The Pentagon: A History

by Steve Vogel

  After a few minutes, Roosevelt instructed the men to adjourn to the adjoining cabinet room and iron out their differences among themselves. An hour’s discussion proved fruitless. Somervell would not budge. Somewhat dazed, Fred Delano emerged from the White House and spoke to reporters. “The whole thing is all up in the air,” he said. “The Army is holding on to its original proposal both as to size and location.”

  Somervell at first refused comment, but when told of Delano’s statement, he remarked, “That’s a proper way of stating it.” The general then added his favorite stock reply: “But why talk to me about it—I’m just a bricklayer.”

  Though the president’s declaration had left him with few cards to play, Somervell managed with bulldog stubbornness to carve out some negotiating room. The talks resumed in the afternoon at Delano’s office in the Interior Building. Delano drafted an agreement that limited the building to 15,000 people. Somervell strongly objected—he wanted space for 35,000—and both sides exchanged angry crossfire.

  Delano persuaded Somervell to make a counteroffer on paper. “What would you insist upon?” Delano asked Somervell. “What is your position?”

  Somervell sat down for an hour to write out his stipulations in pencil. He was willing to accept the quartermaster depot site but was holding out for a larger building. After three hours of back and forth, they broke for the day.

  Consulting with McCloy the next day, Somervell lamented the avalanche of “unfortunate” publicity that had accompanied his defiance of Roosevelt. The general continued his talks with Delano that afternoon, agreeing to come down from his 35,000 figure. The two negotiated the language of the agreement—practically a treaty—working until late to have it ready for the president the following morning. At first glance, the three-page memorandum looked like a defeat for Somervell, as it provided for a building for twenty thousand workers on the quartermaster depot site.

  But the language in the agreement was curious. It said the “general area” of the quartermaster depot site was acceptable as a home for the War Department, leaving Somervell quite a bit of wiggle room as to exactly where he put the building.

  As for the size of the building, Somervell arranged even more leeway. The agreement said “the office personnel space should be limited to that for 20,000 persons at 125 square feet per person until it has been demonstrated that traffic facilities are sufficient to handle a greater number of employees.” While the language meant that the building would initially have 2.5 million square feet of office space, it did not mean that Somervell could not build a significantly larger building and later convert additional area into office space. Nor did it specify who would determine when the roads and bridges were sufficient to handle more than twenty thousand people.

  In deference to Roosevelt’s wishes, the agreement stipulated that “the solution proposed is not advanced as a permanent location of the War Department, but one dictated by requirements of space and speed in the present emergency. The solution proposed does not exclude in any way the return of War Department personnel to the District of Columbia after the emergency, in which case the proposed building can be used for other offices, archives and activities if so desired.”

  The agreement—with spaces awaiting the signatures of Stimson, Delano, and Smith—was presented to Roosevelt the morning of August 29. “It is a compromise,” Delano told reporters. “The Army will get some of the things it wanted and we will get some of the things we wanted. It is up to the president.”

  For his part, the president was exasperated by the drawn-out battle. “I am going out to look at it,” Roosevelt announced that morning. He would examine the quartermaster depot site himself later that day, accompanied by the warring parties, and make the final decision.

  I’m still commander-in-chief

  The president’s limousine was waiting behind the White House, its top down. The weather on the late summer day was unseasonably mild, splendid for an open-air afternoon jaunt to Virginia to look over the real estate.

  Gilmore Clarke had received a phone call at his office in New York that morning, August 29, asking him to report to the White House by four o’clock that afternoon. The Commission of Fine Arts chairman flew to Washington, hurried to the White House, and was directed to the back, where he found Smith and Somervell waiting.

  Clarke introduced himself to Smith and then looked at Somervell, who gazed at his shoes and pointedly offered no greeting. Clarke had the gloating air of a teacher’s pet picked to sit at the head of the class. “General, you’re acting kind of childish, aren’t you?” he said.

  Somervell studiously ignored the Fine Arts chairman. “Well, I thank my lucky stars I’m not in uniform, of a rank lower than you are, or I’d probably be behind bars,” Clarke continued. Somervell’s glowering intensified.

  Shortly after finishing a two-hour cabinet meeting, Roosevelt rolled out the back of the White House in his wheelchair. Fala, FDR’s black terrier, trotted behind. The president, sporting a new plaid tie, headed toward his waiting open-air car, where two Secret Service agents lifted him from his wheelchair into the back seat in the right-hand corner. Fala hopped into a jump seat in front of the president. Roosevelt beckoned Clarke to sit next to him. Somervell climbed into the back on the other side, while Smith took the front passenger seat. Delano, unable to attend, sent Jay Downer as his representative, and the consultant boarded a second car with Bergstrom and Pa Watson, Roosevelt’s military aide.

  At 4:25, the party left the White House grounds. Roosevelt, eager to see traffic conditions for himself, had chosen the height of the evening rush hour for the excursion. The limousine passed along the Tidal Basin, where John McShain’s crews had almost finished the Jefferson Memorial. Clarke had been steadfast in his biting criticism of the memorial, but Roosevelt could not resist proudly pointing out the pantheon design he had personally approved.

  “Gilmore…don’t you like it?” the president asked.

  “No sir,” replied Clarke, ever the scold. “I don’t like it. It’s a disappointment to all of the members of the commission.”

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do with you fellows,” Roosevelt sighed.

  As the entourage took the 14th Street Bridge across the Potomac, Somervell made a final appeal to the president for the Arlington Farm site, speaking across Clarke as if the commissioner were not even in the car. Moving the War Department building from Somervell’s favored site would delay the project and add millions to the cost, the general reminded the president.

  Roosevelt’s face flushed with annoyance as Somervell spoke. “My dear general,” he said, leaning in front of Clarke and addressing Somervell. “I’m still commander-in-chief of the Army!”

  This time, Roosevelt did not seem to be joking. Somervell retreated into silence.

  They arrived at the site. It was known locally as Hell’s Bottom, and it looked it, a tawdry neighborhood of shacks, dumps, beat-up factory buildings, railroad yards, and pawnshops. Roosevelt liked it just fine. The car stopped at a spot on the southern edge of the property, and Secret Service agents jumped out and surrounded the car. Roosevelt pointed north to the site. “Gilmore, we’re going to put the building over there, aren’t we?” the president asked Clarke.

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Clarke dutifully replied.

  “Did you hear that, general?” Roosevelt continued. “We’re going to locate the War Department building over there.”

  Somervell had no choice but to acquiesce.

  When Clarke asked about the language in the congressional bill specifying the Arlington Farm site, Roosevelt dismissed the concern, confident his solution legally circumvented the law. “Never mind, we’re not going to pay any attention to that, we’re going to put it over here,” he said.

  Inspecting the site at close range, Roosevelt pronounced it excellent. To get a better perspective on the eighty-seven-acre tract, the party continued to a high bluff along Arlington Ridge Road overlooking the site.

  Even from
up high, it was not a pretty sight. “It was pointed out that the industrial slums along Columbia Pike would mar the environment of the new building, and the President said they ought to be acquired,” Downer reported to Delano. Looking to the south of Columbia Pike, Roosevelt asked what could be done about the old brickyards and other properties in that area. Somervell said he was confident the Army could secure the authority for cleaning up the south side to a depth of several hundred feet. It was also agreed that what Downer called “slum dwellings”—actually a respectable black neighborhood known as Queen City—in a triangle of land framed by Columbia Pike and Arlington Ridge Road would be condemned for highway improvements.

  Roosevelt wanted to know about the size of the building. Somervell replied that the gross area of the new building would be about four million square feet, or about four-fifths the size originally proposed. But in keeping with the agreement hashed out with Delano and Smith, Somervell promised the president it would hold no more than twenty thousand workers until it was demonstrated that the highways and bridges could handle more.

  The entourage rode through Arlington Cemetery, past the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and back down toward Memorial Bridge, not even slowing as they passed the stately Arlington Farm site where Somervell had come so close to constructing the building. They drove back onto the White House grounds about an hour after departing. As the car came to a stop, Roosevelt again addressed Somervell: “General, you’re going to show the plans for this proposed building to the Commission of Fine Arts, are you not?”

  Somervell had no intention of doing this, and told the president so. The general insisted the new location—certainly not part of L’Enfant’s monumental Washington—was outside the commission’s jurisdiction.

  Irritated, Roosevelt waited until Somervell had finished. “Well, General, you show the plans to the Commission of Fine Arts and, when they’ve approved of them, show them to me.” Clarke listened delightedly. Once that caveat was met, FDR added, the project should “go ahead at full speed.”

  With that, the president rolled back into the White House for a cocktail.

  1878–79 Hopkins map showing the Lee mansion and environs, with overlay of modern Pentagon military reservation.

  A hot time in the old town

  As the southbound train pulled out of Washington’s Pennsylvania Station on the afternoon of May 30, 1904, a handsome young mustachioed man with the blazing eyes of a zealot emptied several bags into the aisle. The contents spilled out, revealing a small arsenal of axes, sledgehammers, and sawed-off shotguns. The man distributed the weapons among a party of twenty men accompanying him. Other passengers were terrified, believing it to be a holdup. But the men were not planning to stay aboard for long. By arrangement with the conductor, the train was to slow down for them to jump off immediately after crossing the Potomac River and reaching Virginia.

  The man was Crandal Mackey, the newly elected Commonwealth’s Attorney for Arlington—then known as Alexandria County—and he was on a mission to restore law and order. In the years since the Civil War, parts of the county formerly under control of Union troops had fallen into disorder and lawlessness. Along the Potomac River, near the bridges connecting Virginia to the District, communities of sin had sprung up. Criminal elements, protected by venal politicians, had set up gambling houses, saloons, brothels, and racetracks serving the citizens of Washington. Two of the very worst areas were Jackson City and nearby Hell’s Bottom.

  Jackson City, at least, had grand beginnings. Old Hickory himself, Andrew Jackson, laid the cornerstone in 1836. The city was dreamed up by New York speculators who envisioned a bustling port and industrial center across the river from Washington. They chose what was then Alexander’s Island, a large tract of land along the Potomac, separated from the Virginia shore by marshland. Its location at the foot of Long Bridge made it a natural setting for commerce, promoters said.

  On a raw and blustery January day, President Jackson led a procession of thousands across the bridge. Despite the cold, the old general refused to wear a hat, thrilling those able to capture a glimpse of his famed snow-white head. At the appointed moment, Jackson knocked a ceremonial stone three times with a small gilt hammer, and cannons thundered in celebration. George Washington Parke Custis, owner of the grand Arlington House, gave a speech enthusiastically welcoming the venture, and so many toasts were drunk that police made several arrests.

  It was all downhill from there. Facing opposition from Georgetown merchants and lacking support in Congress, the enterprise soon flopped. Jackson City was sold at auction in 1851. The promoters had been right about one thing, though: It was an ideal spot for commerce. A horse track established on the island did a flourishing business. In the 1870s, promoters from New Jersey found it a perfect place for commercial vice after gambling and racing were outlawed in their home state. By 1892, the Evening Star referred to Jackson City as “the miniature Monte Carlo on the other side of the river.” The neighborhood was particularly raucous late at night and on weekends, when bars in the District closed and the weak-willed strolled across the bridge to quench their various thirsts.

  Just inland, occupying low ground off Columbia Pike, sat Hell’s Bottom, sprung from the same general atmosphere of lawlessness and vice. There were no streets or sidewalks, just a sordid collection of gambling dens, stills, shacks, and murder traps populated by poor blacks. “Hell’s Bottom was described fully and accurately by two words, ‘Hell’s Bottom’ because it was the very bottom of Hell, you couldn’t get any lower,” Frank Ball, then a young ally of Mackey’s, recalled years later. Victims with names like Dusthouse Dan were found with crushed skulls, shot full of bullets, or both after arguments over dice games or disputes over bootlegging territory.

  Further up the river, across the Aqueduct Bridge from Georgetown, sat Rosslyn, a village packed with saloons and lewd women servicing visitors from across the bridge. Nearby was Dead Man’s Hollow, where at times it was not uncommon to find a body a week. “Some committed suicide, some were killed by the gamblers and liquor people, some got in fights, and a little bit of everything happened,” said Ball. “I would not have gone up Dead Man’s Hollow after dark for all the money in the world and I was a pretty big boy by that time.” Farmers returning to Alexandria County after selling their produce at market in Washington would form armed convoys before crossing the bridges.

  By the turn of the century, the respectable citizens among the 6,400 residents of the county were determined to end the lawlessness. They just needed the right man. Mackey, the son of a Confederate officer, had fought in the Spanish-American War, started a law practice in Washington, and established a sterling reputation. Meeting at the home of Frank Ball’s father, the Good Citizens’ League in 1903 nominated Mackey to run for Commonwealth’s Attorney against Dick Johnson, the candidate backed by the gamblers. “They had the doggonest knockdown dragout fight you ever saw in your life,” Ball said. In the end, Mackey beat Johnson by two votes.

  Taking office on January 1, 1904, Mackey declared war on the gambling interests, vowing to close every saloon in the county. When he had trouble getting the sheriff to cooperate, he took matters into his own hands. Mackey obtained a warrant and quietly formed a posse made up of “the better people of the county.”

  Jackson City was the prime target. It was easiest to approach from Washington. Mackey’s ax party gathered at the train station shortly before 4 P.M. and made its final plans. “After crossing the Long Bridge the train rattled on and the men had a bad moment when it looked as though the conductor had forgotten them,” one account related. But the train soon slowed, and the posse hopped off.

  The raiders worked their way back to Jackson City. Bursting into the first establishment, they found a healthy contingent of gamblers playing poker and shooting craps. The miscreants quickly scattered. “It did not bother them whether they left through the open doors or the closed windows,” the Star reported the next day. Most high-tailed it across the bridge back into
Washington, leaving the posse to its work.

  Mackey’s men were nothing if not thorough. They cut garish paintings down from the walls, busted ornate tables, destroyed chairs, and hacked in walls. “Glassware was smashed and the contents of the bottles, demijohns and decanters was allowed to flow, giving the room the appearance of having passed through a Potomac flood,” the Star reported. A nickel-a-song jukebox was jarred in the ruckus and, by one account, started playing “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” repeatedly.

  Jackson City never really recovered from Mackey’s ax party. Not long afterward, a disgruntled gambler set the place ablaze, and all traces of it disappeared from the earth.

  The place where fish are caught

  The land where the Pentagon would be built had a long history; it already had been inhabited by Indians for perhaps twelve thousand years when Captain John Smith sailed past it in July 1608. A year after founding Jamestown, Smith had taken fourteen men in an open sailboat to explore the Potomac River, looking for gold and a passage to the South Seas. On the site Franklin Roosevelt would choose 333 years later for Somervell’s building, Smith and his men spotted a village consisting of several longhouses constructed of woven grass mats. The inhabitants spoke an Algonquian dialect similar to that of the natives living near Jamestown. The village was called Namoraughquend, a name Smith understood to mean “place where fish are caught.”

  The plentiful supply of fish had attracted Algonquian tribes to the area, as did abundant waterfowl and deer and nearby quarries of quartzite that could be chipped into weapons and tools. The site was mostly low-lying river bottom, a mixture of sands, silts, and clays, with a long way to bedrock. Farther inland the land started to roll and rise.