USHMM Shapell Collections Conservation & Research Center
USHMM Shapell Collections Conservation & Research Center | Bowie, MD
The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections Conservation and Research Center in Bowie, Maryland is a two-story storage and research facility that house documents and artifacts held by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The new 120,000-sq.-ft.conservation center replaced a smaller previous facility.
History
The Shapell Center serves as a hub of activity supporting acquisitions, education, and scholarship to ensure that future generations will continue to honor the memory of Holocaust victims. The collection includes more than 100 million pages of documents, 110,000 photographs and images, 1,000 hours of film footage and more than 16,000 oral testimonies of survivors-witnesses and perpetrators.
Details
The state-of-the-art facility includes sophisticated humidity and temperature controlled program areas, specialized conversation laboratory space, preservation equipment, and eight storage vaults. The heating, cooling and humidity systems all have duplicate backup systems in case of failure. The east wing includes a lobby with decorative staircase, a large conference room, wood shop, metal shop, reading room, offices, and kitchen and seating space.
Features
Sustainable attributes include sun-shaded windows, LED-lighting, high performance concrete panels (HPCC) on exterior walls and roof with high efficiency HVAC equipment.