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National Archives

Home of the original Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights

Local name: National Archives Building

Collection: Washington, D.C. · USA · Open in OpenStreetMap

The Archives building and its colonnade
The Archives building and its colonnade · Kurt Kaiser, CC0, Wikimedia Commons

The story

Before you is the National Archives Building. It keeps and displays the country’s three founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They are called the Charters of Freedom. The building was designed by John Russell Pope, who also designed the Jefferson Memorial. The city’s Center Market once stood here. The old Tiber Creek ran beneath it, the ground was unstable, and the builders drove 8,575 piles into it. President Hoover laid the cornerstone in 1933, and the building was finished in 1937. Statues with inscriptions stand by the entrances. One reads “What is past is prologue,” a line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. For a long time the Declaration and the Constitution were kept at the Library of Congress. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, in December 1941, they were taken to the bullion depository at Fort Knox and brought back in 1944. In 1952 Congress decided to move them here. On the thirteenth of December the documents rode down Constitution Avenue in a Marine Corps armored personnel carrier. Two light tanks and soldiers with submachine guns went with them. Two days later President Truman formally opened their display. By day the documents lay in display cases, and at night they were lowered into a fifty-ton safe. Today you can see them in the Rotunda, the semicircular hall under the dome.

Visiting

The museum entrance is on Constitution Avenue, between 7th and 9th Streets. Open daily, 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., last entry half an hour before closing; closed on Thanksgiving and December 25. Admission is free. You can reserve a timed ticket on visit.archives.gov to get in faster. Metro: Archives–Navy Memorial–Penn Quarter, Yellow and Green lines, across Pennsylvania Avenue.

Photos

The dome of the Rotunda, home of the Charters of Freedom
The dome of the Rotunda, home of the Charters of Freedom · PatrykTBrown, CC0, Wikimedia Commons
Truman at the opening of the documents’ display, December 15, 1952
Truman at the opening of the documents’ display, December 15, 1952 · Abbie Rowe, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons

Sources

This text was written by AI from open sources. An expert will still check it. Found a mistake? Write to us. Support

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