Below the National Museum of American History, flooding is invading the collection room as a result of global warming. The repair will still take several years.
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Washington—President Warren Harding’s blue silk pajamas. Muhammad Ali's boxing gloves. Stars and Stripes. A script from the TV show "M*A*S*H".
The National Museum of American History has a collection of nearly 2 million irreplaceable artifacts that tell the American story. It belongs to the Smithsonian Institution, the largest museum group in the world.
Now, due to climate change, another reason why the Smithsonian Museum stands out is that its precious buildings are extremely vulnerable to flooding, and some may eventually be submerged.
Eleven magnificent Smithsonian museums and galleries form a ring around the National Mall. This magnificent two-mile park is lined with elm trees, extending from the Lincoln Memorial to the U.S. Capitol.
But that land was once a swamp. As the earth warms, buildings face two threats. Scientists say that rising sea levels will eventually push water from the tidal Potomac River into the water and flood parts of the shopping center. More directly, the increasing rainstorm threatens the museum and its priceless collections, especially since many of the collections are stored in the basement.
In the American History Museum, water has invaded.
It rattles on the basement floor. It found the gaps between the windows on the ground and turned around the exhibits. It dives into the pipe system, then meanders through the building and drips onto the display case. It crawled through the locked collection room on the ceiling, like a thief, with a pool on the floor.
Workers have been experimenting with defensive measures: candy red flood barriers lined up outside the windows. Sensors similar to electronic mousetraps are deployed throughout the building and trigger an alarm when wet. A plastic trash can with wheels filled with cat litter, rushing back and forth to absorb water.
So far, the museum's collections have not been damaged. But "we are in trial and error," said Ryan Doyle, facilities manager at the Smithsonian. "It's about managing water."
The Smithsonian vulnerability assessment released last month revealed the scale of the challenge: Not only are the cultural relics stored in the basement at risk, but flooding can damage the basement’s electrical and ventilation systems, which keep humidity at an appropriate level. Level to protect the priceless artworks, textiles, documents and specimens on display.
Among all its facilities, Smithsonian ranks American history as the most vulnerable, followed by the National Museum of Natural History next door.
Scientists at the Climate Center, a non-profit organization, predict that if the global average temperature rises by 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, some of the land around the two museums will be inundated at high tide. The earth has warmed by 1.1 degrees Celsius and is expected to rise by 3 degrees Celsius in 2100.
The American Museum of History, the Museum of Natural History, and the Museum of the American Indian are all facing so-called once-in-100-year floods—the probability of occurrence in any given year is 1%.
Museums with the least risk of flooding Museums at risk of flooding Areas at risk of flooding
Museum with the least risk of flooding
Museum is at risk of flooding
Areas at risk of flooding
Museums with the least risk of flooding Museums at risk of flooding Areas at risk of flooding
Museums with the least risk of flooding Museums at risk of flooding Areas at risk of flooding
Museum with the least risk of flooding
Museum is at risk of flooding
Areas at risk of flooding
Note: The risk zone shows that 2020 is a once-in-100-year flood zone.
Source: First Street Foundation; Open Data DC
Smithsonian officials hope to build flood gates and other defensive facilities, and transfer some of the collections to a proposed site in the suburbs of Maryland. But Congress has not yet funded many of these efforts, and these changes will take years to implement.
Before that, the Smithsonian Institution was struggling with the fact that a well-funded, well-funded institution with top experts was using sandbags and trash cans to protect the nation’s treasures.
Nancy Bechtol, head of facilities at the Smithsonian Museum, said: "We track rainfall in ways you would not believe." "We have been watching those weather forecasts to see if we have weather forecasts. "
One morning not long ago, a group of employees gathered in the foyer of the American History Museum and pointed out where the water had entered.
In the hall is a wooden cotton planter used by tenant farmers in South Carolina. The super surfer skateboard ridden by the first female professional skateboarder Patti McGee. The cream Fender Esquire played by Steve Cropper during the recording of "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" with Otis Redding.
"Of course, our location may be flooded," Ms. Bechtol said.
She worries that a major storm will continue—just like Hurricane Harvey swept Houston in 2017 or Ida flooded New York City this summer.
Building manager Mark Proctor,
Lead the team to the Southern Railway 1401, a towering steam locomotive made in 1926. The train stops by the window and you can see the garden on the east side of the building. In March, a storm flooded the garden. Water came in through the windows and gathered around the 1401 steel wheels.
"We have to dehumidify the water," Mr. Proctor said. Outside, the staff pushed the flood barriers to the windows to slow down the flow of water during the next flood.
Mr. Proctor took the freight elevator to the basement, and then entered a room equipped with electrical and HVAC equipment that constitute the life support system of the building. Without it, the air would become hot and humid, which would damage the collection.
Mr. Proctor pointed to a wall. "This is where the water enters the building," he said when he recalled the storm in March. Nearby is one of the two emergency generators in the building, which Mr. Proctor hopes to move to the fifth floor.
"If your generator is in the water, it won't work," he said.
Next to the machinery room, Robert Horton stopped in front of a locked door. Mr. Horton is the Assistant Director of Collections and Archives. His favorite item in American history is a homemade prosthetic leg made by a coal miner around 1950.
After passing his badge on the electronic sensor, Mr. Horton entered a small room with a low ceiling, filled with cabinets filled with fine porcelain. "All the way back, you know, the invention of porcelain," he said.
Mr. Horton said that when the building was opened in 1964, the basement was not designed to store collectibles. But as the museum's collection increased, it was filled.
Mr. Horton walked to the corner of the room, and during the March storm, water seeped in from the ceiling. Residues in the water are still visible.
Plastic cloth is covered on a cabinet, which is used to direct the leakage into the trash can. It is surrounded by black fabric squares, designed to absorb the moisture that the garbage may leak. "Because we were worried that it would happen again, we kept a lot of protective materials," Mr. Horton said.
In the hall, the shelf in another room is stacked from floor to ceiling with boxes made of treated cardboard. Mr. Horton said that these cardboards are used for waterproofing. They are full of vaudeville scripts, essays by Lenora Slaughter, who hosted the Miss America pageant from 1941 to 1967, and records of the Civilian Protection Corps during the Great Depression, including one marked "CCC Poetry" box.
Mr. Horton pointed to the rows of boxes containing the documents of Father Charles Coughlin. His radio sermons and weekly magazines in the 1930s were described as "tools of anti-Semitism" in his New York Times obituaries.
The boxes are placed on open shelves, and the lowest shelf barely leaves the floor.
In 2006, a storm left three feet of water on Constitution Avenue along the north side of the museum. The water pushed the cars on the street onto the lawn of the museum and poured into the building.
In response, officials proposed ways to better protect the shopping center, including a $400 million pumping station.
Julia said that none of these projects were completed, partly because the responsibility for controlling flooding in the shopping center was shared by several entities, including the National Park Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Water Company of the District of Columbia, and the National Capital Planning Commission Coster, with the committee’s public participation. principal.
"It is necessary to figure out who should be responsible for this," Ms. Coster said.
More than half of the Smithsonian’s funding comes from Congress, and the rest comes from private sources. Since 2015, it has repeatedly asked the government to provide funding to start work at a $160 million storage location in Suitland, Maryland. It is stored in the Museum of American History and the National Gallery of Art.
So far, the Smithsonian Institution has invested $6 million in new storage facilities from a larger funding dedicated to planning and design. The construction originally scheduled to be completed in 2020 has not yet begun.
The Smithsonian Museum is seeking another $500,000 to begin a separate $39 million program for the construction of flood walls and other projects to strengthen the Museum of American History. Smithsonian spokesperson Linda St. Thomas said the project is in the early planning stages.
Some other Smithsonian museums are far ahead. As part of a multi-year renovation project that is expected to cost more than $1 billion, the National Air and Space Museum will install flood gates. The newest member of the mall, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, has three huge pumps built to prevent its lower levels from being filled with groundwater.
At the same time, assets in American history are waiting for a solution.
"I don't want to worry," said Ms. Bechtol, who pointed out that relocating collections requires not only planning and construction of new facilities, but also careful handling of each item. "I guess we really can only do so much and do it carefully."
The tour continued, passing through the second machine room, even if it didn't rain, groundwater emerged from the lowest point of the floor. The History Museum is located in what was once the Tiber River, which was filled in the 1800s.
A group of people walked into a cafeteria, and floor-to-ceiling windows could see a peaceful garden at the foot of a 35-ton sculpture of Alexander Calder. The part of the museum is below the street. The garden slopes towards 14th Street, forming a huge bowl that will fill up with water when it rains.
"Now, it's coming in," Ms. Bechtor said, and she wanted to build a wall around the garden to prevent water from entering. "It's like a swimming pool."
In a museum built on a swamp, the tension between protecting the collection and making it accessible to the public will not disappear. "For us, the best museum is a closed box without windows and doors," Mr. Doyle said, perhaps only half-jokingly. "When you try to attract visitors, it doesn't work very well."