TEXAS, HOUSTON: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF FUNERAL HISTORY

 November 29, 2022

Our last stop in Texas before flying home was one of the weirdest museums we have ever visited (aside from the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico). 

The 35,000-square-foot National Museum of Funeral History opened in 1992 and, according to their website, has the largest collection of funeral service artifacts in the country. (I can not imagine that any other place even comes close.) The museum's purpose is to "educate the public and preserve the heritage of death care."

I have to confess that I was intrigued just walking through the gift shop to buy our tickets. I could tell this was going to be an unusual experience, to say the least. I was happy to see Frida, but a death mask???

We began with the large Presidential Funeral Gallery.

Just after seeing this famous photo of five living Presidents standing together . . . 

. . . we started learning about their deaths and funerals, starting with George and Barbara Bush and moving backwards in time.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: THE REFLECTING POOL AND TIDAL BASIN MONUMENTS, PART 2

We left the Jefferson Memorial and continued clockwise around the Tidal Basin.

Our next stop was the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial. It was dedicated in 1997 by President Bill Clinton. It's distinguishing feature for me was its sprawling layout. It covers 7.5 acres! I kept expecting to come to the end of it, but then there would be another section. Of course, it does have to cover the longest presidency in U.S. history--12 years. The basic format is four "rooms," one for each of FDR's terms.

One especially cool thing about the FDR Memorial is that it is completely wheelchair accessible--a nod to FDR's disabiity.

FDR was known for his pithy statements, and many of them are engraved on the walls of his memorial, such as this one that reads, "The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith."

This one states, "The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man or one party or one nation...it must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world."

Wow. That's an ideology that seems completely foreign in today's political climate.

Next to that quote is a statue of Eleanor Roosevelt--the only First Lady honored at a Presidential memorial. Eleanor stands next to the seal of the United Nations, to which she was the first delegate from the United States:

WASHINGTON, D.C.: SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM AND NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

Washington, D.C., is a great city for walking, and our typical day included driving in from our hotel in Alexandria, parking our car in a centrally located lot, and walking, walking, walking, walking.

On Day Two, we walked down F Street, noting all the attractions along the way that we might want to visit on another trip, such as the International Spy Museum. However, the museum's neighbor, the Shake Shack, required much closer inspection and caused about a 20 minute delay in our morning. It was well worth it:

Just down the road are The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM) and the National Portrait Gallery, which is also a Smithsonian museum. The museums share space in the Old Patent Office Building. Collectively they are known as the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, although I don't think anyone really calls them that. The building takes up two city blocks, and while they really are two different museums, we experienced them as a single museum.

A dramatic sculpture on the outside is always a good sign that you've arrived at an art museum. This one, Modern Head (1989-1990) by Roy Lichtenstein, is the perfect piece to stand outside a portrait gallery. It is an impressive thirty-one feet tall and is made of steel:

Entry to the museums is free, and we were lucky to be there on a day that wasn't wall-to-wall people. The SAAM has over 7,000 pieces of art and we had limited time.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Cape Cod Morning by Edward Hopper, 1950

WASHINGTON, D.C.: THE NATIONAL CATHEDRAL

Day two in Washington, D.C., was Mother's Day, and we decided to spend the morning in an unusual way--attending a service at the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, more commonly known as the "National Cathedral." Since we had been running on empty on our first day, we decided to sleep in and catch the 11:15 service.

The National Cathedral isn't a non-denominational church as we had expected, but an Episcopalian Cathedral. It was granted a charter by Congress in 1891, was begun in 1907, and was completed in 1990. Congress has designated it as the "National House of Prayer." The funerals for Presidents Eisenhower, Reagan, and Ford were held at the National Cathedral, which is the sixth largest cathedral in the world and the second largest in the United States, topped only by the St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York City.

It's difficult to capture the size of the building (the central tower is 301 feet tall) with just one photo, but maybe five will convey its enormity:

Every December I attend a Christmas program at the local university that is basically an Episcopalian service (minus the eucharist), so the service at the National Cathedral felt familiar--lots of pageantry and processionals, lots of anthem singing, some reading and response, lots of up and down, etc.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: THE PETERSON HOUSE, FORD THEATRE, AND RAGTIME

Like many Americans, I am fascinated by Abraham Lincoln. Lanky, sometimes awkward, often unkempt, uneducated in the traditional sense, he appeals to the Everyman in all of us. I am drawn to artistic portrayals of him, books about him, museums featuring him, and places where he lived or visited.

Therefore, of course, I was excited to visit Ford's Theater, the place where Lincoln was assassinated and which I hadn't seen since I was a kid and could hardly remember. But first, we had to go to the Peterson House across the street from the theater, which is where Lincoln "breathed his last" (as one of the helpful signs inside told us).

I'm not sure how Lincoln would have felt about the kitschy shop next door. I think he would have been embarrassed by both the shop's contents and the the misuse of the apostrophe in "souvenir's":

I'm also not sure Lincoln would have approved of the spectacle that "The House Where Lincoln Died" has become:

The National Park Service has carefully recreated the way the rooms of what was a boarding house would have looked on the night Lincoln was brought here after having been shot at close range in the head while watching a play across the street.  Most of the original furnishings, including the bed where Lincoln lay, were purchased by a Chicago collector and are now on display in the Chicago History Museum. Still, they've tried to be attentive to detail, and I'm sure they've done a good job reproducing what was once here.

LINCOLN, NEBRASKA: STATE CAPITOL BUILDING

I have to admit that my initial response to the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln was a mixture of snickering and incredulity.  It looked like a cross between the Ghostbusters building and a state prison--which just goes to show my ignorance.

View from the front

The building was designed by Bertram Goodhue (1869-1924), a celebrated American architect known for his Neo-Gothic buildings. The Nebraska State Capitol is part Classical, part Neo-Gothic.

View of the back

I was surprised to discover that I am familiar with two other buildings Goodhue designed, the California Tower (1915) in Balboa Park, San Diego:

Photo from here

. . . and the Los Angeles Central Library, finished in 1924, the same year as the Nebraska Capitol:

Photo from here

The capitol's 400-foot tower can be seen from as far away as 30 miles, giving the building the nickname "The Tower on the Plains." It is the second-tallest state capitol, topped only by Louisiana's capitol. Thematically, it is said to represent a plant thrusting its way heavenward, referring to the importance of agriculture in this state. This was actually the first state capitol with a functional tower--a much more modern design than the traditional but purely decorative domes seen on so many capitols. Goodhue said he wanted to design "something quite unlike the usual [capitol building], with its veneered order and invariable Roman dome."

DES MOINES, IOWA: STATE CAPITOL BUILDING GROUNDS

During the last couple of years, as we have been marking states off our States List, we've also started a State Capitol Buildings list. Unfortunately, we developed our appreciation for capitol buildings a little late, and now we need to go back to a few state capital cities we visited but where we neglected to see the capitol building.

The Iowa capitol building in Des Moines has perhaps the most striking exterior and interesting grounds of any capitol we have visited. With its four rich green domes surrounding a resplendent gold dome, it reminds me of a Russian palace, but at the same time, it has a classic state capitol look. It is the only five-domed capitol in the United States. We took pictures of it three different times, which accounts for the variety of sky color in the background.

View of the back

Another view of the back

View of the front

The domes

   

The pediment above the main entrance

CHARLESTON, STATE CAPITAL OF WEST VIRGINIA

On our last day in West Virginia, we had just enough time to stop at the state capitol building in Charleston before catching our flight home. I hadn't really expected anything too fabulous from the capitol. After all, West Virginia is the 38th most populous state in the country with the 39th largest economy. By way of contrast, California's economy is almost THIRTY TIMES larger than West Virginia's.

I should have known better since all of my other assumptions about West Virginia had been shot down over the past few days. I quickly saw that the California state capitol building can't hold a candle to West Virginia's.

The capitol was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Cass Gilbert, who also designed the capitol buildings for Minnesota and Arkansas, the United States Supreme Court Building, and the Woolworth Building in New York City, among others. It is a stately, royal structure crowned with a dome of polished gold:

Yes, I fell in love at first sight:

MARYLAND: ANTIETAM BATTLEFIELD

Antietam, marked with an "X" on the map below, is an hour-and-a-half northwest of Washington, D.C.

The first major battle of the Civil War on Union soil was fought here, and this battleground has the dubious distinction of having hosted the bloodiest single-day battle not just of the Civil War, but in all of American history. All told, 22,717 soldiers were killed, wounded, or declared missing on September 17, 1862.