addThe War Department was 1 of the 1st 3 departments created by the executive branch of the federal government, along with the Department of State and the Department of the Treasury. Those 3 made sense: Preparation for war, guidance of overall foreign policy, and management of the economy.
The Department's original home was on Pennsylvania Avenue between 21st and 22nd Streets, 5 blocks from the White House. This building burned down in 1800. Its replacement was built next-door to the White House at 19th & F Streets. The Department of State moved into it, too.
Between 1871 and 1888, a new building was constructed on the site, the State, War and Navy Building, That building became known as the Old Executive Office Building, among other things, some of them very unpleasant. Author Mark Twain called it "the ugliest building in America." Over half a century later, his fellow Missourian, President Harry S Truman, called it "the greatest monstrosity in America."
Truman's successor as President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, considered demolishing it. He didn't, and, since 1999, it has borne his name: The Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It houses the offices of the Vice President, the National Security Council, and the Office of Management and Budget.
In 1918, during World War I, the Main Navy and Munitions Building opened on the National Mall, at Constitution Avenue and 19th Street. The War Department moved there on a temporary basis in 1939. Once the Pentagon opened, the building was turned back over to the U.S. Navy, and it was demolished in 1970. Constitution Gardens, including an artificial pond, is now on the site.
The coming of World War II meant that the War Department needed a new, much larger headquarters. Needing steel for the war, it would be built of concrete, and no more than 4 stories high, meaning it would spread out, not up. This ended up making the Pentagon the building with more office space than any in the world, a record it still holds.
The site originally chosen was Arlington Farms, in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, near Arlington National Cemetery. The site had an asymmetric, roughly pentagonal (five-sided) shape, so the building was planned accordingly. But President Franklin D. Roosevelt thought it would obstruct the view of D.C. from the Cemetery, and chose a nearby airfield instead. He kept the Pentagon design, not just because coming up with a new design would have been costly, but because he was a history buff, and liked that it resembled "star forts" constructed during the gunpowder age.
It was built by John McShain, Inc., of Philadelphia, which had also designed the nearby Washington National Airport (now named for President Ronald Reagan), the Jefferson Memorial, and the National Naval Medical Center in nearby Bethesda, Maryland.
About 26,000 people, several thousand of them civilians, work in the Pentagon. It ended up having 5 floors above ground, 2 below it, and 5 "ring corridors." It is the largest office building in the world: Apple Park in Cupertino, California (outside San Jose) is larger, but has less occupied office space.
As the home of what Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex," the Pentagon has become a location for antiwar protests. There were 3 in 1967 alone, with the one on October 21 attracting 35,000 people, and some people claiming they were there to "levitate the Pentagon" -- and some insisted, against all evidence, that they actually succeeded. It was at this protest that one of the most famous photographs of the Vietnam War era was taken, the "Flower Power" photo: A student in a sweater, later identified as George E. Harris III, placed a carnation in the gun barrel of a soldier protecting the building.
On May 19, 1972, the Weather Underground placed a bomb in a women's bathroom on the 4th floor. No one was hurt. On September 11, 2001 -- 60 years to the day after the building's groundbreaking ceremony, although that was almost certainly irrelevant to the attack -- recognizing the building's symbolism, the terrorist group al-Qaeda hijacked an airliner, and crashed it into the Pentagon, killing the 64 passengers, and 125 people inside the building. It could have been much worse: A renovation of the building had begun in 1998, and fewer people than usual were working where it was hit.
The most recent antiwar protest at the Pentagon was against the Iraq War, with 15,000 people converging there on March 17, 2007.
The building is bounded by Interstate 395, the Henry G. Shirley Memorial Highway; Virginia Route 110, the Richmond Highway; and Virginia Route 27, Washington Boulevard.
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January 15, 1943 was a Friday. Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA had not yet been founded. And no NHL games were scheduled. Therefore, there were no scores on this historic day.
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