The Hubert H. Humphrey Building (originally the South Portal Building) is the headquarters of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), located at 200 Independence Avenue SW in Southwest Washington, D.C., United States. The eight-story office building, owned by the U.S. federal government, was built by the General Services Administration as the headquarters of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). It was completed in 1977 and designed by Marcel Breuer in the brutalist style. The building is one of two that Breuer designed for the U.S. federal government in the District of Columbia, along with the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Planning for a generic federal structure on the site began in the mid-1960s, and HEW secretary Wilbur J. Cohen decided to move the department's executive offices there. Construction began in May 1972 after several changes to plans. The Hubert H. Humphrey Building was dedicated on November 1, 1977, in honor of former U.S. vice president and sitting U.S. senator Hubert H. Humphrey. After the HEW's education component was given to the newly created United States Department of Education in 1979, the HHS continued to occupy the structure.
The design of the building was influenced by its location above a sewage line, the Third Street highway tunnel, and adjoining air ducts. The Humphrey Building is set back significantly from Independence Avenue, and there is a large concrete plaza outside. The lowest two floors are set back from the upper stories, which are suspended from steel trusses above. The facade is composed of travertine, along with cast-in-place and precast concrete. The ground floor has spaces such as a lobby, exhibition space, and an auditorium, and there are additional amenity areas on the second floor. There are also three basements. The interiors are broken up by the main support columns and three cores, which contain elevators and other essential infrastructure. The third through seventh stories are mostly identical in layout, except for the sixth floor, which has the HHS secretary's suite. The interior walls were prefabricated with infrastructure such as wiring and piping. Meeting, office, and dining facilities occupy the penthouse level of the building, which is surrounded by a balcony. Commentary on the design has been mixed.
Site The Hubert H. Humphrey Building is located at 200 Independence Avenue SW in the Southwest section of Washington, D.C., United States. It occupies a site bounded clockwise from the north by Independence Avenue and 2nd, C, and 3rd streets SW. The structure faces the National Mall, a landscaped park, directly to the north. The adjacent blocks include the United States Botanic Garden to the northeast, the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial to the east, the O'Neill House Office Building to the south, the Mary E. Switzer Memorial Building to the southwest, the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building to the west, and the National Museum of the American Indian to the northwest. It is located near the Washington Metro's Federal Center SW station.
The Humphrey Building is placed above a major sewage line, the Third Street highway tunnel, and air ducts that serve the tunnel. As such, the building essentially functions like a bridge above the sewer and tunnel, which run under two-thirds of the site. The sewer and tunnel run diagonally under the site, in contrast to the Frances Perkins Building at the Third Street Tunnel's northern end, where the highway runs parallel to that building. The building's plaza incorporates grilles from the tunnel, and the building itself had to include ventilation towers. The design was further constrained because, while the ducts had to rise at least , any structure on the site had a height restriction of .
Previous site use During the 19th century, the surrounding area had been isolated from the rest of D.C. by the Washington City Canal to the north. After the canal was infilled in the 1870s, the Humphrey Building's site was developed with houses and tolley depots. The northeast corner of the site was cut off by Canal Street, which ran diagonally to the District of Columbia's street grid. When Independence Avenue and C Street SW were widened in 1941, the site assumed its final pentagonal shape.
In 1946, the United States Congress had passed the District of Columbia Redevelopment Act, which established the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency and provided for clearance of land and redevelopment funds in the capital. After a decade of public comment and negotiations, the Southwest Urban Renewal Plan was approved in November 1956. In part, the plan cleared the way for General Services Administration (GSA) to build new large federal office buildings between Independence Avenue SW and Southeast Freeway, along with mid-rise apartment buildings in the same area.
History
Development The Humphrey Building was the last of six federal office buildings built as part of the Southwest redevelopment, in part due to issues regarding its site and tenant. By the 1960s, the Third Street Tunnel was being built under the National Mall, but its construction was repeatedly delayed. To alleviate opposition to the tunnel's existence, the Humphrey Building was supposed to be built atop the tunnel's south portal; the United States Department of Labor building would be built at the north portal. The south portal site was intended as the headquarters of the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). The agency, which at the time occupied a site near the United States Capitol, had grown substantially in scope as a result of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society initiatives.
Funding for a HEW building had been allocated in the 1959 Public Buildings Act. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy established the Ad Hoc Committee on Federal Office Space and charged it with developing new guidelines for the design of federal office buildings. On May 23 of that year, the Ad Hoc Committee issued a one-page report, Guiding Principles for Federal Architecture, which established these new design principles. The document encouraged federal planners to consider and build structures that "reflect the dignity, enterprise, vigor and stability of the American National Government" and "embody the finest contemporary American architectural thought." At the time, few new federal buildings in Washington, D.C., were being designed in neoclassical styles, but neither were architecturally distinctive, contemporary-styled federal buildings being built. Kennedy issued a directive based on the Guiding Principles report that June.
Planning
Planning for a generic federal structure on the site began about 1965 or 1966. Marcel Breuer, his associate Herbert Beckhard, and Nolan-Swinburne & Associates received a contract for a feasibility study of the building—known tentatively as the "Air Rights Building" for its location—on March 28, 1966. The three had previously designed a nearby headquarters building for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, which would be completed in 1968 for substantially less than its budget. Breuer received the commission for the Air Rights Building after positive reception to the HUD design. The site immediately posed difficulties because of its location above the highway and sewage line. As a result, unlike traditional buildings, most of the Air Rights Building could not be supported from directly underneath. Breuer's initial drawings, published in August 1966, vaguely resembled the final design. The plans called for a concrete building with the two lower stories recessed from the five upper stories, which would have stair towers at each corner. There would have been two interior lightwells.
In early 1967, the GSA requested $1 million in Congressional funds for the Air Rights Building's substructure, which were approved that May. Two federal agencies, the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) and the United States Commission of Fine Arts (CFA), approved the design in mid-1967. The Architect of the Capitol's (AOC) office rejected the plans, requiring that the building be set back from Independence Avenue to avoid obstructing views of the Rayburn House Office Building to the east. A new design contract for the "South Portal Building" on the same site was signed in December 1967, and the NCPC, CFA, and AOC approved the revised plans over the next two years. The original design was largely retained, but the building was placed further back from Independence Avenue, requiring multiple changes. Breuer designed a public plaza on Independence Avenue, repositioned the vehicular entrance, and removed the two planned lightwells from the interior.
Initially, the South Portal Building was budgeted at $29 million. No tenant was selected until HEW Secretary Wilbur J. Cohen agreed to move the department's offices there in December 1968. The department's existing building, later the Cohen Building, had 5,000 workers. The GSA wrote to the architects in September 1969, recommending several design changes to reduce the rapidly growing construction estimates. Cohen's successor, Robert H. Finch, announced the next month that he would postpone development of the new HEW building, as the cost had increased to $40.5 million. Despite this, the architects had drawn up the final plans by April 1970, and Breuer, Beckhard, and the GSA began designing the interiors. The GSA was responsible for most of the interior spaces, but Breuer and Beckhard were assigned some of the larger spaces (such as the lobby, auditorium, and conference rooms) in their original design contract.
Construction Foundation work commenced in December 1969, Congress approved the building's construction sometime in 1970, and the construction documents were approved that October. After a joint venture between Hass & Haynie and Blake Construction Company received the general contract in April 1972, construction began early the next month. The construction contract was awarded for 18% below official estimates, and Breuer was reportedly pleased at the cost savings compared with other federal government structures. Work on the building progressed relatively quickly: The first pieces of the concrete core were being poured by October 1972, and the facade was being installed within thirteen months. The steelwork and floor plates had largely been completed up to the seventh-story level by early 1974, when the GSA proposed that parts of the interior scheme be modified in February.
The building's completion date was postponed to August 1975 and later to September 1976. During the construction, there were plans to build a sauna and some squash courts inside, to the consternation of Congress members. As such, in 1975, Congress proposed to take over the building and use it for office space for the United States House of Representatives. At the time, the building was estimated to cost $43.4 million, and the House's 10,000 staff were working in overcrowded offices. The Congressional takeover did not occur, and some House offices were ultimately moved to House Annex 2, a nearby building formerly occupied by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.