archie
Sign in Get the app

Department of Agriculture South Building

Architect
Louis A. Simon
Year
1936
Style
Neoclassical
City
Washington, DC
Collection
the city beautiful
Department of Agriculture South Building
Photo: APK, CC BY 4.0
See it on the map

Built in phases between 1930 and 1936 at 14th Street and Independence Avenue SW, the USDA South Building was designed by Louis A. Simon of the Federal Office of the Supervising Architect in the Stripped Classicism style favored for New Deal-era federal work. Depression-era agriculture programs had outgrown the original 1930 USDA Administration Building, and the South Building was built to absorb the overflow — becoming, at completion, the largest office building in the world until the Pentagon surpassed it.

the building

Bridging Independence Avenue. Two enclosed pedestrian bridges carried on single-span stone arches connect the South Building to the Administration Building across Independence Avenue, consolidating USDA operations into one complex and forming one of the street's more dramatic architectural accents.

A building of superlatives. At 458 by 944 feet, with seven stories and 4,500 rooms, the South Building held the title of the world's largest office building until the Pentagon opened.

the style

Simon's Stripped Classicism pares Beaux-Arts symmetry and proportion down to flat, unornamented surfaces — a style the federal government favored in the 1930s for buildings that needed to look authoritative without the expense of historicist detail.

More on Neoclassical

the architect

Louis A. Simon worked in the Federal Office of the Supervising Architect, the agency responsible for the government's civic and courthouse buildings nationwide; the South Building is among his largest Washington commissions.

significance

The South Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007 and is also a DC Historic Landmark, listed on the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites.

nearby

All 315 buildings in Washington, DC