Happy Nice Mall

WASHINGTON – President Warren Harding’s blue silk pajamas. Muhammad Ali’s boxing gloves. Star Spangled Banner by Betsy Ross. Scenarios from the TV show M*A*S*H.

Nearly two million irreplaceable artifacts that tell the American story are housed in the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum complex.

Now, because of climate change, the Smithsonian stands out for another reason: Its precious buildings are extremely vulnerable to flooding, and some may eventually be submerged.

Eleven magnificent Smithsonian museums and galleries form a ring on the National Mall, a two-mile large elm-lined park that stretches from the Lincoln Memorial to the U.S. Capitol.

But that land was once a swamp. And as the planet warms, buildings face two threats. The scientists say that rising seas will eventually pull water from the tidal Potomac River, flooding parts of the Mall. More urgently, increasingly heavy rainstorms threaten museums and their invaluable assets, especially since most of them are stored in basements.

Water is already trespassing at the American History museum.

It rumbles from the basement floor. It finds the gaps between the ground-level windows piling up around the exhibits. It sneaks into the ductwork, then wanders the building and drips into the shop windows. In locked collection rooms, like a burglar, it leaks from the ceiling in pools on the floor.

Staff try defenses: Candy-red flood barriers line up outside the windows. Sensors placed throughout the building, similar to electronic mousetraps, that trigger alarms when wet. Wheeled plastic bins filled with a version of cat litter to be tossed back and forth to absorb water.

So far, the museum’s assets have survived the damage. But “We’re kind of in a trial and error phase,” said Ryan Doyle, a facility manager at the Smithsonian. “It’s about managing water.”

A evaluation The Smithsonian’s vulnerabilities, released last month, reveal the scale of the challenge: Not only are artifacts stored in basements endangered, but flooding could disable electrical and ventilation systems in basements that keep humidity at the right level to preserve priceless art. , textiles, documents and samples are on display.

Of all its facilities, the Smithsonian ranks American History as the most vulnerable, followed by its next-door neighbor, the National Museum of Natural History.

Scientists at Climate Central, a nonprofit group, expect some land around the two museums. underwater at high tide If average global temperatures increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. The planet has already warmed by 1.1 degrees Celsius and is on its way up. 3 degrees up to 2100.

Smithsonian officials want to build floodgates and other defense systems and move some of the collections to a proposed site in suburban Maryland. But Congress has yet to fund most of these efforts, and the changes will take years to implement.

Until then, the Smithsonian is grappling with the fact that a popular, well-funded, and commissioned institution by top experts guards the nation’s treasures with sandbags and trash cans.

“We’re tracking the rain in a way you wouldn’t believe,” said Nancy Bechtol, Smithsonian’s facility manager. “We’re constantly monitoring these weather forecasts to know if we have any upcoming weather.”

‘There may be flooding where we stand’

One morning recently, a group of employees gathered in the entrance hall of the American History Museum to mark where the water came from.

In the hall was a wooden cotton seeder used by a tenant farmer in South Carolina. A Super Surfer skateboard ridden by the first female professional skateboarder Patti McGee. The cream-colored Fender Esquire that Steve Cropper played while recording “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” with Otis Redding.

“Certainly where we are can be flooded,” said Ms. Bechtol.

Fears of a major storm going on, like Hurricane Harvey smothered Houston in 2017 or flooded New York this summer.

Building manager Mark Proctor,

He led the group to the Southern Railway 1401, a high-steam locomotive built in 1926. The train sits next to a window overlooking the garden on the east side of the building. In March, a storm flooded the garden. Water came out the window and gathered around the steel wheels of the 1401.

“We had to drain the water by getting it wet,” said Mr Proctor. Outside, staff pushed flood barriers to the windows to slow the water down the next time it flooded.

Mr. Proctor boarded a freight elevator to the basement, then entered a room with the electrical and HVAC equipment that make up the building’s life support system. Without it, the weather would be hot and humid, damaging collections.

Mr. Proctor pointed to a wall. “This is where the water was coming from,” he said, remembering the March storm. Nearby was one of the two emergency generators in the building that Mr. Proctor hoped to move to the fifth floor.

“Your generator won’t work if it’s in water,” he said.

Robert Horton stopped at a locked door next to the mechanical room. Mr Horton deputy director of collections and archives. His favorite piece in American History is a homemade prosthetic leg made by a coal miner around 1950.

After passing his badge through an electronic sensor, Mr. Horton entered a small, low-ceilinged room filled with cabinets of exquisite porcelain. “All the way, you know, to the invention of porcelain,” he said.

Mr Horton said the basement was not designed to store collections when the building opened in 1964. However, the museum’s assets dwindled as it grew.

Mr. Horton walked to the corner of the room with water coming from the ceiling during the March storm. The remnants of the water were still visible.

Plastic sheeting was draped over a cabinet to divert leaks into a trash can. Around it were squares of dark fabric designed to absorb any water the trash had missed. “We left a lot of the protective material in place because we were afraid it might happen again,” Mr. Horton said.

Down the hall, the shelves of another room were stacked floor-to-ceiling with boxes made of treated cardboard, which Mr Horton said were designed to repel water. They were filled with Vaudeville scripts, documents from Lenora Slaughter, who ran the Miss America pageant from 1941 to 1967, and Depression-era Civil Protection Corps records, including a box that said “Poems of the CCC.”

Mr. Horton noted rows of boxes of radio sermons in the 1930s and documents about Father Charles Coughlin, whose weekly magazine described in his book “anti-Semitism tools”. New York Times obituary.

The boxes stood on open shelves, the bottom of which had barely risen from the ground.

Who is responsible?

In 2006, a storm left a meter of water on Constitution Avenue, which runs along the north side of the museum. The water pushed cars on the street into the museum’s garden and spilled over the building.

In response, the authorities recommended ways To better protect the Mall, including a $400 million pumping station.

None of these projects were built, Julia said, in part because responsibility for controlling flooding on the Mall was shared between various organizations, including the National Park Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, the District of Columbia’s water utility, and the National Capital Planning Commission. Koster is the commission’s head of public relations.

“There is a need to understand who should take responsibility for this,” said Ms. Koster.

With more than half of its funding from Congress and the rest from private sources, the Smithsonian has repeatedly asked the government for money since 2015 to begin work on a $160 million landfill in Suitland, Md., for items from American History. museum and the National Gallery of Art.

So far, the Smithsonian has invested $6 million in the new storage facility, which was taken from larger money earmarked for planning and design. Initially expected to be completed by 2020, construction has yet to begin.

The Smithsonian is seeking another $500,000 to begin work on a separate $39 million plan for flood walls and other changes to strengthen its American History museum. Smithsonian spokesperson Linda St. Thomas said this project is in the early planning stages.

Some other Smithsonian museums are further along. The National Air and Space Museum will install floodgates as part of a multi-year renovation expected to total more than $1 billion. The mall’s newest addition, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, was built with three large pumps to keep its lower levels from flooding with groundwater.

Meanwhile, the holdings at the American Museum of History await a resolution.

“I don’t want to rush,” said Ms. Bechtol, noting that relocating collections requires not only planning and building a new facility, but also carefully considering each item. “I think we can really only do so much, and we can do it carefully and well.”

‘Like a swimming pool’

The tour continued through a second mechanical chamber where groundwater was bubbling from the lowest point of the floor even though it was not raining. History museum sits what used to be the Tiber StreamIt was filled in the 1800s.

The group stepped out into a cafeteria, where floor-to-ceiling windows overlook a tranquil garden at the foot of the 35-ton Alexander Calder statue. This part of the museum is below street level. The garden slopes towards 14th Street and forms a giant bowl that fills with water when it rains.

“It’s coming in right now,” said Ms. Bechtol, who wanted to build a wall around the garden to keep the water out. “Like a swimming pool.”

The tension between preserving the collection and keeping it open to the public is not lost in a museum built on a swamp. ‘The best kind of museum for us is a closed box with no windows and no doors,’ said Mr. Doyle, perhaps half jokingly. “It doesn’t quite work when trying to attract visitors.”