Old Post Office Pavilion - History

History

In 1880, Congress approved the building of a new post office. By legend, the site was selected by Senator Leland Stanford of California; the new post office was hoped to revitalize the seedy neighborhood between the Capitol building and the White House. It was designed by Willoughby J. Edbrooke, Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department in the Romanesque Revival style that Henry Hobson Richardson (died 1886) had popularized in the 1880s; construction commenced in 1892. Edbrooke later designed the Federal Court House and Post office for the Upper Midwest, now called the "Landmark Center" (1902) in St Paul, Minnesota.

When completed in 1899, the massive edifice was the largest office building and first building incorporating a steel frame in Washington. The steel frame supports floors and interior constructions, but the outer walls, five feet thick at their base, are still self-supporting. It was also the first federal building on Pennsylvania Avenue and the first government building to have its own power plant. Opening ceremonies were marred when the postmaster of Washington fell to his death down an elevator shaft.

During construction, however, the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago had popularized the classicizing formulas of Beaux-Arts architecture at the expense of Victorian forms. The Romanesque Revival arches on low clustered columns, rustication, and Sullivanesque foliate ornament made the building old-fashioned at its opening in 1899. The new structure was derided in the New York Times as "a cross between a cathedral and a cotton mill". The Old Post Office Pavilion was less than ten years old when cries were heard that it should be torn down. One local man, Nathan Rubinton, carved a model of the building by hand so that when it was torn down, people would remember how it looked.

In 1914, the District of Columbia Mail Depot was moved to a larger building constructed next to Union Station. Although only 15 years old, the building at 12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue was dubbed the "old" post office. In the 1920s, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon's building commission developed the surrounding Federal Triangle complex and actively sought the building's demolition.

The Postmaster General moved to a newly constructed office building directly across 12th Street in 1934, and the fate of the building appeared to be sealed. The only reason that the Old Post Office was not razed then was a lack of money due to the Great Depression. For the next 40 years the building served as overflow space for several government agencies. As no particular agency was made responsible for it, the building fell into decay.

By 1962, the neighborhood around the building had also declined. President John F. Kennedy appointed a Pennsylvania Avenue Commission to study ways to improve the area; in 1964 it returned several recommendations, including demolition of the Old Post Office Building to allow completion of the Federal Triangle. In 1970 and 1971, demolition permits were issued and Congress appropriated the money for the building's removal.

But local citizens who had grown to admire the building's architecture banded together and formed Don't Tear It Down, now the DC Preservation League to save it. Nancy Hanks, the politically influential chairwoman of the National Endowment for the Arts, joined the effort and prevailed in convincing Congress to reverse its decision. In 1973 the Old Post Office was added to the National Register of Historic Places, and starting in 1976 it was extensively renovated, including scrubbing its blackened exterior.

On February 15, 1983, the Old Post Office was officially renamed the Nancy Hanks Center in recognition of her devotion to the arts and the preservation of architecturally significant buildings. The building houses the offices of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation as well as the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities, and formerly the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

An exhibit room in the renovated tower depicts the struggle for survival of the Old Post Office building. The same exhibit room used to house the model of the building hand-carved by Nathan Rubinton (1882-1958), but it was returned to the Smithsonian Institution, which had loaned the model.

The New York Times reported that as of 2011 the building was costing the government $6.5 million each year to operate. The General Services Administration, which manages the building, chose the Trump Hotel Collection to redevelop the building as the Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C.. The $200 million project will include 250 hotel rooms, a conference center, a spa, restaurants and a museum dedicated to the building's history.

• The Bells of Congress

• One of the bells up close