Constructed between 1936 and 1937, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Cotton Annex provided the necessary space for federal employees to create and refine cotton classification and standardization. Built with "Stripped Classicism" elements, the building’s exterior stayed largely the same over the decades, except for the addition of a six-story stairwell in 1986. Under the charge of Supervising Architect of the Treasury Louis A. Simon, the rectangular building includes administrative and warehouse wings. While plans originally included an expansion of the Cotton Annex, these were never realized, and can be seen through the lack of ornamentation on much of the building. The Cotton Annex sits across 12th Street SW from the Department of Agriculture’s South Building, completed in 1936. As one of many important agriculture staples in the United States, the completion of the Cotton Annex allowed the Department of Agriculture to further its research related to identifying and classifying cotton. While in operation, research practices and technology used for these purposes continued to advance, which was especially useful given the wide variety of cotton types found throughout the country. The Cotton Annex was considered a premier research facility during its use, and put the United States at the top of cotton standards. In order to keep up with the research techniques employees used, the building had to adapt. Interestingly, researchers realized that natural, northern-facing light was best in order to identify different cotton types, so the Department of Agriculture created special skylights in the building to help employees conduct their work. Over time, however, the department in charge of cotton standards and identification departed the building, and in 1964, few, if any, employees remained at the Cotton Annex. The Cotton Annex was converted to residential use in the early 2020s. The new development, Annex on 12th, includes over 550-units throughout the original building and a 13-story modern addition constructed on the historic landmark's east and south elevations.
DC Inventory: July 23, 2015 National Register: October 5, 2015
Designed in 1939 in the Stripped Classical style, this limestone-clad office building is twelve stories tall, and centrally located near the White House, between McPherson and Lafayette squares. The exterior of the structure is plain and lacks ornamentation—narrow parapets and repetitive square windows maintain the nearly uniform appearance of the building. The interior mirrors the simplicity and restraint of the exterior, with standardized office spaces and unadorned fixtures.
The Lafayette Building is significant as the one-time headquarters of the Federal Loan Agency and its central component, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). During World War II, the RFC would provide intensive support to the Allied powers through constructing new industrial plants, protecting raw materials from Axis powers, and producing synthetic rubber for the war effort.
The office building is also significant for its association with Jesse Holman Jones—a powerful political figure in Washington heavily associated with the RFC. He conducted much of his government business from his office in the Lafayette Building.
Today, the building remains in use as a functional and recently renovated office space, as the home of the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
National Register: September 1, 2005
National Historic Landmark: September 1, 2005
Within Financial Historic District
]]>In 1935, the Federal Reserve Board held a national competition to select an architect who would design their new Washington, DC headquarters. The ultimate winner was the prominent Paul Philippe Cret, who was known for his design of the Pan American Union Headquarters building (1908) and the Folger Shakespeare Library (1929), amongst many other buildings.
Construction on the building began in 1935 and concluded in 1937, and resulted in a modern, four-story Stripped Classical style design with a marble exterior. It diverged from traditional architectural styles in the District and set the tone for future building designs in the city. The façade includes a distinctive marble eagle perched above the Constitution Avenue entryway.
In 1982, an act of Congress officially renamed the building after Marriner S. Eccles, a Federal Reserve Board Chairman who served from 1934 to 1948.
The building remains the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Board.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
]]>Like the Department of War, the Department of State experienced rapid growth due to World War II, requiring it to seek quarters outside of the old State, War and Navy Building. In 1947, the Department of State moved its first unit into the Department of War Building in the Northwest Rectangle, and in 1955, Congress appropriated funds for an extension to the building to become the Department’s headquarters. This purpose-built extension incorporates features specific to the needs of the agency responsible for the international relations of the United States and has, along with the former War Department Building, served that agency for more than six decades. The US Department of State Building is a massive, multi-wing, limestone- and granite-clad federal government office building. The building was constructed in two phases and consists of two principal parts: US Department of War Building, built 1939-1941, and the US Department of State Extension, built 1957-1960. The US Department of War Building, designed by private architects under the supervision of the Office of the Supervising Architect headed by Louis A. Simon, occupies the northeast section of the site. It is notable for its early Modern aesthetic of stripped classical elements, punched window openings, and minimal ornamentation, often referred to as Stripped Classicism. Built twenty years later, the Department of State Extension presents a more mature example of Modernism. The eight-story building with a series of wings and courtyards, capped by a series of penthouses on the flat roofs, no longer alludes to Classical building forms or details. The building is constructed of concrete but clad in buff limestone and granite consistent with the federal government aesthetic.
DC Inventory: July 27, 2017
]]>The Cleveland-Emerson Exchange is an impressive and notable Stripped Classical building with Art Deco detailing located on a prominent corner in DC's Tenleytown neighborhood. The limstone-clad building, constructed as a telephone exchange for the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company, is the product of three separate phases of construction, but appears today as one unified and cohesive building. It occupies the site of the area’s first telephone exchange, a small concrete building completed in 1908. Along with the firehouse across Warren Street NW, the building represents a period of suburbanization in the former 19th century village of Tenleytown. The main building fronting Wisconsin Avenue and Warren Street was designed by notable architect Waddy B. Wood (1869-1944) in 1931-32 and built in two phases: 1931-32, during the architect’s lifetime, and circa 1960, well after the architect’s death. Two walls of an earlier buff brick Classical Revival-style building, constructed in 1927, survive at the rear of the main building and are clearly visible from 40th Street.
DC Inventory: November 17, 2016
National Register: September 8, 2017
]]>The Editors Building is a ten-story office building constructed in downtown DC between 1949 and 1950 to house the offices of the family-owned and operated Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc., the publisher of various subscription-based business and finance periodicals, namely the Kiplinger News Letter and Kiplinger’s Changing Times Magazine. The building was designed by Leon Chatelain, Jr. in the Stripped Classical style.
Despite hardships imposed by the digital age, Kiplinger is still actively engaged in the publication of its newsletter and magazine, in addition to its online publications. Kiplinger remained the owner/occupant of the Editors Building until the Fall of 2011, when it sold its headquarters building and moved to smaller offices at 13th and L Streets, NW. In 2012, Palmetto Hospitality of Washington, DC renovated the building into a hotel and operates it today as a Hampton Inn.
In addition to serving as the headquarters of the Kiplinger Washington Editors, Inc. for 61 years, the Editors Building housed an extensive collection of print media, including historic maps, prints, engravings, lithographs, watercolors, woodcuts, drawings, photographs and much more, of historic Washington. Known as the Kiplinger Collection, this collection of Washingtoniana was begun in the 1920s by Willard “Kip” Kiplinger and was carried on after his death by his descendants.
The vast array of print media filled the building’s corridors, offices, Board room, and lobby area exhibit space, as well as a special archives room set aside for the collection. After sale of the building, the Kiplinger family donated the vast majority of the collection to the Historical Society of Washington, while setting aside a few of the pieces for the National Portrait Gallery, Mount Vernon, and the Lincoln Cottage.
DC Inventory: December 18, 2014
]]>The District of Columbia Recorder of Deeds Building expresses the interplay between political aspirations, social struggle, the search for civic identity, and even the influence of global war on the District of Columbia.
Designed under the direction of Municipal Architect Nathan C. Wyeth, the building was constructed between 1940 and 1943. While Wyeth used the Modern/Stripped Classical style for some earlier designs, the Recorder of Deeds Building occupies a unique niche among his protean and distinguished body of work. It is an office building designed for a special function, as opposed to a general purpose governmental structure such as the DC Municipal Center, which is programmed to flow its patrons to varied functional areas.
The interior is paneled in medium brown walnut. Its most notable feature is its extensive art program, especially the seven murals commissioned by the Treasury Department Section of Fine Art in 1943. Other significant art works include the 1936 series of portraits of prior recorders, William Edouard Scott’s oil painting titled Groundbreaking (1944), and Selma Burke’s sculptural relief Four Freedoms (1945).
The building housed the Recorder of Deeds Office for more than 60 years. In 2005, its murals and rich history were acknowledged by a city historic marker. However, after the Recorder's Office moved in 2008, the building was used for storage and has faced deterioration.
DC Inventory: December 19, 2019
]]>The Commercial National Bank, also known as the Western Union Building, designed by noted Washington architect Waddy B. Wood in 1917, is an excellent early example of the simplified and stylized classicism that distinguishes some of DC’s most noteworthy early-twentieth century buildings. Commercial National Bank was among the first major buildings in Washington to embody the characteristics of this Stripped Classicism.
The abstract classical vocabulary displayed here in 1917 appeared repeatedly through DC’s architectural landscape in the 1920s and 1930s. However, the originality of Commercial National Bank’s stylized classical vocabulary and the subtlety of its expression makes it unique for this early date. This powerful building marks an important transition from Wood’s earlier, more literal use of traditional architectural forms to the boldness and abstraction of his later buildings.
DC Inventory: July 16, 1986
National Register: October 11, 1991
Within Financial Historic District
]]>The Daly Building was designed by DC Municipal Architect Nathan C. Wyeth and constructed with the aid of Public Works Administration funds between 1939 and 1941. This was the first building constructed according to plans developed during the 1920s for a Municipal Center between Judiciary Square and Pennsylvania Avenue.
Notable features include the cast aluminum revolving doors and abstracted classical columns, capitals, and moldings. In the interior courtyards are two enormous ceramic sculptural panels: Democracy in Action by Waylande Gregory and Health and Welfare by Hildreth Meiere. Flanking the plaza steps to the west of the building are two granite bas-relief sculptural panels: Urban Life by John Gregory, and Light, Water, and Thoroughfare by Lee Lawrie. In the south lobby floor is a terrazzo map of the District of Columbia, and near the north entrance is an octagonal fountain by the John J. Earley Studio (dedicated in 1980 as the Washington Area Law Enforcement Memorial).
DC Inventory: Feb 22, 2018
National Register: July 19, 2019
]]>At the time of the Hill Building’s construction in 1925, commercial real estate development in downtown DC started replacing pre-Victorian and Victorian residential buildings. These former residences, many of which then housed private and governmental business offices, no longer provided adequate space and did not embody the physical characteristics of a twentieth century city. The Hill Building office building, designed in a “modern” Stripped Classical style by George N. Ray, was the product of a deliberate effort by the city’s real estate industry to create a more physically elegant city that was commensurate with the nation’s capital. The Hill Building, as well as the Barr Building at 914 Seventeenth Street, were the first office buildings on Farragut Square to follow the trend. Later during the late 1950s and 1960s, many of these 1920s office buildings were demolished. However, the Hill Building survives as an important representation of the transition from residential to business district in the city’s downtown.
DC Inventory: December 18, 2014
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