The National Aquarium, Washington, D.C., was an aquarium in Washington D.C. It was located in the Herbert C. Hoover Building (owned by the General Services Administration), which is bounded by 14th Street NW on the east, 15th Street NW on the west, Pennsylvania Avenue NW on the north, and Constitution Avenue NW on the south. It was the first free and public aquarium in the United States. The National Aquarium in Washington, D.C. was smaller than its counterpart in Baltimore, Maryland — an also known as the National Aquarium, although independent until the two aquariums signed an alliance in 2003 — with the experience taking around 45 minutes. It closed on September 30, 2013, after 140 years, the longest continuously operating aquarium in the United States at the time. History The National Aquarium was established in 1873 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts under the auspices of the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries by Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries Spencer Baird. It displayed 180 species of fish, reptiles, and other aquatic animals. In 1878, General Orville E. Babcock, the Superintendent of Public Buildings and Grounds in Washington, D.C. suggested a public aquarium in D.C. As a result, Spencer Baird's Fish Commission was given of land. Because of this, the National Aquarium moved to the Washington Monument in 1878 and consisted of holding ponds known as "Babcock Lakes." During the 1880s, the aquarium moved again into a building called Central Station near the site of today's National Air and Space Museum so that it could better serve its main purpose of being a hatching station for the Fish Commission. The Fish Commission was incorporated into the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903 and renamed the United States Bureau of Fisheries, and Secretary of Commerce and Labor George B. Cortelyou called for "...a national aquarium of such size and architectural excellence that it will be a credit to the nation." The Bureau of Fisheries became a part of the Department of Commerce in 1913, and when the Commerce Department building was completed in 1932, the National Aquarium moved to the lower level of the building. The Bureau of Fisheries moved to the Department of the Interior in 1939 and merged with the Interior Department's Bureau of Biological Survey (previously the Department of Agriculture's Division of Economic Ornithology and Mammalogy, among other names) in 1940 to form the Fish and Wildlife Service,