The 250,000-square-foot interactive museum includes 35,000 historic newspaper front pages going back nearly 500 years; 6,214 artifacts excluding newspapers and photographs; and 3,800 imagescartoons, comics, front pages, photographs and other graphic elements-on display in the galleries and walkways. Additionally, the seven-story building is home to 15 theaters, 14 major galleries, 12 additional exhibit areas, a 4-D time-travel experience, two television studios and 130 interactive stations. The Freedom Forum, Washington, D.C., a nonpartisan foundation, is the main funder of operations for the Newseum.
The project features a 174,000-square-foot custom-designed curtainwall and cladding system. Enclos Corp. supplied more than 90,000 square feet of glass curtainwall comprised of nine custom systems, including a state-of-the-art point-fixed cable-supported glass façade as a feature element of the architecture. American Metalcraft Inc. provided approximately 8,000 panels coated in six colors by Valspar on 80,000 square feet of wall and soffit areas. Carl Stahl DecorCable Innovations LLC provided 216 pre-assembled panels of X-TEND2 2.36- by 0.06-inch cable mesh railings.
Inside, the Newseum features 17,000 square feet of custom black SQUARELINE UltraMetal Ceiling Tiles from pinta acoustic inc. in the main atrium, galleries, administrative areas, lobbies and cafeteria. The News Corp. News History Gallery features 7,000 square feet of Cambridge Architectural’s Ridge woven metal mesh with a custom painted MeshFX ceiling system. The elevators feature 1,232 square feet of Cambridge Architectural’s Tidal metal fabric installed with the Panel attachment hardware. Ceilings Plus provided approximately 50,000 square feet of ceilings and 80,000 square feet of walls in the atrium, gallery spaces and theaters, as well as a small exterior ceiling installation on the underside of the canopy outside the main entrance.
Originally published: January 2009
Architect: Polshek Partnership Architects, New York City
Exhibit design: Ralph Appelbaum Associates, New York City
General contractor: Turner Construction Co., New York City
Ceiling tile installer: C.J. Coakley Co. Inc., Falls Church, Va.
Curtainwall consultant: R.A. Heintges Architects,
New York City Curtainwall contractor: Enclos Corp., Eagan, Minn.
Coatings: Valspar, Minneapolis, www.valspar.com
Curtainwall: American Metalcraft Inc., Atlanta, www.americanmetalcraft.com
Metal ceiling and wall panels: Ceilings Plus, Los Angeles, www.ceilingsplus.com
Metal ceiling tiles: pinta acoustic inc., Minneapolis, www.pinta-acoustic.com
Metal mesh: Cambridge Architectural, Cambridge, Md., www.cambridgearchitectural.com
Infill panels: Carl Stahl DecorCable Innovations LLC, Chicago, www.decorcable.com
Structural steel: Canam Group Inc., Saint-Georges, Québec, Canada, www.canamgroup.ws
