William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building
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William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building
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The Clinton Building. The tower of the Old Post Office can be glimpsed in the background.
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| Location |
12th Street, and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. |
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| Coordinates | 38°53′38.04″N 77°1′44.04″W / 38.8939000°N 77.0289000°WCoordinates: 38°53′38.04″N 77°1′44.04″W / 38.8939000°N 77.0289000°W |
| Built | 1934 |
| Architect | William Adams Delano, Chester Holmes Aldrich |
| Architectural style | Classical Revival |
| Part of | Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site (#66000865) |
The William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building is located in the Federal Triangle in Washington, D.C., across 12th Street from the Old Post Office. The New Post Office, as the Clinton Building was originally known, housed the headquarters of the Post Office Department until that department was replaced by the United States Postal Service in 1971. The building, which now houses the headquarters of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, was first renamed the Ariel Rios Federal Building on February 5, 1985, in honor of Ariel Rios, an undercover special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who was killed in the line of duty on December 2, 1982. After the federal government announced that it would be renaming the building again in honor of former President Bill Clinton on May 13, 2013, the building was officially renamed to its current title, the William Jefferson Clinton Federal Building, at a ceremony that took place July 17, 2013.
The Clinton Building was constructed in the early 1930s as part of the redevelopment of the Federal Triangle area. At that time one of the city's most blighted neighborhoods, this area was known as Murder Bay and was a center of crime and prostitution. The plan for the area's redevelopment was laid out as part of the 1901 McMillan Plan, the first federally funded urban redevelopment plan, and the redevelopment of Federal Triangle began in earnest in the 1930s under the leadership of Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon. Construction on the Clinton Building was completed in 1934.
The Clinton Building was a central feature of the redevelopment. The neoclassical building was designed by architects William Adams Delano and Chester Holmes Aldrich, who took as their inspiration the Place Vendôme in Paris. The central section of the tri-unit building consists of two huge, back to back, semicircular units with side wings. The semicircle formed by the building's curve on its eastern façade was to be mirrored by a similarly curved façade built across 12th Street on the site of the Old Post Office Building.
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