ARCHITECTURE: New light on the past

Of all the Smithsonian Institution’s venues on the Mall, the dreariest and most discomfiting has been the National Museum of American History. The lack of daylight, views and clear architectural order inside its boxy enclosure often disoriented visitors looking for the First Ladies’ inaugural gowns, Julia Child’s kitchen and the Star-Spangled Banner.

That confusion has been largely eliminated by the $85 million renovation of the building’s central core. Closed since 2006, the museum reopens Friday with a brighter and more coherent introduction to its three floors of exhibits.

Design partner Gary Haney and his team from the New York office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLC have resuscitated the dark heart of the museum with luminous spaces more practical than poetic. Their insertion of a tall, skylit atrium and grand staircase to link the Constitution Avenue and Mall entrances solves most of the navigation problems that long plagued the 1964 building.

Gone are the pendulum, the flag hall and other idiosyncrasies at the building’s center. They have been swept clean by austere, airy spaces lined by glass-fronted cases displaying only the highlights of the collections.

The renovation supplies the spaces now required of modern museums - gift shops, an information center and a cafe - but adds only one major exhibition space. This gallery sensitively displays the museum’s most important object, the restored flag that inspired our national anthem.

Mr. Haney’s orderly, no-frills architecture of glass-paneled walls, terrazzo floors and stainless steel trim supplies a sleekly contemporary, if corporate, image for a museum previously choked with clutter.

It is all a bit too neat. The clean-lined atrium could have benefited from the display of the museum’s bigger artifacts - its old locomotive, covered wagon or Dumbo car from Disneyland - to provide the contrast of history.

Instead of stirring up visual excitement, Mr. Haney has quietly updated the museum with respect for its original design. The 1964 building was designed by McKim, Mead and White, a venerable New York firm long past its prime, to blend two antithetical traditions - classicism and modernism.

Its exterior resembles a stripped-down temple with marble-faced slabs treated like columns. Inside, the galleries embrace the open-plan concept of unencumbered spaces for changeable exhibits.

Mr. Haney reinforced this hybrid quality through spaces reflective of classical symmetry and modern openness. While his atrium and stair hall look contemporary, their spatial sequence draws on an old beaux-arts idea, the grand promenade.

From the Constitution Avenue entrance, visitors now walk straight through a wide hallway lined with exhibits toward the light coming in from the second floor on the Mall side of the building.

A staircase at the end of this passageway, connecting the first and second floors, is as much a light filter as a circulation route. It is the most provocative element of Mr. Haney’s design.

The stair treads are made of glass striped in a ceramic frit to transmit daylight from the upper Mall level to the floor below (some visitors may find walking on the glass unsettling).

Just beyond the top of the stairs, the five-story atrium creates a sense of arrival and uplift. Museum director Brent Glass calls it a “new public square” for events such as naturalization ceremonies, speeches and parties.

The hall’s slanted ceiling soars upward to funnel daylight from a south-facing skylight into the center of the building. All the glass-paneling and metal in the space turn out to have a pragmatic purpose in reflecting the light.

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