February 2012
Q: Who, in 1895, became the first architect to receive the Rome Prize for study at the American School of Architecture in Rome, which was later reorganized as the American Academy in Rome?
A: John Russell Pope, who produced prominent neoclassical buildings in Washington, DC, and elsewhere throughout the early 20th century, running counter to the rise of International Style modernism.
January 2012
Q: What famous American author wrote an 1840 essay titled, "The Philosophy of Furniture," outlining sound principles of interior decorating?
A: Edgar Allan Poe. Yes, the master of the macabre took a break from poems and horror stories to describe the characteristics of the ideal room, proper draperies, and tasteful carpets. He began by stating, "In the internal decoration, if not in the external architecture of their residences, the English are supreme." He went on to criticize various cultures' approaches to domestic interior design, but saved his greatest scorn for his own country, declaring that "[t]he Yankees alone are preposterous," a situation he blamed on our "aristocracy of dollars." The essay first appeared in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine.
December 2011
Q: What was unusual about the unexecuted development between Washington and Baltimore proposed by Edgar Chambless in 1931?
A: It was to be a single, continuous building linking the two cities. The project was one of various “Roadtown” proposals by Chambless. After it became clear that his plan for the Washington-Baltimore corridor was unlikely to be realized, Chambless committed suicide by jumping out of the window of a New York hotel.
November 2011
Q: Where was the first university-based school of architecture in the world?
A: At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The architecture program at MIT was established in 1865.
October 2011
Q: In 1807, the New York City Council appointed a commission led by Gouverneur Morris, one of the principal authors of the U.S. Constitution, to address an important civic issue. What was the result of the commission’s recommendations, which were published 200 years ago, in 1811?
A: “The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811” established the Manhattan street grid, stretching from Houston Street to the northern part of the island.
September 2011
Q: What is the largest building in the world deliberately designed to be earthquake-resilient?
A: The new terminal at Istanbul's Sabiha Gökçen International Airport, completed in 2009. The global engineering firm Arup designed the 2 million-square-foot building to withstand an earthquake measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale. The building rests on some 300 rubber-and-steel springs that isolate the structure from any movement in the ground below.
July-August 2011
Q: Windows are typically made from a form of “float glass.” During the manufacturing process, on what does float glass float?
A: Float glass is made by feeding a sheet of molten glass onto another molten substance of higher density, typically a metal such as tin. The denser liquid provides a perfectly flat surface on which the glass can harden, so that it, too, will be flat. Under carefully controlled conditions, the two molten substances will not mix.
June 2011
Q: In the dining room at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s house near Charlottesville, Virginia, there is a narrow dumbwaiter just a few inches deep, hidden in the mantelpiece surrounding the fireplace. What was its purpose?
A: The dumbwaiter was used to deliver bottles of wine from the cellar below.
May 2011
Q: What is the largest irrigated crop (in terms of total acres of land covered) in the United States?
A: Lawn. Americans irrigate some 32 million acres of grass for primarily ornamental purposes. Corn, covering 12 million acres, is a distant second. These statistics and others related to how we use our land, construct our buildings, and plan our communities are among those that have emerged from the Museum’s Intelligent Cities initiative, exploring the intersections of information technology and urban design. For more information, visit www.nbm.org/intelligentcities.
April 2011
Q: What do the architects of the following buildings in Washington, DC have in common? The buildings are the Corcoran Gallery of Art; the US Supreme Court Building; the SunTrust Bank Building at 2 Massachusetts Avenue, NW (formerly Childs’ Restaurant); the Acacia Building at 51 Louisiana Avenue; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; and the main terminal at Washington National Airport.
Photograph: Corcoran Gallery of Art by architect Ernest Flagg
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