Pentagon

Located in Arlington, Virginia, headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense. The term Pentagon refers to both the building itself and to the military establishment headquartered there. The Pentagon is the center of military power in the United States.

The Building and Its History

The Pentagon, which lies across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, is the world's largest office building. It consists of five concentric rings, designated A, B, C, D, and E, each five stories high. Each ring occupies an area large enough to contain the U.S. Capitol building. The Pentagon covers a total area of 29 acres and contains 3,705,793 square feet of office space, three times the floor space of the Empire State Building. Despite its size, the Pentagon is efficiently designed. Although the building contains some 17 miles of hallways, it takes no more than seven minutes to walk between any two points inside.

The Pentagon's tremendous size is a product of the enormity of the role it was built to fulfill. United States involvement in World War II put a tremendous strain on the then-existing Department of War, whose personnel were spread across 17 different buildings in Washington, DC. The Pentagon was designed to consolidate departmental personnel in a central location to increase efficiency.

The original plan for the building, developed by Brigadier General Brehon B. Somervell, took less than four days to conceive. The building was intended to be a three-story facility meant to house 40,000 people. General Somervell, however, ignored President Franklin D. Roosevelt's stated size preferences and began construction on a five-sided building much larger than had been anticipated. The number of stories was increased to four, and then finally five.

Construction on the Pentagon began on September 11, 1941, and was completed less than two years later. The project was subject to the same wartime rationing requirements as every other initiative; thus, concrete ramps substituted for elevators to connect floors. Even so, 13,000 workers were employed in its construction, and the building cost $80 million when it was completed in 1943.

Since its completion, the Pentagon has acquired tremendous symbolic importance as the headquarters of the U.S. military. For many, it stands as a symbol of American power and stability; for others, it symbolizes a U.S. overreliance on military force to advance national interests. The depth of feeling stirred by the Pentagon has been expressed by a number of acts intended to deface or destroy it. Pig's blood was thrown on the Pentagon during Vietnam War protests, and in the 1960s, the radical antigovernment Weather Underground group successfully bombed a women's bathroom in the building. The Pentagon was one of the main targets of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, DC, placing the building at the center of the war on terror.

The Pentagon as an Institution

The spread of War Department personnel across Washington, DC, was a metaphor for the lack of coordination among the U.S. armed forces. During the war, it became clear that Army, Navy, and Air Force units had to work together closely to be effective. However, the military was plagued by interservice rivalries over allocation of resources and command responsibility. In 1945, President Harry S. Truman proposed unifying military planning and command in a Department of National Defense. The thought of concentrating so much power and authority in one department was worrisome to many military commanders and members of Congress. However, Truman's views won out, and the National Security Act of 1947 combined the Department of War, the Navy Department, and the Department of the Air Force into a new Department of Defense. The civilian head of the department, the secretary of defense, was given authority over all branches of the U.S. military.

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