The Pentagon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. For the geometric figure, see Pentagon. For other uses, see Pentagon (disambiguation).
| The Pentagon | |
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The Pentagon in January 2008
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Shown on District of Columbia map
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| General information | |
| Status | Complete |
| Architectural style | Classical revival |
| Location | Arlington County, Virginia |
| Address | 1400 Defense Pentagon, Arlington, VA |
| Coordinates | 38.87099°N 77.05596°W |
| Construction started | September 11, 1941 |
| Completed | January 15, 1943 |
| Cost | $ 83 million ($1.32 billion in 2014 dollars[1]) |
| Owner | United States Department of Defense |
| Height | |
| Height | 77 feet 3.5 inches (23.559 m) |
| Top floor | 5 |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 7 |
| Floor area | 6,636,360 square feet (620,000 m2) |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | George Bergstrom David J. Witmer |
| Main contractor | John McShain, Inc. |
| Other information | |
| Parking | 67 acres |
| References | |
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Pentagon Office Building Complex
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| Location | Jefferson Davis Hwy./VA 110 at I-395, Arlington, Virginia |
| Area | 41 acres (17 ha) |
| Built | 1941 |
| Architect | Bergstrom, G.E.; Witmer, D.J. |
| Architectural style | Classical Revival, Modern Movement, Stripped Classicism |
| Governing body | Federal |
| NRHP Reference # | 89000932[2] |
| VLR # | 000-0072 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | July 27, 1989 |
| Designated VLR | April 18, 1989[3] |
The Pentagon was designed by American architect George Bergstrom (1876–1955), and built by general contractor John McShain of Philadelphia. Ground was broken for construction on September 11, 1941, and the building was dedicated on January 15, 1943. General Brehon Somervell provided the major motive power behind the project;[4] Colonel Leslie Groves was responsible for overseeing the project for the U.S. Army.
The Pentagon is a large office building, with about 6,500,000 sq ft (600,000 m2), of which 3,700,000 sq ft (340,000 m2) are used as offices.[5][6] Approximately 28,000 military and civilian employees[6] and about 3,000 non-defense support personnel work in the Pentagon. It has five sides, five floors above ground, two basement levels, and five ring corridors per floor with a total of 17.5 mi (28.2 km)[6] of corridors. The Pentagon includes a five-acre (20,000 m2) central plaza, which is shaped like a pentagon and informally known as "ground zero," a nickname originating during the Cold War on the presumption that it would be targeted by the Soviet Union at the outbreak of nuclear war.[7]
On September 11, 2001, exactly sixty years after the building's groundbreaking, American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked and flown into the Western side of the building, killing 189 people.[8] It was the first significant foreign attack on the capital's government facilities since the Burning of Washington during the War of 1812.
Contents
History
Construction
Stimson told President Franklin D. Roosevelt in May 1941 that the War Department needed additional space. On July 17, 1941, a congressional hearing took place, organized by Virginia congressman Clifton Woodrum, regarding proposals for new War Department buildings. Woodrum pressed Brigadier General Eugene Reybold, who was representing the War Department at the hearing, for an "overall solution" to the department's "space problem" rather than building yet more temporary buildings. Reybold agreed to report back to the congressman within five days. The War Department called upon its construction chief, General Brehon Somervell, to come up with a plan.[12]
The site originally chosen was Arlington Farms which had a roughly pentagonal shape, so the building was planned accordingly as an irregular pentagon.[14] Concerned that the new building could obstruct the view of Washington, D.C. from Arlington Cemetery, President Roosevelt ended up selecting the Hoover Airport site instead.[15] The building retained its pentagonal layout because a major redesign at that stage would have been costly, and Roosevelt liked the design. Freed of the constraints of the asymmetric Arlington Farms site, it was modified into a regular pentagon.[16][17]
On July 28 Congress authorized funding for a new Department of War building in Arlington, which would house the entire department under one roof,[18] and President Roosevelt officially approved of the Hoover Airport site on September 2.[19] While the project went through the approval process in late July 1941, Somervell selected the contractors, including John McShain, Inc. of Philadelphia, which had built Washington National Airport in Arlington, the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, along with Wise Contracting Company, Inc. and Doyle and Russell, both from Virginia.[20] In addition to the Hoover Airport site and other government-owned land, construction of the Pentagon required an additional 287 acres (1.16 km2), which were acquired at a cost of $2.2 million.[21] The Hell's Bottom neighborhood, a slum with numerous pawnshops, factories, approximately 150 homes, and other buildings around Columbia Pike, was also cleared to make way for the Pentagon.[22] Later 300 acres (1.2 km2) of land were transferred to Arlington National Cemetery and to Fort Myer, leaving 280 acres (1.1 km2) for the Pentagon.[21]
Contracts totaling $31,100,000 were finalized with McShain and the other contractors on September 11, and ground was broken for the Pentagon the same day.[23] Among the design requirements, Somervell required the structural design to accommodate floor loads of up to 150 pounds per square foot, which was done in case the building became a records storage facility at some time after the end of the current war.[19] A minimal amount of steel was used as it was in short supply during World War II. Instead, the Pentagon was built as a reinforced concrete structure, using 680,000 tons of sand dredged from the Potomac River, and a lagoon was created beneath the Pentagon's river entrance.[24] To minimize steel, concrete ramps were built rather than installing elevators.[25][26] Indiana limestone was used for the building's façade.[27]
Construction of the Pentagon was done during the period of racial segregation in the United States. This had structural consequences to the design of the building. Under the supervision of colonel Leslie Groves, the decision to have separate eating and lavatory accommodations for whites and blacks was made and carried out. The dining areas for blacks were put in the basement and on each floor there were double toilet facilities separated by gender and race. These measures of segregation were said to have been done in compliance with the state of Virginia’s racial laws. The Pentagon as a result has twice the number of toilet facilities needed for a building of its size.[30][31]
President Roosevelt had made an order ending such racial discrimination in the U.S. military in June 1941. When the President visited the Pentagon before its dedication, he questioned Groves regarding the number of washrooms and ordered him to remove the “Whites Only” signs. Until 1965 the Pentagon was the only building in Virginia where segregation laws were not enforced.[31]
The soil conditions of the Pentagon site, located on the Potomac River floodplain, presented challenges to engineers, as did the varying elevations across the site, which ranged from 10–40 ft (3.0–12.2 m) above sea level. Two retaining walls were built to compensate for the elevation variations, and cast-in-place (Franki) piles were used to deal with the soil conditions.[32] Construction of the Pentagon was completed in approximately 16 months at a total cost of $83 million. The building is 77 feet (23 m) tall, and each of the five sides of the building is 921 feet (281 m) long.[33]
Because of the pressing needs of the war, people started working in the Pentagon before it was completed. The Pentagon was built wing at a time, and after the first wing was finished, employees started to move into that wing while construction was continuing on the other wings.
Protests
On March 17, 2007, 4,000 to 15,000 people (estimates vary significantly) protested against the Iraq War.[38] The protesters marched from the Lincoln Memorial, down Washington Boulevard to the Pentagon’s north parking lot.
Renovation
Main article: Pentagon Renovation Program
From 1998 to 2011, the Pentagon underwent a major renovation, known as the Pentagon Renovation Program.
This program, completed in June, 2011, involved the complete gutting
and reconstruction of the entire building in phases to bring the
building up to modern standards, removing asbestos, improving security, providing greater efficiency for Pentagon tenants, and sealing of all office windows.[39]As originally built, most Pentagon office space consisted of open bays which spanned an entire ring. These offices used cross-ventilation from operable windows instead of air conditioning for cooling. Gradually, bays were subdivided into private offices with many using window air conditioning units. With renovations now complete, the new space includes a return to open office bays, a new Universal Space Plan of standardized office furniture and partitions developed by Studios Architecture.[40]
September 11 attacks
Main article: American Airlines Flight 77
On September 11, 2001, the 60th anniversary of The Pentagon's groundbreaking, a team of five al-Qaeda affiliated hijackers took control of American Airlines Flight 77, en route from Washington Dulles International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport, and deliberately crashed the Boeing 757 airliner into the western side of the Pentagon at 9:37 am EDT as part of the September 11 attacks.
All 64 people on the airliner were killed as were 125 people who were
in the building. The impact of the plane severely damaged the structure
of the building and caused its partial collapse.[42]
At the time of the attacks, the Pentagon was under renovation and many
offices were unoccupied, resulting in fewer casualties. Only 800 of
4,500 people who would have been in the area were there because of the
work. Furthermore the area hit, on the side of the Heliport façade, was
the section best prepared for such an attack. The renovation there,
improvements which resulted from the Oklahoma City bombing, had nearly been completed.[43][44][45][46]It was the only area of the Pentagon with a sprinkler system, and it had been reconstructed with a web of steel columns and bars to withstand bomb blasts. The steel reinforcement, bolted together to form a continuous structure through all of the Pentagon's five floors, kept that section of the building from collapsing for 30 minutes—enough time for hundreds of people to crawl out to safety. The area struck by the plane also had blast-resistant windows—2 inches thick and 2,500 pounds each—that stayed intact during the crash and fire. It had fire doors that opened automatically and newly built exits that allowed people to get out.[43]Contractors already involved with the renovation were given the added task of rebuilding the sections damaged in the attacks. This additional project was named the "Phoenix Project", and was charged with having the outermost offices of the damaged section occupied by September 11, 2002.[47][48][49]
When the damaged section of the Pentagon was repaired, a small indoor memorial and chapel were included, located at the point of impact. For the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, a memorial of 184 beams of light shone up from the center courtyard of the Pentagon, one light for each victim of the attack. In addition, an American flag is hung each year on the side of the Pentagon damaged in the attacks, and the side of the building is illuminated at night with blue lights. After the attacks, plans were developed for an outdoor memorial, with construction underway in 2006. This Pentagon Memorial consists of a park on 2 acres (8,100 m2) of land, containing 184 benches, one dedicated to each victim. The benches are aligned along the line of Flight 77 according to the victims' ages, from 3 to 71. The park opened to the public on September 11, 2008.[50][51][52]
Shooting incidents
Main article: 2010 Pentagon shooting, and Northern Virginia military shootings
On March 4, 2010, at 6:40 pm, two police officers working for the Pentagon Force Protection Agency
were shot at near an entrance to the Pentagon and fired back with their
pistols at the suspect. The officers were slightly injured but were
treated in a hospital and released. The suspect, identified as John Patrick Bedell (aged 36), died at the hospital. No clear motive was established.[53]
On October 19, 2010, shortly before 5 am, an unidentified gunman shot
at the south side of the building, shattering windows on the third and
fourth floors.[54]Earthquake
Main article: 2011 Virginia earthquake
On August 23, 2011, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake in Mineral, Virginia, shook the Pentagon.[55] The building suffered minor damage, with flooding from broken pipes.Layout
The Pentagon, 1414 ft or 431 m
RMS Queen Mary 2, 1132 ft or 345 m
USS Enterprise (CVN-65), 1122 ft or 342 m
Hindenburg, 804 ft or 245 m
Yamato, 863 ft or 263 m
Empire State Building, 1453 ft or 443 m
Knock Nevis tanker, 1503 ft or 458 m
The concentric rings are designated from the center out as "A" through "E" (with in addition "F" and "G" in the basement). "E" Ring offices are the only ones with outside views and are generally occupied by senior officials. Office numbers go clockwise around each of the rings, and have two parts: a nearest-corridor number (1 to 10) followed by a bay number (00 to 99), so office numbers range from 100 to 1099. These corridors radiate out from the central courtyard, with corridor 1 beginning with the Concourse's south end. Each numbered radial corridor intersects with the corresponding numbered group of offices (for example, corridor 5 divides the 500 series office block). There are a number of historical displays in the building, particularly in the "A" and "E" rings.
Floors in The Pentagon are lettered "B" for Basement and "M" for Mezzanine, both of which are below ground level. The concourse is located on the second floor at the metro entrance. Above ground floors are numbered 1 to 5. Room numbers are given as the floor, concentric ring, and office number (which is in turn the nearest corridor number followed by the bay number). Thus, office 2B315 is on the second floor, B ring, and nearest to corridor 3 (between corridors 2 and 3). One way to get to this office would be to go to the second floor, get to the A (innermost) ring, go to and take corridor 3, and then turn left on ring B to get to bay 15.[57]
It is possible for a person to walk between any two points in the Pentagon in less than seven minutes.[58]
Just south of the Pentagon are Pentagon City and Crystal City, extensive shopping and high-density residential districts in Arlington. Arlington National Cemetery is to the north. The Washington Metro Pentagon station is also located at the Pentagon, on the Blue and Yellow Lines. The Pentagon is surrounded by the relatively complex Pentagon road network.[59]
The United States Postal Service has established six ZIP Codes for The Pentagon, to which the place name “Washington, D.C.” is assigned, even though The Pentagon is actually located in Virginia. The Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the four service branches each have their own designated ZIP Code.[60]
Security
The Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA) is a United States government agency composed of sworn federal police officers, the United States Pentagon Police and civilian CBRN technicians, and non-sworn civilian anti-terrorism investigative and physical security personnel, and is responsible for the protection of the Pentagon. The Department of Defense created the PFPA after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The new agency absorbed the Defense Protective Service (DPS) and assumed its role of providing basic law enforcement and security for the Pentagon and Department of Defense sites in the 280 acre (1.1 km2) "Pentagon Reservation" and greater National Capital Region (NCR). PFPA was also charged with providing force protection against the full spectrum of potential threats through robust prevention, preparedness, detection, and response measures. The United States Pentagon Police is the primary federal law enforcement arm of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency.Hall of Heroes
The Hall of Heroes is also used for promotions, retirements, and other types of award ceremonies.[65][66][67][68][69][70]
Services
The Pentagon has over 20 of its own fast food operations, including Subway, McDonald's, Dunkin' Donuts, Panda Express, Starbucks and Sbarro, among others.[71] A multibranded KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell restaurant opened in 2003, when renovations to the food court were completed.[72] Food services are managed by the Navy Exchange. The Center Courtyard Cafe reopened in the spring of 2008,[73] replacing the "Ground Zero Cafe" snack bar that was previously there.The Pentagon Athletic Center (PAC), a fitness center for military and civilian staff, opened in 2004[74] adjacent to the north side of the Pentagon, replacing the Pentagon Officers Athletic Club (POAC) which had operated for 55 years in a structure between Route 110 and the parade grounds. Each year, the Pentagon grounds are a major focus for hosting the Marine Corps Marathon and the Army Ten-Miler running events.
There is a Meditation and Prayer Room in the Pentagon, which was dedicated on December 14, 1970, by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird.[75]
In conjunction with the 1976 American Bicentennial,[76] the Pentagon began offering guided tours to the general public. Tours were suspended after the September 11, 2001 attacks, but are currently available on an arranged basis to the general public.
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