The A to Z Challenge asks bloggers to post 26 posts, one for each letter of the English alphabet, in April. Most of us choose to make these posts on a particular theme. My theme for 2023 is 1943 Washington D.C., the setting of the novel that I’m writing. Visit daily in April for a new post on my topic.

P is for Pentagon

The Pentagon, the world’s largest low-rise office building, was completed on January 15, 1943. The ground-breaking ceremony happened only sixteen months earlier, on September 11, 1941. World War II had been going for two years in Europe. The US War Department was gearing up for the possibility of war. It had already taken over multiple buildings in D.C., including “temporary” spaces that were left over from World War I, and it still needed more space.

The new location for the War Department was eventually selected across the Potomac in Arlington County, Virginia.

Pentagon across the Potomac. From the Library of Congress.

The sprawling design of the Pentagon was required to conserve steel for the war. Steel would have been necessary for a skyscraper. The alternative was a low but large building. The five sides were originally designed to accommodate an awkwardly shaped site. The site changed, but the building design was retained — both because people liked the unusual design and because the need for the space was dire. There was no time to start from scratch on a new design.

The five wedges of the Pentagon were built separately. As soon as one wedge was complete, it was occupied.

Lipstick Brigade: The Untold True Story of Washington’s World War II Government Girls by Cindy Gueli describes what it was like to work in the Pentagon before the dedication in January 1943:

Margery Updegraff hated rainy days. Her normal commute was bad enough. Every day the twenty-eight-year-old clerk squeezed her tiny frame onto the jam-packed buses with 14,000 other D.C. workers riding back and forth to northern Virginia. But on wet, clammy mornings, the added nuisance of dripping umbrellas left soggy imprints against Margery’s freshly pressed suites. Yet, even worse than her damp skirt was the ankle-deep mud clogging the unpaved roads stretching a quarter mile from the bus stop to her office in the partially completed Pentagon. Margery survived those messy, seemingly endless treks but several pairs of her fashionable pumps did not.

Conditions inside the mammoth building during that spring of 1942 were not much better…. Completing over six million square feet within seventeen months meant that carpenters, concrete mixers, painters, movers, pipefitters, and other workers focused more on speed than the comfort of the first occupants.

Margery’s office at the Army Ordnance Bureau had no interior walls. In fact, the entire floor lacked dry wall or dividers of any kind. The agency made do with a floor, a roof, and desks. (pp. 68-9)

Work site for construction of the Pentagon. From the Library of Congress.

Check out this article on the Department of Defense website for more interesting facts, including how the Pentagon became the first integrated building in Virginia: 10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About the Pentagon