History museum known as “America’s Attic” reopens in D.C.

WASHINGTON — Some of the nation’s most loved symbols — including the flag that inspired the words of “The Star-Spangled Banner” — are coming back into public view as the National Museum of American History reopens after a two-year, $85 million renovation.

At a ceremony punctuated with patriotic music Wednesday, President Bush and first lady Laura Bush joined in dedicating the remodeled Smithsonian museum, where visitors can see such iconic items as George Washington’s uniform, an early Thomas Edison light bulb, and Dorothy’s ruby red slippers from the movie “The Wizard of Oz.”

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SARAH BETH YODER/Cox Washington Bureau

The star-spangled banner that once flew over Fort McHenry and inspired our national anthem is one of the top attractions at the newly reopened National Museum of American History.

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Calling the museum a home to “many of our national treasures,” Bush urged visitors to “come to this fantastic place of learning” starting Friday, when it officially reopens.

In the museum’s spacious new atrium brightened by a skylight, historian and author David McCullough told the gathering, “Never has the understanding of our story as a people — who we are, the way we are, what we stand for, what we believe — been of such importance as right now.”

McCullough said of items displayed: “They are the real thing. There are no facsimiles here.”

The centerpiece of the museum is the dramatic new setting for the nearly 200-year-old flag that the young Francis Scott Key saw still flying at “dawn’s early light” over Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor after a fierce attack by the British in 1814. He penned the four verses of a poem that became the national anthem.

The carefully preserved, fragile Old Glory is now displayed almost flat, in a climate-controlled glass enclosure that simulates the first light of morning. The goal, museum officials say, is to give the sense of what Scott saw and to provide a contemplative viewing environment, as well as to protect the tattered 30-foot-by-40-foot wool and cotton banner.

On the ramps leading to the star-spangled banner, the flag’s story is told though objects, including a charred piece of timber from the White House, which was burned by British troops, and a silver punch bowl shaped like a British bombshell, a thank-you gift from the people of Baltimore to the commander of Fort McHenry.

The varied items at the museum include the playful, such as a Dumbo flying elephant car from Disneyland, and the epoch-making, such as the “whites only” lunch counter from Greensboro, N.C., where four African-American students staged a sit-in that helped build the civil-rights movement in 1960.

Not far from the lunch counter, the museum is displaying one of the few manuscripts of the Gettysburg Address, written in neat script by President Abraham Lincoln. The document is on loan through Jan. 4 from the White House, where it is kept in the Lincoln bedroom, which is not accessible to public tours.

The renovation project was financed with $46 million in federal funds and $39 million from private individuals, foundations and corporations.