The office was nothing to brag about—just a few rooms tucked away in a Washington eyesore known as the Munitions Building, erected in 1918 as a headquarters for the War Department. The Munitions Building and the U.S. Navy headquarters were side by side, as it happened, both constructed as “temporary” wartime structures during World War I and both still in service even now that the Great War was long over, together dominating the part of the capital city between Foggy Bottom and the National Mall. The twin buildings had concrete facades and a series of thin wings that stretched backward,
...more
