Transcripts For CSPAN3 Smithsonian Institution Castle 201708

Tour of castle spaces not open to the public with steve berry and curator Richard Stamm. Much of mr. Berrys latest work took place here. Richard stamm is the author of the castle. The illustrated history of the building. We met our tour guide in the crypt. This is about 40 minutes. I am steve berry. I am here with Richard Stamm Richard Stamm. Steve berry he has a cool job, he looks after this stuff in the building. This is a really interesting place where it all started. The smithsonian was started by a man named james smithson. He was just a guy who had an interest in science at the time. But he died and he had 500,000 when he died and he left it to his nephew. If his nephew had been married and had kids, life would be great, he would have kept the money. But he died childless. The provision said the money would go to washington, d. C. To found at the Smithsonian Institution for the increase and diffusion of knowledge. That is what the language says. Here is the really neat part. The secret part. Smithson never set foot in america. Why did he leave a half Million Dollars to place he never set a foot in . To this day, no one really knows why. The guess is he was somewhat bitter. He was the illegitimate son of the duke of northumberland. For the first 30 years of his life, he was known as james lewis macey. Because he was illegitimate, he was never allowed to use his fathers name or fortunes or anything. There was a scrap of paper found in his personal effects, paraphrasing, it says the best blood of england flows through my veins but avails me not. Their name will be extinct, but mine will be not. It did suggest he was a little bitter. Other than that, we do not know. And he was right. All of this was created from that 500,000 investment. Congress thought about it for a long time. They could not decide what to do. A lot of people were suspicious of creating Something Like this. Southern senators thought it would be an antislavery institution. Inntually, John Quincy Adams the house of representatives punched it through. In 1846, they created at the Smithsonian Institution. It was completed in 1855. This is smithsons tomb brought here in the earlier part of the 20th century. He is not in here. He is actually down here. There he is. Just his bones are in there. When he was brought over, the regents were notified that the cemetery he was buried in set on top of a stone quarry. They needed to extend the seawall. They notified the board of regents. Wasur board at the time Alexander Graham bell who took it upon himself to convince his fellow Board Members that we needed to bring james smithsons bones here, even though he had never visited this country in his lifetime, had no Close Friends we know of or acquaintances. Docked at the navy yard in southwest d. C. And had a long procession with his british flag draped coffin. They brought him here to the building and in the middle of the great hall, they had a great ceremony and they changed the flags to half american, half british. They took him upstairs to the regents room and draped the coffin in the american flag. These are the ideas of what they were going to do. They wanted to build a proper memorial. They are both huge and would have dwarfed the lincoln memorial. As it became apparent, there was less money for the project, the designs want smaller to a garden bench and her gallant. Pergola. And finally when the regents were informed by congress that there was no money for this, he ended up in this room right here. Which in the 1880s was the janitors closet. It was tastefully redesigned. This was closed. You could not come in here. It was locked up. They opened it in the 1970s when they opened it up when people could start walking in. We have a few of his personal effects but most of these things were destroyed in the fire. We will tell you more about that upstairs. His book survived and we have them over in a refrigerated vault in the Natural History museum. There are a few little personal effects that survived. Insideovel taking place the smithsonian, this is all in tombook, and we reopen the as they did in 1973. They popped this panel off and i go back in and use it. It fascinated me, why did they go in his tomb in 1973 . Nobody really knows. There was no scientific value. They decided to go in and inventory it. And walkedt apart the conference across to the Natural History museum and study studied him for a day or so. Got into a lot of trouble, did they . They did. The District Office got wind of it and they contacted our lawyers to say, you have not got the proper permit. That is why we have lawyers. I am a lawyer so i can talk about the lawyers. They eventually put all of the bones in and it was put back down. I could not resist. I have something hidden there during that time. It is the perfect place. Nobody would go in there. It is all in the novel. The reader will learn about all of that. I try to keep my books 90 to reality. 90 to history. I keep them as close as reality so you canep them learn something along the way while you are experiencing the fund. I serve on the smithsonian libraries Advisory Board and we oversee the 22 libraries. I have a great interest in the smithsonian. I wanted to draw attention to the smithsonian and the smithsonian libraries. He is my hero. He has been in 12 books. He is a recurring character and a retired Justice Department agent and lives in copenhagen. He gets in trouble a lot. I pick stuff from history. Things in the footnote of history. And here, i deal with something called the knights of the golden circle, the largest, most dangerous, Clandestine Group and i weave them in the tale. We will go downstairs to something really cool in the basement and see something very few people get to see. This is the great hall where we are now. Now, we are going to the basement that is a little tight. A lot of pipes and wires. We will follow rick around. It pays to be short here. It helps. When you see books and television and movies, they always talk about the mysteries under the smithsonian. Now, you are under it. There is not a lot of mystery. It is a workable work area. There is an interesting something that is kind of fascinating and i put it in the book. We have a drawing to show you. We are right here. This is the Smithsonian Castle and were right here. Underneath the national mall, all the way across, 700 30 feet, there is a tunnel that goes over to the national History Museum and up. It goes straight under. They did not actually tunnel, they dug a big trench built in a causeway and filled it over. It became a tunnel all the way through. You will see that in a second. What it was designed to do is bring heating from over here to the castle. They brought the heating ducts across. Still does to this day but it is very tight, a narrow thing and i put it in the novel. I was down here one day and rick showed me and i said it has to be in there. It is too cool. In the winter time, this area is warmer where the tunnel is and you can see the line. That is a cool picture. You should get a picture of that the next time it snows. This ground gets a little warmer so you can see the line as it goes across. The tunnel is right here. Do you want to set the alarm off again . I think we have it covered. Lets go down. You can see several hundred feet too. In theire, rick walked it last week with the lights off and a flashlight. I guess you cannot see your hand in front of your face. In the novel, rick actually is in the tunnel with the character and allows access into this building from the Natural History across. He is actually in the book. I had to have somebody in the book who could do a lot of stuff. I was going to make somebody up and said why make up somebody . ,use him. He said he had to be handsome and exciting and i had to paint them, i had a lot of conditions he put on it. He gets shot at. He does get shot at. You save stephanie. You save her life. You did a good job. This tunnel figures into the book. Like i said, there are secrets in the smithsonian and here is one of them. One of the real cool secrets. It has been there since 1910. People still have to walk through therefore maintenance . Occasionally. We had Asbestos Abatement last year so they were in there for a good three months taking out. Sbestos during he said it was not the funnest experience in the world. It is only about five feet area i was trying to film it with my cell phone. I had a flashlight above and was continuously hitting my head against the pipes. It is a Straight Line and in the book, i put a couple of curves in it because i needed the characters to disappear. Otherwise, it is faithfully represented. What we will do now is see something i think is the coolest thing in the whole building. It is his office. He has the office that you would think of when you think of the smithsonian. And we will show it to you right now. Rick wrote a book on the castle, it is kind of like the definitive book on the Smithsonian Castle. I studied that book. The curators office. This place is decorated with of objectsd prints from the smithsonian. Dont hit your head. That is nice. Look at all the cool stuff. Over here, here is a shelf and old books. Just what you would think of when you think of a sony and curator. In a little cubbyhole where nobody can get to you. We will show you something really neat discovered here about 20 years ago . Rediscovered . Yeah, i think we have always known it was there but sealed off. Never used. Pretty interesting. A tour of your office. What does the curator of the castle do . I am the curator of the furniture to decorate the secretary and undersecretary. And all the public spaces. It was set up in 1964 by general ripley who was secretary at the time. He felt the inside of the building should better reflect what the outside is. And that is a historic structure. At the time, it was green linoleum and egg crate fixtures and government issue furniture and all of that. For the next, since 1965, we have been collecting antique furniture that fits with the building and the time period, roughly 1840 to 1900. The first initial years of the smithsonian. And then, we actually, people actually sit at the desks and is the tables and the building is furnished that way throughout. And that is the collection i manage. This little staircase is in one of the tiny towers on the corner of the main building. It was put in 1881 for the scientists who had Laboratory Space on a balcony in the great hall. One of them was mary jane rathbun, she was the sister of one of the young assistant secretaries. She worked in the marine collection. The wet storage was down here. They put in the staircase as a shortcut. She would have to go to the middle of the great hall down a flight of stairs and where the elevator was, was a flight of stairs and all the way to this end of the building, the west end. Pick up these huge jars filled with marine invertebrates and retrace her stuff and go back up. They put in this little staircase for shortcut for those scientists. She said before she would open , the door and come out into the storage space, she would stop her feet three times to scare away the rats. That is the book that is out. We put this medallion on the cover. We had a cover artist draw it. He created it. That is the actual book itself. The staircase is in the book. It is used as a secret way to get in and out. You cant not put it in the book. It was sealed for many years and they unsealed it and started using it again. We will go from the very bottom to therds the top rotunda. Some really cool things many people never get to see. This is the regents room where the regents of the smithsonian meet. A lot of people do not understand how the smithsonian is governed. It is governed by a 17 member council. The Vice President of the United States serves on the board as do three members of the house, three members of the senate, and nine citizen members of the 17 of members. This is where they meet. This room is also cool because as we saw downstairs, when they brought his body appear first, it laid in this room. That was in the early part of the century. In 1865, january, this is where they kept smithsons personal effects. When the fire happened, this room was destroyed and most of his personal effects. The only thing that survived were his books that are in a refrigerated vault in the national History Museum and a few of his personal items. A small painting and some arrowheads. Just his calling cards and really very minor things. What people do not realize is there is something called smithsonite. What is it . A mineral he discovered. It was named for him posthumously. It is fairly useless as a mineral good very expensive on the open market. It comes in many different colors. Colors areughtafter sort of a turquoise color and it is found in mexico. I have always wondered about this extremely expensive mineral that has very little if no uses whatsoever. I keep a chunk of it on my desk. We are not sure why it is so expensive. I have a chunk of it on my desk where i write. This is the regents room. That would be a cool job to help. This is where a lot of it happens. They meet a couple of times a year, sometimes more. As i understand it, the current chief justice takes an active role, very interested in it. What kind of things do they decide in here . Everything. The fate of the institution. When a new museum is proposed, they work it out. They are the governing board. They are our governing board. I like to say every Smithsonian Museum and Research Center has been created in this building, if not because the collections because there, but regents created it in this room. They are a fiduciary board. The secretary works for them and is like the chief executive order. They set all of the policy and make all of the major decisions. Are 18 is why there chairs, 17 regents who report to him. A previous secretary preferred round tables. He had a point. At a long table, we had a 16foot antique table here. And if you were sitting at this end, you could not to make eye contact or talk to the person on the same side as you. We had in this custommade to accommodate 18 chairs. This way, everyone can make eye contact and no one chair is more important than the other except the chief justice sits over there. That is his preferred or chair. We will go out to the rotunda now. We will show you something pretty cool. This is almost like the heart of the building. Center of the Center Section of the building. Prior to 1865, we were standing in the middle of an auditorium is where we would be. It would be a gigantic gallery, a couple thousand people. Here it is. You can see it. Were,is where we standing in the middle of this. The smithsonian would present talks and lectures and speeches. A big controversy at the time because joseph henry refused to allow an abolitionist speak. He did not want to get in the middle of that. The smithsonian did a risky juggling act during the civil war. On the one hand, henry served as lincolns science advisor and helped with innovations for the war. On the other hand he was very , sympathetic to the south in some ways and had a lot of connections. He tried to balance it. You are in washington, d. C. , it is union territory. It is a little bit of a problem. He managed to do it and survive except in january of 1865, there was a horrendous fire. I want to show you this first. This case is interesting. When i was writing the novel, rick was refurbishing this case. I included it in the novel and i unfortunately destroy it in the book a little bit. It was fiction. It cannot really happen in real life. This key is really interesting. I do not know why i found it fascinating. It is fairly innocuous. It was found in the attic in the 1950s and no one knows what it opens. It is does going to lock. It does go into a lock but will not turn. There is one original door left but it will not turn. It fascinated me. This key is given to the incoming secretary each time, like a badge of the office but , they do not give him the original. They have copies. Rick has like five copies in his office. I tried to get one. He will not let me get it. About five of them. They get a copy. This is the original. The novel revolved around this key. This one little thing put it all together. In the novel, i figure out what it does open and had some fun with that. That is where my 10 is where i trip it up a little bit. The key itself, this is the badge that was created back in the 1960s by Dillon Ripley. He wanted to give more ceremony to being a secretary. Tell us about this. That is pretty cool. The symbol of knowledge. That into theted badge of office. You can see it in the photograph. Dillon ripley with queen elizabeth. He loved regalia. He brought a little majesty to the job. He also left a huge imprint. Most of what you see today in with sony and came from him. He had huge building projects, all sorts of things he credited. The libraries themselves came from him. He was quite a visionary. He was what and when was he here . He was the eighth secretary. He started in 1964 and retired in 1984. He was a long serving secretary and made a lot of changes. And also created this maze, ce, another symbol of the institution. Symbolism from james smithson, this is from the smithson coat of arms on the silver down here. The medallions around the top symbolize the cities associated with james smithson, bath, england, where we think he was conceived. Paris, where he was born. Pembroke where he went to college. And washington, d. C. The symbolism i almost incorporated in the novel but it was a little too recent. It was created for that very purpose. It fascinated me, all of the symbolism. They even incorporated a piece of smithsonite. That gets carried in academic possessions and when we induct the secretary. The honor guard carries it. It is supposed to preside over the regents meeting. They never do that. Thats why i decided to relocate it in proximity to the regents room. In a sense, it is presiding. There is another case that was not as attractive trade a much different case