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During the Civil War, the ornate building at Pennsylvania Avenue and 17th Street, diagonally across from the White House, was a warehouse stuffed with army blankets and uniforms. This fall, after a century and a half of use, misuse, confusion and narrow escapes from destruction, it is reborn as one of the most elegant public spaces in the capital and the nation.
The Renwick Museum, now reimagined and renovated, is qualified once again to be called the “American Louvre,” after the Paris museum that inspired it. It was erected just before the Civil War—the first building in America designed specifically to be an art museum—by one of the country’s most distinguished architects, at the bidding of Washington’s richest and most generous citizen.
The banker and real estate magnate W. W. Corcoran had grown up in Georgetown and made enough money to repay his good fortune with vast good works. He was a major backer of the long-running Washington Monument project, and supported causes and institutions at home and abroad.
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