The Triangle… The Oval… The Rectangle… The United States Department of Defense could have chosen
any shape — and name — for its headquarters. So how exactly did they end up with "The Pentagon?"
In July 1941, six months before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor
on December 7, officially thrusting the United States into World War II,
forward-thinking U.S. Army Brigadier General Brehon Burke Somervell conceived the idea
for an immense building that could house an expanding War Department. Somervell headed
up the branch's Construction Division and had a knack for getting things done even if
they were mired in bureaucracy, according to "The Pentagon: The First Fifty Years."
Somervell wanted this new building to easily accommodate the department's
24,000 military and civilian employees spread out among 17 buildings across Washington,
D.C., and he wanted it done as soon as humanly possible. The chosen site, across the Potomac
River in Arlington County, Virginia, was between Arlington National Cemetery and Washington,
and would require a unique design to fit within the parameters of the property. Lt. Col. Hugh
Casey, known as Pat, the chief of the Army's Design Section, and his team came up with a
pentagon-shaped building that maximized the oddly shaped space, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
Brigadier General Somervell envisioned a building that could accommodate at least
40,000 people, with nearly twice the office space found in the Empire State Building — 4
million square feet — and parking for 10,000 cars, at a projected cost of $35 million,
according to the Defense Media Network. As if that wasn't a hard enough set of requirements,
Somervell stipulated that it couldn't be over four stories tall so as not to block
views of the nation's capital across the river, Live Science notes, and to conserve on steel,
which would soon be in great demand as the nation began ramping up its military production.
The new building's site, Arlington Farm, had been a Department of Agriculture property used for
experimental farming on top of a hill overlooking the Potomac River, according to "The Pentagon:
A History." Because the space was hemmed in on five sides by roads and other impediments,
the War Department's new building design required thinking outside of the box. Somervell then made
things even harder by asking for the plans to go from four stories to three in an attempt to
stave off any potential complaints about the building's height. And he still wanted the
same amount of floor space. Eventually, George Edwin Bergstrom, the lead architect, and his
small team came up with the building's singular shape that would give the building its name.
"Get me The Pentagon. Red priority."
The outcry about the plans for the new War Department building was swift
and loud. Gilmore D. Clarke, the dean of the architecture department at Cornell University,
believed building The Pentagon so close to Arlington National Cemetery would spoil the
view from the hallowed grounds that contained the Grave of the Unknown Soldier and the
former home of Robert E. Lee, according to a contemporary story in The Ithaca Journal.
In late August 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt stepped in and nixed the planned
site near Arlington National Cemetery and also told General Somervell to reduce the
size of the building by nearly half, according to The Evening Star. At the time, Roosevelt,
and everyone else, believed the building would only be used during the coming war. The new
site consisted of land from the U.S. Army base Fort Myer — now called Joint Base Myer-Henderson
Hall — and the Washington-Hoover Airport, Smithsonian explains. The U.S. government
also evicted 150 families from a traditionally Black neighborhood made up of the descendants
of enslaved people in East Arlington to make room for the Pentagon, according to History.
With the new project site, there was no need for a five-sided building but, by this point,
it was too late to start over with the design, so they kept the unusual shape.
Somervell managed to convince Roosevelt to make the building large enough to accommodate
35,000 workers,15,000 more than the President had wanted, The Washington Post reports. They
broke ground on September 11, 1941, and only seven months later, the first War Department employees
moved in, while construction continued on the rest of the building, according to Live Science.
They completed the building in only 16 months under the supervision of Col. Leslie
Groves, who would go on to helm the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bomb.
In "The Pentagon: The First Fifty Years," military historian Alfred Goldberg surmised:
"Born of necessity, built in great haste, and occupied section by section,
it turned out to be a much better building than anyone expected or had a right to expect."