Planning for the East Building of the National Gallery began in 1967 with a $20 million donation from Paul Mellon to construct a new Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts and additional exhibition space to supplement John Russel Pope’s 1938 gallery building. The board of trustees selected I.M. Pei as their architect in 1968, noted for his prior experience with the National Mall and recent museum designs in Des Moines and Syracuse. Gallery Director John Carter Brown played a central role in establishing design expectations, encouraging Pei to “end Pennsylvania Avenue with a bang not a whimper,” and design with the intent to last for “hundreds of years” (Dean 75). Brown further mandated the defining intimate scale and detached arrangement of the gallery spaces, and worked with Pei to ensure the building would connect with a mass audience. The clearest challenges to the site ultimately emerged as the most influential, with the irregular plot, relationship to Pope’s building, placement along the Mall, and bifurcation of the program finding prominent and thoroughly resolved expression in Pei’s final design.

In 2005, Pei’s experimental marble curtain wall system began showing signs of stress, and was subsequently overhauled by Robert Silman Associates, with work finishing in 2014.

In 2009, architect Perry Y. Chin undertook a study for the implementation of two new galleries, a sculpture terrace, new elevator, and third egress stairwell for the East Building, all while practicing immense sensitivity towards Pei’s design. From 2013 to 2016, this plan was executed by Hartman-Cox Architects.

The gallery continues to serve its original program, displaying permanent and traveling collections for the US National Gallery and housing the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. 

With its recent comprehensive renovation and careful monitoring, the building remains in excellent condition.

The East Building of the National Gallery of Art is 604,000 square feet in total, split between a 154,000 square foot underground concourse, 112,000 square foot research center, and 338,000 square feet of main gallery and circulation space. The trapezoidal outline of the 4.9 acre site is reflected in the building’s plan, which Pei split diagonally to form a 405’ x 405’ x 270’ isosceles triangle for the public spaces, and a 405’ x 135’ x 381’ right triangle to house the research center. Exterior and interior walls are clad with 2' x 5' marble panels, arranged in continuous courses without vertical expansion joints, and rotated vertically along the parapet to form a subtle cornice. Concrete floor slabs of uniform thickness align with the marble courses to create the appearance of lintels across openings; and when spanning large areas, feature truncated pyramidal coffers.

Three 110’ parallelogram towers rise from the corners of the gallery triangle, with their own interior corners sectioned off to house stairways, elevators, and mechanical services. The main galleries are located within the remaining space at the core of the towers, as well as in trapezoidal halls connecting them on the fourth floor, and a dedicated sculpture mezzanine on the second. Situated between the perimeter galleries and the north wall of the study center is an 80’ high atrium. Serving to orient visitors on their entry and in travel between galleries, the atrium is kept bright and welcoming with a 500 ton space frame skylight, composed of 25 interlocking tetrahedrons, measuring 150’ at the base and 225’ along the legs of their combined triangular profile. The vast room is enlivened by the collision and connection of perimeter spaces through perforations and bridges which span the open hall. 

A 442 seat auditorium and additional 18,000 square feet of flexible gallery space beneath the East Building connects with the adjacent concourse through a tunnel served by mechanical walkways and lined with reflective metal paneling. Hosting a lobby, restaurant, cafe, and retail space, the concourse is illuminated by natural light from an irregular arrangement of seven prismatic skylights and a cascading surface waterfall, all expressed with a dynamic sculptural presence in the granite paved plaza above. 

The entrance to the Center for Advanced Study flanks the main gallery entrance on the building’s west face, cutting an oblique tunnel through the otherwise symmetrical composition and connecting with the seven story southern triangle beyond. The wing’s acute western extremity contains a stair tower, beyond which offices and archives follow the Center’s hypotenuse, blind to the atrium on their inner perimeter, but opening onto the National Mall through a cavernous excise in the southern leg. Further east, two partially detached service and circulation towers reassert the true boundary of the southern leg along the Mall, and enclose a 72’ high reading room in the void between them. Separated from the reading room by a core of library stacks, the eastern leg of the triangle contains executive and curatorial offices with views of the US Capitol Building. On the seventh story, a slab following the true perimeter of the triangle defies the recess along the Mall face, creating an open planted terrace, joined to the east by another terrace atop the reading room.

The East Building’s structure consists largely of reinforced concrete, but employs three major steel trusses to achieve its clear spans between the gallery towers. Perimeter voids in the concrete framing were filled with brick and precast blocks, onto which button head anchors and steel brackets were fixed to provide localized support for the cladding panels. The marble slabs themselves, 3” thick on the exterior, were lined with a deep inset neoprene gasket, allowing the free movement of individual panels and obviating the use of expansion joints. 

The concrete was treated with great care in all aspects of its execution. The mix design was carefully refined to complement the Tennessee marble, a special variety of clear-grained fir was employed for the formwork, and local cabinet makers were enlisted to achieve exceptional precision in the board formed coffer details (Progressive Architecture, Sept. 1974). 

The space frame for the atrium skylight was largely fabricated from custom welded components on site, achieving individual spans far greater than those typically offered by available stock commercial systems, each tetrahedron measuring 30’ x 45’ x 45’ along their perimeter profiles.

The East Building is the last structure on the northeast side of the National Mall and last building on the southeast side of Pennsylvania Avenue before the US Capitol Building. The 1938 neoclassical National Gallery building neighbors it to the west, separated by Pei’s concourse plaza and a grove of Saucer Magnolias, recently replanted to the original specifications of Landscape Architect Dan Kiley. Douglas Cardinal’s 2004 Museum of the American Indian faces the East Building across the Mall, and the 1949 stripped classical Prettyman Courthouse is situated across Pennsylvania Avenue.

When Pei’s design for the East Building was first published, attitudes towards cladding were moving in a more inclusive direction than had generally characterized International Style orthodoxy, but his bold embrace of the ashlar proportions and bond from Pope’s neighboring West Building was still far from characteristic of American modernism in the early 70s. The decision, however, was pursued and received as a technical innovation rather than a mark of regression. Without pilasters or columns to hide expansion joints, Pei’s articulation of uninterrupted masonry cladding, up to 400’ in length, was a celebrated feat of curtain wall engineering. Uniform standards of thickness for concrete floor slabs and pseudo-lintels, as well, depended on an advanced technical mastery of reinforcement practices to resolve the varying stresses with consistent formal standards. The rational simplicity to which the East Building adheres, in deference to its sober classical predecessor, is itself an expression of technical means unique to its own age.

In his address at the opening ceremony for the East Building, President Jimmy Carter praised the Gallery’s representative role in the, “the increasingly supportive connection between public life and art” (Architectural Record, Aug. 1978). The assessment spoke to Director Brown and I.M. Pei’s success in shaping the Gallery to an accessible and engaging vision of experience for the common masses. Veering away from ivory tower elitism and storehouse anonymity, Pei claimed that museums should be, “a fun place to be, a pleasant place for people to linger and return to look at more art” (Diamondstein 149). The atrium factored substantially into achieving this conception, providing both a refreshing periodic escape from the intimate galleries and an exciting dynamic means of circulation between them. Some critics disparaged the trend towards popularizing the museum experience as consumeristic, but a positive critical and popular consensus prevailed regarding Pei’s gesture of hospitality on the National Mall (Dean 74, 76).

In 1978, Progressive Architecture Editor Suzanne Stephens observed that, “at a time when architects are refuting the modernist legacy… the major cultural statement of recent years is not only modernist, but is greeted enthusiastically by the public and almost orgiastically by the press” (Dixon et al. 49). Her assessment of the National Gallery’s East Building outlines precisely its anomalous status in American culture and architecture. Pei asserted in 1980 that, “The talk about modernism versus postmodernism is unimportant,” instead subordinating issues of style beneath those of community and environment (Diamonstein 145). The East Building exemplifies the primacy of such contextual factors in Pei’s work. Addressing itself to the classical West Building, it derives its material palette, setback lines, and partial symmetrical elevation from the older neighbor. The asymmetrical thrust of Pennsylvania Avenue and the dual community identities of the building cut through the mass and create the organizing triangular motif which pervades the design, plans, and details. The authority of these influences do not preclude effective expression of the program, but provide the language of surface, form, and order through which it is realized. The resulting vast, spare, and monumental surfaces are not out of line with those of the nearby Hirshorn, but unlike the discrete figural heroics which had fallen out of critical favor for the SOM museum, the East Building is endlessly dynamic, almost inwardly urban, in the clustered irregularity of its non-hierarchical volumes. Without the imitative or ironic approaches in vogue by the late 1970s, the East Building’s sensitivity and responsiveness to the virtues of the National Mall transcend the stylistic discourse of its day, leaving a modernist statement as, “the architectural event of the year, perhaps the decade” (Canty 105).  

Following a century's worth of chaotic development, the US Senate’s 1910 McMillan Plan restored the National Mall to the simple specifications of the 1791 L’Enfant plan for Washington. The McMillan effort additionally prompted creation of the United States Commission of Fine Arts, to provide enduring professional oversight for future architectural developments in the District of Columbia. Although the McMillan Commission was influenced by the City Beautiful Movement, the restored Mall was far from an exclusively Beaux Arts ensemble. The eclectic assortment of historical styles along the Mall emboldened the Commission of Fine Arts, starting under the Kennedy Administration, to permit premier works of modern architecture to join the ranks of the park. Governed by a private body, separate from the Smithsonian, the National Gallery commissioned its own modern landmark with the funds and directive of Paul Mellon, whose banking magnate father had substantially contributed to founding the institution three decades earlier. The East Building represented the last word in architectural design, on the Capitol Hill side of The Mall, until Douglas Cardinal’s 2004 Museum of the American Indian, which reflects the trapezoidal plan of Pei’s building, but contrasts the angular National Gallery with its sinuous organic profile.

The National Gallery of Art East Building opened new frontiers in museum design and triumphantly closed a prolific era of civic construction in the US. Visually punctuating both Pennsylvania Avenue and the National Mall at the foot of Capitol Hill, there are few American sites of greater civic prominence than that of the East Building. Pei’s design is a lasting reminder of American faith in the dignity and progressive mission of modernism, and a compelling testament to the possibilities that such an openness to innovation can achieve for a nation’s people.   

Canty, Donald. “Building as Event.” AIA Journal, Mid-May. 1979, pp. 105-113. 

“Connoisseurs of cast-in-place.” Progressive Architecture, Sept. 1974, pp. 90-93. 

Dean, Andrea Oppenheimer. “The National East: An Evaluation.” ARCHITECTURE: The AJA Journal, Oct. 1984, pp. 74-78. 

Diamondstein, Barbaralee. American Architecture Now. Rizzoli, 1980. 

Dixon, et al. “P/A on Pei: Roundtable on a trapezoid.” Progressive Architecture, Oct. 1978, pp. 49-59. 

“East Building, National Gallery of Art.” Architectural Record, June. 1971, pp. 40.

“Mr. Pei Goes to Washington.” Architectural Record, Aug. 1978, pp. 79-92.

Poretti, Sergio. “Stone in Modern Buildings.” Docomomo, Stone in Modern Buildings: Principles of Cladding ; Proceedings of the Sixth International Docomomo Seminar, November 30, 2001, Rome, Italy, 2003, pp. 14–18. 

“The Maturing of the Mall.” AIA Journal, June. 1978, pp. 32-41. 

“The Two Triangles of the Mall's Newest Monument.” AIA Journal, May. 1981, pp. 259–263. 

“Washington DC.” Architecture Plus, Mar. 1973, pp. 62–67.