This DCist thinks the National Building Museum is unsung. It is the most amazing space in this fair city (in the gigantic red-brick Montgomery Meigs-built old Pensions Building) and the exhibits are not run of the mill. Who knew concrete could be interesting?
The museum’s latest show, “Jewish Washington: Scrapbook of an American Community,” is really a classic immigrant story: Jews get persecuted in other countries, come to the U.S. and D.C. for a better life, and end up getting nominated to the Supreme Court. It also is the story of D.C. — the growth of the city, the flight to the suburbs, the triumphant return to the city and the origin of such businesses as the now-defunct Hechinger’s and Hot Shoppes and still-extant Giant Food.
To add to museum’s case, this summer’s Reel Architecture Film Series looks promising, despite the name (DCist has had it with the puns on “real”). Movies will include “The Long Goodbye,” “Soylent Green,” and “Do the Right Thing.” You can bring picnic fixings, blankets and pillows and camp out on the massive floor of the Building Museum’s Great Hall. And the nature-averse won’t have to worry about mud and bug in their hair — unlike Screen on the Green.
Image of the old Pensions Building from the Social Security Administration archives.
