6/1/2004
By Darin Painter
Introducing the newly renovated exhibit areas at the National Archives.
“What is past is prologue.” That inscription appears on a large, gray statue that stands near the entrance to the research area of the National Archives building in Washington, DC. Family history buffs and others walking on Pennsylvania Avenue can read the phrase and consider the significance of America's early days.
If the statue stood at the opposite end of the archives — the newly renovated exhibition side facing Constitution Avenue — perhaps the inscription could include this lighthearted line: “What used to be inside this place is now history.”
Gone are the helium-filled, slowly deteriorating glass and metal cases that secured the original Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights,and the first and last pages of the Constitution. Those founding documents of democracy, known collectively as the Charters of Freedom, were displayed in the archives' Rotunda from 1952 until a major renovation began July 5, 2001. During the renovation, curators removed the Charters of Freedom from their original encasements and put them in more preservation-friendly displays.