|
Steve Vogel |
|
The Pentagon — A History |
|
thepentagonhistory.com |
|
The Untold Story of the Wartime Race to Build the Pentagon – and to Restore it Sixty Years Later |
|
¶ "Steve Vogel has compiled the untold story of this venerable building—its personalities, construction, reconstruction following 9/11 and ongoing renovation. The Pentagon: A History is well illustrated with maps, photographs and a timeline. Vogel’s prose is fast moving . . .
Vogel has extensively researched the Pentagon’s construction, including pitfalls and successes. He introduces a cast of personalities through whom the building comes alive in a race against time....
Readers will find Steve Vogel’s The Pentagon: A History informative, entertaining and rewarding." Army Magazine, September 2007
————————————————-
¶ "The book's narrative keeps the same pace as the construction - fast." Army Times, September 3, 2007
————————————————-
¶ "Vogel's book starts off like a runaway freight train, with the rush to construct the Pentagon amid the turmoil of World War II. . . . The Pentagon can easily be recommended to anyone - the history buff, the political layman or anyone with an ear for an interesting account." Winston-Salem Journal, July 22, 2007
————————————————-
¶ "Few major buildings were constructed in as much of a hurry and with as many challenges as the building that is synonymous with the nation's defense. Almost by accident, it is one of the best-known buildings in the world.
The building, of course, is the Pentagon, and its story is wonderfully told in a new book ``The Pentagon -- A History''(Random House) by veteran Washington Post military writer Steve Vogel. . . .
Every building of any size and complexity has a story; few of them are this compelling." Tom Condon, The Hartford Courant, July 22, 2007
————————————————-
¶ “STEVE VOGEL has provided two excellent books in one: an interesting account of the frenetic effort to build the world's largest office building in order to support the U.S. entry into World War II, and an equally fascinating study of how the building survived and was reborn in the renovation effort so rudely interrupted on Sept. 11, 2001.
Gen. Brehon B. Somervell, who managed the massive public works project through a series of assignments, was never a household name in the history of World War II. His subordinate Leslie Groves, who headed the Manhattan Project, is much better known. Once the decision was made to create a single building to consolidate the occupants of 17 Army buildings, (which included a just-completed War Department Headquarters ) Somervell began to plan, construct and occupy the monumental edifice despite constant engineering and political challenges - including solicitous meddling by the "First Architect," FDR.
Somervell, the quintessential "D.C. player," had an outsized ego but justified it with competence and a steady hand. He had no qualms about subterfuge and dissembling when it came to the budget - he couldn't be pinned down even on the number of floors he was constructing - and promised jobs for Virginians to get support from the Virginia congressional delegation. The Pentagon's cost overruns were astronomical, for a variety of reasons, but Somervell bamboozled his critics, including Sen. Harry Truman.
Vogel, a Washington Post reporter, details the organizational and technical innovations required to plant a 43-acre stone building on the most unsuitable swampland in the D.C. area. He also covers the social aspects of the site selection, construction and move-in of the workforce. In 1943, racial discrimination was illegal in the District of Columbia and federal facilities, but not in Virginia. The construction effort was thoroughly segregated, and as Army bureaucrats began to staff the offices, they discovered duplicate water fountains, bathrooms and even cafeterias that they refused to accept.
After summarizing events and personalities from 1943 to 2001, such as the reorganization of the armed forces, conduct of several wars and the handling of Vietnam-era protests, Vogel addresses the Pentagon and its inhabitants' survival after the impact of Flight 77. While the entire original project was thought to be temporary, it was built to last. FDR had envisioned its ultimate use as the nation's archives, insisting on reinforced floors that saved lives after the potentially devastating impact and fire.
While the offices of many former Pentagon dwellers prominently display their souvenir photo of the building's reflection in a rear-view mirror, they uniformly respect the pride and dedication of its builders and re-builders. Vogel has done a great service to a historic structure and its people.” Raymond Leach, The Virginian-Pilot, July 29, 2007
————————————————- ¶ Vogel "puts on display his superlative skills as a journalist with capturing human detail. Above all, he reminds us that history is made by living people, and he has a biographer's fascination with the details of dozens of personalities who made the Pentagon what it is today." Mark Falcoff, The New York Sun, July 11, 2007
————————————————-
¶ "Vogel vividly depicts the horror of those inside the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 and then skillfully describes the rebirth of the Pentagon through the Phoenix Project. His intimate knowledge of the construction process and his years of research energize these pages. . . . [T]here is simply no better book on the massive construction - and then restoration - of the building itself." Chuck Leddy, The Christian Science Monitor, July 10, 2007
————————————————-
¶THE saga of the construction of the Pentagon, skilfully recounted by Steve Vogel, a military reporter on the Washington Post, is as enthralling as it is improbable. One Thursday evening, July 17th 1941, Brigadier-General Brehon Somervell, on his own initiative, assembled a small group of officers from the army's construction division. He told them that they were to build a single headquarters to house the entire war department, then scattered over 23 sites. It would be in Virginia and hold 40,000 people in four air-conditioned storeys. Somervell ordered that the general layout, basic design plans and architectural perspectives for the building be on his desk by 9am on Monday. Guided by the odd shape of Arlington Farm, the plot of land at the foot of Arlington cemetery on which they hoped to build, the planners sketched a skewed five-sided structure “curiously reminiscent of an old fortress: a pentagon”. On Tuesday July 22nd the secretary of war and the army chief of staff gave their approval. At a cabinet meeting two days later President Franklin Roosevelt gave his consent. The plan went through the House of Representatives the same day. The Senate then followed on August 14th. There was considerable discussion of what might be done with the building after the war was won when the army, obviously, would no longer require that much office space. Roosevelt's idea was to convert it to an archive. To fulfil what now seems a wildly optimistic expectation, the president required that the floors be made strong enough to hold heavy filing cabinets. Under these instructions, they were designed to support twice the normal load. This extravagance was rewarded on September 11th 2001, when the Pentagon largely withstood a Boeing 757 ploughing into its first floor at almost 530 miles (850km) an hour. The president also changed the site of the building. He decided that to preserve the view of monumental Washington from Arlington cemetery the Pentagon would be constructed in the part of Arlington where it stands now. There was no time to change substantially the design of the building but its five sides were made equal in length. Selective honesty A presidential intervention on aesthetic grounds might not happen these days. But Somervell's concealment from Congress of the expanding size and cost of the project is all too familiar. A press release described “a three-storey building with basement”, but the basement was above ground. No mention was made of the planned sub-basement or the sub-sub-basement. After Somervell confessed to a fourth storey—and a large portion of the building had been roofed—he decided on a full fifth floor. Characteristically it was described in documents submitted to Congress as “Fourth floor—intermediate”. Costs were simply omitted—and eventually ballooned to well over twice the original appropriation. The contract, signed in September 1941, required that at least 500,000 square feet (46,500 square metres) of building be ready for occupancy no later than May 1st. On that date, 600,000 square feet were available and several hundred employees from the Ordnance Department were at their desks working. Construction continued, often in advance of design plans. When the Pentagon was completed in January 1943, the world's largest office building was “four times the size of the British War Office in Whitehall, the German Kriegsministerium in Berlin and the Japanese general staff headquarters building in Tokyo combined” (though when peace came about the War Department was still scattered over 30 buildings). It was one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century—driven by the intelligence and willpower of larger-than-life figures prepared to cut corners and demand the impossible. Mr Vogel has brought to our notice a thrilling achievement.
————————————————-
¶ “STEVE Vogel's marvelous work recounts the construction of one of the world's most iconic buildings - the Pentagon. But more compelling by far, he relates the human stories underlying this huge construction effort.
To provide a building to consolidate the War Department's assets, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tapped Brig. Gen. Brehon B. Somervell, an ambitious and eccentric engineer officer. (FDR can't resist the temptation to indulge his fascination for architecture by fiddling with the plans.)
Here you will meet John McShain, the tireless, feisty contractor determined to deliver an unprecedented structure in record time. The lead architect is a young Dutch refugee, Iles van der Gracht, who designs a functional building that will exceed the Empire State Building in floor space. (When finished, van der Gracht will go on to the Office of Strategic Services and parachute behind German lines, where he will eventually liberate his mother and sister.)
Here is Gen. Leslie Groves, facilitating the project by healing bruised egos and frantically massaging cost overruns to keep Congressional watchdogs at bay. (Groves will also head the secret Manhattan Project.)
Vogel also paints portraits of the lawmakers who jousted over whose district would provide labor, materials and a home for the structure. They grouse about cost overruns, grandstand for the newspapers and complain about the irascible Somervell all the while.
It all happened quickly. The building's blueprints were being drawn up even as construction continued. Within months, the world's largest office building rose from a swirl of dust in the Virginia countryside. Just across the Potomac River, a somnolent Washington broiled in brutal summer heat, seemingly oblivious to the distant thunder of war in Europe and Asia.
The proposed structure - which had consisted of a rough sketch in July 1941 and little more than a swarm of contractors, trucks, concrete and mud at the time of Pearl Harbor - rose in a fashion that can only be described as stunning. By 1943, more than 30,000 people worked in the building, which had become the nerve center of the war to preserve democracy.
All this would of itself be enough to warrant a book but Vogel plunges on to an appropriate second story: the terrorist assault of 9/11 and the Pentagon's subsequent resurrection. This section of the book, due perhaps to the proximity of the event, is all the more compelling.
The events that spawned the Pentagon's construction and reconstruction may now seem remote. But perhaps not so remote: One can only hopes that no one will be forced to write such a volume about JFK International Airport.
Events, however, have a way of getting our attention, of reminding us of things that matter - be they structures, or the way of life that they represent.” —Frederick J. Chiaventone, New York Post, June 17, 2007
|
|
The Reviews |
|
¶¶ |
|
¶¶ |
|
¶¶ |
|
|