by Steve Vogel
The Washington Daily News ran a photograph on March 23 showing the two long, low façades, stretching seemingly forever across eight columns of the newspaper. “This is how the New War Department Building is coming along, in case you’ve been staying home saving gas and rubber,” the caption read. “Some change, eh?”
It was indeed. The building was 40 percent complete, Renshaw reported in March. More than thirteen thousand workers were now on the job, and their numbers would soon peak at fifteen thousand, more than four times the number that built the Empire State Building. It was “a scene that could have been remindful of the construction of the pyramids,” Department of Defense chief historian Alfred Goldberg later wrote. A reporter for the Star who visited the site in early April was amazed. “In one of the swiftest construction jobs on record, an army of workers seemingly imbued with a spirit of accomplishment is nearing completion of the first sections of the enormous War Department office building in nearby Arlington—less than seven months since ground was first broken,” he wrote.
Renshaw—now a lieutenant colonel, his second promotion since construction began—had a new set of aerial photographs for Somervell showing the progress as of March. Two of five sections, A and B to the south and west, were largely built to their roofs, while Section C was well on its way. The framework was rising for the second and third stories in Section D, facing the lagoon. Piles were still being driven for Section E, the fifth and final one, but the building’s entire layout was now apparent. Before sending the photographs, Renshaw used a black pen to outline a chevron-shaped wedge in the building that included about half of Section A and half of Section B—about 500,000 square feet in all. “The section outlined in ink is for May occupancy,” Renshaw wrote to Somervell. “We are running a close race with the architect and with our appropriations.”
The architect, at least, was running relatively well. The designers in the Eastern Airlines hangar were still lagging 5 percent behind schedule in February but by March had largely caught up, and by the beginning of April, they had actually moved 6 percent ahead of schedule—though still not fast enough to satisfy McShain.
The appropriations race was another matter altogether. Through the winter, the Army clung to the convenient fiction that the building was going to cost $35 million, the amount appropriated by Congress. Official construction documents listed this amount even after Bergstrom estimated in February that the cost would be $45 million, what with the space added to the building after Pearl Harbor, the roads Somervell promised, and all the changes to the design. The news just got worse. On April 3, McShain reported the project was more than $13 million over budget. Overtime wages alone accounted for $2 million. Conditions at the swampy site were responsible for $2 million in extra earth excavation and fill and $1.4 million in additional pile driving. Added space in the building accounted for $2.7 million. Beyond that, as McShain’s job superintendent, Paul Hauck, dryly remarked, “it is noted that the type of building which was originally planned differed greatly from the one which is now being built.”
Somervell blew up when McShain told him the news. Chagrined, McShain reworked the numbers. “Since seeing you last week I have been very much concerned about your reaction towards the rising cost,” the builder wrote him on April 10, adding, “I am ever mindful of the fact that you awarded this job to me.” McShain reported that he had found an error in the estimates for concrete that reduced the overrun to $10 million over the original estimate. Somervell replied that this was “hearty news,” adding cautiously, “I hope that your predictions will be borne out.”
They would not. The predictions would soon prove hopelessly optimistic. Just a week later, Renshaw reported that he was short $15.7 million, and more overruns were possible. Ultimately, it was not Bergstrom’s, McShain’s, or Renshaw’s fault. The problem was with the $35 million estimate itself. Somervell did not, however, feel it necessary to notify Congress just yet. He would wait until the building was occupied, probably figuring he would wrap bad news with good to soften the blow. Somervell’s PR man, George Holmes, told Renshaw that any information released to reporters about the building should have “nothing to do with the actual details.”
Renshaw had reported on March 28 that he was on track to meet the May 1 deadline. But it was not going to be pretty. The limestone was being hung outside, but the arriving employees would not find a finished building inside. There would be no heat or air conditioning; with a little luck nobody would freeze or boil to death, though either was possible, given Washington’s fickle May weather. No one was sure they would be able to feed the employees. “It is hoped the temporary cafeteria will be ready and operate somehow,” Renshaw reported.
The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company would rig up a temporary switchboard, and the Potomac Electric Company would bring in temporary electricity, since the power plant was not finished. With all the delays acquiring land, most of the road network would not be finished until the fall, though two lanes of a new highway leading from the Memorial Bridge were expected to be ready. Office employees would have to delay their arrival in the morning so as to not create a jam with the thousands of construction workers arriving for the day shift at 7:30 A.M. Once at the building, it was not yet clear how the employees would enter, as there was no guarantee entrances would be ready. Plaster in the building would not be thoroughly dry, and leaks and other “incidentals” should be expected. “Naturally it must be expected that the occupants of the building will be more or less dissatisfied with these existing conditions, which may result in unfavorable comments to outside sources,” Renshaw observed. That was to prove quite an understatement.
At War Department headquarters, Brigadier General Wilhelm “Fat” Styer, chief of staff for Somervell’s Services of Supply, was having doubts about the wisdom of rushing in employees. Heavyset and easygoing, Styer was the polar opposite of Somervell in both looks and temperament, yet was a loyal and effective deputy to the general. With cool reason and a knack for seeing both sides of an argument, Styer was often able to rein Somervell back from his more impulsive decisions. Meeting with Renshaw on the morning of April 20 about the expected working conditions in the building, Styer raised the possibility of delaying occupancy. He did not want the first employees working amid clouds of dust.
Groves was infuriated when he learned of Styer’s suggestion. Less than two weeks earlier, on April 9, an army of 35,000 American and Filipino troops, wasted by hunger and disease, capitulated to the Japanese on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines. It was the largest surrender in American history. Here in Washington, the War Department was desperately short of space, and an army of thirteen thousand workers was racing to get the building ready. Now the higher-ups were worried about a little dust? Groves sent Styer an impassioned note April 21 warning of a disastrous let-down in morale if the move did not take place by May 1. “Everyone connected with the building has been driven to make this date,” Groves wrote. “If the War Department now hesitates there is no question in my mind but that the efficiency of the construction forces will be permanently impaired and that the building will fall behind schedule and the cost will be increased substantially.”
If dust was a problem, Groves added with a touch of sarcasm, then they might as well not move in at all until the building was finished in November. “There will be dust in this building from now until the completion of all construction,” he said. Styer brought the issue to Somervell, who immediately reiterated that he wanted employees in the building and working by May 1, regardless of discomfort.
On April 22, Fat Styer issued the orders. The first employees—several hundred from the Ordnance Department—would begin moving in to the Pentagon at 8 A.M. on Thursday, April 30, and must be at their desks working the following day, May 1.
Gathered in haste from the four winds
Edwin Bergstrom, the man most responsible for the Pentagon’s design, would not see that day.
On the evening of April 11, the chief architect co
mposed a letter addressed to the 350 members of the design team working in the Eastern Airlines hangar. “Fellow Workers,” he began. “I am leaving this job tonight.”
It was a sudden and shocking departure, brought about by personal scandal, though his letter made no mention of it. Bergstrom had never replied to the American Institute of Architects’ demand in December that he reimburse the institute for his questionable expenses and justify his expensive suite at the Hay-Adams House while he was president. At 10 A.M. on March 20, 1942, R. Harold Shreve, Bergstrom’s successor as president of the institute, convened a special meeting of the board of directors at the Commodore Hotel next to Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Charges of unprofessional conduct against Bergstrom were on the agenda.
No one knew if Bergstrom would show up for the hearing, but he did, accompanied by Pierpont Davis, one of his assistants from the Pentagon project. Proud and imperious, Bergstrom read from a prepared statement and denied all charges. He declared that “he was entitled as President to live in a manner to which he was accustomed and which the head of the Institute should command.” Because he drew no salary from the Institute, he argued that he was fully entitled to have his expenses paid even after he accepted a full-time position with the War Department. His entertainment expenses had not been excessive, he added, and in any event were “a necessity in Washington.”
J. Frazer Smith, a board member from Tennessee, was uncomfortable with suggestions that the board had not known of Bergstrom’s expenditures. “Everybody understood that President Bergstrom was accustomed to an expense account that looked like a month’s salary to some architects,” Smith said. Another sympathetic board member, St. Louis architect Kenneth E. Wischmeyer, suggested the charges against Bergstrom were being pursued because of the enmity that a group of institute members from the east bore against the Californian over an old funding dispute. Shreve, an eminent New York architect who helped design the Empire State Building, agreed some eastern members were driving the case against Bergstrom. “But they are not alone,” Shreve added; protests of Bergstrom’s conduct had been registered from members across the country.
Whether it was based upon geography or not, a majority of the board was clearly lined up against Bergstrom. When the board recessed at eight o’clock that evening, Bergstrom approached treasurer John R. Fugard and offered to cut a deal: He would make restitution on at least some expenses and offer an accounting of others as best he could—provided the board drop the charges of unprofessional conduct. Informed of the offer, Shreve turned it down on the spot.
The board deliberated the following day until late in the afternoon. When a motion was forwarded to censure Bergstrom for improper and unprofessional conduct, twelve members voted in favor, two against, and one abstained. On March 28, the institute sent out a confidential notice of disciplinary action to all its chapters and members around the country: “The Board terminates the corporate membership of George Edwin Bergstrom effective March 21, 1942, for improper and unprofessional conduct.”
It was a humiliating rebuke, and, for a man of his position and reputation, the damage was perhaps irreparable. Whether Bergstrom decided to leave the Pentagon project of his own volition, or whether Somervell, fearing any taint of scandal, forced him to resign is not known. David Witmer, Bergstrom’s friend and deputy, was immediately appointed to replace Bergstrom as chief architect; Witmer had directed much of the exterior detailing of the building and was unquestionably qualified to take over.
The farewell letter Bergstrom wrote the night of April 11 left no doubt of the pride he felt:
Gathered in haste from the four winds and from eight professions, you have worked together so completely and earnestly and so loyally as a unit that we have accomplished everything we were set to do, in the utmost harmony and without confusion.
The building, the project, are yours far more than they are mine. No one realizes that more than I do and I hope you will treasure as I will the happiness of our working together and that each of you will be intensely proud of your part in the creation of this building and its environs.
…Whatever may come in the future, the association with you all will always be the happiest memory I have, and the most treasured one for what remains to me of life.
Bergstrom left the project that night, never to return.
Army soldiers ponder a Pentagon corridor map in 1949.
Justifiable pride
Joe Allan knew he could forget about going home. The foreman had given orders that everybody would work straight through. The first employees were due to report to the Pentagon early the next day, April 30, 1942, and that meant Allan and the other carpenters in his crew would work all through the day and night. The building was not quite ready.
Crews had worked frantic overtime hours through April trying to get 600,000 square feet of Sections A and B ready for occupancy. Teams of workers raced to lath and plaster the interior walls and put up suspended ceilings of acoustic tile. Plumbers hooked up water and sewage lines to the washrooms and electricians installed power outlets in offices. Asphalt tile was laid in office bays and corridors. Painters slapped thousands of gallons of alkaline, flat oil, and lead paint on interior walls, corridors, and stairways. A joke later told was that if a carpenter was moving too slowly, he got his hammer painted. With a few days to go, there was nothing but scaffolding and building material scattered around a large section of the ground floor in Section A where a temporary cafeteria with seating for 1,800 was to go. “Bingo, and it was done,” the Star reported. “They were setting up tables as fast as the floor was laid.”
Finishing work was a misnomer—there was always more to be done. All through the last night Allan and the others worked, hanging doors, finishing trim work, and putting up partitions. When the sun came up, they were still at it, operating mainly on adrenaline. “Excitement was in the air,” Allan recalled. “We were all in the spirit of the thing.” Finally, at 8 A.M. the foreman told them to stop, pick up their tools, and go home. It was over. It was for Allan. After seven months on the job, he had saved enough money to begin summer school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His final twenty-four-hour shift had left him exhausted, but giddy with enthusiasm about what the crews had accomplished.
Walking outside into a warm spring morning, Allan saw Army officers and secretaries lined up outside the south entrance, waiting to move in. “They were excited and ready to get to work,” Allan recalled.
More were arriving from Washington. Military police directed cars coming across the 14th Street Bridge onto Columbia Pike and into the south parking lot, still mostly dirt but with spaces paved for eight hundred cars. “The MPs did such a good job that all the cars that came across the bridge went into the parking lot, including lots of people heading to Richmond,” Bob Furman recalled. Furman—newly promoted to captain—had to redirect the southbound vehicles, including at least one bus on its way to the Virginia state capital, a hundred miles to the south.
Several hundred employees from the Army’s Ordnance Department had been chosen as guinea pigs to move in over the first few days. Marjorie Hanshaw, a twenty-three-year-old secretary from Iowa assigned to the supply section for the Chief of Ordnance, rode a bus from her home in Arlington with two other young women who worked in the office. Dropped off at a temporary bus-and-taxi terminal in the south parking lot, they entered the building without a clue where their office was.
Hanshaw and her friends wandered down long corridors, looking fruitlessly for a familiar face. They roamed about enormous office bays, amid scattered piles of desks, boxes, file cabinets, and building materials. “These things were just stacked up sky-high,” she recalled. “It took us about an hour to wind our way through that to find anybody we knew.” Finally, in the midst of a vast, largely empty office bay on the outermost E Ring, they saw their section chief, known to them only as Mrs. Wright, an eccentric Kansan who was trying to regain the red hair of her youth by popping a daily dose of alfalfa p
ills.
Hanshaw and the other Ordnance workers were moving from the Social Security Building at 4th Street and Independence Avenue on Capitol Hill, an elegant building with escalators, marble halls, and a fine cafeteria. Their new home was something altogether different. Water and sawdust were collected on the floor, and telephone wires dangled like seaweed from the ceiling. From her desk, Hanshaw could see the bright-blue sky a short distance away, but not through a window—it was an unfinished, open section of the building leading outside. Hanshaw and her companions could only laugh. “We couldn’t imagine why they’d move anybody in there, but at that age we weren’t too upset about it,” she recalled. “We found it rather amusing…. We were the pioneers. It was an adventure.”
The two dozen workers in Hanshaw’s section—under the direction of Wright, who kept her overcoat on despite the warm May weather—set up an island of desks within their big bay, trying to make order out of chaos. “You couldn’t really tell where the office started and where it finished,” Hanshaw said. “We were all just in there.” By the weekend, about three hundred workers from Ordnance had moved into the building, but it was a mere drop in the bucket. The employees “rattle about in the immensity like a small sewing circle in Madison Square Garden,” an observer wrote.
Yet the building was officially open for business. Renshaw, McShain, and Hauck took reporters and photographers on a tour May 2 to see the completed section of the building and watch new employees at work. McShain, wearing a double-breasted suit and a fedora, glowed with pride. Even the normally dowdy Hauck was turned out for the event.