Stately Homes: A Department on the Move

Article by Bill Palmer reprinted from State Magazine, April 2005.

Fifty years ago this year, Congress approved a long-dreamed-of plan to consolidate the State Department in one building. The plan would add a million square feet to the "New State Building" on 21st Street. Finally, the department locations scattered throughout the city—as many as 47 in the 1940s—could be gathered under one roof.

It didn't quite work out that way. Even when the extension—four times larger than the original building—was completed in 1961, the Department, which was much smaller than it is today, still required five annexes.

But 1961 might have been a high point for consolidation and improved space, even though some employees hated the new building's modernist architecture. In the years that followed, the Department continued to grow but Main State did not.

Today, one of the most important documents in any office is the shuttle bus schedule. When they’re not out of breath from racing to catch the shuttle to SA-44 [State Annex-44] or FSI [the Foreign Service Institute], employees grumble constantly about endless renovations and shrinking work and storage spaces.

But none of this is new. Even when the Department was young and very small, employees had to endure constant moves, cramped conditions and controversial architecture.

A publication produced by the Office of the Historian, Homes of the Department of State 1774-1976, describes the Department's headquarters over the years—all 24. Moving trucks were always backing up to the door, it seemed.

Many of those 24 buildings, which early on included a couple of taverns, didn't get everyone under one roof either, even though the Department had only 55 employees as late as 1875. In that year, it moved from the cramped Washington City Orphan Asylum Building, a severe firetrap, to the State, War, and Navy Building (now the Old Executive Office Building), next to the White House. The new space was called the finest office building in the world, though its Victorian architecture—porticoes and pillars, mansards and peaks—was more admired then than it is now. State would remain there until 1947, its longest tenure anywhere. [Photo left: The Old Executive Office Building, formerly the State, War and Navy Building, was the Department's home from 1875 to 1947.]

However, the Department's space in the building was, as early as 1884, "so cramped for room as to seriously interfere with good executive management," according to Homes. Eventually, the Navy and War departments moved elsewhere, freeing up space, but State still needed more room. Various offices were squeezed out to other buildings around town. During the next 100 years, the Department used more than 130 annexes. Among them were familiar Washington landmarks such as the Octagon House at 1735 New York Avenue (1941–47) and the Old Post Office Building at 12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue (1951–61).  [Photo right: The Octagon House on New York Avenue was a Department annex during World War II.]

When the National Museum of American Diplomacy opens in 2007 in the George C. Marshall Wing—formerly "New State"—of the Harry S Truman Building (after yet another renovation), employees and visitors will be able to see images of some of these earlier sites of American diplomacy. What a wandering band we've been—even those of us who never left Washington.

[Photo top left: The George C. Marshall wing of Main State was once known as New State. Surrounded by a construction fence, it is under renovation.]