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U.S. Department of Agriculture Cotton Annex

Architect
Louis A. Simon
Year
1937
Style
Neoclassical
City
Washington, DC
Collection
the city beautiful
U.S. Department of Agriculture Cotton Annex
Photo: APK, CC BY 4.0
See it on the map

The Cotton Annex was built in 1936-37 at 300 12th Street SW to house offices and laboratories for the USDA's Bureau of Agricultural Economics, after its previous headquarters was demolished to make way for the expanding Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Designed by Louis A. Simon, the Supervising Architect of the Treasury, in the Stripped Classical style, it sits on a site chosen under the 1901 McMillan Plan and was funded through the Public Buildings Act of 1926.

the building

Buff brick in all-stretcher bond. The six-story building is faced in distinctive variegated buff-colored brick laid in an all-stretcher bond, an unusual patterning choice for a stripped-down federal office building of its era, under a flat roof.

the style

Simon's Stripped Classicism pares classical proportion and symmetry down to plain, largely unornamented surfaces, a style favored for federal buildings of the 1930s that needed to look dignified without the expense of full classical detailing.

More on Neoclassical

the architect

Louis A. Simon served for decades as Supervising Architect of the Treasury, overseeing the design of federal buildings nationwide; the Cotton Annex was one of his Washington commissions.

significance

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Cotton Annex was converted from federal office space into apartments in 2024 and renamed Annex on 12th.

nearby

All 315 buildings in Washington, DC