A few nice image gallery images I found:
Washington DC - Penn Quarter: National Portrait Gallery
Image by wallyg
The National Portrait Gallery, at 801 F Street NW, administered by the Smithsonian Institute, was established in 1968 with a collection focusing on images of famous individual Americans. The museum shares the Old Patent Office Building with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which collectively are known as the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture.
The Greek Revival Old Patent Office Building was constructed between 1836 and 1867. L'Enfant's plan for the city reserved this site for a "shrine to America's heroes', but after the goverment's first Patent Office burned, this vacant lot was selected as the site for its fireproof replacement. Ithiel Town and William Elliot won the commission in a design competition, and were supervised by Robert Mills, whom President Andrew Jackson appointed as the official architect of federal buildings in 1836. Mills and Elliot ended up in a public dispute, making atribution difficult. Mills, however, was the lead architect for the expansion of the building beginning in 1849, before being outsed in 1851 and replaced with Thomas U. Walter, who worked with Edward Clark to finish. When the building was complete, it was the largest office building in Washington.
Over the years, clerks working in this office issued over five hundred thousand patnets to the likes of Alexander Graham Bell, Cyrus McCormick, and Thomas Edison. During the Civil War, it served as a hopsital and counted among its ministering nurses Walt Whitman, who based his poem "The Wound Dresser" on his experiences. Whitman returned to teh building in 1865, working as a clerk for the Indian Bureau, before being dismissed when a secretary of the interior discovered a copy of Leaves of Grass in his desk.
A fire in 1877 damaged the west and north wings, leading to a major reconstruction, including several important interior spaces. The Patent Office moved out in 1932, and the Civil Service Commission occupied the building until 1963, before President Eisenhower's offer of the building to the Smithsonian was taken up and it was adapted to museum use.
National Register #66000902 (1966)
Downtown Historic District National Register #84003901 (1984)
