Planet Word, a museum dedicated to language, will open on Franklin Square in downtown D.C. on May 31.

The museum will be housed in the historic Franklin School Building, built by architect Adolf Cluss in 1869. History nerds know it as the place where Alexander Graham Bell made the first-ever wireless voice transmission in 1880.

Visitors to the free museum will encounter interactive galleries and exhibits themed around words, language, reading, and oratory. There will be places to solve puzzles, deliver famous speeches, and sit quietly and listen to poetry.

The courtyard will feature a 20-foot-tall tree sculpture by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, whose sound installation “Pulse” made a splash at the Hirshhorn last year. When people walk under its branches of the “Speaking Willow,” 500 motion-activated speakers will project poems, speeches and sayings in dozens of different languages.

“We’ve been busy at Planet Word, designing immersive and interactive galleries, curating content to feature in our exhibits, assembling a talented team of professionals and revitalizing the historic Franklin School Building with care,” said Planet Word Founder, CEO and primary funder Ann Friedman in a release on Thursday.

The project hit a roadblock last fall when city officials discovered that parts of the building’s interior spaces had been removed or altered during construction, violating the city’s strict historic preservation rules. The District issued a stop-work order on the project and the opening date was pushed back by about six months.

Friedman told the Washington Post that the mistake stemmed from her lack of experience in real estate development. She instituted regular meetings and walk-throughs of the space with city officials to avoid further issues and delays.

The Franklin School is an official National Historic Landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places. It has served as a public school, homeless shelter, teacher’s college and Occupy protest site over the course of its 150-year history.

The privately funded museum has raised $16 million of the $20 million it needs to cover “the creation of the museum’s exhibits and experiences and start-up operating costs.” It has received major donations from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Poetry Foundation, the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation, AT&T, board member Ann Doerr, and Friedman herself.

This story originally appeared at WAMU.

Previously: 

D.C. Council Gets (Some) Answers About Why City Didn’t Intervene Sooner In Damage Of Franklin School
A Developer Badly Damaged This Historic Site. It’s Still Unclear Why The City Didn’t Step In Sooner
Downtown’s Franklin School To Become A Linguistics Museum Called ‘Planet Word’