The Rewrite Man

Overby was smitten, by the location, by the symbolism, by the challenge.

"Just the idea of being able to locate this museum right on Pennsylvania Avenue . . . it was location, location, location," Overby says.

The list of obstacles was long. He had the team prepare an unsolicited offer, a package he thought the city couldn't refuse.

The Newseum team thought $50 million was a good offer to the city, but they also wondered if foreign investors would be eyeing the site. They decided on $75 million. But then Overby decided to put another $25 million (to be used for affordable housing) on the table. "I am a strong believer in the round-figure number. I thought the number would take everyone's breath away," he says. Zambo remembers being flabbergasted by Overby's plan. "Our jaws dropped," she says.

The $100 million not only chased away any competition, it allowed the Newseum to set a deadline for the city's response.

Overby also studied how major projects often attract critics, especially when the city is trying to build a livable downtown. He enlisted advocates. One of the first was Terry Lynch, executive director of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations. "He's very adept and he does it in a way that has inclusivity and consensus, rather than leadership that rams something through," Lynch explains.

Weeks before the deal was final, Overby and Prichard went to a reception at the Canadian Embassy, their new next-door neighbor. They went up on the balcony for the first time to see the view they would someday share.

"The sun goes down, the light goes on in the Capitol, and a full harvest moon rose behind the Capitol dome," Prichard recalls. "Charles says, 'We didn't pay enough.' "

Now Overby, a thin Mississippian with Southern manners, talks a lot about how collaborative the creation has been. About 300 people -- a gaggle of writers, an army of builders, entertainment producers and technicians -- have pulled together the new museum. They closed the first in March 2002 and took time to get this one exactly as they wanted. They had a big checkbook. This is a museum with a $450 million price tag.

Overby, 61, has been a constant presence with both Newseum 1 and Newseum 2. The first one was ordered up by Neuharth. Jerry W. Friedheim, the former president of the American Newspaper Publishers Association and executive director of the first Newseum, came up with the name.

When the city gave its final approval for the deal, Overby was in Ghana, where the Freedom Forum was hosting a debate for the country's presidential candidates. His lawyer called and said "it was a done deal." Overby ran into the hotel lobby, gave his assistant a congratulatory kiss, and then his team toasted with champagne.

Overby recalls the steps required to turn a hole in the ground into the most important addition to Pennsylvania Avenue since the Reagan Building. Overby's office on the ninth floor has a sweeping view of the Capitol dome, the roof of the National Gallery of Art, the clock tower of the Smithsonian Castle and the nation's other cultural sentries along the Mall. The upper tier of Nationals Park beckons in the distance, as do the ever-present cranes of gussied-up Washington. If he turns just so, he can look toward the Senate press gallery, where he worked for three Southern newspapers after running up and down the hallways as a junior aide to John Stennis, the late senator from Mississippi.