Temple of Invention: History of a National Landmark

By Charles J. Robertson (Smithsonian American Art Museum and Scala Publishers Ltd., 2006, $19.95)

On the evening of March 6, 1856, in Washington, D.C., a ball was held for President Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration in the vast hall of the nearly complete north wing of the U.S. Patent Office Building. The hall was crammed with more than 4,000 guests, yet the 250-foot-long buffet table—adorned with such delicacies as terrapin stew, quail, venison and lobster—could serve only 300 at a time.

“When supper was announced, a mob rushed to the buffet,” writes Charles Robertson in his new book Temple of Invention: History of a National Landmark. “Foraging gentlemen grabbed large platters of food to carry to their guests, spilling much of it on the surging crowd....”

Lincoln’s ball is one of many fascinating episodes in the history of the U.S. Patent Office Building chronicled in Robertson’s richly illustrated, 100-page book.

Located on a two-block site between Seventh and Ninth streets and between F and G streets N.W., the Patent Office Building, home to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, reopened on July 1.

Renovations totaling $166 million have restored the building’s features to their original splendor, including a storied Greek Revival design, a curving double staircase, porticoes with fluted Doric columns modeled after the Parthenon and vaulted galleries illuminated by natural light.

This massive 333,000-square-foot structure was once a hall of fame for the creations of American inventors and housed the Department of the Interior. It was the largest office building in the United States at the time of its completion in 1868. It also has served as a “museum of curiosities,” a Civil War hospital and headquarters of the U.S. Civil Service Commission.

The building’s purpose, when President Andrew Jackson signed legislation for its construction in 1836, was to house models and plans of inventions submitted to the U.S. Patent Office. It was to be a monument to American ingenuity and enterprise.

Construction of the south wing began in 1836 under the supervision of architect Robert Mills, when the nation’s capital was a town of just 20,000 people and hogs ran down its dirt streets.

Poet Walt Whitman, who visited wounded Civil War soldiers in the Patent Office Building during its use, from September 1861 to April 1863, as a military hospital, called it “that noblest of Washington buildings.” He later worked in the building as a clerk for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

American Red Cross founder Clara Barton worked in the building as a Patent Office clerk, earning an annual salary of $1,400. She was the first woman employed in a regular position by the U.S. government at wages equal to those of a man. 

Barton was unfazed by the resentment of male employees “who were habitually rude to her,” Robertson writes in Temple of Invention. “They blew cigar smoke in her face, spat tobacco juice at her and cast aspersions on her morality.”

By 1877, display cases in the Patent Office Building were filled with more than 200,000 patent models. That same year, a fire gutted the north and west wings. The majority of models were salvaged.

After the structure was rebuilt, the Patent Office stayed in the building until 1932, when the Civil Service Commission moved in. “The noble edifice suffered abuses and modernization during these decades,” Robertson writes.

In 1953, legislation was introduced in Congress to demolish the building for a parking garage. Spared in 1955 by President Eisenhower, the building was given to the Smithsonian for use as a permanent home for its National Museum of American Art and National Portrait Gallery. It opened to the public in January 1968.

In July 2006, the newly renovated building opened again as the Smithsonian’s Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture.

An 1836 report authorizing construction of this building “called for ‘a place to celebrate and present the achievement of the American people,’” Robertson writes. “As it begins its third century of useful life, the venerable Patent Office Building perpetuates this transcendent purpose.”