At 100, Wilson Building Is Only Looking Better

Officials Toast Seat of Government That City Abandoned in Darker Days, Then Reclaimed

The District's political elite squeezed into an atrium in the John A. Wilson Building yesterday to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the beaux-arts style structure -- at once a symbol of the city's federal control, its longtime struggle for autonomy and most simply, an awesome display of craftsmanship.

They recalled how today almost didn't happen. The Pennsylvania Avenue NW building slipped out of the city's control in the 1990s when then-Mayor Sharon Pratt abandoned the crumbling, vermin-infested city hall for offices at Judiciary Square. The D.C. Council later followed.

Financially strapped, city officials agreed to a partnership with a private developer to renovate the building. In turn, the developer would lease two-thirds of the building to the federal government for 20 years. But as the city came back from financial ruin and the building was returning to its glory, city officials wanted to return home.

After legal wrangling with the developer and negotiations with the federal government, the city got its house back in 2000 and officially returned in 2001.

"The federal government was out, out, out of our city hall," said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), recalling the fight.

Linda W. Cropp (D), who chaired the council when the city moved back in, noted that the building is the D.C. government's only presence on Pennsylvania Avenue.

"It was very important that the District of Columbia have a presence on the main street," she said.

Pratt recalled the political skewering she took for leaving.

"Needless to say, the same council that said we had rats and roaches jumped on me when we moved," she said.

But that's politics, she said. And the past.

Yesterday, she took in the building's restored magnificence. It underwent a $68.5 million restoration, a task that Cropp said entailed scraping away 13 layers of paint in the council chambers. An addition was also built, which includes an office for the mayor on the sixth floor.

Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) said the building has been updated in the past two years with cameras in meeting rooms to create more transparency and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's modern take on office settings: the bullpen.