How the Smithsonian founder’s bones made their way across the Atlantic
Crypt containing the body of founder James Smithson in the North Tower entrance of the Smithsonian Institution Building or “Castle,” 1905. Smithsonian Institution Archives, image no. MAH-17041
What could be spookier than our founding donor’s bones in the Castle lobby? The Smithsonian Crypt is the final resting place for James Smithson, a British scientist who never visited this country...while he was alive.
Smithson left his fortune to the U.S. to start an educational institution (but only if his nephew died without heirs, which happened). He died in Genoa, Italy, on June 27, 1829.
More than 50 years after the Smithsonian Institution was officially established, Smithson's original burial site in Italy was to be relocated. Alexander Graham Bell (yes, THAT Alexander Graham Bell), who was on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, went to exhume the body and send it back to Washington. Smithson’s coffin sat in the Castle Regents' Room for a year before entombment in the crypt in 1905.
The crypt includes Smithson’s Italian grave marker and a heavy iron gate made from pieces of the fence that surrounded the gravesite. You can see the crypt as you enter the building—if you dare.
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