This building opened its doors to the public in 1962. We remain open to the public today. And now we are building an open-access library, where PubMed Central’s 4.1 million articles are used by over one million people every day.
About the NLM Mezzanine
Perched over the southeast corner of the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland, the National Library of Medicine building is an impressive limestone structure topped with a large gull wing dome (a four-quadrant hyperbolic paraboloid shell made of reinforced concrete, to be precise).
Just below that dome, the mezzanine—the second floor of the building—serves as the central hub for NLM. It is where the NLM leadership team keeps its offices and where decisions are made about products and services used by millions of people in the U.S. and abroad. It is also the place from which Dr. Brennan’s musings originate.
Just below that dome, the mezzanine—the second floor of the building—serves as the central hub for NLM. It is where the NLM leadership team keeps its offices and where decisions are made about products and services used by millions of people in the U.S. and abroad. It is also the place from which Dr. Brennan’s musings originate.
New Medical Library ‘Roof’ Has Uniqueness and Zing
By John M. Blamphin
The pagoda-like roof of the new National Library of Medicine—that unusual building nearing completion on the southeast corner of the NIH reservation—has increasingly become the subject of a question often asked of modern art: “What is it?”
The Record, as curious as any, assigned this reporter to find out. The assignment led to interviews with engineers in the Research Facilities Planning Branch of DRS, in which they explained “the roof” in language a layman might understand.