• Ford House Office Building - Washington DC
    The Gerald R. Ford House Office Building was constructed during the New Deal as the Federal General Office Building No. 1 (GOB #1).  It was built just behind the new Social Security and Railroad Retirement Board buildings, which were underway at the time. Its original purpose was to house 7000 employees of the U.S. Census Bureau for the census of 1940. Congress appropriated $3.5 million for the building in 1938 and it was constructed in record time in 1939-40 (FWA 1940). It provided one-half million square feet of office space. President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal drove an unprecedented increase in federal employees...
  • National Archives Building: Completion and Expansion - Washington DC
    The National Archives building was substantially completed under the New Deal and the central stacks were added with funding from the Public Works Administration (PWA). In 1926, Congress approved $8.7 million for a home for the National Archives. The Public Buildings Commission and Commission on Fine Arts had to approve the site and design, which led to much jostling over where it would fit within the larger plans for a "Federal Triangle" in the center of the city.  As a result, the site was moved twice before the architect, John Russell Pope, was officially appointed by Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and...