned two of the kid-friendly museums out there. I'd throw American History, Postal Museum, Portrait Gallery, and the Archives (if the line isn't too long) in to the mix, as well. But my hands down favorite for kids has got to be the National Building Museum. Frankly, National Harbor can keep the Children's Museum; I'll take the Building Museum any day of the week.

The building itself, as befits a museum about buildings, is spectacular. Savvy visitors to my blog will recognize the frieze as you enter. Built as the Pension Bureau following the civil war, its wide open Great Hall is a favorite place for local families to escape the heat (or the cold). Even if you don't look at a single exhibit, the Great Hall is worth stopping in for a comfortable place to relax in a city all too often concerned with propriety and grandeur.

Young kids will enjoy the Building Zone area, with it's ample building toys and play area. Giant legos! But pay close attention to their work. Sometimes my daughter doesn't do it right and I have to "help" her here. How else is the tower going to be six feet tall if I don't assist her! She's generally pretty understanding with me. On weekends, it can get a little crowded and there might be a short wait to enter Building Zone, but the staff normally brings blocks out into the Great Hall. We often have so much fun with that, we never make it into the play room proper. And for us older kids, the giant arch in the Great Hall is my personal white whale. If anyone manages to complete it, please send me a picture with them standing under it to post here. I've come close, but small children are less help than you might think in engineering projects.

If you know when you're going to be in town, a little planning can add quite a bit more to your experience. The Museum rents out "tool kits" to families for five bucks that help explore kids up to 11 explore the building. And besides putting on it's own excellent events, the Museum plays host to a great deal of fascinating outside programs. Later this month the 28th to be precise, Target will be sponsoring the National Cherry Blossom Festival's Family Day and Opening Ceremony here. Lot's of kid friendly activities and Target puts on a good party. I went to their sponsored opening of the Portrait Gallery's courtyard a few years ago and it was a blast.

The exhibits are quite well-done as well. The Museum's permanent exhibit, Washington, Symbol and City, is possibly the best comprehensive discussion of the growth of Washington, DC as a City I've seen. Visitors looking to engage the city beyond the National Mall should come here to start. And I try to make a point to stop in to their rotating exhibits. They can be quite clever, even those I would normally dismiss. Case in point, the current one, Detour, discusses tourist routes in Norway. And it's not at all the snooze-fest I anticipated.

As far as amenities go, there is a small cafe inside but we usually just bring a picnic lunch. The Museum is conveniently located on the Red Line at Judiciary Square and the exit is directly across the street. Be sure to spend a minute at the National Law Enforcement Memorial. It doesn't get much attention, but it is one of the worthier memorials in town. But that'll be the subject of another post...

National Postal Museum - Not Just for Dorks!

One thing I always enjoy when giving a tour of DC is pointing out the number of "Old Post Offices" we have here. Thanks to grandiose design plans coupled with shifts in postal distribution systems, we are awash in grand old buildings that have been creatively adapted to modern usages. In downtown DC, we have the General Post Office building, built in 1839 by the same architect that designed the Washington Monument, now the excellently redone Hotel Monaco. A few blocks south, we have the iconic Old Post Office, built in 1899 and worthy of a post of it's own in due time. For now, let me say that it's tower is one of the best views in Washington and yes, the food court is in walking distance from the Mall.

Unfortunately for the Old Post Office, shortly after it's completion, the Postal Department took a look at how they distributed mail nationwide and discovered a glaring efficiency gap. Mail was increasingly arriving via train and then being hauled across the city to the main Post Office to be delivered locally. So, as newer, larger train stations were built, the Postal Department (then a Cabinet Department) located the respective city's main post office adjacent to it, removing the need for one more trip with the mail. Take a look at this when you visit a large city; generally there's a fancy post office next to the downtown train station.

So a scant decade after the Old Post Office opened for business, construction began on yet another Post Office, this one creatively named the City Post Office or the Postal Square Building, adjacent to Union Station. Completed in 1914, the building does continue with some postal functions to this day. Notably, come the Christmas shipping rush, those of us that live on Capitol Hill know it as an attractive alternative to the Worst Post Office of All Time. However, with the shift from rail to road, most postal distribution functions have moved to the Brentwood facility in NE DC. In the early '90s, the excess space was converted to two outstanding additions to the local scene: Capitol City Brewing Company and the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but they look boring so I won't talk about them.

As Cap City can do it's own marketing, let me chat a bit about the Postal Museum. Unless you are a die hard stamp collector, this museum probably doesn't catch your eye. Don't fall for that though. I made the acquaintance of the Postal Museum as a stay a home dad one winter when it was too cold to go to the park. As suicide seemed like a cop-out and sliding into insanity like too much work, I found kid-friendly and indoor spaces in DC to be at a premium. The Postal Museum became a regular in the rotation, although to be fair, it's close proximity to Cap City may have helped tilt the scale. It's combination of relative lack of crowds and kid-friendly big trucks and trains make it a great place for little kids to explore. It's Moving the Mail exhibit has a big rig truck kids can climb on and a rail car to explore, as well as some excellent mail planes hanging overhead. And as they get a bit older, Binding the Nation is very much a history of America connecting itself and growing as a nation; a far more interesting way to introduce American history to that bored teenager than another essay in second period. Don't worry, the exhibits go way beyond just stamps to include, I kid you not, a stuffed dog.

Among their permanent exhibits, and as you might expect, they have a first rate stamp collection (ok, ok, I'll call it by it's proper name: Philatelic Galleries) if that's your thing. Including the always amusing "Inverts", which even a stamp philistine like myself recognize. And, if you've already been once, be sure to check on-line before you go to see what the temporary exhibit is. Sometimes they're worth a special trip back if you're in town. While right now, the Museum is jumping on the Lincoln bandwagon, I fondly remember a first rate Titanic exhibition from a few years ago. You know, back when that was the big thing.

So, while I might not make a trip to DC just to see the Postal Museum, if you've got an extra hour and you're near Union Station, I'd recommend a drop in. As of today, it's hours are 10:00 am to 5:30 pm, seven days a week, closed Christmas. And, like just about the rest of the Smithsonian, admission is free.

All Lincoln, All The Time

Ok, I admire President Lincoln as much as the next guy, and even more so if the next guy hails from south of the Rapahonnock. He's one of those rare historical figures where the mythology undersells what he accomplished. His Memorial is a fitting counterweight to the Capitol on our National Mall. And certainly, no President better supports the Great Man theory of history.

But isn't it all getting to be a little much? Yeah, yeah, I know it's the bicentennial of his birth. I know there is more than a casual overlap between Lincoln's life story and our new President's. I'm sure those of us in the DC area have noticed the phenomenon; maybe our friends from Illinois can back us up here. Is it possible that we give the man who was arguably our greatest President too much attention?

It all started innocuously enough. Ford's Theater closed down a few years ago for a long awaited restoration, to reopen on the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth. Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin's fascinating look at Lincoln's political machinations during his Presidency, came out around that time. Then, the National Trust for Historic Preservation restored the Lincoln Cottage at the Soldier's Home in NE DC. Ok, these seemed to be, and were, positive developments. The Cottage, in particular, is a welcome addition, very well done, and truly adds something to our awareness of President Lincoln.

But it all went off the rails at some point. For me, it was when I attended a meeting about the re-opening of Ford's Theater and saw that DC's greatest little museum was becoming our latest infotainment center; a 1865 version of the Spy Museum. I'll have more on that later, but for know it just kind of got me noticing what was going on around here. Every new museum exhibit, every new symposium, every new lecture was about Lincoln.

Some of these look cool. Certainly, the National Museum of American History is a natural venue for a retrospective of Lincoln's life. And the Library of Congress, continues it's track record of being, in my opinion, the best American History Museum in Washington with it's exhibit that includes the contents of Lincoln's pockets the night he was assassinated. And I was terribly moved to see the Gettysburg Address on display when the American History Museum re-opened. But Lincoln Stamp Collecting? Random Lincoln Art? And this one really takes the cake (for a look at some craziness near you check it out here). Nothing wrong with any of this individually, but in total it's a bit overwhelming. Even the Economist is noting the trend.

So, all in all, President Lincoln, I ask you not to leave us in peace, but in moderation. It's all just too much. Maybe you could nudge your wife to visit some curators, writers, and lecturers from beyond the grave and let them know that Lincoln has been done. On the off chance they find a new angle, it's going to be lost in the shuffle. And hey, we got some other history to look at here as well.