J. Edgar Hoover Building
- Architect
- Charles Murphy
- Year
- 1966
- Style
- Brutalism
- City
- Washington, DC
- Collection
- concrete washington
Planning for FBI headquarters began in 1962, with design work by Charles Murphy of C.F. Murphy Associates explicitly aiming to avoid the blocky, monolithic look typical of federal architecture. Congressional funding delays stretched construction over a decade -- only a three-story substructure was finished by 1970 -- and costs grew from an original $60 million to $126.108 million before the building was completed in September 1975 and dedicated by President Gerald Ford.
the building
A decade of delays. Design was largely finished by 1964, but final approval didn't come until 1967. Land clearance began in 1965, yet funding problems left only the substructure complete by 1970; the superstructure wasn't started until May 1971, four years before the building opened in 1975.
Naming Hoover's building. Two days after J. Edgar Hoover's death, President Nixon directed federal agencies on May 4, 1972, to call the still-unfinished structure the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, though the order carried no force of law.
the style
The finished Brutalist concrete building is a striking contrast to its own design brief, which had set out specifically to avoid the blocky, monolithic quality typical of federal architecture at the time.
More on Brutalismthe architect
Charles Murphy led the design at C.F. Murphy Associates for this headquarters building.
nearby
- Ford's Theatre NHS-Star Saloon (south addition)
- National Union Building
- Washington Loan and Trust Company
- Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building
- The Gallup Building
- Old Post Office