The Newseum, the largest museum dedicated to journalism, opened today in the Washington, D.C. Designed by New York based Polshek Partnership Architects with Exhibit Designer Ralph Appelbaum Associates, the modern glass and steel building occupies a prominent site on Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and the White House. The $450 million building is conceived as a three dimensional newspaper. The seven storey, 640,000 square foot building provides 250,000 square feet of space for the Museum, a conference center and offices for the Freedom Forum, 136 units of housing, and space for commercial and retail facilities, including a public restaurant. Outside the museum, on public display, is a rotating daily exhibit of the front pages of more than 450 newspapers from around the world. About the design architect James Polshek said, “It is fitting that a museum dedicated to journalism and free speech should itself be an open, visually and intellectually accessible stage for the public to learn about and interact with the process of news making.”