The Pentagon is not an FMMC facility, but is a near neighbor of Fort Myer, and FMMC supports many of the Soldiers who work there.

The Pentagon was conceived as a temporary solution to the War Department’s critical shortage of space during the summer of 1941. At the time, 24,000 War Department personnel were scattered among 17 different buildings in Washington, D.C., working to mobilize U.S. armed forces as war raged in Europe and Asia.

Brig. Gen. Brehon B. Sommervell, chief of the construction division of the Office of the Quartermaster General, envisioned a single structure in which all components could be housed.

The Pentagon groundbreaking took place Sept. 11, 1941. Three shifts worked 24 hours a day, every day, building the Pentagon wedge by wedge. Some 1,000 architects worked in a hangar at Hoover Airport producing blueprints to stay ahead of the 14,000 construction workers.

The building displaced an airport, a racetrack, factories and a low-income neighborhood known as Hell’s Bottom. The idea for five sides came from the original location at Arlington Farms, which wasbordered by five roadways. Concern that the massive structure would interfere with the view between Arlington National Cemetery and the city of Washington caused President Franklin Roosevelt to direct it be moved three-quarters of a mile down river.

An oddity when it was constructed, the building has a design that requires only seven minutes or less walking from any point in the building to another — provided you know your way. The efficiency of the design was carried through in its construction.

Today, more than 25,000 service members and civilian employees, from the Secretary of Defense to mail clerks, and from the four-star chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to junior enlisted servicemembers, work at the Pentagon, occupied 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

There are nearly 6.5 million square feet of space in the Pentagon and 17.5 miles of corridors. The building features enormous cafeterias, snack bars and executive dining rooms; a post office; ashopping concourse; Metro bus and rail stop;dispensary and dental clinics; and every otherfacility and service one might expect in a city of its size and population.

Sixty years to the day after the initial Pentagon groundbreaking, America suffered a devastatingterrorist attack. Memories of Sept. 11, 2001, when hijacked commercial airplanes crashed into New York City’s Twin Towers, the Pentagon and ground at Shanksville, Pa., are fresh, but both the nation’s collective spirit and the Pentagon structure are stronger today than ever before.

Original estimates were that demolition of the damaged area of the Pentagon would take up to eight months, but Pentagon renovation workers took down the damaged portion of the building in one month and one day.

Reconstruction began Nov. 19, 2001. Six months after the attack, due to the efforts of workers who worked at first in three shifts, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, new five-story walls had risen from the ashes at the site dubbed the Phoenix Project. About 600 workers a day rebuilt the Pentagon, andas promised, with the most visible constructioncomplete and employees at work in the building on the E Ring where the aircraft hit, a dedicationceremony was held Sept. 11, 2002.