The agency moved into the Munitions Building on the National Mall in August 1939, but when Germany invaded France in 1940 - and with the subsequent rapid mobilization of the Army - Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson told President Franklin D. Roosevelt an even larger space would be needed.
Army Brig. Gen. Brehon Somervell, head of the construction division of the Quartermaster Corps, was put in charge of the project, with Col. Leslie Groves representing the Army, and the search for a large tract of land near the Capitol began. With the president's approval, the 67-acre Arlington Farms tract was selected for the new building, and Somervell instructed War Department Chief Architect George Bergstrom to begin drawing up plans.
Form follows function
The site was shaped like a lopsided pentagon, which dictated the building's design. Bergstrom settled on a layout that featured an outer and inner ring with more than 5 million square feet of space and just four stories, so as not to overshadow nearby Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The estimated cost would be $35 million, a staggering amount at the time (approximately $500 million today). Nevertheless, Congress approved the tab and three contractors were selected to begin work.
But Roosevelt began having second thoughts about the site due to its proximity to the cemetery. In his book The Pentagon: A History, Steve Vogel describes the summer day in 1941 when the president, along with Somervell and other major project officials, drove out to a new site known as Hell's Bottom and, over Somervell's objections, decided on the spot to relocate the War Department building there.
With the clock ticking, there was no time to redesign the giant edifice, but that didn't matter to Roosevelt. In his view, the new building could store old records after “the emergency” was over. On Sept. 11, 1941, with final designs for much of the building still pending, the first piles were driven, and the project was underway.
A massive undertaking
Somervell promised he could finish the building in just one year, but reality soon intervened. Despite a large team of draftsmen and engineers working nearly nonstop on blueprints, the process quickly fell behind, so a unique strategy was employed: The design for the first wedge would be used to construct the others.
The soggy nature of the site and a shortage of steel meant pilings would have to be concrete. Rather than assembling them elsewhere and trucking them in, they were cast in place, poured into sheaths buried in the ground. Millions of cubic yards of dirt were trucked in to level the land, while the digging out of a nearby lagoon supplied another million.
Construction proceeded at such a breakneck pace the builders often found themselves waiting for the architects. As Vogel writes, sometimes the builders took matters into their own hands, taking the plans from the designers' offices at night so they could continue working. Dr. Erin R. Mahan, DoD's chief historian, notes that “in order to save scarce steel for military purposes, concrete ramps were constructed for people to move between floors.” Although 4,000 workers toiled day and night at the site, by the beginning of December, the project still was behind schedule. Then, the Japanese launched a surprise attack Dec. 7 on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and everything changed.
The Pentagon at war
As large as the original design had been, it was no longer big enough, and changes quickly were drawn up that added a fifth floor and boosted the number of concentric rings to five. So many more men were hired that by January 1942, some 6,000 workers were on the job; at one point the number rose to 15,000, creating an acute housing shortage. Commercial tugs transporting gravel up the Potomac River were waylaid by War Department officials for the cause, according to Vogel, who reports the massive operation produced up to 3,500 yards of concrete each day.
By the end of April 1942, most of Wedge One was complete and the first tenants began moving in, while construction continued on the remainder of the building. The building now known as the Pentagon was declared officially complete Jan. 15, 1943. Its original planned 4 million square feet of office space was now 6.24 million, and the estimated cost of $35 million had ballooned to roughly $83 million - its first, and by no means last, cost overrun. But those dollars bought a building that was a virtual fortress, and its rugged construction would serve its occupants well in ways no one could have predicted.
A phoenix rises
Fifty years later, the Pentagon was showing its age. Water and sewer pipes were bursting on a regular basis, the ceilings were full of asbestos, and the building was plagued with regular power outages. After some false starts, renovation began in earnest in late 1998 with the gutting of Wedge One. Crews began installing blast-resistant windows and reinforcing the walls with steel, along with other safety upgrades. All furniture and equipment was replaced, and when the first workers began moving back into the Navy Command Center in August 2001, it looked like a brand-new building.
At 9:37 a.m. Sept. 11, 2001, 60 years to the day after construction began, American Airlines Flight 77, a 757 commandeered by five al-Qaida terrorists, slammed into the recently renovated wedge at the first-floor level, sending a fireball and burning debris tunneling some 310 feet through the E, D, and C rings. The blast killed all 64 airline passengers, including the hijackers, and 125 people in the building. The first firefighters, who showed up within two minutes, were aghast to see a gaping hole in the building as fires raged all around. Remarkably, the upper floors held without support until 10:10 a.m., allowing employees on the fourth and fifth floors
to escape.
As horrific as the attack had been, the plane's impact point on the newly renovated, partially occupied Wedge One prevented many more casualties. The blaze was mostly under control by the next day, although it took several days to extinguish persistent, smaller fires. The plan to rebuild the Pentagon after the attack, named the Phoenix Project, was estimated to take three years. However, the construction workers were determined to finish it in a year, and they beat their own goal by nearly a month. In less than a single year, they managed to erase virtually all signs of the attack, save the memories of those left behind.
Near the point of impact on the first-floor E ring, a memorial room commemorates those who died that day. “In the center of the room is a book with a page and picture for each of the 184 victims,” Mahan notes, while a nearby chapel offers a quiet space for contemplation. Outside stands a park with 184 granite-inlaid, stainless steel benches arching over illuminated pools of water, one for each person who died in the attack.
For an ostensibly temporary building, the Pentagon has demonstrated remarkable longevity and resilience. It is now one of the most famous landmarks in the world. Its construction, although rushed, has stood the test of time, and there's little doubt it still will host America's military command at the dawn of the next century.