Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site

The Joint Committee on Landmarks has designated the Federal Triangle a Category II Landmark of importance which contributes significantly to the cultural heritage and visual beauty of the District of Columbia.

The first of the Triangle buildings, the Romanesque-Revival old Post Office, was constructed in 1891-1899, followed by the Neo-Classical Beaux Arts District Building in 1904-1908. However, the bulk of the area's buildings and their overall design were developed between 1928 and 1938 under the direction of a consultant board of architects to Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, popularly known as the Mellon Board. Designed by the leading architects of the period, the Mellon Board's handsome Neo-Classical ensemble consists of nine enormous federal buildings constructed around a series of outdoor plazas and inner courts. It is this country's most imposing example of the monumental civic center concept, a planning ideal in the early decades of the twentieth century. The Triangle's massiveness symbolizes the tremendous growth of the Federal government in this century.

The Federal Triangle has a rich urban design heritage. Inspired by the magnificence of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, cities throughout the Country hired consultant planners to design local civic centers. These civic center plans usually consisted of a grand open plaza around which were 10Fated various government and institutional buildings designed in the NeoClassical style with uniform cornice lines. The monumentality and unity of these proposed building schemes greatly impressed turn-of-the-century Americans who were accustomed to the irregularity of Victorian architecture and small-scale builders. These civic center plans symbolized the nineteenth-century growth of these cities from frontier outposts to industrial and commercial centers, prepared to challenge the supremacy of Europe. Such projects were also often viewed as a means of eliminating deteriorated commercial and tenement areas.

However, the scale of most of these plans far exceeded the financial resources or needs of the aspiring cities, and construction was usually limited to a new city hall and plaza. In Washington, however, grand plans corresponded to the critical need for more government office space. Federal employment in the District increased from 28,044 in 1901 to 64,722 in 1926, as the government shed its narrow nineteenth-century role and undertook major responsibilities in domestic affairs with the initiation of a federal income tax and the establishment of various regulatory agencies and numerous Industry supportive programs. The Federal Triangle reflected the major, new role that the national government was assuming in the twentieth century. It was a part of a massive government building program in the 1920s and 1930s which also included the construction of the Library of Congress Annex, a second House Office Building, and the Supreme Court.

The earliest proposal for concentrating federal buildings in the Triangle area bordered by Pennsylvania Avenue, Constitution Avenue, and 15th Street) was made in 1896 by William Aiken, Supervising Architect to the Secretary of the Treasury. At this time the building now known as the old Post Office, the first of the Triangle buildings, was being constructed at 12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue under the direction of the Treasury Department.

Six years later, the McMillan Commission recommended that the Triangle area became the center for the administrative and service functions of the District of Columbia and that the existing sprawling and unsightly animal and produce markets in the area be replaced by a new, more concentrated series of market buildings. The classical revival government buildings which the Commission proposed are similar in overall design to the buildings which were eventually constructed.

In 1908, the District Building, designed by Cope and Stewardson, was completed on the south side of E Street between 13-1/2 and 14th Streets. In 1910 the government purchased the land at the western end of the present-day Triangle between 14th and 15th Streets, for the site of three new executive department buildings--Justice, Commerce and Labor, and State. Construction of these buildings, however, was not undertaken.

The great potential for the Triangle area as a center for government buildings was again stressed in a 1917 report by a subcommittee of the Public Buildings Commission on the need for permanent office space for government functions. The subcommittee recommended the purchase of the nongovernment-owned land in the Triangle, and the location of a new market and government buildings in the area, as an alternative to the growing practice of renting office space. In a letter included in the subcommittee report, the Commission of Fine Arts emphasized the importance of this project as a means of revitalizing the deteriorating older downtown area, in opposition to the government's growing tendency to locate their offices west of 17th Street.

No further progress was made on the Triangle project until a new Public Buildings Act was passed in 1926. The law gave Secretary of the Treasury Mellon the responsibility for constructing new federal office buildings, and limited the purchase of District land for this purpose to the area south of Pennsylvania Avenue and west of Maryland Avenue, except for the sites for the Supreme Court Jand the extension of the Government Printing Office.

A plan for the Federal Triangle was prepared by the Treasury Department in the same year. The Department was assisted by Edward H. Bennett, a former associate of Daniel Burnham, the major figure in the planning of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, the McMillan Commission Plan of 1902, and numerous other turn-of-the-century civic plans. Although Congressional authorization was limited to only a few buildings, the plan covered the entire Triangle area, so as to allow for orderly development in the future. As was the case with the McMillan Plan, classical revival architecture was envisioned for the area, but the 1926 plan differed greatly from the 1902 proposal. The Triangle was given over totally to government office space without any provision for a new market. The Eighth Street vista was ignored, and a building intruded upon the southern half of Market Square. Another building blocked the line of Indiana Avenue south of the Square, and, instead of extending outward to the city's streets, the 1926 plan was inwardly oriented around a large L-shaped central plaza between 13th Street and 14th Street.

In 1927 a six-nan advisory board of architects was established to assist the Secretary of the Treasury and in December of that year, a revised Triangle plan was approved by the Public Buildings Commission. This plan was even more inwardly oriented than the 1926 proposal. Almost all of C Street was to be closed within the Triangle, and the old Post Office was to be demolished to allow for the construction of another plaza on the line of 12th Street. The succession of plazas was to be an important element in the Triangle's overall design.

The final major change in the Triangle Plan occurred in 1930. The National Archives was moved to 8th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue and was set facing 8th Street, rather than parallel to Pennsylvania Avenue. This recognition of the Eighth Street Vista was an exception to the usual lack of concern that the Triangle's architects showed for the streets that their buildings terminated. Although the Federal Triangle was supposedly designed within the framework of the L'Enfant Plan, its very essence--the inward orientation, the enormous concentration of government activities--is in conflict with the original plan for the city.

Congress authorized the purchase of the remaining non-government-owned land within the Triangle in 1928. Construction of the first Mellon Board buildings--the Commerce Department and the Internal Revenue Service--began that year. They were followed over the next decade by the construction of buildings in the Triangle area for the Labor Department, the Interstate Commerce Commission, an Auditorium, the Post Office Department, the Justice Department, the National Archives, and lastly the Federal Trade Cosmission in 1938. Of special note is John Russell Pope's handsome design for the National Archives, a separately listed National Register landmark. Pope was a member of the board of consulting þrchitects to the Treasury, as were all the firms which designed the individual buildings within the Triangle.

Although construction of the Triangle ended in 1938, an important element, the Great Circle at 12ch Street, remained unfinished. The President's Temporary Commission on Pennsylvania Avenue, a body formed in the 1960s to provide a plan for the development of Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House, proposed that the Great Circle be completed. Such an undertaking, however, necessitates the demolition of the old Post Office, a separately listed National Register landmark. Congress refused to allow the destruction of the building in 1934 and has yet to appropriate the funds for such a project. The General Services Administration is now seeking a means of preserving| the building.

The Pennsylvania Avenue Commission also recommended that the Grand Plaza be formally landscaped, and the existing parking lot be located underground. The Commission Plan envisioned the completion of the Grand Plaza with the construction of a Neo-Classical Post Office extension on the bow vacant site at Pennsylvania Avenue and 13-1/2 Street, then the location of the Coast Guard Building. However, no funds have been appropriated for these projects.