I’ve lived for 40 years in breathtaking landscapes. Where, from our deck at the Land, the Backbone of the World—40 miles of the Rocky Mountains—stretches into infinity. Where night after night, my home range—the Big Belts—turns gold and pink and purple in reflected sunsets. Where the earth’s curves unravel along quiet highways. Where—baring fires—the clear air and clouds magnify our limitless sky. I live in a land of hyperbole.
But last night, heading into sleep, I traveled back to Washington D.C. and walked in memory into the offices I occupied there. The massive, 1930s Interior Building. A flimsy, nondescript multi-story 60s building on L Street— on the edge of changing neighborhoods way past all the fancy lobbyists’ digs. And then, and then, into the Pension Building. And I couldn’t breathe or sleep or stop the longing to be there. I knew what my fingers would be trying to describe today.
Designed by General Montgomery C. Meigs, Quartermaster of the U.S. Army, the entire block-encompassing, fireproof building took shape between 1881and 1887. A home for the Pension Bureau and a monument to those who fought and died and won the Civil War. Bohemian-born sculptor Caspar Buberl created a terra cotta frieze depicting Union military units and action. It banded the entire enormous red brick Italianate Renaissance Revival building. Even with the spectacular frieze, the Pension Building’s detractors applied the sobriquet: the old red barn.
Those folks must not have stepped inside. Where they would have been greeted by an atrium—the Great Hall—rising 75 feet before being topped by a tall clerestory structure. Huge Corinthian columns defined the space. Three floors of interconnecting offices lined the atrium’s perimeter reached by arcaded galleries. Creating light-filled working spaces. And healthy ones—courtesy of Meigs’ ingenious circulation system.
By 1978, when I moved in along with other historic preservation folks, the building had been lightly occupied by an assortment of federal agencies for almost 50 years. Sometimes empty; sometimes a whisker away from demolition. The office spaces were shabby. The fountain that should have played under the soaring central clerestory windows was quiet.
Long before the cut-and- paste architecture of the middle and late twentieth century, ancients understood that settings influence our behavior. Deliberative bodies tackle their work with greater care and wisdom when situated in elegant, beautiful spaces. We view the Oval Office as demanding serious state craft. (We’ve been fiercely disappointed in both examples recently.) Every religion in the world counts on lavish architecture and ornament to attract and impress followers. To suggest that deities are best summoned and honored in glorious places.
General Meigs didn’t quite aspire to a temple of worship. But he designed his big red barn with reverential intent. First, to honor the two million men who kept the Union whole. And to allow the personnel responsible for paying veterans their pensions to work in a bright, airy functional space. No more Bob Cratchits in dim smoky offices, but respected civil servants doing the Nation’s important work.
For two years, I got to walk into that echoing space every morning. From my World War II garden apartment on the edge of Alexandria, I took a bus to the Pentagon. And transferred there to the Metro that delivered me to the Judiciary Square stop. I read the Washington Post along the way. At the top of the Metro escalator, I had only to turn around and walk across the street into the unassuming front door. Then past the empty fountain and angle northwest across the yawning courtyard to the office I shared with Bill Lebovich. To a desk and lamp that turned my tiny place in the building’s history into a pool of light.
Walking that courtyard or running errands along the balcony. Or heading to the restroom, I felt as if I passed through a portal in time. Surrounded by the spirits of the men and women the building honored. Held in a column of light and a host of lives past. Akin to being under a night sky defined only by stars and their time-traveling brilliance. Only and oddly more ethereal, more personal. Literally and figuratively, I stood straighter; thought more creatively; felt more alive. Hyperbole made manifest. Familiarity blunted that mystical sensation a bit, but never altogether. And now two thousand miles away, remembering, I catch my breath all over again.
By the late 70s, during President Carter’s redrawing of the Interior Department, things began to change. In 1980, Congress authorized a new museum to celebrate the Nation’s architectural and engineering skills and history. The Pension Building was to be its home. The perfect marriage of space and purpose. I visited the old red barn, the National Building Museum, just once in its new role. The fountain burbled. The atrium buzzed with families, lost tourists, children’s games. As it should have. I was glad to have visited and I understood the gift I’d been given to be in that dome of light and history alone—in quiet.
So here’s my question tonight: do I want to revisit D.C., take the Metro to Judiciary Square, and walk into the Pension Building. Or, now, in this time in my life, am I better served by the transcendent memory of being THERE, at work, when it was mine. ©
