The massive First Amendment tablet on the face of the former Newseum has found a new home at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
“It was really important we found a publicly accessible place for the tablets to go on display,” says Jonathan Thompson, vice president and chief outreach officer of Freedom Forum, which operated the journalism-focused museum.
The 50-ton, 74-foot-tall work of marble is made up of several pieces, and will be dissembled in phases over the next few weeks. Once fully dismantled, the tablet will be placed in temporary storage until it is mounted at the history museum later this year—a gift from Freedom Forum. The slab is one of the last vestiges of the building’s identity as a space dedicated to the role of journalism and journalists; in 2019, the edifice was bought by Johns Hopkins for $372.5 million.
Daniella Byck joined Washingtonian in 2022. She was previously with Outside Magazine and lives in Northeast DC.
