MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. Washington, D.C.'s landscape is constantly changing with new museums and memorials set to join the ranks of the familiar landmarks downtown, and many of the city's residential neighborhoods are going through a renaissance.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIIt's a lot to keep up with, but if anyone is up to the task, it's Martin Moeller, who keeps close tabs on the evolution of architecture in D.C. and the changing nature of the city itself which is reflected in everything from the city's newest public libraries to the growing number of residents sporting D.C. flag tattoos.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIG. Martin Moeller Jr. joins us in studio. He is senior vice president and curator at the National Building Museum, former executive director of the D.C. chapter of the American Institute of Architects, AIA. He's the author of the fifth edition of the "AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C." Martin Moeller, thank you for joining us.

MR. G. MARTIN MOELLER JR.Thank you for having me.

NNAMDIYou, too, can join the conversation. Just call us at 800-433-8850. You might want to share what's your favorite building in D.C. 800-433-8850. You may also want to share what building you hate the most. You can send email to kojo@wamu.org, or send us a tweet, @kojoshow, or simply go to our website, kojoshow.org, and join the conversation there. Martin Moeller, revising and ultimately rewriting a thorough guide to the D.C. architecture is a huge undertaking. Were you at all reluctant to take it on?

MOELLER JR.I was, actually, yes. It is an intimidating task. You have to be familiar with and really up on the details of hundreds of buildings. It's not just like researching one architect or one building or one neighborhood. And, yeah, it was kind of daunting, but it was also very enjoyable. It managed to fit in with a lot of other research that I was doing at the time and helped me to build on some of my knowledge of Washington architecture already and kind of take it in some new directions. So ultimately, it was a fun project.

NNAMDII mean, one of the reasons I find it scary is that the first edition was written by a group of architects and published in 1965. Here you are taking this task on all by yourself.

MOELLER JR.And these were -- it was a formidable group of architects, the likes of Hugh Newell Jacobsen, I mean, some of the leading architects in the Washington area, went on to become very prominent internationally in several cases. So, yeah, it was a bit of a challenge to step into those shoes, but at least I was able to build on the work of the past editions, fortunately.

NNAMDIYou not only have to get facts, large and small, right, but you also have to build an interesting narrative for people. How did you try to do that?

MOELLER JR.That's right. I -- that was part of the goal here. I -- really, this isn't intended to be a straight history, nor is it really a full critique. It's sort of a balance between the two. And as I was writing the book, I often asked myself about a given building. What is something about this building that people can see but maybe not appreciate? A detail or an element that maybe was an innovative use of a material or an unusual motif, but they might not really understand the depth of that and what that really represented.

MOELLER JR.And at the same time I asked myself, what is something about the history of this building that is not visible but that knowing it would somehow inform your understanding of the building, your appreciation of the building? An example that I often like to cite is the fact that the Watergate complex, famous for political reasons, more than architectural reasons, nonetheless, is interesting partially because it was designed by an architect who was one of Mussolini's favorite architects.

NNAMDIAnd who never foresaw fascism.

MOELLER JR.That's right. Yeah. He never really recanted his fascist sympathies, and that just sort of colors your view of it. And even though obviously in a book of this nature, I can't really get into detail about that, my hope is that learning that fact and learning the guy's name will encourage someone to go Google it and find out, OK, who was this Luigi Moretti, and what was his connection to fascism, and what other buildings did he do before he did the Watergate? So that's the hope, is it really encourages people to explore some of these details on their own.

NNAMDIThe rate at which editions of this guide had been revised and rewritten is testament to the rapid growth and the rapid change in this area. Rather than tracing this evolution through changing styles, you prefer to think in terms of periods. Why?

MOELLER JR.Definitely. Well, the stylistic labels can become illusory. I think often people have a tendency to say, OK, I can put a stylistic label on this building, and therefore, I understand it. And I don't think that's really true, partially because styles are rarely pure in architecture. Often a building is really a hybrid of styles, and, also, there are so many other factors that come into play. Well, it's one thing if a building has details that are consistent with, say, the Romanesque revival, but why?

MOELLER JR.Why was the architect using those materials? What was the nature of the building project? Who was the client? Those things are part and parcel of the architectural history of the building, and they go beyond just simply a stylistic label. And also, I think it's -- it tells you more about the history of architecture to understand what's going on more broadly. How does it fit in with the political history, the cultural context? It's not just about a style pure and simple. It's about how that building reflects broader developments in society and in the development of the city.

NNAMDITalk a little bit about the Folger Shakespeare Library and how it differs from the exterior to the interior.

MOELLER JR.Oh, that's a fascinating building. It's built in the '30s, designed by Paul Philippe Cret, a French-American architect who, I think, was very talented and was of those architects at that cusp of moving from the kind of classical tradition into modern architecture. And it was a time when, you know, that change was going on broadly, but not everyone was fully comfortable with it. There were, of course, the revolutionary modern architects, people like Le Corbusier and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius.

MOELLER JR.But most of the people who were moving into modernism were, in fact, more evolutionary. And so Cret was one of those people, and he was really a contextualist in the truest sense. And in his view at that time, this kind of stripped classicism, the -- what some people call a Greco deco, the exterior, the character of the building was very appropriate for its context, its physical context.

MOELLER JR.It fit in with the classical tradition of Washington, but it was also something that marked the kind of beginnings of the modern movement in its relative lack of ornament and its simplicity. But on the inside, it's kind of this Elizabethan fantasy, and that was also a contextual decision. In that case, it was the context of the institution that it was housing, and the patrons were very clear that they wanted an interior space that was evocative of the era of Shakespeare.

MOELLER JR.So they got it. So you have this gleaming, white, sleek building on the outside and a bunch of dark wood and ornateness on the inside. It's a strange contrast but a great building.

NNAMDIYou can find a slideshow of interesting buildings featured in this guide, the "AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C." at our website, kojoshow.org, which is where you'll find the aforementioned slideshow. Kojoshow.org is where you can also join this conversation. If you have questions or comments, you can call us at 800-433-8850, or send us a tweet, @kojoshow.

NNAMDIWe're talking with Martin Moeller. He is senior vice president and curator at the National Building Museum and former executive director of the D.C. chapter of the American Institute of Architects, AIA. Cret also defined -- designed the Federal Reserve Building.

MOELLER JR.That's right, yes, which is another of those stripped classical buildings, and it has a great dignity to it, a great power. But it also is an excellent example of how certain movements in architecture can really trump politics and other things that people often think come into play in architectural expression. I actually saw a pair of photographs once of the Federal Reserve board on one side and the Zeppelin Field in Germany designed by Albert Speer, Hitler's architect.

MOELLER JR.And let's just say it was kind of jarring how similar those two buildings were. So here were these buildings going on in the -- being built in the two great mortal enemies of the '30s and '40s, and yet remarkably similar in style. So it's a reminder that there are kind of technological issues and aesthetic issues that probably often are more significant than a lot of the underlying political and cultural things that people often ascribe to buildings.

NNAMDISo if a building is still standing and has not changed in any fundamental way, why might you find reason to completely rewrite the entry on that building?

MOELLER JR.A variety of reasons. First of all, just from a personal standpoint, my views of architecture in specific buildings are constantly changing. I, you know, you can't help it but pass by a building, you know, multiple times and see it in a different way and come to appreciate something that I hadn't appreciated before or perhaps like something a little bit less that I used to love but also the context changes.

MOELLER JR.I live in the Logan Circle area, and I feel like every time I go home from work these days, the neighborhood has changed. It's developing so quickly, and there are huge, you know, projects going up, and there are lots of great renovations and new restaurants coming in. And all those changes of views and changes of context and even just a different flow of people in front of those buildings, all of those things change your impression of the architecture. And so those things led me to want to rewrite some of the entries from the previous edition, even though that was only six years ago.

NNAMDIThe former director of the Studio Theatre, Joy Zinoman, and I used to have conversations about how that building used to be an auto repair shop at one point, so things do change pretty quickly in this city. Like the city itself, a number of buildings have had various incarnations, as I was just pointing out, such as the 6th and I Synagogue and the East Capitol Street Barn. Talk a little bit about how they have been reimagined.

MOELLER JR.Sure. The 6th and I Synagogue is fascinating for a variety of reasons. It -- I think often in Washington, D.C., the ethnic history of the city is kind of broken down into simplistic black-and-white terms. And what people tend to forget is there's actually a much richer ethnic history in the background of Washington, D.C. And one example of that is the 6th and I Synagogue, which is a remnant of the period in which that area, now kind of part of Chinatown, was the center of Jewish life in Washington.

MOELLER JR.And, in fact, all three of the major synagogues used to be within a few blocks' stretch between roughly 5th and 8th and H and I Streets Northwest. There was a conservative synagogue, orthodox and a reformed congregation. So there was this real nexus there. And 6th and I was originally built as the Adas Israel Temple, and then in 1951, Adas Israel moved to its current location in Cleveland Park, and an AME church moved in and, of course, took out the Jewish symbols and inserted Christian symbols in their place.

MOELLER JR.But then a few decades later, that congregation moved to the suburbs, and for a while, believe or not, there was a developer who was proposing turning that building into a nightclub. And that horrified some of the people who remembered the history of the building, and eventually, a group of Jewish developers got together and bought the building and then led the renovation effort and converted it now into a really interesting facility. It's a...

NNAMDIIt's a nondenominational synagogue.

MOELLER JR.Exactly. And it -- I was there not too long ago for a wedding, and it's actually really a beautiful place inside. And it's an unusual institution in that it doesn't have a specific congregation, but it is available for religious services, weddings, funerals, those kinds of things, but also a lot of cultural programming.

NNAMDII knew an African-American congregation -- Jewish congregation that used to meet -- that have -- that used to have their services at the 6th and I. How about the East Capitol Street Barn?

MOELLER JR.That's another great case of what we often call adaptive reuse, which is taking a building that was very explicitly designed for one purpose and then completely reimagining its use. And in that case, it was a car barn, a term that confuses a lot of people. They don't realize what that is or was. It was a street car barn. That was where the street cars would come in, and they'd be stored.

NNAMDIWhen I first came to Washington and people said car barn, I said, what kind of car are you talking about here? Yes.

MOELLER JR.Exactly. And it was street cars, and there's another great one in Georgetown, that fantastic building just as you come to the end of the Key Bridge, and that is right there at the bluff. That was the sort of Georgetown equivalent of the eastern car barn on East Capitol Street. So there were several of those facilities throughout the city.

MOELLER JR.And in a city that didn't really have much industry and therefore didn't have a lot of buildings that were ready to be converted into lofts -- true loft space when that become -- became very popular. Those were the kinds of buildings that we did have that had these great open spaces that could be converted. And so in the 1980s, a forward-looking developer turned that car barn into a residential complex. And it's just a great series of spaces because of the original use and how that's now been adapted to residential purposes.

NNAMDIA number of callers want to join to the conversation. But we still have a few lines open, so you can call us at 800-433-8850 with your questions or comments. Have you ever looked at a structure in the city and wondered, why? Well, we've got the answers to that question. I'll start with Harold in Berryville, Va. Harold, you're on the air, and I suspect your question is why, too?

HAROLDMy question certainly is why as I've been listening to you talk about all the other buildings with which I'm very familiar and like. I have always been concerned about the Newseum.

NNAMDIWhat's the nature of your concern?

HAROLDI think it looks like a suburban Macy's department store…

HAROLD...and sitting across from the National Gallery of Art, the east wing of the National Gallery of Art, and next to the -- another Pritzker award-winner, the Canadian Embassy. I believe it's just -- I think it's just an architectural blight on Pennsylvania Avenue, functionally marvelous but architecture -- including the -- which is open through the glass, these open stairways that goes down the side -- back stairway that goes down the front of the building, with a side stairway that goes down the front of the building.

NNAMDIMartin Moeller, what can you tell us about the Newseum?

MOELLER JR.It's interesting. I think that's a building -- I've joked that it's maybe five or six good buildings that go together to make a not-so-good building. There's a lot going on there, lots of different elements, many of which in isolation are very beautifully detailed, really, I think, quite elegant, but it's perhaps a bit too much. I think, in some ways, you could say that that's kind of, you know, typical or representative of what the subject matter is because, as I say in my book, it's like the news itself. It comes at you as a barrage these days. You don't quite know how to sort it all out.

MOELLER JR.It was a very complicated program. I think there are some really nicely designed elements of it. But it is -- it's a lot going on. There are lots of different curtain wall details, lots of different elements there, and then, of course, the big, huge First Amendment, although that's kind of handy. I think it's nice having people be able to go stand on Pennsylvania Avenue and be reminded of the First Amendment every so often. It's probably not a bad idea.

HAROLDThe First Amendment part is what I do like.

NNAMDIHarold, thank you very much for your call. We're going to take a short break. If you have already called, stay on the line. We'll get to your calls. 800-433-8850 is the number or you can go to our website, kojoshow.org. Join the conversation there. Do you have an architectural style that you love or one that you loathe? Tell us what it is you like or dislike about it, 800-433-8850. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to our conversation with G. Martin Moeller Jr. He is senior vice president and curator at the National Building Museum and former executive director of the D.C. chapter of the American Institute of Architects, AIA. He's the author of the fifth edition of the "AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C." So much of our experience and interaction with architecture is personal. Is that a blessing or a curse when it comes to a project like this?

MOELLER JR.Oh, I think that's absolutely a blessing. That's what's so exciting about this process for an architect is that knowing that everyone is going to interact with your building in a different way. And it's impossible to anticipate all of those different ways. So what you try to do, I think, is create a building that works in its own terms, but that allows for people to kind of see themselves in it, how -- and find ways to interact with it and be moved by it based on their own experiences, and the best buildings are those that do that very successfully.

NNAMDISome of your descriptions include near personifications of buildings. Do you find most buildings have distinct personalities?

MOELLER JR.I hadn't thought of it in quite those way -- in quite that way, actually. I have to say I don't think of buildings as people. But I think sometimes they do take on that character, perhaps. You know, a building does kind of have a personality, like a pet, you know? And it's probably every people -- every person sees it differently. But, sure, some buildings can be forbidding. Some buildings can be welcoming. Some are...

NNAMDIHold that thought for a second...

MOELLER JR.Okay.

NNAMDI...because I couldn't wait to get to this part. I will combine a tweet we got from Mindy, a call we're getting from David and then tell them your description. Mindy tweets, "Is there anyone who does not hate the FBI building most of all?" Here is David in University Park, Md. David, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

DAVIDHi, Kojo. I've been living here almost 40 years, and I'm pushing 60. And if there's one thing that I really hope I live to see is the razing of the FBI building. It looks so weird. It's brutalist. It's -- and, you know, I've had many hours just looking at buildings in Washington. I love doing that, but I despise that building. And it's too small for the FBI and any number of beautiful things to be there.

NNAMDIAllow me to have Martin Moeller share with you his description of that building, or should I read it?

MOELLER JR.Sure, I don't have to look in front me. But I know the basic words.

NNAMDIHe says, "The FBI building is the swaggering bully of the neighborhood -- ungainly, ill-mannered and seemingly looking for trouble."

NNAMDII love that. What do you think about that? We lost our caller. I love the part about seemingly looking for trouble.

MOELLER JR.It -- you know, I guess that makes my opinions of the building clear. But I hasten to add that, you know, it's interesting the caller used the term brutalist, which many people, I think, hear that term and don't understand its origins.

NNAMDITrue.

MOELLER JR.It actually goes back to the French term beton brut for raw concrete. It actually isn't related to brutal although it's easy for a lot of people to assume that. I actually think there are some really beautiful -- in sometimes in a kind of haunting, stark way, there are some beautiful buildings of the Brutalist movement. FBI is not one of them. And it's just awkwardly proportioned. It's in the wrong place. It was really one of those things that was -- it was of its era. It was a time when people were looking -- they tended towards creating very large, monumental buildings.

MOELLER JR.And there is this vision of Pennsylvania Avenue is this kind of Soviet boulevard lined with all of these very intimidating buildings. And the construction of that building pretty much assured that none of the others from that plan would get built, which is the one blessing. But I -- it's always risky to make predictions, but I think there's a good bet that before too long that building will be at least dramatically changed if not torn down and replaced completely.

NNAMDIOn to Calin in Fairfax, Va. Calin, (sp?) you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

CALINHello. Thank you for taking my call. My question concerns how you might recommend preserving the character of the city's architecture while advancing lead sustainable and green technology forward. As far as I can tell, you know, typically you know a green building when you see one. It's in the, you know, the size, shape and color of the windows, the angles of the eaves, and well, perhaps more importantly, the materials of construction. I was wondering what recommendations you might have.

MOELLER JR.Well, the first reaction to that is that I love an expression that Richard Moe, the former head of the National Trust for Preservation, once said. He said, "The greenest building is one that already exists." So simply by virtue of preserving a historic building, you have created -- you've done something sustainable. You have allowed the embodied energy of that building, all of its materials, et cetera, to remain.

MOELLER JR.And, of course, there are many great examples of historic buildings being reused, renovated and often in ways that really can make them quite modern. You know, it's not an either-or proposition. Some buildings are very sensitive, very delicate, either by virtue of their architecture or their history, and you really want to kind of preserve them exactly as they are. But others can be adapted and can really become cutting edge even as you're preserving the existing structure.

MOELLER JR.The other point is that, really, sustainability is a very broad term. Green design is a very broad term. And there are lots of different ways to go about it. And there are lots of buildings that are pretty green that maybe don't look that way. And it's simply, for example, a case of using sophisticated technology in terms of the heating and ventilation systems as well as using recycled or recyclable materials.

MOELLER JR.Those kinds of issues that don't necessarily affect the building, it doesn't have to look like a greenhouse, for example, in order to be green. So there's a whole range of things that are happening. Many people are surprised to see kind of return to the glass box. A lot of new commercial architecture in downtown Washington involves a lot of, you know, very glassy facades. And people think -- they tend to think that that's not a very environmentally sustainable way of going about building.

MOELLER JR.But, in fact, it can be that glass technology now is phenomenal, and often, those window walls can have tremendous insulating properties. They let in lots of natural light, which means you can reduce your need for artificial lighting in those buildings, which is a big energy drain. And as long as the incoming heat is managed properly, that can be something that can also be a boon to these buildings. So sustainable design is a complicated matter, and it's not just simply a question of kind of a checklist of different items that one might have in a new building.

NNAMDICalin, thank you very much for your call. For tourists, D.C.'s big draws tend to be its memorials and impressive federal buildings. What do visitors miss if they zero their focus in on those structures alone?

MOELLER JR.You know, when I have people calling up or writing and saying I'm coming to town, what should I see? Or if they're coming to visit me, I really make a point -- I even kind of do this deliberately -- the first thing I tend to talk about is some of the neighborhoods. I talk about -- yeah, 'cause I know they're expecting me to say, oh, you've got to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, you've got to see the Lincoln Memorial. Yeah, you do, but they all know all of that. What they don't necessarily know is U Street on a Saturday night and this incredible parade of people that I just love.

MOELLER JR.I mean, it's so vibrant, and it is an absolute cross-section of humanity. And there are all sorts of interesting clubs and restaurants up there. And that, to those of us who live in Washington, is truly as much Washington if not more so than the Mall and the federal buildings. I talk about that. I talk about 7th Street. I talk about getting down now to the wonderful New Yards Park on the Anacostia River, which is really beautiful, of course, getting to Georgetown. There are so many things that are off the beaten path that a lot of tourists just never see.

NNAMDISpeaking of Anacostia, the west campus of St. Elizabeth's is about to be re-imagined for a new purpose as well. Tell us about that story property.

MOELLER JR.Well, that is, yeah, that's a really complicated story with a great rich history going back to the middle of the 19th century when it was built as the Government Hospital for the Insane. The terminology back then was a little bit less sensitive than it is now.

NNAMDIYes.

MOELLER JR.But for obvious reasons, most people don't tend to get over there and don't really realize the rich architectural history that that campus represents. A phenomenal building by Thomas U. Walter, the central building, which -- this was the same architect who gave us the Capitol Dome, and the east and west extensions -- or rather north and south extensions to the Capitol, so a very prominent architect.

MOELLER JR.And then a series of other buildings, dozens of other buildings on that campus, many of them dating to the early 20th century in the hands of Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge out of New York -- excuse me -- out of Boston. Really beautiful buildings, and it -- a lot of us have been worried for a long time what would become of that campus. And there are many people who are disappointed that it is going to become the Homeland Security complex. Because of the security issues there, people aren't going to be able to wander in.

NNAMDIAccess, no access.

MOELLER JR.Yeah, it's an issue. But at least, my sense is that it's -- at least there's a use for it. It's -- it looks like the buildings are generally going to be preserved. A lot of them are in terrible shape. Of course, the new Coast Guard headquarters is being built in there, but I think very sensitively, largely underground, in a way that will preserve the fundamental character of that campus. So I'm hopeful.

MOELLER JR.I think that, you know, we just never know what's going to happen in the future. And maybe someday in a happier, less insecure future, we'll be able to re-open that campus, and people will be able to get up there, see those buildings and see the spectacular views of downtown Washington.

NNAMDIHere is Darren in Arlington, Va. Darren, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

DARRENThank you for taking my call, Kojo. My favorite building is Union Station. And I recall, close to 20 years ago, when I first saw the Grand Hall, I couldn't believe the light that goes into that space. Could you talk a little bit about the preserving of that building just to think that we almost lost it?

MOELLER JR.That's also one of my favorite buildings in Washington. And, yes, some -- many local residents may remember a kind of an abortive attempt to turn that into a National Visitor Center, which involved carving out some major portions of the existing building. It was really just unfortunate. But, again, it's one of those things people now look back on that and say, how could they possibly do that? It was sort of before the resurgence in the city. It was before the resurgence in train travel, a lot of things that -- it was easy for people to think that that building had outlived its usefulness.

MOELLER JR.But now it's a really vibrant place again. It was fortunately sensitively re-restored, I guess you could say, or re-renovated and now is a -- just a really spectacular place. One of my favorite vistas in Washington is standing at one end of that great arcade along the front of the building and looking all the way the length of it. Just the proportions, the perspective, the light fixtures, everything, especially at the right time of day, if the sunlight is correct, it's really beautiful. And you're right. The main hallway is a great way to enter the city.

NNAMDIWe talked about Union Station's future on June 18 of this year. You can find that in our archives, Darren, or anyone else who is interested in it. Thank you very much for your call. We mentioned earlier that Mindy tweeted to say, "Is there anyone who does not hate the FBI building most of all?" I should mention that Nicky tweets, "The HUD building, officially The Robert C. Weaver Federal building, is worse. What's with those flying saucers on the plaza?"

MOELLER JR.That's interesting. I'm not crazy about the HUD building, but that's one that I'm a little bit more sympathetic to than perhaps a lot of people are. It was done by a very prominent architect, an architect whose work spanned a really broad range in terms of character, Marcel Breuer. He did some really very delicate and beautiful houses and with some spectacular furniture design. Many people might have -- might recognize the name Breuer associated with chairs.

MOELLER JR.I don't think HUD is his greatest work, but I actually -- I don't think it's as bad as some people imagine. It's certainly -- those plazas needed something, and the idea behind the additions of those discs was to animate the plazas and create some places for people to sit. Unfortunately, I don't think that was fully successful. My understanding is that the original design actually called for those to be more colorful and really to create a sense of kind of an event out there.

MOELLER JR.And I think that would have been a great counterpoint to the severity of the building. So I'm sorry that they ended up being only these white discs. Yeah, not successful, not a great building in terms of its role in the city, but not maybe as bad as some people might think.

NNAMDIYou can call us at 800-433-8850. What changes would you like to see to the city's landscape? 800-433-8850. Send us a tweet, @kojoshow, or email to kojo@wamu.org. Democritus tweets to say his favorite buildings are the Octagon House and Museum at 18th and New York Avenue Northwest, also the -- fanfare, please -- National Building Museum, which is the former Pension Building, great architecture. You get to work in there every day.

MOELLER JR.Yeah, it's really spectacular. And I guess everyone -- you go to work and you kind of take where you are for granted. But the great thing is that every day I get to walk down into the Great Hall and see someone come into the building for the first time and see their jaws drop and...

NNAMDIThat was my situation.

MOELLER JR.Yeah. It's a spectacular building and now one of the -- I think it's fair to say one of the most beloved buildings in Washington. But, again, it's a reminder of how tastes change. There were numerous efforts over the course of the last 120 years or so to tear down the Pension Building, the National Building Museum, or dramatically renovate it so that it looked more like the kind of polite classical architecture that people associate with Washington more closely.

MOELLER JR.So tastes do change, and, fortunately now, it's been preserved. I think most people like it for it really being a kind of exceptional work of architecture in the truest sense in Washington. And we certainly hope that they like it.

NNAMDID.C. used to be thought of as a place that people passed through, lived for a few years and then move on, whether they happened to be working for a member of the Congress. It generally was seen as a kind of transient place. But you've been beginning to notice a significant phenomenon: increasing numbers of people with the D.C. flag tattooed on some part of their bodies.

MOELLER JR.I remember that, going back about maybe 12 or 15 years, at a time when a lot of people talked about Washington as this transient city -- and I actually thought that was always overstated partially because it overlooked a lot of people in the African-American community who had been here for generations, as well as people from other groups that had been here for generations. So I thought it was overstated. But, nonetheless, it struck me about -- I was about to say 12 or 15 years ago, I was walking along. It was a summer day, and I noticed someone with a D.C. flag tattoo on his calf.

MOELLER JR.And I thought, wow, this is a kind of remote remarkable thing because people didn't tend to have a sense of identity and pride in the community the way they did in some other parts of the -- in other cities around the country. And then, I don't know, maybe a year went by, and I saw another one. And then a few months went by, and I saw another one. Now, I could probably think of -- easily think of 40 or 50 people I know or see all the time who have D.C. flag tattoos.

MOELLER JR.It's, for me, a sign of the growing sense of pride and community identity that we have, and that shows up in the resurgence of interest in development and living in the city. The -- you know, even despite the economic difficulties the last few years, property values in the city have remained pretty high because there's real demand for people to be back in the middle of things, which, I think, is great and also very good for us in the long term because cities are ultimately more sustainable than suburban and exurban development.

NNAMDIIf you have already called, stay on the line. We'll try to get to your calls. We're taking a short break. If the lines are busy, shoot us an email to kojo@wamu.org or go to our website, kojoshow.org. Ask a question and -- or make a comment there. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIOur guest is G. Martin Moeller Jr., senior vice president and curator at the National Building Museum and former executive director of the D.C. chapter of the American Institute of Architects, AIA. Martin Moeller is the author of the fifth edition of the "AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C." Martin Moeller, including private homes in a guidebook is a tricky proposition, and you lament that row houses are underrepresented in the book. What is unique about what may ultimately be D.C. signature building style?

MOELLER JR.I do think that row houses are fascinating in general because they create such great neighborhoods. They have a -- just a great texture, a great scale. And there's also something about that idea of the attached row dwelling. It's separate, it's your own house, but you obviously have a sense of closeness to your neighbors. And I think that tends to create very neighborly areas. And -- but, you know, in a guidebook like this, obviously, look, you're going to be focusing on the White House and the monuments and memorials and major commercial buildings and some really key houses.

MOELLER JR.You just can't cover everything. And what that means, unfortunately, is that a lot of residential buildings -- and, in particular, row houses of interest -- get left out. It would be hard to pick representative ones. There are certainly ones that are in there either because of their location. It makes sense in terms of an existing tour, and it would be a great place to stop and point out something about the history of that building type. Others are there just because they're so important, but a lot of great ones are left out.

NNAMDII lived in a row house in Shaw for 20 years and, frankly, loved it. It's where I raised my children. It's my understanding that Shaw and Logan Circle are some of your favorite parts of the city. What buildings of note should people take notice of in those neighborhoods?

MOELLER JR.Well, right now, just -- the most fascinating thing is to walk down 14th Street and U Street and look at all the construction. And, again, an area -- in an era in which there's not a lot getting built in a lot of places around the country, 14th Street is booming. Logan Circle itself is this spectacular -- late 19th century through the present, really -- collection of some of the grandest houses in Washington, D.C., one in 2 Logan Circle, the big house there that a lot of people know, just this spectacular Second Empire mansion with an interesting story in its own right.

MOELLER JR.But also, you know, particularly getting up into Shaw and up on U Street, there are really interesting glimpses of African-American history, again, shown in architecture. The True Reformer Building is interesting. I think it's a -- an elegant, if understated, building. But it becomes more fascinating when you realize that it was the first major building, not -- you know, other than a -- an individual house or something like that, but the first building of any scale that was financed, designed, built entirely by African-Americans anywhere in the country, as far as we know.

MOELLER JR.And that's extraordinary. And the fact that it's also associated with great historical events like Duke Ellington playing his first concert there for 5 cents a pop, you know, is just -- it really does reveal a lot of the history of that neighborhood.

NNAMDIWell, speaking of 14th Street, Vaslav (sp?) writes, "Can you talk about this phenomenon that I call facade lobotomy, where they save the old historic facade and then put up a huge new building behind it? On 14th near U Street, there are many examples springing up."

MOELLER JR.Yeah. That was something that was very common in the, I guess, really, '80s, '90s, in particular these jobs where you would preserve just the first couple of feet of a historic building and then build an entirely new thing behind it. That's going to be much less common now. I think the historic preservation authorities, the different design review agencies are looking much less favorably upon those projects that really just preserve the front of the building.

MOELLER JR.And there's really now an expectation -- there are still going to be things where you have large additions to existing buildings, but, more likely, you're going to be finding cases where the -- a larger chunk of the existing building is preserved. You get a sense of the scale and character of that whole building, maybe then with a larger setback before you get the new building coming up.

MOELLER JR.And, you know, I think it -- that's the sort of thing that can be done well or can be done poorly. And when it's done well, it's a great way to preserve the texture of the street while also getting greater density and allowing for new facilities to come in. So it can be a win-win situation when it's handled well.

NNAMDIHere's Javier in Reston, Va. Javier, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

JAVIERHi, Kojo. Thank you so much for your wonderful show. I listen to it as often as I can.

NNAMDIYou're welcome.

JAVIERMy question is about -- I don't know, you know, how sensitive it is or whatever, but at one point there was going to be a Frank Gehry addition to the Corcoran that didn't happen. Can you shed any light on that? And I have another question about the bridge on Rock Creek Park, where you can see those Native American head details if you're driving from, like, the mall into Rock Creek Park. I don't know anything about that, and that's what my question is about. I'll take my answer off the air.

NNAMDIAll right. Thank you for your call, Javier.

MOELLER JR.I'll answer the second one first. That is a great bridge that was done by Glenn Brown and Bedford Brown and does indeed include heads, these images meant to -- you know, that were inspired by Native American characters. And it's actually one of the entries in the book, so you can hear -- read a little bit about that.

NNAMDIWhat's it called?

MOELLER JR.That's -- you know, I think what he's referring to is the Buffalo Bridge...

NNAMDIOh, OK.

MOELLER JR....which is the one that has this great elegant curve to it. It's going across Rock Creek, and it's, you know, these arches, but also a curve in plan as it goes across. It's really a very elegant structure and has great details on it. A lot of the bridges across Rock Creek Park are really beautiful, as a matter of fact. Some of the ones that are more from the '20s and '30s get a little bit simpler, but just beautifully proportioned and, again, often really wonderful works of sculpture worked into the designs of the buildings. Back to the Corcoran.

NNAMDIThe Corcoran.

MOELLER JR.Yeah. Indeed, the Corcoran did run a limited competition in 1999 that Frank Gehry won. Many people forget that there were other entries in there. In fact, a couple of architects who went on to become much more famous were also in the running. Daniel Libeskind, who designed the master plan...

NNAMDIA lot of our better-known buildings seem to have been the result of competitions.

MOELLER JR.That's true, yeah. And I think that that's perhaps something that is -- it's not entirely because this is Washington, D.C., but maybe there's a greater tendency to have competitions because that seems kind of more democratic, a good way to drum up some interesting projects and maybe even to give opportunities to young unrecognized architects who win these competitions. And that's happened a number of times in the history of the city. The Pan-American Union, now Organization of American States, was the result of a competition.

MOELLER JR.And that was Paul Cret who won that, actually, at a time when he was not so well-known. But back to the Corcoran, yeah, it was -- you know, it was a question of money and also the internal politics of the institution that the Gehry design was not executed. I think that project was interesting. My favorite of the winners was -- or of the competition entries was actually the one by Santiago Calatrava, who now is designing the great transportation center at Ground Zero in New York and has done many spectacular buildings.

MOELLER JR.His was, I think, in a way, simultaneously the most contextual and yet also the most radical. It somehow fit very well with the architecture of the existing building, and yet I think it would have been a really stunning addition to the city. But, yeah, so now the -- none of those is going forward, of course, and the Corcoran instead is working on -- working with the developer to build an office building next door as an income-producing element for the Corcoran.

NNAMDIBuildings with a lot of curves tend to stand out especially in a city with lots of sharp angles. How did the Pan-American Health Organization building, the PAHO building get its shape?

MOELLER JR.It's another competition entry, a competition winner. It was a Uruguayan architect actually, Roman Fresnedo Siri, who won that competition. He was very much in the spirit of many Latin-American architects of that day, heavily influenced by Le Corbusier. And this is the post-war Le Corbusier, the Swiss-French architect who really began to move into various sculptural forms. His chapel at Ronchamp is perhaps the most famous of those very sculptural buildings, almost look as if they were created out of clay rather than the typical building materials.

MOELLER JR.This one isn't quite so fluid, but it does have this great curving element behind it, the main office building and then a cylinder in the front that was designed to house an assembly chamber and other elements. In a way, it's kind of a play on the same sort of thing you see at the U.N. headquarters in New York where you have the different elements pulled out and expressed architecturally.

MOELLER JR.In this case, the assembly's base expressed as its own cylinder, which is now just being redone by the local firm KCCT and then the swooping arc of the office building behind it. It's another one that is now probably a little out of fashion. It's less urbane and less urban friendly than it might be. It does create some sort of leftover spaces there, but it has a simple dignity to it, I think, that structure, that complex that will probably come back into favor eventually.

NNAMDIHere is Jim in Bethesda, Md. Jim, your turn.

JIMHi, Kojo. Thanks for the show. You know, I just want to make the point how the passage of time really helps our appreciation for history, and I think one of the best examples is if you take an old city like Baltimore and you walk up Charles Street and just look at the rooftops from downtown all the way to Johns Hopkins. You see not just different neighborhoods but the influences of just different ethnicities just within one block of each other.

JIMAnd so the point about the gentleman's comment on the museum, you know, today, it might look out of place, but in 20 or 30 years, you know, there might be more people that appreciate that building than the other ones around it. And a final comment, I think if the Martians do finally take over, the first building they'll get rid of is the FBI building.

NNAMDIIt pops up in every conversation.

MOELLER JR.Yeah. Baltimore is a great city architecturally. It's really underappreciated. And it really has -- frankly, it's got a lot of stuff, just some really spectacular buildings, more so than Washington does. Baltimore had money in a variety of periods that tend to be really good periods for architecture in times when Washington wasn't in quite some flush. But still, Washington has got a lot of great stuff. And yeah, you're right. As I said earlier, my own opinions about architecture change over the course of a few years. Certainly, societally, we look at things very differently.

MOELLER JR.We have to remember that there was a period when the typical American looked at Victorian architecture and thought, yuck, I mean, this is awful, ornate stuff. It's all dark and cramped. Why would anybody want that? And now, of course, people are killing themselves to get in to these great Victorian row houses and, you know, return them to their glory, so things do change.

NNAMDIYou mentioned money. And it sounds counterintuitive, but you say the recession may have helped foster a bit of a renaissance among local architects and the designs were seeing now. How so?

MOELLER JR.Often, a recession is important in the development of architecture because it gives birth to young new firms. You know, the unfortunate reason that people are having to leave existing firms, they're getting laid off, there's not enough work, and they kind of have no choice but to go out and start their own firms. And it's tried and true, not just this time but in recessions past, that a lot of really interesting and talented architects got their own start, their own firms start during a recession.

MOELLER JR.And I think there are a lot of really talented architects locally. You know, we tend to focus on the really big high-visibility projects. Sometimes those are done by big firms, sometimes out-of-town firms. There are some great big firms in Washington, but there are also a lot of great sole practitioners and smaller firms that are doing really innovative work.

MOELLER JR.And, frankly, I don't think it gets recognized as fully as they should in the national and international architectural press. I think there's still a little bit of a sense of Washington as a more conservative and fuddy-duddy place than it really is architecturally. There's a lot of fascinating stuff going on here.

NNAMDIHere's Olivia in Washington, D.C. Olivia, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

OLIVIAHi. Thank you for taking my call. Yes, I went to a conference once on American architecture, and someone from one of the Scandinavian countries stood up and said, when someone in our country puts up a very fab building that is objected to by the community, we have a tradition of putting up a billboard next to that building that says that it -- we have a tradition called name and shame, and they put up a billboard in the neighborhood that says, this building was designed by. And I just wondered if you would comment on that tradition, which I think is fantastic.

NNAMDIName and shame, Martin Moeller.

MOELLER JR.I've never heard that particular thing. I actually have long liked the idea of architects signing their buildings. You know, I think that it'd be great to have that sense of connection and, you know, some -- a better appreciation of who's behind this, whether you like it or not. I'm often fascinated by going to a movie, and at the end of a movie, it can be the most mundane movie. And you look at the credits, and there are zillions of people. You know, the caterer who brought it sandwiches one afternoon is credited.

MOELLER JR.But there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people behind the construction, the designing construction of the building and, often as not, you never see a single one of those names. And it would be great to at least have a better sense of who's responsible, as I say, for better or for worse. It cuts both ways. But I think it would be a great way for people to take more pride in authorship and also for everybody to be able to recognize who's behind these works.

NNAMDIOlivia, thank you for your call. We're running out of time, but if you can answer this briefly, Beth in Silver Spring would like to know what you think of the new NPR building on North Capitol Street.

MOELLER JR.I've had a few glimpses of it. It looks like it's going to be interesting. I haven't had a chance to talk to the architects yet, and I expect that I'll probably be writing about it, as a matter of fact, before too long. But, yeah, it looks kind of promising. It's very exciting. Again, a lot of what's going on in the NoMa area there and really creating a sense of place where before it was kind of a hodgepodge.

NNAMDIG. Martin Moeller Jr. is senior vice president and curator at the National Building Museum. He's former executive director of the D.C. chapter of the American Institute of Architects, AIA. He's the author of the fifth edition of the "AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C." Martin Moeller, thank you for joining us.

MOELLER JR.Thank you so much.

NNAMDIAnd thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.