y available to provide a much needed National Gallery of Art in the nation's capital" (Smart & Gibbon, 1979, p. 3). The National Gallery is considered part of the Smithsonian Institution, although it is administered separately (Funk & Wagnalls, 1978).
The architectural design commission was awarded to John Russell Pope, who followed an essentially neoclassical plan that was consistent with the architecture traditional to Washington, D.C. Smart and Gibbon (1979) say that the cost of construction was $15 million. Pope died in 1937, the year that construction work began, and it was completed in 1941 (Boles, 1983). Pope's original design was essentially followed by his partners Otto Eggers and David Paul Higgins. Mellon appears to have been a significant influence on the architectural design: "Mellon wished the new building erected in a style that would be timeless and that would harmonize with existing buildings in Washington. Classicism, the style which began in Greece, developed in Rome and was revived in the Renaissance, fulfilled these requisi
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