Robert C. Weaver Federal Building
The Robert C. Weaver Federal Building is a 10-story office building in Washington, D.C., United States. Owned by the U.S. federal government, it was built by the General Services Administration as the headquarters of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. It was completed in 1968 and designed by Marcel Breuer in the Brutalist style. The building is one of two that Breuer designed for the U.S. federal government in the District of Columbia, along with the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The building was first conceived in 1962, when President John F. Kennedy established the Ad Hoc Committee on Federal Office Space. Work began after Kennedy's successor Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965. A cornerstone-laying ceremony took place in November 1966, and the building was formally dedicated on September 21, 1968. The plaza was redesigned in the 1990s by Martha Schwartz. The structure was renamed for Dr. Robert C. Weaver, the first Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the first African American Cabinet member, in 2000. After HUD announced plans to move out of the building in 2025, the federal government considered demolishing it.
The Weaver Building has a curvilinear precast concrete facade, similar to Breuer's previous UNESCO Headquarters and IBM La Gaude. It is shaped like two back-to-back "Y"s, with four curving wings extending off an elongated core. Breuer designed a plaza, which serves as the roof for an underground parking garage. The facade contains concrete panels with deeply recessed rectangular windows; the ground floor is recessed behind concrete pilotis. As built, there were two basements, a ground-level lobby and communal area, and nine office floors above. Although the building's design received architectural praise when it was built, its Brutalist style and the unoriginality of its design have also received negative commentary, especially from several HUD secretaries.
Site
The Robert C. Weaver Federal Building is located at 451 7th Street SW in the Southwest Federal Center section of Southwest Washington, D.C., United States. The building's site spans. The building is surrounded by wide roads and a highway; clockwise from the north, the building occupies a city block bounded by 7th Street SW, D Street SW, 9th Street SW, and Interstate 395. On the east and north sides, the Weaver Building faces other large structures, specifically the Constitution Center to the east and GSA Regional Office Building to the north. To the west, the building faces L'Enfant Plaza. An entrance to the Washington Metro's L'Enfant Plaza station is located next to the building on D Street.During the 19th century, the surrounding area had been isolated from the rest of D.C. by the Washington City Canal and the RF&P Subdivision railroad tracks to the north. By the end of the century, the Weaver site was filled with two churches, along with low-rise rowhouses and commercial structures. The neighborhood became rundown during the mid-20th century. In 1946, the United States Congress had passed the District of Columbia Redevelopment Act, which established the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency and provided for clearance of land and redevelopment funds in the capital. After a decade of discussion, public comment, and negotiations with landowners and developers, the Southwest Urban Renewal Plan was approved in November 1956. In part, the plan cleared the way for General Services Administration to build new large federal office buildings between Independence Avenue SW and Southeast Freeway, along with mid-rise apartment buildings in the same area. The HUD building was constructed on the site specifically because of its proximity to both the interstate and the then-planned Washington Metro station.
History
Development
The building was originally conceived for the Housing and Home Finance Agency, created in 1947 and later superseded by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The United States Congress passed and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 on August 10, 1965. The legislation greatly expanded funding for existing federal housing programs, and added new programs to provide rent subsidies, grants, and urban beautification, among other things. Four weeks later, President Johnson signed legislation establishing HUD, which started operations in November 1965. The building's later namesake, HHFA Administrator Robert C. Weaver, was named the first HUD Secretary in January 1966; he was the first African American member of the cabinet of the United States. HHFA occupied 20 sites around the Washington, D.C., area in the mid-1960s, only a small number of which were owned by the federal government. For the other buildings, the federal government had to pay $1.4 million in annual rent.Funding for a HHFA building had been allocated in the 1959 Public Buildings Act. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy established the Ad Hoc Committee on Federal Office Space and charged it with developing new guidelines for the design of federal office buildings. On May 23 of that year, the Ad Hoc Committee issued a one-page report, Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture, which established these new design principles. The document encouraged federal planners to consider and build structures that "reflect the dignity, enterprise, vigor and stability of the American National Government" and "embody the finest contemporary American architectural thought." At the time, few new federal buildings in Washington, D.C., were being designed in neoclassical styles, but neither were architecturally distinctive, contemporary-styled federal buildings being built. Kennedy's Guiding Principles directive was issued that June.
Site selection and design
The General Services Administration, which was responsible for the development of nearly all U.S. federal buildings, oversaw the building's construction. In January 1963, the District Redevelopment Land Agency proposed constructing a building for HHFA within the Southwest Urban Renewal area, at the corner of 7th and D streets SW. This was to be the sixth federal building in the redevelopment area. A site had not been selected by that April, when the United States House Committee on Appropriations approved $3 million in funding for site selection and further planning activities. The GSA acquired a site from the District Redevelopment Land Agency that June.In August 1963, the GSA awarded the design contract to Marcel Breuer & Associates of New York and Nolan-Swinburne & Associates of Philadelphia. The building, to be located on D Street SW between 7th and 9th streets SW, was to house several federal urban-renewal and development agencies across about. At the time, the engineering work was supposed to be completed in February 1965 so construction could begin the next year. One unidentified federal official said of Breuer's involvement that "a sense of victory attends selection", expressing optimism that the building's design would conform to contemporary "cultural values". Karel Yasko, the GSA's assistant commissioner for design and construction, oversaw the design process in accordance with the Ad Hoc Committee's guidelines. Yasko said of the plans, "We're proving that it costs no more to hire a good architect than a poor one."
The HUD building was intended to showcase the Ad Hoc Committee's design guidelines while also conforming to the site's limited area and to local height restrictions. Additionally, it was supposed to include space for up to 6,000 employees. When the plans were presented to the United States Commission of Fine Arts in June 1964, commission members raised concerns about minor parts of the design, although they viewed the plans favorably. The National Capital Planning Commission delayed its own approval of the plans while NCPC members and Weaver debated how many parking spaces the new building should have. The NCPC approved the plans in July 1964 after acceding to Weaver's proposal that the building include one parking space per 11 employees, although these extra spaces were never built. The next month, the United States Congress allocated $26 million for the project.
By late 1964, Breuer and Nolen-Swinburne had drawn up plans for a ten-story building costing $26 million, to be made largely of concrete. The material was used because it symbolized "enterprise and vigor", two of Kennedy's Guiding Principles. Breuer gave the final drawings to the GSA in April 1965, and the GSA detailed plans for the building at the White House Conference on Natural Beauty the next month.
Construction
Congress's total appropriation came to $29 million. John McShain, Inc., a major federal building contractor in the Washington, D.C., area, was named the general contractor, receiving a $22.295 million construction contract in June 1965. Work began on July 20 of that year, and site preparation began in November 1965. When work began, the project was variously expected to cost $22 million or $32 million.The project was originally supposed to be finished in late 1967, but a May 1966 strike by the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America temporarily delayed construction. The building's cornerstone was laid during a ceremony on November 10, 1966, attended by Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. The facade contractor had had no previous experience producing architectural concrete, but instead had supplied precast forms for bridges and parking garages. The facade panels also had to be installed in an extremely precise manner because of the facade's curvature.
During the HUD building's construction, the -thick footings for the western portion of the building, extending underground, were accidentally built over the property line. When L'Enfant Properties, leaseholder of the property abutting the HUD site, began construction of L'Enfant Plaza Hotel in 1971, the company sued John McShain, Inc. and the Redevelopment Land Agency for removal of the footings, stabilization of the HUD structure, and associated costs. The action spawned several lengthy court battles which lasted through the 1970s. Also during construction, the top floor and roof of the building were severely damaged by a fire in November 1967. The building's final finishes were being installed by 1968.