James Smithson Crypt, Smithsonian Institution Building, or Castle

ID: SIA RU000095 [SIA_000095_B31_F32_001]

Creator: United States National Museum Photographic Laboratory

Form/Genre: Black-and-white photographs

Date: 1905

Citation: Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 95, Box 31, Folder 32, Image No. SIA_000095_B31_F32_001

Summary

Interior view, crypt containing the body of founder James Smithson at the North Tower entrance of the Smithsonian Institution Building, or Castle.

USNM No. 17041
Smithson's remains were brought to the United States by Smithsonian Regent Alexander Graham Bell in 1904, when the Protestant Cemetery in Genoa, Italy, where Smithson was buried, was to be moved. Many plans were made for an elaborate memorial to the Institution's benefactor, but the lack of an appropriation dictated a more modest course. Smithson's marker from the Italian gravesite was incorporated into the room, and a gate was fashioned from pieces of the fence that had surrounded the site. Architects Hornblower and Marshall redesigned the room to give it a more somber classical feeling, replacing the ceiling, windows, and the floor.

Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 95, Box 31, Folder 32, Image No. SIA_000095_B31_F32_001

Smithsonian Institution Archives Capital Gallery, Suite 3000, MRC 507; 600 Maryland Avenue, SW; Washington, DC 20024-2520

1905

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No Copyright - United States

Crypts

Black-and-white photographs

SIA RU000095 [SIA_000095_B31_F32_001]

Gelatin silver prints; 8 x 10;