DC -- Downtown -- Eisenhower Executive Office Building (Old Executive Office Building) (1650 Penn Ave NW):
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Wikipedia Description: Eisenhower Executive Office Building
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB) — formerly known as the Old Executive Office Building (OEOB) and even earlier as the State, War, and Navy Building — is a U.S. government building situated just west of the White House in the U.S. capital of Washington, D.C. Maintained by the General Services Administration, it is occupied by the Executive Office of the President, including the Office of the Vice President of the United States. Located on 17th Street NW, between Pennsylvania Avenue and New York Avenue, and West Executive Drive, the building, commissioned by Ulysses S. Grant, built between 1871 and 1888, on the site of the original 1800 War/State/Navy Building and the White House stables, in the French Second Empire style, is a National Historic Landmark. It was for years the world's largest office building, with 566 rooms and about ten acres of floor space. Many White House employees have their offices in the massive edifice.
State, War, and Navy Building
The building—originally called the State, War, and Navy Building because it housed the Departments of State, War, and the Navy—was built between 1871 and 1888 in the French Second Empire style. It was designed by Alfred B. Mullett, Supervising Architect.
The Old Executive Office Building was renamed the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building when President Bill Clinton approved legislation changing the name on November 9, 1999. President George W. Bush participated in a rededication ceremony on May 7, 2002.
Much of the interior was designed by Richard von Ezdorf using fireproof cast-iron structural and decorative elements, including massive skylights above each of the major stairwells and doorknobs with cast patterns indicating which of the original three occupying departments (State, Navy, or War) occupied a particular space. The total cost to construct the building came in at $10,038,482.42 when constructed ended in 1888, after 17 years. The original tenants of the building quickly outgrew it and finally vacated it completely in the late 1930s. The building gradually came to be seen as inefficient and was nearly demolished in 1957. In 1969, the building received the highest recognition possible, becoming a National Historic Landmark. In 1981, plans began to restore all the "secretary of" suites. The main office of the Secretary of the Navy was restored in 1987 and is now used as the ceremonial office of the Vice President of the United States. Shortly after 11 September 2001, the 17th Street side of the building was vacated and has since been modernized. The building continues to house various agencies that compose the President's Executive Office, such as the Office of the Vice President, the Office of Management and Budget, and the National Security Council. However, its most public purpose is that of the Vice President's Ceremonial Office, which is mainly used for special meetings and press conferences.
Many celebrated national figures have participated in historical events that have taken place within the Old Executive Office Building. Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush all had offices in this building before becoming President. It has housed 16 Secretaries of the Navy, 21 Secretaries of War, and 24 Secretaries of State. Winston Churchill once walked its corridors and Japanese emissaries met there with Secretary of State Cordell Hull after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. President Herbert Hoover occupied the Secretary of the Navy's office for a few months following a fire in the Oval Office on Christmas Eve 1929. Dwight D. Eisenhower held the first televised Presidential news conference in the building's Indian Treaty Room (room 274) on January 19, 1955. In recent history, Richard Nixon had a private office there during his presidency, where his secret taping system recorded some of the conversations that proved the Watergate scandal. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was the first in a succession of Vice Presidents who have had offices in the building. The first wife of a Vice President to have an office in the building was Marilyn Quayle, wife of James Danforth Quayle. He served as the Vice President to George H.W. Bush. In keeping up with the times, the building unveiled the White House website in 1994.
A small fire on December 19, 2007 damaged an office of the vice-president's staff and included the VP ceremonial office. According to media reporting, the office of the Vice President's Political Director, Amy Whitelaw, was heavily damaged in the fire.
Patterned after French Second Empire architecture that clashed sharply with the neoclassical style of the other Federal buildings in the city, it was generally regarded with scorn and disdain, and the architect of the exterior, Alfred B. Mullett, ended his life in litigation and suicide. The OEOB was referred to by Mark Twain as "the ugliest building in America." Harry Truman called it "the greatest monstrosity in America." Historian Henry Adams called it Mullet's “architectural infant asylum.”
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2010_DC_OEOB: DC -- Downtown -- Eisenhower Executive Office Building (Old Executive Office Building) (1650 Penn Ave NW) (8 photos from 2010)
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2007_DC_OEOB: DC -- Downtown -- Eisenhower Executive Office Building (Old Executive Office Building) (1650 Penn Ave NW) (2 photos from 2007)
2005_DC_OEOB: DC -- Downtown -- Eisenhower Executive Office Building (Old Executive Office Building) (1650 Penn Ave NW) (1 photo from 2005)
2004_DC_OEOB: DC -- Downtown -- Eisenhower Executive Office Building (Old Executive Office Building) (1650 Penn Ave NW) (11 photos from 2004)
2002_DC_OEOB: DC -- Downtown -- Eisenhower Executive Office Building (Old Executive Office Building) (1650 Penn Ave NW) (13 photos from 2002)
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1997_DC_OEOB: DC -- Downtown -- Eisenhower Executive Office Building (Old Executive Office Building) (1650 Penn Ave NW) (10 photos from 1997)
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1981 photos: From 1979 to 1984, I lived in downtown Washington DC.
From 1979 to 1981, I experimented with some weirder pocket cameras which generated 110mm and 126mm negatives. They were crap.
From 1981 to 2002, photos were taken using a Pentax ME Super camera.
From 1966 to 1989, all of my pictures except those taken with the experimental cameras were slides which is what I had grown up on.
Until 1997, I was taking at most a couple of hundred photos a year.
Trips this year: None except to visit my girlfriend up in New York.
Image quality for my pictures is variable because these are scans of slides and/or prints at varying quality/resolutions.The Great Pandemic Digitizing Project: When I was first setting up my website in August, 2000, I had decided to digitize some of my favorite pre-digital slides and prints. The scans were fairly low resolution but they were good enough. With COVID forcing me to stay indoors, I decided to rescan ALL of my pre-digital images from multiple sources (slides, prints, and negatives) at a much higher resolution and quality setting. (I digitized Dad's slides at the same time). Instead of replacing my original scans, I added the new scans to existing pages, figuring I'd select the best ones later. As a result, multiple versions of images appear on most of these early pages. At some point, I'll take the time to do a final review and get rid of the duplicates.
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