Plan for the War Department Building at Pennsylvania
Avenue and 17th Street, Washington, DC
By William Strickland, ca. 1845
Ink and wash on paper
26 1/2" x 39 1/2"
National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Office
of the Chief of Engineers
William Strickland Designs
William Strickland entered this drawing in the
competition for new and larger War and Navy Department buildings. Strickland
proposed two identical buildings, one for each department. Each structure
was to have 64 rooms and was to be built with cast iron columns for fireproofing
purposes. The facades at the bottom of the page show Strickland's simple
symmetrical elevations with elongated rectangular windows, a low hipped
roof, and plain wall surfaces. His restrained use of ornamentation is
limited to gigantic Ionic columns across the center portico and carvings
above the attic windows. The longitudinal and transverse sections at the
top of the page give a sense of the interior spatial arrangement. Strickland's
design was rejected, and the outbreak of the Civil War delayed action
on this project. After the war, interest in this project resumed, but,
by this time, the elaborate French Second Empire style of architecture
had replaced the severe Neoclassical as the fashion of the day. In 1871
Alfred B. Mullett designed the replacement State, War, and Navy Building
as an exuberant Second Empire composition. Mullet's building is now known
as the Old Executive Office Building and remains a landmark at the corner
of Pennsylvania Avenue and 17th Street in Washington, DC.