When was pentagon built

A member of the Commission argued to Roosevelt that not only was the building ugly, but that it would make a huge bombing target. In the end, the President said he preferred the shape for its uniqueness, and gave it the go-ahead.

In January of , after 17 months of construction, the Pentagon was completed. With about 6. It has shrunk considerably since the end of the Cold War, she says.

The Trump Administration in its budget blueprint , however, plans to grow the Defense Department. Initially, the building had just 13 elevators, and they were reserved only for freight. Humans wishing to ascend or descend used concrete ramps, installed to save on precious wartime steel.

The Pentagon now has 70 modern elevators, bringing the building into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, says Mahan. The damage—stretching into three of the outer concentric circles—necessitated the rebuilding of some , square feet of space. The first workers returned to the new offices in August During World War II, messengers traveled the hallways by bike or roller skates.

In the s, the Secretary of the Air Force, Eugene Zuckert , was struck—not fatally—by a vehicle in a hallway intersection near his office, Mahan says. Today electric scooters are available only for those who cannot get around on their own. The building renovation was sorely needed, says Mahan.

When the overhaul began in , the Pentagon did not meet fire, safety or health codes, had no sprinklers, and because of outdated electrical systems, experienced to power outages daily. By the beginning of the next year, that number was expected to reach 30, By that time, however, the building was deemed far too small.

In , it would become the headquarters of the U. State Department. General George C. A building this large could not fit in Washington, so Somervell chose a site across the Potomac River in Virginia , just east of Arlington National Cemetery.

Known as Arlington Farm, the plot of land was once part of the grand estate of the Confederate general Robert E.

Edwin Bergstrom, drew up the design for the building, he was forced by the position of existing roads at the site to use an asymmetrical five-sided shape. Somervell had determined that the building could be no more than four stories high, both to accommodate a wartime scarcity of steel and to prevent blocking the views of Washington, D. The three-story building would be completed, he claimed, within a year, with , square feet ready for use within six months. The House of Representatives passed the necessary legislation for the project on July 28, ; the Senate on August By that time, however, controversy had arisen over the scale of the building, as well as its location so close to the hallowed ground of Arlington National Cemetery.

Moved by the protests, Roosevelt declared that the project should be moved to a site three-quarters of a mile south of Arlington Farm, adjacent to Washington-Hoover Airport. He also directed Somervell to reduce the size of the building to no more than 2. A pentagonal shape meant shorter interior distances than with a rectangle, while the straight sides were easier to build than a circular building; the shape also recalled traditional fortress constructions, as well as Civil War-era battlements.

Construction on the Pentagon began without fanfare on September 11, By early December , 3, workers were on the site during the day, but construction was still behind schedule. Groves, who would later be chosen to head the Manhattan Project and build the atomic bomb. The already-tight construction schedule was moved up, and by March , more than 10, people were working on the site. At one particularly intense stage, 15, people were working three shifts, 24 hours a day, with floodlights illuminating the site at night.

Its massive bulk—6. Many wondered what to do with the Pentagon after the war ended, as the common view was that the War Department would have no need for a building so large in peacetime. Some said it should be converted into a hospital, a university or headquarters for the Veterans Administration, but the Army had no intention of giving it up. In September , Congress passed the National Security Act , ushering in the single biggest military reorganization in American history.

To provide a strong center for the military establishment, President Harry Truman wanted the Navy, Army and Air Force all to be headquartered in the Pentagon. Exactly 60 years before the September attacks, on September 11, , ground was broken in Arlington Country, Virginia, for a huge new building to house the War Department, forerunner of today's Department of Defense. The department was then operating from 17 separate buildings in Washington.

At certain periods 13, people worked on the project. Originally, plans called for three floors, but as the military prepared for war after the attack on Pearl Harbor , two more floors were added. To conserve steel, concrete ramps were used in place of elevators and the outside walls were made of reinforced concrete.

The Pentagon was built in "stripped classical" style, a variation of Greek and Roman classicism popular in the middle of the 20th century and often used for government buildings. On January 15, , just 16 months after construction began, the Pentagon was completed. In April, occupants began moving in. Since five roads surrounded the site, builders chose a five-sided building, which is how the Pentagon got its name.

The building consists of five concentric rings connected by ten corridors that run, like spokes, from the inner ring to the outer. Interior courtyards that provide light separate the rings. The corridors are a total of There are 3,, square feet for offices, concessions, and storage.

The five-sided center courtyard covers five acres. A shopping concourse, numerous snack bars, cafeterias, dining rooms, banks, a subway station, and a bus platform make the Pentagon "a city within a city.