NATIONAL PARK SERVICE CONSOLIDATES AT SIGNATURE HEADQUARTERS BUILDING
CASE STUDY
In 2017, the NPS consolidated its cultural resources programs including, among others, the NRHP, the Historic American Buildings Survey, and Heritage Preservation Services, to reunite with other DOI programs in the 1936 Main Interior building for the first time in a half-century. Now named the “Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building,” this New Deal icon once again provides a consolidated headquarters and federal presence that is vividly tied to the agency’s mission. Buffalo motifs decorating its doors, Native American murals rimming its sky-lit cafeteria, and an extensive collection of WPA murals promotes the DOI programs and conservation philosophy to visitors and employees traversing the building’s corridors and stairways. Clad in Indiana limestone, with interior public spaces finished in durable Tennessee marble, the building was conceived for functional adaptability and long-term value. It was among the government’s first buildings to include movable steel partitions, acoustically treated ceilings, fire-proofing, central air conditioning, a central vacuum system, and a floor reserved for mechanical equipment.The six-phase rehabilitation project, undertaken by GSA, the building’s owner, built upon the building’s inherently sustainable attributes, adding green roofs and solar panels for renewable energy.
Counterclockwise: Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building,Washington, D.C. Replanting the Wasteland, by Ernest Fiene (photo courtesy Carol M. Highsmith Photography, Inc./GSA) The mural is rolled onto a large cardboard tube to facilitate its removal from the wall and for safe transport to the conservation lab. (photo courtesy U.S. Department of the Interior Museum) A conservator working on the Henry Varnum Poor fresco in the DOI headquarters building (photo courtesy U.S. Department of the Interior Museum) “American Bison” by Boris Gilbertson, 1940, restored (photo courtesy U.S. Department of the Interior Museum)
IN A SPIRIT OF STEWARDSHIP: A REPORT ON FEDERAL HISTORIC PROPERTY MANAGEMENT 2018 | 43
Made with FlippingBook - Online Brochure Maker