Also in 2003, the Heye Center will open a $3 million education center in a 6,400-square-foot space under the grand rotunda.

The design's focal point is a brightly lighted grand rotunda that dominates the intersection of Center Street and Park Place.

The statesman, plutocrats and artists arrayed under the vast, shallow dome of the grand rotunda that follows are all immediately recognizable, although some of the likenesses are, for reasons impossible to define, a little off.

The museum's grand rotunda will be repainted in one of her hallmark vibrant shades.

A grand rotunda, reminiscent of Madison Square Garden, has a retro-1950's decor, a clacking notice board like a train station, Oscar Robertson's jersey, cut-down nets, scratched and shiny trophies and yellowed newspaper clippings.

The neo-Classical exterior has been declared a landmark, as has part of the interior, with its grand, skylighted five-story rotunda, granite columns, ornate cage elevator and high-ceilinged, spacious rooms.

Designed in 1900 by Cass Gilbert, it had been empty since the mid-1970s when Mr. Kuhn began restoring its elaborate facade and grand, elliptical rotunda and reconfiguring its interior as a museum.

Emotional issues, like what to do about carriage horses, bring floods of people through the grand rotunda.

We speak not of the gold ceilings and grand rotunda of what was once a bank, but of the large canopy bed that had been set up in its center.

A grand, columned rotunda marks the center, orienting the visitor and serving as a nobly scaled beginning.