Internal Revenue Service Building
- Architect
- Louis A. Simon
- Style
- Neoclassical
- City
- Washington, DC
- Collection
- the city beautiful
The Internal Revenue Service Building at 1111 Constitution Avenue NW, on the corner of 12th Street in the Federal Triangle, was designed in the Neoclassical style by Louis A. Simon and the Office of the Supervising Architect and built from 1928 to 1936. Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon laid the cornerstone in 1929, and the building opened in 1930, sixteen months ahead of schedule, becoming the first Federal Triangle building put into use. It remains IRS headquarters today.
the building
A quote over the door. An inscription above the main entrance carries a line from Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935): "Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society."
the style
The building's Neoclassicism ties it to the coordinated classical language of the Federal Triangle group it joined as the complex's first completed structure.
More on Neoclassicalthe architect
Louis A. Simon oversaw the design as head of the Office of the Supervising Architect, the federal government's in-house architecture office responsible for Treasury buildings nationwide.
significance
Designated by Congress in 1966 as a contributing structure to the Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site, and subsequently listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
nearby
- Old Post Office
- Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building
- William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building
- National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
- Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium
- J. Edgar Hoover Building