The Pentagon - the story of the birth of a monster
Child of War
The Pentagon building can rightfully be called a child of war. With a high degree of probability, Roosevelt would not have decided on such a large-scale construction if World War II had not broken out in 1939. Military expenses grew, the army rapidly gained power, and with it the administrative apparatus. All this brethren had to be housed somewhere.
America is a country of skyscrapers, and it was quite logical to build a Department of Defense building a couple of hundred meters high. But there were restrictions.
Firstly, the think tank of the US Army for this purpose should have been moved to New York or any other city - in Washington there are certain difficulties with skyscrapers. No, this is not a common myth about the ban on building buildings higher than the 87-meter Capitol. In fact, buildings in the US capital can be erected no higher than the width of the adjacent street plus another 6 meters. The corresponding Building Height Act was passed by the US Congress in 1920. That is, the Pentagon, even if it wanted to, could not be a tall building.
And there's another catch here.
The fact is that the Pentagon formally belongs not to the District of Columbia, but to Arlington County, in the state of Virginia. The US Military Department is not located in the capital, although it is separated from the White House only by the Potomac River and a few streets. But these are formalities, and no one in their right mind would spoil the architectural ensemble of Washington and surrounding areas just because the military department is being built in another district and another state.
By the way, in the capital of the United States, the tallest building is not the Capitol at all, but the Basilica of the Church of the Immaculate Conception, stretching 100 meters.
The second reason why the Pentagon was not allowed to grow higher was the nearby Arlington Cemetery, America's main army burial ground. An excessively tall Pentagon would have become the architectural dominant of the area - the architects considered this unnecessary.
Rebuilding the Pentagon after the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001
The start of construction of the Pentagon turned out to be very symbolic - September 11, 1941, less than four months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Americans entered the world war and the pace of construction of the Pentagon increased significantly.
The main question is why exactly the regular pentagon became the model for the US Defense Department building?
With great convention, one can find parallels with a five-pointed star. For example, the building of the Central Academic Theater of the Russian Army from above is very reminiscent of a marshal's star in pursuit. But the structure, built during the Stalin era, carries more symbolic meaning than practical. Although it cannot be ruled out that the American architect George Bergstrom took a look at the outlines of the Pentagon from his colleagues from Moscow. Or he creatively adopted the classic scheme for constructing defensive pentagonal forts.
The building of the Central Academic Theater of the Russian Army
Be that as it may, the gigantic building with a height of only 23 meters from the ground looks inexpressive. Ordinary people are accustomed to seeing the Pentagon from a bird's eye view, where the pentagon is majestic and beautiful. It is enough to take a walk around the building on Google Maps to understand that the American Department of Defense is nothing special from an aesthetic point of view.
According to legend, Franklin Roosevelt liked the pentagonal shape of the War Department building. The farms of Arlington County were chosen as the initial construction site, and the pentagonal building fit perfectly into the gaps between them. But the soil in that place was not very good, and they decided to move the construction closer to the Potomac River and at the same time to the White House. It was then that Roosevelt abandoned the previous pentagonal shape, which later became a symbol of the American military. As contemporaries write,
“Redesigning the building at this stage would lead to longer wait times, and the Americans were entering a costly war, so it was important to build the War Department as quickly as possible. Soon the structure was given a perfect pentagonal shape with five projections reminiscent of forts.”
Pentagon Circles
The Americans justify the Pentagon's short stature by the desire of builders to save metal, which is so in demand in war. Skyscrapers, although much more convenient, require enormous amounts of metal. For that time, it seemed better to build several aircraft carriers than to build high-rise buildings. And without metal structures, a concrete skyscraper would simply crush itself.
Indeed, during the war, and also for several years after it, the Americans were not particularly keen on high-rise construction. It is unknown exactly how many hundreds of thousands of tons of metal the architects saved on the Pentagon, but they built it in just 16 months. They started on September 11, 1941, and ended on January 15, 1943.
At least 15 thousand workers worked at the construction site around the clock. The Japanese attack not only forced a noticeable acceleration in the pace of construction, but also turned a blind eye to a more than twofold increase in costs. In peacetime, taxpayers would inevitably have questions, but not in 1942. The location near the Potomac River, from which sand for concrete was extracted, turned up to be successful and quite economical. But it was still not possible to meet the initial budget of 35–40 million dollars (prices in the early 40s).
American protest against US aggression in Vietnam
With the completion of construction, military officials from the naval complex moved to the Pentagon. fleet and ammunition in the District of Columbia, Washington State. The locals could barely fit in with their archives and bloated staff, which is why they considered the spacious Pentagon a real salvation. Interestingly, the US Department of Defense was not known until 1947 - until that time the department was called the War Department.
A few numbers to help us understand the scale of the Pentagon.
The total area of five aboveground and two underground floors is more than 620 square kilometers. The total cost of construction, denominated in 2022 dollars, is almost 1,3 billion. This is a lot. For comparison: one of the symbols of America, the Empire State Building, costs 640 million dollars in modern money.
Due to its size, the Pentagon has six postal addresses. This is not surprising - the building can accommodate the population of a small town of 25-30 thousand people. For the same reason, the building has its own metro station and helipad.
Modern Americans are particularly proud (or, conversely, sad) of the lack of separate toilets for blacks and whites. They say that Roosevelt, on his first visit to the Pentagon, canceled this racist requirement, although in the original plan, according to the laws of the state of Virginia, such segregation was present. The builders tore down the partitions separating the blacks and whites in the toilet, making it now very spacious.
The main building of the Navy and Ammunition - this is where most of the military officials moved to the Pentagon in 1943
The huge area of the Pentagon, coupled with its low height, created natural problems with lighting and ventilation of the premises. We had to build five circuits or rings with courtyards. Each ring is named in order from the Latin letter A to E, starting from the outer contour.
Ten radial corridors connect the interior of the Pentagon into a single whole and significantly speed up movement. If, of course, one can say so in relation to a building with a living area of several hundred square kilometers and a total length of corridors of 28 kilometers. Pentagon architectural chronicler Justin van Heissting can better explain the purpose of each ring:
“Ring A is the ring used by the most senior officials, such as the Secretary of Defense and his General Department. Ring B consists of various offices that are used by various defense agencies, such as the Office of the Inspector General. Ring C contains many military command offices, such as the Army and Navy services. Section D is a support ring consisting of finance, legal and other departments. Finally, Ring E, the final ring, consists of secondary units such as the library and the Pentagon Sports Center.”
Apart from the fact that the Pentagon building has long been considered the most massive building in the world, there is nothing special about it. All perceptions are based only on stereotypes imposed by Western culture.
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