Tvs american artifacts visits Historic Places and museums. The National Building museum in washington dc was known as the pensions building in 1885, when Grover Clevelands inaugural ball was held in the building. Composed of over 15 million red bricks, it contains a red hall that is 316 feet long, and 160 feet tall. American history tv visited the building to learn about the inaugural balls of several president s, including jimmy carter, william mckinley, Ronald Reagan and barack obama. , thank you for joining us today and welcome to the National Building museum. My name is jean, gene and i am a volunteer tour guide for the museum. We are here to go through what we call the president ial inaugural tours. We do this every four years at inauguration time. Because this building, which was built as a Federal Office Building over 120 years ago turned out to be a wonderful place to have in inaugural inaugural balls. What we want to do is explain to you how this building got dealt, that built builds, its history, and how it ended up being so representative of the inaugural notion, and how it is being used. We will go through in a little bit and show you pictures of inaugural balls and the history of them. We will put the two together and show the pictures of how this space looks when in an when an inauguration on inaugural ball is occurring in it. We will show you where most of the president s have had a all in this space. We are here in a space that is unusual in terms of washington dc. It has monuments of marble and white. You will see a very unusual building the way it was built. We will get to that in a moment. The Building Museum was designed a number of years ago to try to celebrate what we call the built world. It is the world we all live in, because every structure that we live in, that we work in, that we play in worship in, study in, had to be imagined by somebody, designed by somebody, built by somebody and eventually maintained by somebody. The museum was designed to celebrate the accomplishments of the people who do all of that work. And to sort of show all of the things they do will me have they do. We have exhibits all of the time, to explain the built world. This particular built world was dependent on a particular individual. An army general by the name of montgomery mays. Gham a wonderful name. I the picture of him in his civil war uniform. He was a remarkably adept engineer and architect who built both civilian and military facilities in and around the United States for the 1800s. He was a graduate of west point in 1836, with a background in engineering and architecture. When he first started working and was commissioned as a military officer, he worked on building for to read United Building of forts around the United States. By the late 1840s, he came to the washington dc area and help build and design the aqueduct which takes water from the potomac into the city of washington. It was built 150 years ago and is still viable and useful today. He then worked on the extensions of the Capitol Building, and figured out a way to help build a capital dome that we know today. He was involved in that. His biggest contribution was, during the civil war he became the quartermaster general for the union forces, and was responsible for all the acquisition and material moved around by the northern forces during the civil war. One of the features of the civil annd on unintended unintended consequence, disabled veterans. Veterans who were due pension. Todays terminologies the word tension is used as a retirement think for civilians and military. Those days it was only focused on disabled veterans. That is a tradition that pays the disabled veterans some kind of remuneration after they able to serve. It is a function that was served in the United States right after the revolutionary war. States picked up the funding for paying pensioners. They were very good at doing that, and one of the reasons thats one of the reasons when they built the constitution, they wanted to pick up the federal government to pay the pensions for the civil war for the revolutionary war for disabled veterans. The huge influx of disabled veterans overpowered what had become the Pension Bureau it during the civil war. In 1881, after complaints for the disabled veterans, congress decided to build a single building to consolidate all the support to these disabled veterans. And so they appropriated an amazing number in these days. To build a single building. 400,000they named general mays, who was still the quartermaster general, to be the architect and engineer for this building. They had two requirements. One requirement was that it would be inexpensive, and secondly it had to be fireproof. Because of the generals background as an engineer, but he had come from a background in which his father had been a physician. He was interested in a third requirement, which was to make the building healthy for the workers who would be here. He was not idle during the times of the civil war and when he got commissioned to build this building. He went to italy and studied architecture over there. When he came back and had this idea, he went back to his experience in italy, and his admiration for italian renaissance architecture. He decided to use italian architecture as the model for building this building. One of the facilities he looked azzo, which wasl built in rome in the early parts of the 1500s. The 16th century roman architecture, three stories. It has a very distinct pattern of these windows with these pediments over the windows. Straight here alternating curves , and rectangular shapes all over the top. He decided to use that as the model for the outside. He realized he would have to put a roof on it up here, because this was to be a covered building. But this is a foursided building with an open courtyard in the center. That is what he started from. He took exactly the same pattern of windows and window pediments, extended them out here and put this enormous building, which consumes almost a city block. It is 400 feet long, 200 feet wide, and raises to the top 160 feet from the base. Big building. By the time they were done, it was advertised as the biggest brick building in the world. The used over 15 and a half million bricks to build the outside of the building. It shows, if you go outside, you will see it is very different. It is quite striking in the city of marble and white to see this particular kind of welding. The second part of the problem building. The second part of his problem was to build the interior of it. For that he did a different kind, but still italian renaissance. That is what we are looking at today. The building he built inside, which was patterned after a different palazzo in rome, which we have a photograph of here. If we get the right angle of a its here, and you can see how it looks like and how and very similar the arches, pediments, windows are all looking back in here. He enlarged it. This, again was an open , courtyard. He was faced with the problem of how to cover a large expanse of this space. This space inside here is almost as big as a football field. Some 316 feet long, 116 feet wide and completely covered, but completely open. And so as a result of that, coincidentally, not design for designed for that, but once italy coincidentally ended up with the largest covered space in this part of town. As it was built in the 1880s, 1885, 1887. But his design again though, had some problems. Trying to put a roof on it became an issue because of the large space. Dn those days, masonry and woo would not cover those expansions. He was able to devise a fairly new cast iron, and some steel to build a roof over this thing. What we are seeing is under construction, and these people pieces here are the structure that will hold the roof itself. They were put in place in about 1885. They are the same structures we see today. That is the original material still in place. Still use from the original construction. In addition to the roofing problem, he had to support the roof in the middle. He decided to put in columns in the middle to be able to support the roofing. There he decided to go to another facility in rome, which was a church, and build enormous corinthian columns. Eight of them, individually to , support the center part of the ceiling. Now those look to be marble, they are not. They are, in fact, part of the break brickwork. Each has 70,000 bricks in them. They have been plastered over and painted to look like marble. We call them marblizing. As a result, this building became sort of usable by the mid1880s, 1985, and actually people from the Pension Bureau started to move and while it was while kit while construction was continuing. President Grover Cleveland was about to be inaugurated. Somebody decided this would be a great space to have an inaugural ball for Grover Cleveland. And so we have a picture of the building still under construction in 1885. With these enormous columns, you could see the bricks. Through the beginning to be put in. And here, these are garlands left over from the inaugural ball itself create because there was no roof, they had to pay to put a temporary roof. They had to put a wood floor down temporarily to be able to use it. When it was done, it went back and they begin to use it as part of the Pension Bureau and finishing up the construction. When the construction was underway, one of the things he tried to do was to make it healthy. He was not making open space for inaugural balls, he was doing it to be healthy. He did it in several ways. The windows that we see at the ball, he brought windows to bring light inside office spaces. They had windows to the outside and with all of the window light coming in from the inside, the had lightthey they oath ways. They had to make all those window so they could open and so there could throw here and outside of the room. If you go outside of the building, there are three missing bricks. He intentionally did that to allow airflow through the spaces , then out and up there. So this is sort of a diagram of the notion of how this was going to have natural ventilation. From outside the walls here into the space, and out the upper story windows. He came in claimed he made e test is on it cap tests after the building was completed. The air circulation was replaced in about two minutes without any kind of artificial enterprise. , there was far fewer days that they lost. That is the structure of the history of the building itself. I will like to go towards talking about how it came, and how it looked at the inaugural ball. Inaugural balls go back to george washington. The first president in 1789 had a party after his inauguration. At that time the capital of the , United States was not in washington, it was in new york city. So the party was there. By 1793, when he was reelected the party moved to philadelphia, which had become the capital at that moment in time until the structures were built here in washington dc. By that time, washington was identified as the capital city, but was under construction. This is not a place you could do the capital and president s house were under work, this is not a place you could do that. He liked parties, although martha was not there because she was in non mount vernon. When john adams became president he decided he would have no parties. He into his boarding house and had dinner. The first ball that we know of that was in this town was president madison in 1809. Dolly madison was a great loved to have parties, and the first part they had was in a hotel. Over succeeding years years they , had parties and sometimes called a ball and sometimes called a party. It was not until the late 1840s that he really begin to get into the theme of having an event of special nature. And they started to build temporary buildings for a part of that. One of the things about the inauguration, the constitution is very clear about how the president will assume power. It says explicitly in the 20th amendment that he will do it on january 20, and there is the appointed oath of office that he has. The wonderful 37 word thing that requires that he thing that he requires to preserve and protect the constitution. I Ronald Reagan do solemnly swear. That i will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States. And will to the best of my ability. Preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States. So help me god. Congratulations sir. [applause] gene the rest of the events are up to the president and his staff. They could do it anyway they want. Lately, it has been a pattern in which the president , after being sworn in, gives the inaugural speech. He has lunch with the congress people. Which the comes with a parade down pennsylvania avenue to the white house. Then comes the evening events. During the evening events we see the inaugural ball. There could be 1, 5, as many as 14 balls. President clinton in 1993 had 14, which is a record at the present time. Frequently there are six or seven. It depends on the president , resources available, and predilections, sometimes on the weather. It is up to them, the nature and timing and expense of these. They can have them very elaborate or very simple. Well go to some of these as we go on. Let me show you a picture of one of the early ones. Before the building. A ball, by definition is nothing more than a formal gathering for social dancing. That is the webster dictionary definition of what a ball is. It was started, as far as we know, probably in the 16th, 17th century in france. King louis the 14th started to dance to the minuets. We have images of those in that period of time. It was something that was in western european culture and was carried into the United States at the very beginning. It became more attractive as we got more economically involved, and we had more facilities that can handle this kind of a party. This is a party that we mentioned. You will see people formally dressed and things will be sort of ornate. There will be things like chandeliers. There will be flower arrangements, and then theres banners and bunting. They were natural in europe, but not natural here in the United States. This was actually a sketch of party. s 1861 inaugural heres a similar one. President grant in his first 69 1869. Hing you can see there was a balcony and a chandelier. The men are formally dressed in edos and the tux women have downs. That is a typical pattern. In grants second inauguration, four years later, again within a temporary building within the area. In the temporary building it got very cold. The use canaries as part of the decorations. It got so cold, unfortunately that the canaries succumbed to , the cold. They all died. At that point in time they said it was probably better to get a better heated to place and move it inside. By that time, we are getting to the point in 1885, with this building is partially complete and Grover Cleveland is inaugurated at that point in time. This is an image of the building in which was still being called the pension building. This was Grover Clevelands first inauguration, 1885 in the new pension building. Again, you can see the bunting, the formal gown, the formal wear, military officers and with themal uniforms epaulets and braiding, and to the women again in downs. Gowns. The womens gowns become very important of what the inauguration ball will look like. One thing we mentioned about the roof on an italian Renaissance Building with arches and ionic and corinthian columns. One of the things we see people doing over the years was somehow screening that roof. This is a picture in 1897 of the inaugural preparations. You could see the huge columns. They have been decorated, lots of floral arrangements here. They have put streamers over the ceiling to cover that industrial roof. Here is one in mckinleys 1901. Now, they begin to introduce electric lights. In some of these events they would actually hang chandeliers down in these three major sections to make it look like in a ornate kind of environment. The last inauguration of all in , there the first era were really two arrows, was was in 1909 with president taft. He was the last one that had it here. By the time we got to 1913, which was president wilson, he thought they were to elaborate and would have none of it again. He was like john adams. He decided it was too expensive and wanted nothing to do with it. The Second Period of time there were no balls until we got past world war ii to president nixon. Look upstairs at what this place might look like. We are standing in the fourth level of the building. When we first showed it, it was only three stories high. It turned out that when general mags realize what was going on, he realized there was room to add another level. He constructed and designed another level to be used as the records for the Pension Bureau and that is what you are looking , at now. It is the extra rope railing and balcony he added to provide access to the upper spaces. These levels do not have windows to the outside. The only have windows, skylights and then the light that is coming in from the windows at the top. We were talking last down at the , bottom of the first level floor we were talking about , president taft being the last of the particular era from 1885 to 1909. Here is a picture of his inaugural building. Again you can see the large , columns in the middle. This is from probably the second level up. We are at the fourth level. A little above that. To shift gears a little bit, one of the features of the inaugural ball has become the gowns worn by the first lady. This is there are many of them. This is one of the more elaborate ones. At the moment in time, this was and theft in 1909 gorgeous gown that she wore. Those familiar with gowns is that it was probably the most gorgeous inaugural down that had been worn in history. Many of them are now visible and available in the smithsonian institutions. Specifically museum of american , history. So that becomes a theme for all the inaugural events, how is the first lady dressed . Said, as i said president wilson did not want , them, then came world war i, then came the depression. Generally speaking there was not , an issue of having a elaborate balls thr