WASHINGTON DC — On Friday Johns Hopkins University announced they are starting to make moves around Washington DC.
They are moving their graduate programs to a new home right in the heart of our nations capital, at the Newseum building on Pennsylvania Ave. They said they plan on transforming the building into a modern, world-class interdisciplinary academic facility anchored by JHU's School of Advanced International Studies.
"The renovated building will provide opportunities for every academic division of the university to pursue research and educational activities in Washington—complementing and drawing on those conducted on our flagship Baltimore campuses and deepening our connections to debates over national and global policy." said Ronald J. Daniels, the President of Johns Hopkins University.
The building will move all of the DC based graduate programs into a single campus, a move the university says will create new opportunities for interaction and collaboration among those pursuing advanced degrees in Washington at SAIS, the Carey Business School, the School of Nursing, and the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences' Advanced Academic Programs.
"With the acquisition and renovation of the Newseum, we will have an unparalleled opportunity to bring all of our current D.C.-based Johns Hopkins graduate programs together in a single, landmark, state-of-the-art building," Daniels wrote in a message to the university community on Friday.
The Newseum moved into the building at 555 Pennsylvania Ave in 2008 and put it up for sale in early 2018. Hopkins says they will buy the building for $372.5-million.
"It's a huge facility, and we do intend to make some major changes," said Lee Coyle, the university's senior director of planning and architecture. "Considerable interior modifications will be required to repurpose the structure from its current use as a museum into a venue that supports JHU's higher education mission in D.C. today and for decades to come.
The Newseum will stay open through 2019 an an initial estimate by JHU facilites and Real Estate says that construction could begin as soon as fall 2020 and could take up to two and a half years to complete.
