There’s a few reasons no one has exactly copied Walt Whitman’s “O Captain, My Captain.”
The biggest is that, despite the best efforts of English and history teachers across the country who have given the poem to their students to read, few possess quite the literary skills of Whitman. But the lack of direct copycats also owes to what Whitman called “the noblest of Washington buildings,” the structure which once housed the Patent Office and is now home to the National Portrait Gallery.
The front of the grand marble building is held up by four large columns, owing to architect Robert Mills’ vision to model the space after the Parthenon in Athens. D.C. city planner and plaza-namesake Pierre L’Enfant wanted the building to be a church of the Republic when he set aside the area halfway between the Capitol and the White House.
L’Enfant’s desire never came to be, with the space being used for state instead of church. In 1842, before the building was even done being built, it became home to the Patent Office. The very first U.S. design patent was granted that same year out of the Patent Office’s new location to George Bruce for a typeface he had created — you might be reading this article today in a totally different text font had it not been for that early action in the Greek-inspired fortress.
Perhaps more exciting than who owned certain typefaces, the Patent Office also had a key role in the Civil War. With all the wounded Union soldiers flowing into the District during the war, most of the area’s hospitals were packed to the brim.
Somehow, even among all the massive space in the Patent Office that was surely needed for paperwork, the government managed to find room to set up a makeshift hospital for Union soldiers. The building also acted as a morgue and briefly as a barracks.
This time was when Whitman first encountered the building he so admired for its nobility. Even in the middle of the fearful trip and while the ship was weathering every rack, the poet came by to read to the wounded soldiers and work as a nurse. Whitman during this time listened to stories from soldiers, taking down vigorous notes and eventually converting the tales into some of his most well known work, including “O Captain! My Captain!”
Another modern household name also paid visits to the grand structure during this time: Clara Barton, the founder of the Red Cross, treated the soldiers as a nurse. Barton had also served as a clerk in the Patent Office.
In 1865, the dreary hospital got a makeover as it hosted the glitz and glam of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural ball. The ball was just six weeks before Lincoln was assassinated. For just $10, one could buy a ticket for a “gentleman and two ladies” — perhaps raising some questions about if people attending the ball had the same loyalty to their families as they did to their country.
The next 70 years brought little change to the office as patent after patent continued to be printed, but in 1932 it moved into a new building for the entire Department of Commerce constructed by — and named after — President Herbert Hoover. The building then became home to the equally exciting Civil Service Commission Offices.
While the New Deal era may have seen the civil service expand, it didn’t mean the Civil Service Commission saw its building improve. The majestic marble stairs on the south of the building were tossed aside in favor of wider streets, and in 1953 it seemed that what was supposed to be the church for all of America had met its end when legislation was passed to turn it into a parking lot.
Instead of letting the grand building be paved over like so much of America, Congress in 1958 passed legislation gifting the structure to the Smithsonian Institute. The Institute worked tirelessly to restore the building in the early 1960s, and in 1968 re-opened it to the public as two museums: the National Museum of American Art and the National Portrait Gallery.
Those two museums still reside in the Parthenon-esque space today, though the former is now known as the American Art Museum. Aside from the exterior, not much about the space would give you any clue about its origins in the 1800s, printing patents while Walt Whitman waxed poetic to wounded infantrymen.
But just like he was in 1865, Abraham Lincoln still resides in the museum, only now as a portrait, immortalized next to his fellow presidents.
Photo Credit: National Portrait Gallery (https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/legacy_blog/patent-office-inaugural-ball-.jpg)
To learn more about the National Portrait Gallery and the surrounding area, check out our Lincoln Assassination tour.
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