House Office Building (Cannon House Office Building)
- Architects
- Carrère and Hastings Thomas Hastings
- Year
- 1908
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- City
- Washington, DC
- Collection
- the city beautiful
Completed in 1908, the Cannon House Office Building is the oldest congressional office building in Washington, designed by the firm of Carrère and Hastings, with partner Thomas Hastings, in the Beaux-Arts style. It was built to relieve overcrowding inside the Capitol itself, where members previously had no offices and had to rent quarters or borrow committee rooms.
the building
Built to give Congress its first offices. Congress authorized the Architect of the Capitol, Edward Clark, to plan fireproof office buildings for the House and Senate in March 1901; by 1903 the site south of the Capitol had been cleared of private residences and businesses to make way for construction.
the style
The building is considered a significant example of the Beaux-Arts style, the grand classical idiom Carrère and Hastings also used for the nearby Hotel Washington a decade later.
More on Beaux-Artsthe architect
Thomas Hastings, of the firm Carrère and Hastings, designed the Cannon Building; the same firm's only DC commercial project, the Hotel Washington, went up a few blocks away a decade after.
significance
Renamed in 1962 for former Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon, the building is a DC Historic Landmark and is listed on the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites.
nearby
- Thomas Jefferson Building
- Library of Congress
- The Capitol
- Folger Shakespeare Library
- Supreme Court
- Saint Mark's Church