Free The Pentagon: A History by Steve Vogel

the Memorial Bridge. The first employees would move in within six months. The building would be completed in twelve months. He blithely reported that construction and planning would take place simultaneously.
    “We will have to develop the plans contemporaneously with the building, or we cannot do the job,” Somervell said. Though there would be room for forty thousand people, the War Department expected it would hold thirty thousand for the time being and that the remaining space would be used for storage. The efficiency of the War Department would be increased by one quarter. The building would be of reinforced concrete with a brick exterior, he said. There would be no marble or other fancy materials. The cost would be $35 million, and that covered everything except parking lots for ten thousand cars.
    “How long do you think your estimate will stand without an increase?” Representative Louis Ludlow, an Indiana Democrat, asked suspiciously.
    “We do not want it to stand for more than a year,” Somervell parried. “We will have it finished within a year.”
    “This thing would not come to pieces very easily, would it?” asked Representative John Taber, a New York Republican.
    “It certainly should not,” Somervell assured him. “It should not ever come to pieces.”
    “What would you say would be the life of the building?” Ludlow asked.
    “The life of the building would be a hundred years unless it became obsolescent,” the general replied.
    “If you had the money, how soon could you get under way on it?” Woodrum asked.
    “We could get under way on it in two weeks,” Somervell replied.
    No one questioned Somervell’s stunning promise. As for the huge size, it was no time for restraint, the general told the congressmen. “Every time we have asked for what we thought was just what we needed, by the time the building was finished it was not enough, and I think it would be the height of folly to cut this thing right to the edge and not have any leeway,” he said.
    “Would this probably be the largest single government building constructed, if undertaken?” Ludlow asked.
    “Oh, I do not think so,” Somervell replied dismissively. “Of course we always have to build the biggest.”
    Conceivably, Somervell did not know the full scope of what he was proposing; more likely, he was merely being coy. The Chicago Post Office, then the biggest government building in the country, covered six acres, reached fourteen stories in its northern corners, and contained 1.7 million square feet of space. The Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world at 102 floors, had 2.25 million square feet of office space. The War Department building as proposed by Somervell was far larger; it would contain 4 million square feet of office space and have total space of 5.1 million square feet.
    Somervell had sold them; the subcommittee unanimously approved funding for the new building, sending the recommendation to the full committee.
    Stimson decided it was time to tell the president what was afoot, although he was still embarrassed about asking for another War Department building on the heels of the last one. On Thursday, July 24, he told the president’s military aide, Major General Edwin “Pa” Watson, that he wanted to speak with Roosevelt after that afternoon’s cabinet meeting about a new War Department headquarters in Arlington. “It has now reached the stage where the Appropriations Committee has heard of it, and Stimson wants you to know that he is not [the] author, but that the plan has a lot of merit,” Watson reported to the president.
    Shortly before the cabinet meeting, an objection to Somervell’s plan was finally raised. Harold D. Smith, Roosevelt’s budget director, a former Kansas farm boy known as “a beagle for bargains,” had got wind of the project. He smelled trouble. Smith too sought the president’s ear. Watson reported to Roosevelt that Smith “is very anxious that the President