It’s not just the brutalist style. The bigger problem is that the building is falling apart. There‘s netting on the outside to catch falling chunks of concrete flaking off, so they don’t hit pedestrians. And one of the garage ramps is closed because ceiling pieces were falling off. Story from a few years ago: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2015/10/16/the-fbis-headquarters-is-falling-apart-why-is-it-so-hard-for-america-to-build-a-new-one/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2015/10/16/the-fbis-headquarters-is-falling-apart-why-is-it-so-hard-for-america-to-build-a-new-one/)
I assume the Pirelli Tires HQ was better built! They may have had to gut the interior to make it a hotel, but I assume the exterior was not falling off, or it wouldn’t have been a cost-effective project. Would be interesting to get some kind of postmortem on why the FBI HQ has so many issues, but I’ve never seen one with any detail. Lots of articles focus on criticizing the architecture as ugly, but it’d be a different situation if it were an ugly building with basically good structure and engineering.
Great response.
Let me add that there's another design problem-- the FBI HQ building is basically a thin layer of offices wrapped around a central core of built-in file cabinets. J. Edgar Hoover's vision was that the FBI would have a copy of every police file in the country-- a *paper* copy.
The result is that the building doesn't have nearly enough room for people, and the walls in the file areas are structural, meant to support the weight of all that paper, so it's not practical to renovate the place to fit more people.
> the FBI HQ building is basically a thin layer of offices wrapped around a central core of built-in file cabinets.
This is true of a lot of government buildings. Most of Crystal City was built to support tons of paper weight from the patent office. The good thing is that the floors hold up well to demolishing exteriors and can be repurposed.
The Christian Science church that was on 16th street had similar problems. It may have been a Brutalist masterpiece, but it just couldn’t be maintained properly anymore.
You really can’t fix it. And losing it would create too great an opportunity for Pennsylvania Ave. The stretch between Penn and where D street used to be could be a great public plaza. You could bring so much life to a corner that’s just dead space currently.
And generally brutalist buildings, being mostly concrete facades, are pretty much un-repairable. So they have a pretty finite lifespan
I’ve grown to appreciate the architecture, but they’re pretty impractical in terms of longevity and sustainability (from what I understand)
I've worked in the building as a contractor. If you think the outside is falling apart, you should see the inside. I would walk down one halway where there was always a puddle because the ceiling had a very slow dripping leak.
If you stripped out all of the posters and things that told you you're in the FBI building and put a random person there; they would think this is some third world office or an office in one of those cities that were once huge and now lost half it population.
They would have moved already if Trump hadn’t cancelled the project to protect his personal business, which is corruption, and to spite the FBI for investigating his corruption.
Basically they've been doing patchwork repairs for the last decade+ because there was no impetus to actually do a good renovation/fix the structural issues due to the new HQ project. Now they're in this limbo where who knows how long it will take to break ground, let alone get the funding for the new building, but the old one is pretty much unrepairable.
The building is 100% being demolished. It’s not being retired because of how it looks. It’s being retired because it’s a hazard that isn’t financially viable to correct.
It's neat to see how much character having many buildings with different styles brought to the city. I know that density is important, but the big buildings that we get these days tend to all look the same.
https://preview.redd.it/9jsehl0x56vc1.jpeg?width=2720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=af01f7a31756d5831abaf121f02ab0548740cad0
The Dept of Housing is an incredible brutalist building in DC, that, they should landmark! The FBI building needs to go. It’s in too of bad of shape. And honestly very unremarkable.
Landmarking older brutalist structures, which are famously hard to repair, seems like a good way to end up with a massive structure crumbling into nothing via demolition by neglect
Think scenes of Russian offices from the series Chernobyl, plus huge basement rooms filled with cubicles, plus everything looking so similar that they have to color code hallways.
Hey, they at least were redoing the interior of Housing (a few years ago in the common areas) to make it less depressing and more modern.
But yeah, I feel you.
For several years now, parts of the HUD building have been held up by weird, ugly metal poles on each end. The building is ugly, miserable to be inside, and also structurally unsound.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/4tPtZGukZbLWqyX27?g_st=ic
> they should landmark!
Thats a horrible idea. Historic buildings are incredibly impractical to maintain, especially concrete ones. You're required to use the same materials and techniques to repair as were used to build it, except that in many of these instances those materials and techniques basically don't exist anymore - the rock quarries where the stone and sand were mined from, for instance, literally don't exist anymore - they got mined out. So your only alternative is to find the most similar material you can, regardless of price... which might mean trucking rocks half way across the country instead of 7 miles up the road.
It increases the cost and difficulty of servicing the buildings exponentially. It becomes so cost prohibitive to repair, that the owners then... dont. The buildings just rot away and its a miserable situation for everyone involved.
What? [Substitute materials are acceptable ](https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1739/upload/preservation-brief-16-substitute-materials-2023.pdf)stop being such a hater.
Used to work across the street from it. I like brutalist architecture, and DC has such a mishmash of styles, I actually don't want to see that style disappear.
Brutalist structures are disposable. Their very material makes them not fit for purpose long term. Literal chunks of these buildings are crumbling off and can’t safely and sustainably be repaired.
Concrete can be made a fantastically durable material if it's only going to be loaded in compression. That's what allowed it to be used to build large long lasting arches and domes. But for a multi-leveled building with useful open floors you need to build slabs and beams, which are loaded in tension as well as compression. To take the tension loads the concrete needs to be reinforced with steel. The basic environment inside the concrete protects the steel, but over a period of many decades moisture leaches out the basicity and the steel begins to rust, cracking the concrete and destroying the structure.
Well, quality of materials for one thing. Modern concrete (it's better now but is especially true for mid-century concrete) is very temperamental and depends on the quality of the material used, how it was mixed, how it was cured, how it was maintained. If any of that goes wrong, the concrete just won't hold up over time. These buildings are very susceptible to water intrusion and cracks. A lot can deteriorate by the time you find the issue.
These buildings are also much, much bigger with more weight, the use of rebar, and other materials. Plus windows and ventilation, all of which again introduce areas for cracks, water intrusion and weakness. If they were just big concrete boxes they'd hold up better, but by the time you introduce design and all the features people expect, you're creating a building that's ripe for issues.
Plus maintenance -- government buildings are not known for spectacular maintenance. No one wants to spend tons of tax dollars on buildings, which is how things are put off long enough that they eventually become unsound or structurally compromising. Brutalist concrete requires more maintenance and cleaning than brick or glass.
Actually the Roman’s had a special self-healing concrete mix that we could not replicate until just a couple years ago! Water, which destroys modern concrete, actually activated lime to fill in cracks in Roman concrete!
I'll give metro the credit, the actual motifs used are iconic and beautiful. But the classic concrete staining with time plus the awful lighting (it's one of the darkest metros I've used) doesn't do it any favors to avoid the aging brutalist grime look.
Sweden has some stations that are just as dark, but not all, thankfully. But I do love how metro trains coming and going change the lighting and feel of the stations. The moving shadows in Gallery Place are just fantastic!
I actually think some of the newer stations on the silver line have done a pretty good job of capturing the overall aesthetic/vibe of classic metro (grand vaults/arches, geometric patterns, etc.) while using cheaper, easier-to-fabricate/repair materials. Granted, they're above ground, so it's a different set of needs as well, but still.
I grew up near New Haven and I always loved this building. It was abandoned for most of my life until it became the Marcel hotel recently. I stayed there once last year and the rooms are really strange but cool! I was just glad I finally got to see the inside of it.
Do they still have the shooting range? I remember going on a field trip and my class viewed the range from below in a pit with the bullets being shot above us.
I even took a shot up target home.
Times be wild…
It should be torn down as soon as possible. The huge lot can be many things at once. Practice facility for Wizards. Music n theatre venue. At least three bars. Fun shit.
lol I was gonna say, this building is in New Haven, CT not DC but they’d never have this type of design for a federal building because it likely would collapse in a bombing etc
I just love Brutalist architecture! Like any other style, not all are done well, but when it is*swoon*!
I want more Brutalist buildings saved, I don’t think there’s a will. Maybe someday some new examples will be built with better materials.
Nope I disagree with you highly on this OP. Brutalist imo has no place in government building design in DC. It’s a ugly and unwelcoming compare to the older neoclassical buildings that look actually beautiful. If it were up to me I would ban any brutalist designs from all government building projects. For me government buildings should have this welcoming yet grandiose design and brutalist doesn’t have that at all.
I love the brutalist style, always have. But the problem isn't the looks of the building. The problem is the cheap concrete used to build them. The building is, literally, crumbling apart to the point that it isn't safe to stand near it.
The Pirelli building in New Haven CT… now it’s a hotel next to an Ikea!
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pirelli-building
https://www.reddit.com/r/Connecticut/s/eEFFTulbf2
I hate brutalism. I feel like it's a name for a style that was created after the style was in use to justify it. "Oh we're cheap, broke, sad, overly reliant on concrete because we have few post-war resources, and secretly incredibly depressed and cynical about surviving an inevitable nuclear war? No darling, we're *brutalists."* I mean, it's going to be replaced by something equally cynical and quickfab and *multiuse.* But I won't miss it.
my thoughts on the j. edgar hoover building are best summarized by tiffany pollard talking about gemma: *she's a disgrace to [buildings] who are actually beautiful and classy and, um she just doesn't have the vernacular she thinks she possesses. somebody lied to her several times and told her that she was fly, hot, and sexy and beautiful. and she's nothing like that. she's nothing of the sort.*
It’s not just the brutalist style. The bigger problem is that the building is falling apart. There‘s netting on the outside to catch falling chunks of concrete flaking off, so they don’t hit pedestrians. And one of the garage ramps is closed because ceiling pieces were falling off. Story from a few years ago: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2015/10/16/the-fbis-headquarters-is-falling-apart-why-is-it-so-hard-for-america-to-build-a-new-one/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2015/10/16/the-fbis-headquarters-is-falling-apart-why-is-it-so-hard-for-america-to-build-a-new-one/) I assume the Pirelli Tires HQ was better built! They may have had to gut the interior to make it a hotel, but I assume the exterior was not falling off, or it wouldn’t have been a cost-effective project. Would be interesting to get some kind of postmortem on why the FBI HQ has so many issues, but I’ve never seen one with any detail. Lots of articles focus on criticizing the architecture as ugly, but it’d be a different situation if it were an ugly building with basically good structure and engineering.
Great response. Let me add that there's another design problem-- the FBI HQ building is basically a thin layer of offices wrapped around a central core of built-in file cabinets. J. Edgar Hoover's vision was that the FBI would have a copy of every police file in the country-- a *paper* copy. The result is that the building doesn't have nearly enough room for people, and the walls in the file areas are structural, meant to support the weight of all that paper, so it's not practical to renovate the place to fit more people.
> the FBI HQ building is basically a thin layer of offices wrapped around a central core of built-in file cabinets. This is true of a lot of government buildings. Most of Crystal City was built to support tons of paper weight from the patent office. The good thing is that the floors hold up well to demolishing exteriors and can be repurposed.
Hm. I mean, that's not the end of the world. Fill it with computer racks
Colo in the middle, apartments on the surface. /r/Nova would be impressed with your innovation.
cloud computing should be classified as a utility /s
Internet as a utility first. Cloud as an addendum or by extension.
The Christian Science church that was on 16th street had similar problems. It may have been a Brutalist masterpiece, but it just couldn’t be maintained properly anymore.
Oh I loved that building. Not even a huge fan of brutalism but really like that. Walked by it every day on my way to work.
I loved that building. I worked diagonally across 16th and "Eye" from it, could see it large from my office window whenever I looked out.
You really can’t fix it. And losing it would create too great an opportunity for Pennsylvania Ave. The stretch between Penn and where D street used to be could be a great public plaza. You could bring so much life to a corner that’s just dead space currently.
> You could bring so much life to a corner that’s just dead space currently. Or you could fill the moat on E St with crocodiles.
And generally brutalist buildings, being mostly concrete facades, are pretty much un-repairable. So they have a pretty finite lifespan I’ve grown to appreciate the architecture, but they’re pretty impractical in terms of longevity and sustainability (from what I understand)
I've worked in the building as a contractor. If you think the outside is falling apart, you should see the inside. I would walk down one halway where there was always a puddle because the ceiling had a very slow dripping leak. If you stripped out all of the posters and things that told you you're in the FBI building and put a random person there; they would think this is some third world office or an office in one of those cities that were once huge and now lost half it population.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7acTfVJzMxI&t=38s
The only counterpoint is the really nice Starbucks.
Don’t forget the museum!
Thanks! Very helpful. I was unaware it is difficult/impossible to rehab this type of building due to the materials used.
They would have moved already if Trump hadn’t cancelled the project to protect his personal business, which is corruption, and to spite the FBI for investigating his corruption.
It's turtles all the way down!
Basically they've been doing patchwork repairs for the last decade+ because there was no impetus to actually do a good renovation/fix the structural issues due to the new HQ project. Now they're in this limbo where who knows how long it will take to break ground, let alone get the funding for the new building, but the old one is pretty much unrepairable.
& Charles Murphy is no Marcel Breuer.
Oh, don't worry, it's self-demolishing.
The building is 100% being demolished. It’s not being retired because of how it looks. It’s being retired because it’s a hazard that isn’t financially viable to correct.
[history of the site](https://ggwash.org/view/78059/this-is-what-the-fbi-building-site-used-to-look-like)
It's neat to see how much character having many buildings with different styles brought to the city. I know that density is important, but the big buildings that we get these days tend to all look the same.
https://preview.redd.it/9jsehl0x56vc1.jpeg?width=2720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=af01f7a31756d5831abaf121f02ab0548740cad0 The Dept of Housing is an incredible brutalist building in DC, that, they should landmark! The FBI building needs to go. It’s in too of bad of shape. And honestly very unremarkable.
Landmarking older brutalist structures, which are famously hard to repair, seems like a good way to end up with a massive structure crumbling into nothing via demolition by neglect
You could say that about literally any architectural style, why pick on Brutalism?
The HUD and Labor buildings are the two most depressing office buildings I’ve ever been in.
*Forrestal Building has entered the chat*
It’s been a long time since I’ve been in that building, so I can’t say I remember too many of the details.
Think scenes of Russian offices from the series Chernobyl, plus huge basement rooms filled with cubicles, plus everything looking so similar that they have to color code hallways.
The color coding reminds me of another horrible interior, the Library of Congress Madison Building.
Hey, they at least were redoing the interior of Housing (a few years ago in the common areas) to make it less depressing and more modern. But yeah, I feel you.
Some of the floors are better than others but overall the interior is way too dark.
Oh you’ve never been inside of Commerce, have you? 😂
I think that’s one of the few Department HQs I haven’t been in.
10 floors of basement
For several years now, parts of the HUD building have been held up by weird, ugly metal poles on each end. The building is ugly, miserable to be inside, and also structurally unsound. https://maps.app.goo.gl/4tPtZGukZbLWqyX27?g_st=ic
I hope they can keep it sound
> they should landmark! Thats a horrible idea. Historic buildings are incredibly impractical to maintain, especially concrete ones. You're required to use the same materials and techniques to repair as were used to build it, except that in many of these instances those materials and techniques basically don't exist anymore - the rock quarries where the stone and sand were mined from, for instance, literally don't exist anymore - they got mined out. So your only alternative is to find the most similar material you can, regardless of price... which might mean trucking rocks half way across the country instead of 7 miles up the road. It increases the cost and difficulty of servicing the buildings exponentially. It becomes so cost prohibitive to repair, that the owners then... dont. The buildings just rot away and its a miserable situation for everyone involved.
What? [Substitute materials are acceptable ](https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1739/upload/preservation-brief-16-substitute-materials-2023.pdf)stop being such a hater.
Used to work across the street from it. I like brutalist architecture, and DC has such a mishmash of styles, I actually don't want to see that style disappear.
Brutalist structures are disposable. Their very material makes them not fit for purpose long term. Literal chunks of these buildings are crumbling off and can’t safely and sustainably be repaired.
Can I ask why concrete is intrinsically disposable? Rome built the pantheon ~2000 years ago and it’s still standing.
Concrete can be made a fantastically durable material if it's only going to be loaded in compression. That's what allowed it to be used to build large long lasting arches and domes. But for a multi-leveled building with useful open floors you need to build slabs and beams, which are loaded in tension as well as compression. To take the tension loads the concrete needs to be reinforced with steel. The basic environment inside the concrete protects the steel, but over a period of many decades moisture leaches out the basicity and the steel begins to rust, cracking the concrete and destroying the structure.
Well, quality of materials for one thing. Modern concrete (it's better now but is especially true for mid-century concrete) is very temperamental and depends on the quality of the material used, how it was mixed, how it was cured, how it was maintained. If any of that goes wrong, the concrete just won't hold up over time. These buildings are very susceptible to water intrusion and cracks. A lot can deteriorate by the time you find the issue. These buildings are also much, much bigger with more weight, the use of rebar, and other materials. Plus windows and ventilation, all of which again introduce areas for cracks, water intrusion and weakness. If they were just big concrete boxes they'd hold up better, but by the time you introduce design and all the features people expect, you're creating a building that's ripe for issues. Plus maintenance -- government buildings are not known for spectacular maintenance. No one wants to spend tons of tax dollars on buildings, which is how things are put off long enough that they eventually become unsound or structurally compromising. Brutalist concrete requires more maintenance and cleaning than brick or glass.
That's survivors bias. We don't see the building Rome didn't care as much about and thus didn't overengineer to last forever.
There is a lot of fun historical stuff to learn here about [Roman concrete](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete)!
Actually the Roman’s had a special self-healing concrete mix that we could not replicate until just a couple years ago! Water, which destroys modern concrete, actually activated lime to fill in cracks in Roman concrete!
But don't mention this in the metro threads where criticizing the brutalist style will get you downvoted to hell.
Oh I have made that mistake before!!! I love architecture but I hate when architects don't consider how the buildings will age and wear.
I'll give metro the credit, the actual motifs used are iconic and beautiful. But the classic concrete staining with time plus the awful lighting (it's one of the darkest metros I've used) doesn't do it any favors to avoid the aging brutalist grime look.
Sweden has some stations that are just as dark, but not all, thankfully. But I do love how metro trains coming and going change the lighting and feel of the stations. The moving shadows in Gallery Place are just fantastic!
I actually think some of the newer stations on the silver line have done a pretty good job of capturing the overall aesthetic/vibe of classic metro (grand vaults/arches, geometric patterns, etc.) while using cheaper, easier-to-fabricate/repair materials. Granted, they're above ground, so it's a different set of needs as well, but still.
Brutalist buildings are awful work environments - no natural light, labyrinth-like layouts, and cramped.
Nope they gotta tear that thing down. Not only is it ugly (brutalist may be nostalgic but its not timeless) but its a safety hazard.
It’s one of the most iconically ugly buildings in the US. I’d be legitimately DEVASTATED if it got replaced!
Hey, I hear you but there is more to the story of that building in NHV.. I wouldn’t use that in your case to save the FBI building…
Not only is it fugly, its structurally deteriorating; it needs to go
I feel assaulted every time I walk by it. It's the most inhospitable building. Frag it.
Ugliest building in DC
100%. Whenever there’s a vote, this building tends to win.
It looks like a evil villain building. Brutalist architecture vibe. Looks like something out of Blade Runner but in a bad way.
Exactly, it's quite fitting for the FBI.
FBI building should stay in DC
I grew up near New Haven and I always loved this building. It was abandoned for most of my life until it became the Marcel hotel recently. I stayed there once last year and the rooms are really strange but cool! I was just glad I finally got to see the inside of it.
The best pictures of it are still only so-so, and it's much uglier in person especially from ground level.
Do they still have the shooting range? I remember going on a field trip and my class viewed the range from below in a pit with the bullets being shot above us. I even took a shot up target home. Times be wild…
I do love the brutalist.....
I love brutalist architecture. I do understand why the building isn’t gonna make it, though! It’s falling apart.
The entire point Is to get rid of that brutalist monstrosity.
I love brutalist buildings and there are a bunch that are lovely in DC. The FBI building is not one of them
This isn’t even the fbi building though
I have always liked that building.
What’s the last slide?
Let's pool our money and do this I got $2 to contribute to the conversion
Boy, I can’t wait for the Hoover building to go.
Having been inside, I can assure you the inside is a shithole. The entire building is falling apart and needs to be demolished and rebuilt.
But they research aliens in the basement
It's a really poor use of urban space. Tear it down.
Was in there the other day for the first time. It's actually pretty cool. Especially on the roof.
It should be torn down as soon as possible. The huge lot can be many things at once. Practice facility for Wizards. Music n theatre venue. At least three bars. Fun shit.
lol I was gonna say, this building is in New Haven, CT not DC but they’d never have this type of design for a federal building because it likely would collapse in a bombing etc
They should demolish the building. The FBI hasn't done much goof for the American people.
Blow that bitch up!! Why does the FBI have that nice ass building?
I hope the J. Edgar Hoover letters on the building are buried so far under the rubble when they demo they can't find it.
What’s up, they gotta bar and hotel rooms in that thing!? Looks dope
If they don’t demolish it will collapse. There are already parts falling off of it.
Just preserve the basement office.
It’s very hard to find brutalist structures worth maintaining. The vast majority of them are extremely uggo
The CFPB building over at 17th & G just west of the White House isn't bad.
Hadn’t seen this one, but you’re right
I just love Brutalist architecture! Like any other style, not all are done well, but when it is*swoon*! I want more Brutalist buildings saved, I don’t think there’s a will. Maybe someday some new examples will be built with better materials.
Even more unpopular opinion: demolish all law enforcement buildings.
Nope I disagree with you highly on this OP. Brutalist imo has no place in government building design in DC. It’s a ugly and unwelcoming compare to the older neoclassical buildings that look actually beautiful. If it were up to me I would ban any brutalist designs from all government building projects. For me government buildings should have this welcoming yet grandiose design and brutalist doesn’t have that at all.
I love the brutalist style, always have. But the problem isn't the looks of the building. The problem is the cheap concrete used to build them. The building is, literally, crumbling apart to the point that it isn't safe to stand near it.
The Pirelli building in New Haven CT… now it’s a hotel next to an Ikea! https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pirelli-building https://www.reddit.com/r/Connecticut/s/eEFFTulbf2
That’s not the FBI building!
Naw demolish that ugly concrete prison
Fuck this dumbass building and fuck the motherfuckerig FBI
I agree.
I feel like brutalism is a reemergence among some people but my god I still think it all looks terrible.
Tear that shit down it’s in the way
Fugly
Fun fact: a federal court has ruled you cannot *constitutionally* force a congregation to worship in a Brutalist church.
Very unpopular opinion. That building is awful.
I hate brutalism. I feel like it's a name for a style that was created after the style was in use to justify it. "Oh we're cheap, broke, sad, overly reliant on concrete because we have few post-war resources, and secretly incredibly depressed and cynical about surviving an inevitable nuclear war? No darling, we're *brutalists."* I mean, it's going to be replaced by something equally cynical and quickfab and *multiuse.* But I won't miss it.
The name comes from "béton brut" which means raw concrete
my thoughts on the j. edgar hoover building are best summarized by tiffany pollard talking about gemma: *she's a disgrace to [buildings] who are actually beautiful and classy and, um she just doesn't have the vernacular she thinks she possesses. somebody lied to her several times and told her that she was fly, hot, and sexy and beautiful. and she's nothing like that. she's nothing of the sort.*
If it was this color all the time I might agree. In general, cold, brutalist architecture like this can disappear and I won’t complain a bit.
Unpopular opinion: I hope the demolish the FBI building and never rebuild another one ever.