History
Prior to the construction of the Ford Building, the site was the home to the Bell School and Zion Wesley Chapel. Construction of the building began in 1939 as part of the Works Progress Administration program. The building originally housed the United States Census Bureau from 1940 to 1942. Over the years, it was used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to house its Latent Print Unit. Thousands of fingerprint records were housed in the building, requiring manual search techniques to find a match. The unit was one of the first to move to the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover Building upon its completion in 1974. Following the FBI's departure, the building was purchased by the Architect of the Capitol and was renamed House Annex-2. In the late 1980s, the Democratic and Republican parties were each permitted to rename a House Annex building. The Republicans, then in the minority, chose to rename House Annex-2 the Ford Building after former President of the United States and House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, while the Democrats chose to rename House Annex-1 the O'Neill House Office Building after former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill.
Read more about this topic: Ford House Office Building
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)