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During the Presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941, the
24,000 civilian and military personnel in Washington, D.C. was
spread out among 17 buildings. Brigadier General Brehon B.
Somervell came up with the idea and was then given the task to
design and build a building to house the United States
Department of Defense in one location.
The five-story reinforced concrete building has five concentric
pentagonal rings connected by 10 radial corridors with light
wells in between and a 6-acre interior center court.
Completed on January 15, 1943, the Pentagon, located in SE
Arlington County, Virginia, is one of the largest office
buildings in the world with 3,705,793 square feet of floor space
covering 29 acres. In 1998 renovations were started to
modernize the Pentagon and to make the building a more secure
structure.
On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, an airplane under the control of
terrorists crashed into the Pentagon destroying a portion of the
building and killing 125 individuals. The Pentagon was repaired
within a year and a memorial was built on the crash site.
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