The Old Post Office, listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Old Post Office and Clock Tower, is located at 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. in Washington, D.C. It is a contributing property to the Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site. It is adjacent to the Federal Triangle station on the Washington Metro. The building's 315-foot high clock tower houses the "Bells of Congress," and its observation level offers panoramic views of the city and its surroundings. The historic federal office building has been a hotel since 2016.
Construction began in 1892 and was completed in 1899. The building is an example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture, popular in the late 19th-century United States. Its bell tower is the third tallest structure in Washington, D.C., excluding radio towers. It succeeded an earlier 1839 building, the General Post Office, which was built in Classical Revival style on F Street NW. It was used as the city's main General Post Office until 1914 at the beginning of World War I.
The Pennsylvania Avenue landmark functioned primarily as a federal office building. It was nearly torn down during the construction of the surrounding Federal Triangle complex in the 1920s and 1930s, and 1970s. Instead, major renovations to The Old Post Office Building were made in 1976 and 1983. The 1983 renovation added to the office structure, a food court, a retail space, and a roof skylight over the building's central atrium. It was upon this rehabilitation that the building acquired the name of the Old Post Office Pavilion. A glass-walled annex on a former adjacent parking lot was added to the structure in 1991.
In 2013, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) leased the property for 60 years to a consortium headed by "DJT Holdings LLC", a holding company that Donald Trump owns through a revocable trust.
Trump developed the property into a luxury hotel, the Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C., which opened on September 12, 2016 September 12, 2016 Trump International Hotel Opens in DC; grand-opening ceremonies planned for October. Fox 5 DC. Retrieved: October 1, 2016. and closed on May 11, 2022, after its sale to CGI Merchant Group. It reopened as the Waldorf Astoria Washington DC on June 1, 2022.
History Construction and opening
The United States Congress approved construction of a new post office for Washington, D.C., on June 25, 1890."The Post Office Site". The Washington Post. August 30, 1890. The site, at the southeast corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 12th Street, was chosen by Senator Leland Stanford in 1888Struck, Myron. "Old Post Office Revived". The Washington Post. April 16, 1983. in the hope that the building would revitalize the Murder Bay neighborhood between the Capitol building and the White House.Benedetto, Donovan, and Du Vall, p. 166. Willoughby J. Edbrooke, Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department, designed the structure in the tradition of the Romanesque Revival architecture of Henry Hobson Richardson.Moeller and Feldblyum, p. 129. Construction began in 1892, and the building was complete in 1899.Evelyn, Dickson, and Ackerman, pp. 75–76.Wentzel, p. 34. The total cost of construction was $3 million."New Post Office Building Is Not a Great Success". The New York Times. January 21, 1900.
At the time of its completion, the Post Office Building contained the largest uninterrupted enclosed space in the city. Its clock tower reached 315 ft into the air. It was also the city's first building to have a steel frame structure, and the first to be built with electrical wiring incorporated into its design. The structure featured elevators with cages of highly intricate wrought iron, a glass covered atrium and mezzanine level, and floors, moldings, railings, and wainscoting made of marble. The atrium was 196ft high, and 10 floors of balconies looked out onto the space (which provided interior light in an era when indoor lighting was not common). It boasted more than 39,000 interior electric lights, and its own electrical generator. Girders and catwalks spanned the atrium at the third floor level to allow post office supervisors to look down on the workers. The fifth floor housed executive offices in the corners. Each office had a turret, ornately carved wooden moldings, and red oak paneling. But there were problems with the structure. The Washington Star reported that the skylights and windows leaked air and water, the marble floors were poorly laid, and much of the construction was shoddy. The ninth floor was to have served as a file room, but a post-construction inspection showed it could not accommodate the weight. Technological advances in electricity and electrical wiring, mechanical engineering, heating, and movement of air made the building out of date as soon as it opened. The anticipated economic development, however, never occurred.
19th century At the 1898 meeting of the American Institute of Architects, the structure was criticized as supremely ugly during a plenary address by New York City architect George B. Post. That same year, Senator Joseph Roswell Hawley called it "a cross between a cathedral and a cotton mill"."Congress and the Questions of Expansion and Increased Armaments Confronting It". The New York Times. November 6, 1898. By the time it opened, the building was also too small to accommodate the government agencies which occupied it. The city postmaster had advocated a building with a 50000 sqft footprint, but only |10000 sqft were purchased. The post office used the main floor and mezzanine, but these were already too crowded by January 1900."Too Crowded for Comfort". The Washington Post. September 15, 1899. Treasury Department offices were to have taken over the eighth floor, but the structure was so overcrowded that this move was suspended.
A year after the building opened, an accident there took the life of Washington, D.C. Postmaster James P. Willett. On September 30, 1899, Willett fell 90 down an open elevator shaft. Nothing more than a flimsy wooden barrier prevented access to the shaft. Willett died a day later."Fell Down the Shaft". The Washington Post. October 1, 1899; "Died". The Washington Post. October 2, 1899.
In the early 1880s, Senator Justin Smith Morrill and Senator John James Ingalls proposed razing all the structures between Pennsylvania Avenue and B Street (now Constitution Avenue) to the south to create a park."The New Municipal Building". The Washington Post. December 16, 1902. The influential McMillan Plan of 1902, however, proposed retaining the structure.Subcommittee on Public Buildings and Grounds, p. 60. (It could hardly have done otherwise, with the building only just having been completed.)Scott and Lee, p. 170. Nonetheless, the same year the Washington Post editorialized in favor of its demolition. In 1906, discussing plans to beautify Washington, essayist Sammuel E. Moffett disparagingly called the building a "Kansas City emporium so utterly out of keeping with the general atmosphere of official Washington that it sets the teeth of architects on edge".Moffett, Samuel E. "Washington, Despite Departure from L'Enfant's Plans, to Be in Time the Most Beautiful Capital City in the World". The Washington Post. July 22, 1906. Later that year, Senator Weldon B. Heyburn introduced legislation to authorize the federal government to purchase all the land between Pennsylvania Avenue (northeast side), the National Mall (south side), 15th Street N.W. (west side), and the Capitol grounds (to the east) for the construction of an architecturally "harmonious" set of massive office buildings. Heyburn's plan retained the architecturally dominating Post Office Building of 1899 with its commanding tower, but adjusted its Pennsylvania Avenue side to be parallel with the street."Public Building Plan.' The Washington Post. December 5, 1906.
The clock in the building tower was originally mechanical in nature, and kept accurate time via gravity. A cable was wrapped around a drum, and a large weight attached to the end of the cable. As the cable unwound due to the force of gravity, the clock hands turned. The cable was rewound once or twice a day.
20th century
In 1914, the District of Columbia's General Post Office moved to a larger Beaux Arts/Classical Revival building constructed next to recently completed Union Station of similar impressive style, taking advantage of heavy use of the national railroad system for speedier mail delivery.Applewhite, p. 16. Although only 15 years old, the building at 12th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue was now commonly called the "old" post office. For the next forty years, the building served as office space for several government agencies.
The Old Post Office Building was slated for demolition during construction of the Federal Triangle. In 1926, the United States Congress enacted the Public Buildings Act, which authorized the construction not only of the Federal Triangle complex of buildings but also a new U.S. Supreme Court building opposite the east front of the United States Capitol on the site of the Civil War-era Old Capitol Prison, and north of the Library of Congress's Thomas Jefferson Building, completed in 1897.The Act also authorized a major extension of the U.S. Government Printing Office building on North Capitol Street, and significant widening of B Street N.W. (later renamed Constitution Avenue) on the north side of the National Mall."$165,000,000 Public Building Measure Signed by Coolidge". The Washington Post. May 26, 1926. Government officials, other experts, and the press believed that the demolition of the 1898 District Building ("city hall" for the District of Columbia) and the Old Post Office Building, and the closure of many streets in the area, would follow.Whitaker, Charles B. "Building for the Glory of Washington". The New York Times. March 6, 1927. A Board of Architectural Consultants was created on May 19, 1927, to advise the federal agencies developing the Federal Triangle on how to proceed."Architects Chosen to Advise on Plans for Mall Triangle". The Washington Post. May 20, 1927.
By July 1927, the board had fashioned a general plan for the area, but did not address whether the Old Post Office Building, the District Building, or the Southern Railway Building should be torn down."Triangle Sites Studied by Architectural Board". The Washington Post. July 12, 1927. Planning for the complex was deeply influenced by the City Beautiful movement and the idea of creating a civic center to achieve efficiency in administration as well as reinforce the public's perception of government as authoritative and permanent. For the architectural style of the buildings, the board adopted the McMillan Plan's recommendation of the Neoclassical style.Gutheim and Lee, pp. 181–95. Rather than a mass of tall, imposing buildings, two unifying open spaces (intended for ceremonial use, and under discussion by the Board at least by March 1928) would be utilized.Speers, L.C. "Washington's Aspect Is Undergoing Change". The New York Times. March 18, 1928. The first would be a Circular Plaza (inspired by the Place Vendôme)McCormick, Anne O'Hare. "Building the Greater Capital". The New York Times. May 26, 1929. bisected by 12th Street NW, and which would require the demolition of the Old Post Office Building.Goode, p. 13.