Robert C. Weaver Federal Building
- Architect
- Marcel Breuer
- Year
- 1968
- Style
- Brutalism
- City
- Washington, DC
- Collection
- concrete washington
Conceived in 1962 under President John F. Kennedy's Ad Hoc Committee on Federal Office Space and funded after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965, the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building was designed by Marcel Breuer in the Brutalist style as headquarters for the new Department of Housing and Urban Development. Its cornerstone was laid in November 1966, and the ten-story building was dedicated on September 21, 1968.
the building
Precast concrete piloti. The ten-story block rests on precast concrete piloti, a signature Breuer structural move that lifts the building's mass above street level and is visible from the sidewalk.
A plaza redesigned. The building's plaza was redesigned in the 1990s by landscape architect Martha Schwartz, decades after the structure's original 1968 dedication.
the style
Built in the Brutalist and Expressionist idioms, the building is one of two Marcel Breuer designed for the U.S. federal government in Washington, the other being the Hubert H. Humphrey Building.
More on Brutalismthe architect
Marcel Breuer designed two federal office buildings in Washington, D.C.: this one and the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, making HUD's headquarters part of a small federal pairing in his American career.
significance
The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites. It was renamed in 2000 for Robert C. Weaver, the first Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the first African American Cabinet member.
nearby
- U.S. Department of Agriculture Cotton Annex
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
- Arts and Industries Building, Smithsonian Institution (National Museum)
- National Air and Space Museum
- U.S. Government Central Heating Plant
- Railroad Retirement Board (Mary Switzer Building)