It was, and remains, the largest office building in the world. Its odd shape was dictated by the irregular piece of land on which it originally had to fit. To raise and grade the site, six million cubic yards of earth had to be moved. Yet the Pentagon was ready to admit its first workers just eight months after earth-moving began, and it was substantially complete (along with a brand-new network of roads to service the site) in little more than a year. All these feats were accomplished under the material and labor shortages of the biggest war in American history. How could this happen?
As Steve Vogel explains in The Pentagon: A History (Random House, 656 pages, $32.95), there were no environmental-impact statements or planning reviews to speak of, and only cursory nods toward worker protection. When a community of 150 African-American families got in the way, residents were simply told that their homes would be demolished in a month. The only thing that mattered was speed. Foremen grabbed plans off draftsmen’s tables and took them directly to the work site—or, in some cases, built first and checked the plans afterward. When a fifth floor was added to the design during construction, acres of roofing had to be ripped out. Pile drivers worked around the clock, sinking 40,000 piles into the soggy earth while basic design matters like whether or not to include windows remained unresolved.
There were political headaches too. President Franklin D. Roosevelt fancied himself an amateur architect and kept offering suggestions. A powerful Indiana senator made sure the design included Hoosier limestone, while a Virginia congressman steered part of the construction to firms from his state. Interior walls were ripped out to accommodate Navy personnel, then put back when the admirals decided to stay in Washington. The building’s cafeteria and bathrooms did not have to conform to Virginia’s segregation laws, since they were on federal property, but black workers had to move to the rear of buses carrying them to and from work.
The book contains many surprises, but perhaps most jarring of all is the repeatedly expressed pre-war expectation that the Army would move back to its modest Washington offices “after the emergency is over.” These days emergencies, like construction projects, tend to last a lot longer.
