Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building

Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, as it appeared before its destruction.
Alternative names	Alfred P. Murrah Building
General information
Status	Destroyed
Address	200 Northwest 5th Street
Town or city	Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Country	United States of America
Opened	March 2, 1977
Demolished	May 23, 1995
Owner	United States federal government

The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was a United States federal government complex located at 200 N.W. 5th Street in Downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States. The building was the target of the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995, which killed 168 people, 19 of whom were children under the age of six. Half of the building collapsed seconds after the truck bomb detonated. The remains of the building were imploded a month after the attack, and the Oklahoma City National Memorial was built on the site.

The federal building was designed by architect Wendell Locke of Locke, Wright and Associates and constructed using reinforced concrete in 1977 at a cost of $14.5 million. The building, named for federal judge Alfred P. Murrah, an Oklahoma native, opened on March 2, 1977.

By the 1990s, the building contained regional offices for the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the United States Secret Service, the Department of Veterans Affairs vocational rehabilitation counseling center, the Drug Enforcement Administration (D.E.A.), and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF). The building also contained recruiting offices for both the Army and the Marine Corps. It housed approximately 550 employees. The building also housed a children's day care center.

In October 1983, members of the white supremacist group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA), including founder James Ellison and Richard Snell plotted to park "a van or trailer in front of the Federal Building and blow it up with rockets detonated by a timer." While the CSA was building a rocket launcher to attack the building, the ordnance accidentally detonated in one of the member's hands. The CSA took this as divine intervention and called off the planned attack. Convicted of murder in an unrelated case, Richard Snell was executed on April 19, 1995, the same day the bombing of the federal building was carried out, after Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas declined to hear further appeal. Snell reportedly spent his last day watching news coverage of the bombing and laughing to himself.