ON INAUGURATION DAY 2009, as the new president of the United States paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue from the U.S. Capitol, the Newseum was brimming full of people and on prominent display for the entire world. Having opened the previous year to record crowds and publicity, Washington's newest monument was envisioned from the beginning to be an iconic building and highly symbolic of the role of the First Amendment to the Constitution and a free press in our society. The original Newseum operated from 1997 to 2002 in a much smaller facility in Arlington, Va. In 2000, The Freedom Forum, a non-partisan foundation dedicated to free press, free speech, and free spirit for all people, purchased the last available site along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington to be its new location. The Forum engaged Polshek Partnership Architects, New York, to design a new building to house its expanded and more technologically advanced Newseum. Ralph Appelbaum Associates, New York, was selected to design the highly interactive state-of-the-art exhibit galleries, which educate the public about the role of the press and free speech.
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