An Eyeful of Washington Eyesores

-- Peggy Dorvitt, 51, Leesburg

The hospital, referred to as "Glenn Dale Golf Club" in its manicured prime, has spookified itself into a foreboding haunt over the past 25 years. It was vacated in 1982 after serving first as a tuberculosis sanitarium (from 1934 to 1960) and then as a home for the chronically ill. Now its crumbling Georgian- and Colonial Revival-style buildings languish on 216 acres of rolling hills in Prince George's County, attracting wild vines and serial trespassers. Nothing specific is planned for the site, which is owned by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission.

National Association of Automobile Dealers 8400 Westpark Dr., McLean

The ugliest beyond-Soviet-era building. Pay close attention to the concrete cylinders that look like missile silos from the '40s and '50s.

-- Sergio Nino II, 54, Dale City

We assume that nuclear warheads are not, in fact, stored in the headquarters of the National Association of Automobile Dealers. But it looks as though they could be. Three rounded beige towers flank a giant shiny black box of a building. It's two distinct "aesthetic" concepts smushed together: Cold War paranoia vs. trim corporate suburbia. Who designed the building? What do employees think of it? We don't know. Representatives for the association didn't return our calls or e-mails. But we forgive them. Given the climate of the auto industry, they probably have bigger fish to fry than making excuses for their unsightly place of work.

Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, Department of Housing and Urban Development 451 Seventh St. SW

Is it a spaceship, space station or what? It is so gray, cold and impersonal -- in the worst way. And what is the purpose of those grassy disks? In my opinion, it doesn't fit in with the design of the federal buildings in the city and is a terrible eyesore.

-- Millicent J. Dew, 58, La Plata

Actually, it fit in just fine in 1962, when, apparently, large angular slabs of precast concrete connoted enterprise and vigor. Those are two of the philosophical pillars of the "Guiding Principles of Federal Architecture," a set of directives issued by the Kennedy administration that called for federal buildings to "reflect the dignity, enterprise, vigor and stability of the American National Government." HUD's headquarters were designed by Marcel Breuer and completed in 1968. As for those disks that look like flying saucers? They weren't added until 1990. Perhaps the building lacked dignity without them.