Who built the Smithsonian? The first of the Smithsonian’s many museums was built by the US government and was designed by an architect called James Renwick Jr. However, the idea for the institution and the money came from a British scientist called James Smithson, who lived from 1765 to 1829.
The Smithsonian is the world’s largest museum complex because it spans 21 museums, 21 libraries, 14 educational centers, and a zoo. The museums house over 157 million items, only 2% of which are ever on display at any one time. It is not the largest single museum by floor space, that honor goes to the Louvre, but combined, the Smithsonian Institute dwarfs any of the other largest museums. They have the original Wright Flyer and the Apollo moon capsule. They have Dorothy’s red shoes from the Wizard of Oz and a complete Tyrannosaurus rex. They also have an inverted Jenny stamp from 1918, which is one of the rarest stamps in the world. To visit all of the exhibits in all of their museums would take weeks, possibly even months. Almost all of the museums are free to enter, and the institute’s operating costs come from the federal government and the institute’s substantial endowment. It costs about $1.3 billion a year to run all of the museums.
The first Smithsonian museum opened in Washington D.C. in 1855. It is now used as the Smithsonian Institute’s administration center. It had taken almost twenty-five years from receiving the funds to opening the museum. Where did the money come from and what exactly happened?
In 1829, a British scientist called James Smithson died. He was actually in Italy when he died. Smithson had no wife and children, so when he died, he bequeathed all of his wealth to his nephew, Henry James Hungerford. However, he added a clause to the will. If his nephew died without children, which he did, the money would then go to “the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” Henry Hungerford was born in 1808 and Smithson probably expected he would go on to get married and have children, but Hungerford ended up dying in 1835 at the age of 27. If he hadn’t died, the Smithsonian would not exist, and I would not be writing this. However, he did die, and the United States government found itself the recipient of $500,000. The money was in gold sovereigns that an American diplomat had to go and pick up in 105 sacks. In 2025, that is $18,049,488. That doesn’t sound like a huge amount, but to put it in perspective, it was 1.6% of the GDP of the US at the time. Once the money arrived in the US, it took nearly a decade for Congress to decide what to do with it. Some people were even against the idea of taking the money in the first place. They finally settled on the plan to form the Smithsonian Institution and President James Polk signed the legislation.
James Smithson was born in France in 1765. He was the illegitimate son of the 1st Duke of Northumberland, Hugh Smithson and Elizabeth Macie. His birth name was Jacques-Louis Macie. He moved to England early in his life and took his father’s name, Smithson, in 1800. He attended university at Oxford and became a chemist and mineralogist. As he was illegitimate, he couldn’t lay claim to his father’s title, so he set off on his own path. He carried out a lot of research and wrote many papers during his lifetime. He was admitted to the Royal Society. He made a few important discoveries. He had a mineral, a type of zinc carbonate, named after him. However, none of these discoveries would have made him any money. To this day, no one knows where he got his fortune from and why he donated it to the US government.
Smithson didn’t have any discoveries that would have made him any money, so he most likely inherited the majority of his fortune, but from which relative is unknown. His mother had land that he probably inherited, but it wasn’t anywhere near what he left in his will. His mother sold most of her property and spent most of her money before she died. Smithson may have reinvested it, making more money. However he got it, he had a sizable estate. But why did he donate it to the United States? He presumably wanted his name to live on, but he could very easily have founded a college in a university, or built something in Britain. He traveled a lot during his life, but he never once went to the United States and when he wrote his will, the United States was a very young nation. And this could be the reason why he chose the states. His father was a Duke and his mother was from an aristocratic family. Smithson was illegitimate, though, and could not inherit any of those titles. He obviously wanted to make sure his name lived on and he might have seen the US as both young enough to take the money, and small enough that the money would have an impact. He may also have seen it as revenge on the British system that wouldn’t let him inherit any titles. In his papers, he wrote, “On my father’s side I am a Northumberland, on my mother’s I am related to kings, but this avails me not.” This could be proof, although he wrote nothing else, so I guess we will never know. And this is what I learned today.
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Sources
https://siarchives.si.edu/history/featured-topics/smithson-smithsonian/who-was-james-smithson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithsonian_Institution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Smithson
https://siarchives.si.edu/history/tale-two-sisters/elizabeth-macie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithsonian_Institution_Building
https://www.si.edu/about/history
https://www.officialdata.org/us/inflation/1835?amount=500000
Photo by david hou: https://www.pexels.com/photo/smithsonian-institution-building-in-washington-dc-29704416/