Visiting the National Building Museum

I was always interested in miniature buildings or building replicas. When I travel, I hear so much about the architecture, but it is hard to imagine it without actually seeing it. Thus, I always try to find a replica of a building I visited if there is one available. It is much more meaningful together with the description.

Recently when I planned a trip to Washington DC, I contacted the National Building Museum and asked if they would be able to give me a touch tour and show me some miniature buildings.

The team was very kind and they organized a meeting for me for the only free afternoon I had during my trip. Little did I know, the day couldn’t be more perfect, as it was the opening of the Mini Memories exhibit, which is a number of souvenir buildings from the David Weingarten collection.

The David Weingarten collection was donated to the museum in 2019. It consists of over 3000 miniature mementos, the largest collection of its kind. The exhibit consists of about 400 pieces of the collection. I was introduced to a smaller subset of this collection showing a great variety of artifacts. If you are interested, you can also read how they packed up the entire collection in California, it is a fascinating read.

I met Nancy Bateman and Bryn Cooley a couple of hours before the exhibit opened, and they showed me the pieces they set aside for our meeting.

The collection is much more than just replica buildings, some are very accurate representations of buildings, others are more stylized, or have practical uses, like a coin bank, a soap bar, salt and pepper shaker or a lamp.

The materials are also quite diverse, I touched a Ferris Wheel made out of porcelain, a Washington Monument made of pressed Dollar bills, or a soap RCA building in New York. And of course, many are made of steel or plastic.

The type of buildings also shows a great variety, there are the more common ones like a Capitol Building or the Space Needle, but there was something as unique as the replica of the part of Dallas where President Kennedy was shot.

After the touch tour of the selected artifacts, Nancy took me around the entire exhibit and briefly explained what can be seen there, as objects are shown in see-through boxes. Still, it was very interesting to hear about the different buildings made of all kinds of materials, for all kinds of purposes from all around the world. The last section of the exhibit is buildings from each state of the United States.

It is hard to cover the extent of this exhibit, fortunately there is a database of the entire David WeinGarten collection. What’s really great about it is that many of individual artifacts are described, and the museum is specifically working on making the catalog accessible.

After my tour was concluded, I stayed for the official opening and reception, where I was able to meet with some of the museum members, sponsors and other invited guests. This was particularly special, because I recently joined the Souvenir Building Collectors Society, and I was able to meet some of the members for the first time.

The evening concluded with a dinner and great conversation with the people from the Souvenir Building Collectors Society. Soon I will write more about them as well, as it is also worth a separate posts.

I am particularly grateful for the employees of the museum to squeeze my visit into an already very busy day. For me to truly imagine a building is impossible without touching it. However, there are certain objects which would not be possible outside of the museum, so it was a unique and memorable experience.

Let me know if you have a product or service that blind people would benefit from, I’d be happy to review it. Also, contact me if you need help to make your product or service accessible.

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