Old Post Office (Washington, D.C.) Informations

The Old Post Office, listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Old Post Office and Clock Tower and located at 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., was begun in 1892, completed in 1899, and is a contributing property to the Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site. It was used as the city's main General Post Office until 1914 at the beginning of World War I, succeeding an earlier 1839 edifice, G.P.O. of Classical Revival style, expanded in 1866 on F Street, which later was turned over to the Tariff Commission and several other agencies (today, the Hotel Monaco). The Pennsylvania Avenue 1899 landmark structure functioned primarily as a federal office building afterward, and was nearly torn down during the construction of the surrounding Federal Triangle complex in the 1920s. It was again threatened and nearly demolished in the 1970s to make way for proposals for the completion of the enveloping Federal Triangle complex of similar Beaux Arts styled architecture government offices, first begun in the 1920s and 30s.

Major renovations occurred in 1976 and 1983. The 1983 renovation opened a new chapter in the structure's history and use, added a food court and retail space that together with the building's central atrium with an added roof skylight acquired the name of "Old Post Office Pavilion". A glass-walled addition on a former adjacent parking lot was added to the structure in 1991.

In 2013, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) leased the property for 60 years to a consortium headed by "DJT Holdings LLC", a holding company that Donald Trump owns through a revocable trust. Trump developed the property into a luxury hotel, the Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C., which opened in September 2016.

The building is an example of Richardsonian Romanesque, part of the Romanesque Revival architecture of the nineteenth century United States. It is the third-tallest structure, excluding radio towers, in the national capital of Washington, D.C. Its 315-foot (96 m) high Clock Tower houses the "Bells of Congress" and offers panoramic views of the city and its surroundings on an observation level.

The United States Congress approved construction of a new post office for Washington, D.C., on June 25, 1890. The site, at the southwest corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th Street, was chosen by Senator Leland Stanford in 1888 in the hope that the building would revitalize the Murder Bay neighborhood between the Capitol building and the White House.Willoughby J. Edbrooke, Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department, designed the structure in the tradition of the Romanesque Revival architecture of Henry Hobson Richardson. Construction began in 1892, and the building was complete in 1899. The total cost of construction was $3 million.

At the time of its completion, the Post Office Building contained the largest uninterrupted enclosed space in the city. Its clock tower reached 315 feet (96 m) into the air. It was also the city's first building to have a steel frame structure, and the first to be built with electrical wiring incorporated into its design. The structure featured elevators with cages of highly intricate wrought iron, a glass covered atrium and mezzanine level, and floors, moldings, railings, and wainscoting made of marble. The atrium was 196 feet (60 m) high, and 10 floors of balconies looked out onto the space (which provided interior light in an era when indoor lighting was not common). It boasted more than 39,000 interior electric lights, and its own electrical generator. Girders and catwalks spanned the atrium at the third floor level to allow post office supervisors to look down on the workers. The fifth floor housed executive offices in the corners. Each office had a turret, ornately carved wooden moldings, and red oak paneling. But there were problems with the structure. The Washington Star newspaper reported that the skylights and windows leaked air and water, the marble floors were poorly laid, and much of the construction was shoddy. The ninth floor was to have served as a file room, but a post-construction inspection showed it could not accommodate the weight. Technological advances in electricity and electrical wiring, mechanical engineering, movement of air, heating, and more made the building out of date as soon as it opened.

The anticipated economic development never occurred. At the 1898 meeting of the American Institute of Architects, the structure was criticized as supremely ugly during a plenary address by New York City architect George B. Post. That same year, Senator Joseph Roswell Hawley called it "a cross between a cathedral and a cotton mill". By the time it opened, the building was also too small to accommodate the government agencies which occupied it. The city postmaster had advocated a building with a 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m2) footprint, but only 10,000 square feet (930 m2) were purchased. The post office used the main floor and mezzanine, but these were already too crowded by January 1900. Treasury Department offices were to have taken over the eighth floor, but the structure was so overcrowded that this move was suspended.

A year after the building opened, an accident there took the life of D.C. Postmaster James P. Willett. On September 30, 1899, Willett fell 90 feet (27 m) down an open elevator shaft. Nothing more than a flimsy wooden barrier prevented access to the shaft. Willett died a day later.

In the early 1880s, Senator Justin Smith Morrill and Senator John James Ingalls proposed razing all the structures between Pennsylvania Avenue and B Street (now Constitution Avenue) to the south to create a park. The influential McMillan Plan of 1902, however, proposed retaining the structure. (It could hardly have done otherwise, with the building only just having been completed.) Nonetheless, the same year the Washington Post editorialized in favor of its demolition. In discussing plans to beautify Washington, essayist Sammuel E. Moffett disparagingly called the building in 1906 a "Kansas City emporium so utterly out of keeping with the general atmosphere of official Washington that it sets the teeth of architects on edge". Later that year, Senator Weldon B. Heyburn introduced legislation to authorize the federal government to purchase all the land between Pennsylvania Avenue (northeast side), the National Mall (south side), 15th Street N.W. (west side), and the U.S. Capitol grounds (to the east) for the construction of an architecturally "harmonious" set of massive office buildings. Heyburn's plan retained the architecturally dominating Old General Post Office Building of 1899 with its commanding tower, but adjusted its Pennsvylania Avenue side to be parallel with the street.

The clock in the building tower was originally mechanical in nature, and kept accurate time via gravity. A cable was wrapped around a drum, and a large weight attached to the end of the cable. As the cable unwound due to the force of gravity, the clock hands turned. The cable was rewound once or twice a day. On October 10, 1956, the weight came loose from the cable and plunged through two floors (narrowly avoiding killing a man, who had just gotten up from his desk). The mechanical clock was later replaced with an electric one.

In 1914, the District of Columbia's General Post Office moved to a larger Beaux Arts / Classical Revival building constructed next to recently completed Union Station of similar impressive style, taking advantage of heavy use of the national railroad system for speedier mail delivery. Although only now 15 years old, the building at 12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue was now commonly called the "old" post office. For the next forty years, the GPO building served as office space for several government agencies.

The Old Post Office Building was slated for demolition during construction of the Federal Triangle. In 1926, the United States Congress enacted the Public Buildings Act, which authorized the construction not only of the Federal Triangle complex of buildings but also a new U.S. Supreme Court building opposite the east front of the United States Capitol on the site of the Civil War era Old Capitol Prison and just north of the recent 1897 Library of Congress first building, along with a major extension of the U.S. Government Printing Office building on North Capitol Street, and significant widening of B Street N.W. (later renamed Constitution Avenue) on the north side of the National Mall. Government officials, other experts, and the press believed that the demolition of the 1898 District Building ("city hall" for the District of Columbia), the Old Post Office Building and the closure of many streets in the area would occur. A Board of Architectural Consultants was created on May 19, 1927, to advise the federal agencies developing Federal Triangle on how to proceed. By July 1927, the board had fashioned a general plan for the area, but did not address whether the Old Post Office Building, the District Building, or the Southern Railway Building should be torn down or not. Planning for the complex was deeply influenced by the City Beautiful movement and the idea of creating a civic center to achieve efficiency in administration as well as reinforce the public's perception of government as authoritative and permanent. For the architectural style of the buildings, the board adopted the McMillan Plan's recommendation of the Neoclassical style. Rather than a mass of tall, imposing buildings, two unifying open spaces (intended for ceremonial use, and under discussion by the Board at least by March 1928) would be utilized. The first would be a Circular Plaza (inspired by the Place Vendôme) bisected by 12th Street NW, and which would require the demolition of the Old Post Office Building.

But by 1934, although the government had cleared land around the Old Post Office Building, Congress was increasingly opposed to demolishing the structure. Tearing down a structurally sound 35-year-old building during the Great Depression seemed foolish. But the executive branch agencies overseeing the Federal Triangle's construction still wanted it gone. Yet, it was not demolished. Four years passed. Although a push was made to remove the Old Post Office Building again in 1938, Senator Elmer Thomas defended it and attacked the erection of a Neoclassical office building in its place as financially unacceptable.

The 1938 effort to remove the building was the last one for 30 years. Various reasons have been suggested for why the Old Post Office Building survived. A common claim is that the federal government, fighting the Great Depression, simply did not have the money. Press reports at the time, however, noted that voters would have punished congressmen who tore down a perfectly good building. Architectural historians have also argued that President Franklin D. Roosevelt (who took office in March 1933, five years into the Federal Triangle's construction) was not interested in completing the expensive complex of white marble office buildings or making the Federal Triangle architecturally harmonious.

The Old Post Office Building's tower slowly became an iconic one in the city. The United States Information Agency often used it as a backdrop for propaganda films to be shown in foreign countries. In one instance, a portion of a film about Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn was taped in the tower.

By the 1950s, and Eisenhower era, the neighborhood around the Old Post Office Building had also declined. Pennsylvania Avenue N.W. was marked by deteriorating homes, shops, and office buildings on the north side and monumental Neoclassical federal office buildings of the 1920s-30s era Federal Triangle on the south. After observing the poor state of the Avenue during his inaugural parade from the Capitol to the White House, 35th President John F. Kennedy appointed a President's Council on Pennsylvania Avenue to study ways to improve the area. The council's draft plan was ready for Kennedy's approval almost two and a half years later when he was assassinated in Dallas Texas on November 22, 1963. The draft plan retained the Old Post Office Building.

Kennedy's successor, 36th President Lyndon B. Johnson, agreed to move forward with the plan and appointed a Temporary President's Commission on Pennsylvania Avenue, although it did not hold its first meeting until May 21, 1965. The new commission recommended that the Old Post Office be torn down in favor of completing the plan for the Federal Triangle. The temporary commission managed to prevent development of the avenue which was contrary to the draft plan, but it never was able to win congressional approval for its plan. It ceased to function on November 15, 1969, due to lack of funds. A permanent Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation (PADC) was finally created by Congress on October 30, 1972.

An attempt to demolish the Old Post Office Building began in February 1970. The National Capital Planning Commission, a federal agency with legal jurisdiction over major building projects in the Washington metropolitan area, agreed (although it said the tower might be preserved). Within days, Wolf Von Eckardt, the influential architectural critic of The Washington Post, began campaigning for the structure's preservation. No action was taken on the demolition project in 1970, and Von Eckardt continued to press for the building's preservation in 1971. By early 1971, a group of local citizens and architects formed a group known as "Don't Tear It Down" (predecessor to the D.C. Preservation League). The group's members included Nancy Hanks, the politically influential chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Don't Tear It Down began heavily lobbying the PADC, General Services Administration (which owned the building for the federal government), White House, Congress, and D.C. city government to stop the demolition. Opposition to the demolition began to grow in the U.S. Senate, which held hearings on the buildings in April 1971. Preservation forces received a major boost in May 1971 when the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation recommended retaining it.

The Nixon administration, however, continued to seek its demolition so that Federal Triangle could be completed in time for the United States Bicentennial in 1976. But by this time, Senator Mike Gravel, chair of the Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds of the Committee on Public Works was strongly opposed to the effort. Gravel sought allies in the United States House of Representatives, and in June 1972, the House Committee on Appropriations voted down Nixon's request for money to demolish the Old Post Office.

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