The Pentagon: A History

by Steve Vogel

  McShain had an ally in the limestone industry, which had fallen on hard times, and, aided by Senator Raymond Willis of Indiana, was lobbying hard for limestone on the new War Department building. “Bricklayers are all extremely busy whereas stone setters are literally walking the streets in every large city,” the director of the Indiana Limestone Institute wrote Somervell. The “limestone boys,” a War Department official later said, succeeded in making the switch from bricks. Groves thought limestone was a mistake and argued against it repeatedly with Somervell. A brick exterior “would indicate that we were not extravagant,” Groves later wrote. But Somervell was persuaded that limestone would lend a dignity to the building at a reasonable cost—$295,000—and if it made the limestone boys and the senator from Indiana happy, all the better. The Commission of Fine Arts approved limestone, but a decision was still needed from Roosevelt, who had reserved final judgment on the exterior.

  The limestone debate was only a warm-up to a far more serious disagreement over the rest of the walls. Each of the building’s five concentric rings was to have exterior walls on both sides. In essence, ten pentagonal-shaped walls would be constructed around the entire length of the building. The outermost wall would have limestone facing, if Roosevelt approved. The question was what to put on the other nine walls, as well as the walls of the inner-court stairways, bridge passageways, and various approaches to the building. An enormous amount of wall space was at stake—more than 1.1 million square feet.

  McShain and Groves thought it easiest and most economical to simply use brick. But Bergstrom, borrowing from designs he had used often in Southern California, wanted to use architectural concrete, a technique that made ornamental use of concrete. Rough-sawn boards would be used as forms, giving the concrete a texture reflecting the pattern of the grain in the boards. A gap would be left between the eight-inch boards, so the concrete would ooze out and form a ridge. The forms had to be stripped with great care to avoid breaking the ridges. Skilled concrete finishers would brush wet grout on the walls to give them the proper color and texture. It would be painstaking work, “a most expensive procedure,” as Groves said. The effect was meant to simulate limestone; ironically, it would have been cheaper just to use limestone, Luther Leisenring, the chief of the architects’ specifications section, later told Army historians.

  McShain was beside himself, predicting disaster. Architectural concrete had been used sparingly on the East Coast, and McShain’s crews were unfamiliar with the technique. It would prolong construction by six months or more, he warned, and increase the cost of the walls by $650,000. Groves conceded that architectural concrete would look better than brick but called it “a terrible thing from the cost standpoint and a time standpoint.”

  Late on the morning of October 10, Somervell slipped into the Oval Office with Bergstrom to decide the controversy with Roosevelt. The general recommended facing the exterior of the building with Indiana limestone. Roosevelt raised no objection, insisting only that the building have no marble, for the sake of appearing thrifty.

  Next Bergstrom made the case for using architectural concrete for the other exterior walls, showing the president photographs of a building in Los Angeles he had designed using the technique. Roosevelt was pleased with the look and approved architectural concrete, despite the added cost.

  “The president thinks it is swell,” Groves glumly told McShain that afternoon.

  The fight was not over. Groves ordered three sample walls built, each about twenty feet long by twelve feet high, complete with windowsills. One was to be of an attractive colored faced brick, one of architectural concrete, and one of Indiana limestone, to see how they compared.

  Inspecting the concrete wall after it set, McShain was horrified. The concrete was badly honeycombed with voids caused by air. At 8:45 A.M. on October 14, McShain called Groves in a lather. “I went over the sample with Bergstrom and between you and me, Colonel, if they’re going to let that go I think we’d better leave town,” McShain said.

  An appeal had to be made to Somervell and Roosevelt, McShain argued. “I still want the general to see it and if possible we should try to prevail on the President, because what we do here—I don’t care whether you and I oppose it—it’s going to reflect on us sooner or later,” McShain said.

  “Of course it’s bound to,” Groves agreed.

  “We are the ones responsible for the job because Bergstrom will be forgotten,” McShain said.

  Groves pressed Somervell to bring the matter to Roosevelt. “Of course the President decided the way Somervell wanted,” Groves later said.

  The president was “emphatic in his disapproval of the use of brick, either red or cream colored,” Somervell reported. The walls would be made of architectural concrete.

  “Well, it’s settled,” Groves told Somervell. “I won’t say anything more but I bet you didn’t treat me fair.”

  McShain, who prided himself on his ability to predict costs, said his estimates for the walls were worthless now. “I was only judging what a good architect would do in designing it,” he told Groves. “I didn’t anticipate the intentions of a Californian.”

  It’s going to be a whopper

  Newspaper and magazine reporters were hounding George Holmes, Somervell’s public relations man, for some news—any news—about the new building. Somervell decided progress was far enough along that he could afford to go public with a press release October 7. Reporters were confounded by what they learned.

  Each face of the five-side exterior would stretch 921 feet. The pentagonal rings would surround a six-acre landscaped interior court. A large bus terminal would be built in the basement, with two lanes and fourteen loading stations. Two parking lots would accommodate eight thousand automobiles. The whole building would be air-conditioned, and its main concourse lined with a cafeteria, drugstore, barbershop, and other shops and facilities. The 320-acre site, which included separate heating and sewage plants, would be landscaped and beautified. Stepped terraces and plazas would lead up from the lagoon. Access roads would crisscross the property and new highways built to bring employees to work.

  It sure did not sound as if the size of the building had been cut in half. Yet the release conspicuously noted that “the size, design and location of the building have received the personal attention of the President and the plans as announced reflect the instructions issued to Brigadier General Brehon B. Somervell, Chief of Construction.”

  Reporters were further alarmed by the high amount listed in the release for the construction contract, $31.1 million—a figure that did not even include the architectural and engineering costs that raised the total to $33.2 million. “The War Department’s new office building in Arlington, Va., will be a dream building after all, costing some 31 million dollars,” the Post reported suspiciously.

  The release described the building as “a three-story building, with basement,” but that was a deliberate deception, directed by Somervell. The “so-called basement was above ground,” so the building was really four stories. Somervell ordered the basement nomenclature to disguise the inconvenient fact that he had promised a three-story building in his congressional testimony. No mention was made about the sub-basement that was planned, or for that matter, the sub-sub-basement.

  Indeed, no information at all had been included in the press release about the total amount of space in the building. Reporters scrambled to find details of the dimensions from closed-mouthed War Department officials but met with little success for several days. An Army press spokesman, employing no little sophistry, told the Star that it was impossible as of yet to figure out the size of the building because the plans were not finished.

  Finally, leaving the White House around noon on October 10 after a meeting with the president, Somervell was cornered by reporters who demanded answers. “No one is interested in the size of the building except real estate operators and war profiteers,” the general insisted. Pressed, Somervell acknowledged the total size of the buildin
g would be more than four million square feet, or over four-fifths the size of the original proposal.

  Conferring with local architects, the Star pieced together the truth. The plans for Somervell’s building allotted 125 square feet per employee, a generous amount of space by the standards of the day given the emergency conditions. Some War Department employees were getting by then in as little as forty-five square feet. By halving the space allotment per worker, the building could—with the stroke of a pen—hold forty thousand workers. The building was being constructed with enormous office bays rather than individual suites, so it would be a simple matter of moving in more desks.

  The working papers of Witmer, Bergstrom’s top assistant, confirm the theory, showing the architects were working with two sets of estimates, one showing capacity of 19,530 workers at 125 square feet per person, the other 37,500 workers at 65 square feet per person.

  Speaking to reporters at the White House, Somervell called it “utterly ridiculous” to suggest he had circumvented Roosevelt’s directions. “Do you think any government official in his right mind would fail to conform to the President’s orders?” he asked. Indeed, despite the press suspicion, Somervell told Roosevelt on August 29 that the building would be four million square feet, and the president raised no objection. Roosevelt, seeking to dampen the public controversy, probably was an accomplice in hiding the true size of the building; Somervell likely spoke the truth a month earlier when he told Surles, the public relations chief, that the president did not want the information released.

  As for reporters’ doubts that such an elaborate building would ever be used to store records, Somervell insisted it would make a “dandy” archives. Asked if the War Department would ever be willing to give up the building, the general coyly said, “Let’s get through the emergency first.”

  Skeptical reporters consulted with Frederic Delano, who confirmed that Somervell’s building adhered to the compromise agreement that he had signed and the president had approved. The commission was “by no means satisfied,” Delano told reporters. But, he added, “we treated it as a war emergency and so accepted it.”

  The newspapers broke the news about the building to the public. The Times-Herald sounded bitter about having been duped: “It was finally decided once and for all, positively and definitely yesterday, that the size of the new War Department Building hasn’t been cut in half and that it is going to be a whopper.”

  An aerial view of the site on September 15, 1941, with the Goodyear blimp Enterprise visible in the background moored to the ground.

  Lieutenant Furman’s blimp ride

  Lieutenant Bob Furman waited for a rare quiet moment to slip away from the job site. As executive officer for the construction of the new War Department building, he spent his days and often his nights responding to one crisis after another. But on a clear October morning, Furman walked down to the grounds of the old Washington-Hoover Airport and headed to the field where the Goodyear blimp Enterprise was tied to a portable mooring mast.

  The blimp was the only aircraft still flying from the old airport, at least legally. Even in mid-October planes were still buzzing into the airport, piloted mostly by out-of-towners unaware that the airfield had closed down and somehow oblivious to the heavy equipment tearing up the place. Constructing Quartermaster Clarence Renshaw—newly promoted to major—publicly appealed for pilots to stop, warning that someone was bound to be killed soon.

  Enterprise, a 148-foot long helium blimp, had been a fixture in Washington skies since 1935, promoting the tire company, carrying thousands of tourists on sight-seeing tours, and once delivering food and medical supplies to icebound residents of Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay. The War Department granted the ship special dispensation to stay at Washington-Hoover while its enormous hangar was moved, piece by piece, to National Airport. Renshaw soon had cause to regret the benevolence. Every time Enterprise launched, a thousand men at the construction site would drop whatever they were doing and turn their heads skyward to watch.

  Furman knew time was short to sneak a ride on the blimp. “Nobody knew I was doing it,” he said. “I had miscellaneous duties, and I just fit that one in.” He plunked down his $3 and boarded the cabin. He had it all to himself.

  Tall, bright, and affable, with a pompadour of reddish-brown hair above his angular face and smiling eyes, the twenty-six-year-old Furman had not expected to find his life interrupted by this great construction endeavor. He was the son of the assistant cashier at a small Quaker bank in Trenton, New Jersey. His father, William Amies Furman, had been raised a Quaker in Trenton but was thrown out of the church when he married a Congregationalist. His mother, Lelia Ficht, was the daughter of a Colorado man who built railroad lines through Indian country to copper mines in New Mexico. Bob, born in Trenton in 1915, was raised an Episcopalian along with his two brothers and two sisters. The middle son, Bob was industrious from the start, working for—and soon taking over—a network of neighborhood kids who sold seven hundred Saturday Evening Posts around town for a nickel apiece, clearing a penny-and-a-half profit per copy.

  He earned enough to pay his first year’s tuition at Princeton, where he entered the school of engineering. “I always wanted to build, so civil engineering was naturally the place for training,” he said. Furman also joined the ROTC program at the insistence of his older brother, who wanted him to be an officer instead of a draftee if war came. Graduating in 1937, Furman went to work for the Turner Construction Company in New York City.

  Furman did not pay much mind to the great mobilization of the Army in 1940 and was quite surprised to find himself called to active duty just before Christmas. With his engineering background, Furman was ordered to report to the Quartermaster Corps Construction Division headquarters in the Railroad Retirement Building in Washington. He was assigned to Renshaw’s staff and given a desk next to Colonel Groves’s office, the center of the whirling frenzy that was Army construction in 1941.

  Groves and Renshaw were impressed with the Princeton boy’s smarts and calm competence. When Renshaw was chosen to build the new War Department headquarters in August 1941, he took Furman with him. As executive officer for the construction of what would become the Pentagon, Furman was seeing his dream of building come true on an unsurpassed scale. All the debate about whether the building would be needed after the emergency struck him as irrelevant. “Whether it was useful after the war didn’t matter,” he later said. “We needed it to win the war.”

  Now, as Enterprise lifted skyward, Furman got his first bird’s-eye view of the construction. The blimp’s motion had him feeling a tad seasick, but he ignored the queasiness and peered out the window at the ground. Familiar as he was with the project, the scope of what he saw still astonished him. “It was a big site—a hell of a big site,” Furman said. “The magnitude of the project was so evident.”

  Workers swarmed everywhere. Nearly three thousand men were now working three shifts around the clock, the bulk of them during the day. Two sides of the pentagon were clearly visible, joined together like a giant arrow pointing to the southwest. The southern portion, Section A, was further along, the concrete slab for its foundation—some ten thousand cubic yards—already poured. Forms could be seen for part of the second-floor slab. Hundreds of pile cap forms had been placed in Section B, to the west. From the air it looked like a vast punch card riddled with holes. Pile drivers were hammering around the clock, and almost nine thousand piles had been sunk.

  The land 1,500 feet below Furman was being reshaped. Steam shovels were excavating earth and bulldozers had already graded a hundred acres of land. Dirt construction roads crisscrossed the site, and dump trucks lumbered along them, raising plumes of dust. In the lagoon adjacent to the site, barges bearing heaps of sand and gravel from the Potomac delivered the aggregate to the concrete batching plant. On the old airport grounds, construction had started on the basement for the new building’s power plant. Along the eastern side of the building, workers were nearly f
inished relocating a mile-long stretch of the Pennsylvania Railroad running north up to Rosslyn.

  The blimp ride was short—perhaps ten minutes—but it left a tremendous impression on Furman. Floating down to earth, he marveled that the nation could construct such a great building at the same time it was mobilizing and arming an enormous military. It was a formidable sight. “The size and magnitude and strength of the country was pretty evident,” Furman said.

  McShain and Bergstrom go to war

  Back on the ground, progress was not so evident. The pace of the work was anemic, as far as the builder, John McShain, was concerned. The architects could not supply design plans fast enough. McShain was in a fine fettle: He could have two, three, even ten times as many men on the site constructing the building—if he only knew what he was supposed to build.

  McShain had laid down the law that there were to be no personalities and no friction at the job site, but there were personalities—McShain’s prominent among them—and there was friction, particularly with Edwin Bergstrom, the chief architect. Though his headquarters and home were in Philadelphia, McShain spent many days in Washington monitoring the work, keeping an apartment at the Hay-Adams House, a luxurious Italian Renaissance-style apartment-hotel on Lafayette Square across from the White House. This project was too important and too big—too magnificent a challenge—to stay away from. He needed to do battle with the architects.