National Building Museum (Pension Building)

The National Building Museum occupies the historic Pension Building, completed in 1887 to house the U.S. Pension Bureau, and is noted for its monumental interior Great Hall with monumental Corinthian columns. The building was adaptively reused to create the museum, which interprets architecture, design, engineering, and construction through rotating exhibitions and public programs. The structure is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and remains a landmark example of late 19th-century federal architecture.