The Pentagon History
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The Pentagon's History begins in 1941 when Brigadier General Brehon Sommervell determined that the War Department required a temporary solution to its shortage of office space.
The rapidly expanding War Department envisioned one structure in which to house its various offices for the departments of the Army, Air Force, and Navy, and for the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
In August 1941, Congress allocated funds (approximately $83 million) necessary to construct the War Departments new offices. A ceremony for groundbreaking occured on September 11, 1941.
The intitial site selected for the new Pentagon was a piece of land known locally as Arlington Farms. Because the tract was bordered by five roadways, the area required a pentagonal shaped building. Concerned that building would obstruct the view of the nation's capitol from Arlington Cemetery, President Roosevelt ordered that the structure be moved 3/4 of a mile down the river.
A new location was chosen at the site of what included the old Hoover Airport, a pickling factory, a brick factory, a racing track, and a residential area locally known as Hells Bottom. On this site, a final design concept of an open air courtyard surrounded by five, stacked, concentric pentagonal rings (or corridors) was constructed.
The Pentagon was constructed from reinforced concrete using nearly 380,000 tons of sand dredged up from the adjacent Potomac River and supported by roughly 41,492 concrete piles. Its style architecture is Stripped Neo-Classical.
During the height of its construction, more than 1,000 architects along with 14,000 construction workers and tradesmen worked on the project. With three shifts of workers on schedule of 24 hours-a-day schedule, 7 days a week, the Pentagon was built wedge by wedge. The structure was officially dedicated on January 15, 1943--about 16 months following the day of the groundbreaking ceremony.
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