National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
- Architects
- Daniel Burnham Charles Follen McKim Hornblower & Marshall
- Year
- 1910
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- City
- Washington, DC
- Collection
- the city beautiful
Opened in 1910, the National Museum of Natural History was one of the first Smithsonian buildings built specifically to hold the national collections and research facilities, rather than adapting older space. It was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Daniel Burnham, Charles Follen McKim, and the firm Hornblower & Marshall, and it anchors the National Mall today, offering free admission 364 days a year.
the building
Built to hold a collection. The museum's 1.5 million square feet include 325,000 square feet of exhibition and public space, built to house what is now the largest natural history collection in the world: more than 148 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, and human cultural artifacts.
A working research institution. Beyond its exhibits, the building houses more than 1,000 employees, including roughly 185 professional natural history scientists, the largest group of researchers dedicated to natural and cultural history study in the world.
the style
Like its Mall neighbors, the museum was designed in the Beaux-Arts idiom, part of the Smithsonian's early-20th-century shift toward monumental, purpose-built exhibition halls rather than converted or shared buildings.
More on Beaux-Artssignificance
The museum is a DC Historic Landmark and listed in the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites. It received 3.3 million visits in 2025, with free admission offered nearly every day of the year.
nearby
- Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building
- Internal Revenue Service Building
- Smithsonian Institution
- National Archives
- Old Post Office
- Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium