History
The building is located near the Federal Triangle Metro station in Washington, an area once populated heavily with saloons and brothels. The federal government purchased the land in the 1920s, and it was to be part of the Federal Triangle redevelopment of the late 1920s and 1930s. Until development on the current building began, the area known as the "Great Plaza" was used as a massive downtown parking lot.
In August 1987, the U.S. Congress passed the Federal Triangle Development Act, authorizing a Federal building complex and international cultural and trade center to complete the redevelopment of Pennsylvania Avenue, for $362 Million. The Act specified that the building "reflect the symbolic importance and historic character of Pennsylvania Avenue and the nation's capital" and "represent the dignity and stability of the Federal Government." The law realized President John F. Kennedy's goal of revitalizing Pennsylvania Avenue.
Under the direction of the U.S. General Services Administration and the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation, architectural firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners of New York, in association with D.C. architects Ellerbe Becket, were selected as the building architects in 1989. The building was designed by James Ingo Freed of Pei Cobb Freed. Construction began in 1990. The building is located in front of the Oscar Straus Memorial.
In 1995, the Congress voted unanimously to name the building after President Ronald Reagan, who had signed the legislation authorizing its construction. Three years later, the building was officially dedicated on May 5, 1998. At the time it was built, the Ronald Reagan Building was the most expensive federal building ever constructed, at a cost of $768 million. As a federal office building, it is second in size only to the Pentagon. Its naming was controversial, because Ronald Reagan was considered to be a champion of small government and the building was seen by some as an example of "big government" and government waste.
Read more about this topic: Ronald Reagan Building And International Trade Center
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.... It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving—as if it were an individual person—its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)