1775
Liberty Drive

The National Museum of the United States Army opened on November 11, 2020 — Veterans Day — on a 84-acre campus on the western edge of the Richmond Highway Place Richmond Highway ~8,656-acre U.S. Army installation along Richmond Highway in Fairfax County, established 1917 as Camp A.A. Humphreys, renamed Fort Humphreys 1922, renamed Fort Belvoir 1935 in … installation. The 185,000-square-foot museum is the first national museum dedicated to the full sweep of U.S. Army history from the Continental Army’s June 1775 founding through present-day operations. ^[1] Source 1 National Museum of the U.S. Army — official site Website

The address — 1775 Liberty Drive — is a deliberate reference to the U.S. Army’s founding year. The museum is operated by the nonprofit Army Historical Foundation under a long-term agreement with the U.S. Army; admission is free.

Galleries

The museum’s galleries cover the Army’s history across seven chronological “Fighting for the Nation” exhibits — the Founding the Nation gallery (Revolutionary War through 1812), the Preserving the Nation gallery (Civil War), the Nation Overseas gallery (Spanish-American War through World War I), the Global War gallery (World War II through Korea), the Cold War gallery (1945–89), the Changing World gallery (post-Cold-War operations through Iraq and Afghanistan), and a contemporary “Soldier’s Stories” rotating exhibit. The collection includes more than 1,400 artifacts, vehicles, and large-scale weapons systems.

Architecture and siting

The building was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) in a contemporary institutional vocabulary — stainless-steel-clad pavilion massing organized around a central rotunda — sited on the western edge of the Fort Belvoir parcel where the Fairfax County Parkway meets the installation’s open-access civilian-visitor sector. The siting allows public access without requiring entry through the secured Fort Belvoir gates.