National Museum of the Marine Corps

My Visit to the National Museum of the Marine Corps

By:Lucas Shubert

One stop my family and I made while site-seeing over Thanksgiving break was the Marine Corps Museum near Stafford Virginia. It was a very interesting experience from parking lot to exhibit. The outer form of the building is unique and structurally honest. Most of the building formed a circular bunker under a built-up rampart. The center of the circle was a conical glass shape with a massive mast jutting through the center into the sky. The march toward the entry of the building, flanked by two-story precast retaining walls, was somewhat ominous as well as monumental in scale.

On the grounds around the museum proper exists a chapel, several statues and miles of wooded paths. The chapel seemed to be a favorite place for marines to share their nuptials, after learning that it was booked constantly throughout the year. It was a simple wood and glass structure placed on top of a small wooded hill overlooking the museum.

Once inside the museum, after passing through the metal detectors approaching the front desk, I was greeted by a huge several story volume as the ceiling opened up. Large exhibits were present in this central lobby- three on the floor and four airplanes hanging above.

The layout of the primary exhibit area was a somewhat linear path around the circumference of the central circle. It was chronologically ordered, beginning with the conception of the Marine Corps and ending with present day conditions. I’ve never been to a museum with so much information presented in the forms of models, images, and text. It seemed like someone could spend an entire day in just one section of the museum absorbing all the information.

After spending a couple hours walking through the exhibit path back to the center lobby, we rode the elevator up to the second floor to get a better look at the airplanes hanging within the cone. A clerestory hallway lead around the circle to a restaurant and tavern. At this point I noticed that a lot of people were confused about how to get back down to the first floor (myself included). It turned out we had to walk all the way back around the circle to the stairway where we came up. That part seemed like poor planning. After visiting the gift shop near the entrance, we left the museum.