How the Pentagon Got Its Shape

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How The Pentagon Got Its Shape
In 1941, Washington was consumed by war anxiety. And the U.S. War Department, growing at an explosive rate, needed a new home.

Somervell had also ignored the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, assuring Congress that there was no need to consult the commission about the project. Not everyone agreed, including the planning commission chairman, Frederic A. Delano, or, as President Roosevelt called him, "Uncle Fred." Delano, younger brother of Roosevelt's mother, Sara, was a pioneer in the field of city planning and was a leading force in resurrecting L'Enfant's plan and clearing out the Mall. Delano pushed Congress to bring order to the capital's development by creating the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, and, Somer-vell's assurances aside, the law creating the commission clearly gave it oversight over the proposed building in Arlington.

Delano had many concerns about the building, particularly potential transportation problems. At 3 p.m. on Wednesday, July 30, Delano walked into the Oval Office for a meeting with his nephew. He was accompanied by Harold D. Smith, director of the president's budget office. With calm gray eyes behind his rimless spectacles, Smith had the look and sensibilities of a Midwestern justice of the peace. His opinions were held in high regard by Roosevelt. The visitors had a very direct message: "It was a great pity to construct this building," the president was told.

Roosevelt had returned the previous day from a five-day visit to Hyde Park, where he had decamped after approving the new building at the Cabinet meeting July 24. Now, faced with his uncle's protests, the president admitted that perhaps he had been a bit hasty. Smith's concerns about the building were not aesthetic. He just could not understand why a huge, permanent building was needed when the growth of the War Department was supposed to be a temporary response to the emergency.

Delano and Smith told the president that moving 40,000 people back and forth across the Potomac River between Washington and Virginia every day would create "terrific" traffic problems and overwhelm the capacity of the bridges. By the end of the meeting, the president had decided that Somervell's building would be cut back considerably in size.

ON AUGUST 3, AT 10:40 ON A HOT AND HUMID SUNDAY MORNING, the U.S. flag flying over the White House came down from its staff, signaling the president's departure. Roosevelt was escaping a Washington so oppressive that "the heat was melting the tar on Massachusetts Avenue," one press account said. A special train waited at Union Station to take the president to New England for what was supposed to be a relaxing 10-day fishing cruise.

Before leaving town, Roosevelt had taken care of a pressing matter.

After huddling with Harold Smith at noon on Friday, Roosevelt signed a letter to Colorado Sen. Alva B. Adams, chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that was to consider the new War Department building. "When this project was first brought to my attention, I agreed that it should be explored," Roosevelt's letter read. "Since then I have had an opportunity to look into the matter personally and have some reservations which I would like to impart to your committee."

The letter, drafted by Smith and using language very similar to that sent by Delano to the Senate the day before, expressed concern about whether the site's transportation network could accommodate such a large building with so many employees. Roosevelt urged the Senate to approve "a smaller building" limited to 20,000 employees. More space could be added later if needed, he said.

With all final business attended to, Roosevelt appeared not to have a care in the world as he headed out of town, boasting of the number of fish he expected to catch. But the trip was a good deal more than a vacation. The president's yacht was scheduled for a surreptitious night rendezvous off Martha's Vineyard with the heavy cruiser USS Augusta, flagship of the Atlantic Fleet. The Augusta, in turn, escorted by another heavy cruiser and five destroyers, would carry Roosevelt to waters off Newfoundland for a secret meeting -- his first as president -- with Winston Churchill, prime minister of Britain.

Almost everyone back in Washington, even senior government officials, knew nothing about the president's mission. Congress remained in session, and the debate over the new War Department building erupted into a full-fledged controversy. Somervell confidently moved forward to construct the building on his own terms, making no adjustments to shrink it. Yet there was no denying that Somervell had suffered quite a reversal.

A consensus was settling in some quarters that the new War Department simply could not be built at the foot of Arlington Cemetery, desecrating the view from L'Enfant's tomb. Clarke, the leading opponent, endorsed a proposal to use another plot of land, this one immediately south of the Arlington experimental farm and adjacent to Washington-Hoover Airport. The Army had just broken ground for a quartermaster depot on the site.

There would be no aesthetic concerns about building on this low-lying, ignoble tract of land. But Somervell refused to bend, heaping scorn on the quartermaster depot site, set in a picaresque neighborhood known as Hell's Bottom: "The Chairman of the Fine Arts Commission thinks it is all right to put the War Department down among a lot of shanties, brickyards, dumps, factories and things of that kind." The committee endorsed Somervell's favored site.