Ford House Office Building
- For the building in Detroit, Michigan, see Ford Building.
The Ford House Office Building is one of the four office buildings containing U.S. House of Representatives staff on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. It is the only House Office Building that is not connected underground to either one of the other office buildings or to the Capitol itself and the only House Office Building that does not contain Member offices. The Ford Building primarily houses Committee staff and other offices, including the Architect of the Capitol and the Congressional Budget Office.
History
Construction of the building began in 1939 as part of the Works Progress Administration program. Over the years, it was used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to house its Latent Print Unit. Thousands of fingerprint records were housed in the building, requiring manual search techniques to find a match. The unit was one of the first to move to the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover Building upon its completion in 1974. Following the FBI's departure, the building was purchased by the Architect of the Capitol and was renamed House Annex-2. In the late 1980s, the Democratic and Republican parties were each permitted to rename a House Annex building and the Republican Party, then in the minority, chose to rename House Annex-2 the Ford Building after former President of the United States and House Minority Leader Gerald Ford. House Annex-1 was renamed the O’Neill House Office Building after former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill.
External links
- The Congressional Office Buildings - Overview
- Architect of the Capitol
- A Brief History of the United States Capitol Complex
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