National Air and Space Museum, District of Columbia

The 1970s saw two new Smithsonian museums on the Mall, the nation’s modern and contemporary art museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Park, and the Air and Space Museum, conceived to display aircraft soon after World War Two, but not built until 1976. Displays in the Air and Space museum are battle-ready, for the throngs of school kids that course through the cavernous interior. Though full-sized aircraft, space capsules, and satellites are featured, the museum houses many more full-sized aircraft in the Udvar-Hazy Center, a 760,000 square foot facility at Dulles airport, where, among 200 other aircraft, the Enola Gay is on display, in one piece.