Dirksen Senate Office Building
The Dirksen Senate Office Building is one of three US Senate office buildings . Constructed from 1956 to 1958, the building is located north of the Capitol in Washington, DC
The plans for the Dirksen Building go back to 1941. With the United States' increasing role after World War I, the Senate hired more staff to keep the US Capitol and the older Russell Senate Office Building tight. The Second World War, in which the United States entered a little later, prevented the construction of a new building for the time being and exacerbated the problems.
In 1946, Congress passed the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 , which, among other things, further improved the staffing of the Senate. As before the Russel Building was built, the Senate started renting rooms in adjacent office buildings. The problem only got worse when Hawaii and Alaska joined as states and four new Senators and all necessary staff moved into the Capitol. In 1948 the Senate finally bought a piece of land on which the new building was to be built.
The Chamber of Parliament agreed on plans by the architects Otto R. Eggers and Daniel Paul Higgins from New York. They envisaged a seven-story building with a white marble facade that would be across from the Russell Building and northwest of the Capitol. Although designed more cautiously than the Capitol and the Russell Building, it should form a unit with them stylistically. Bronze ornaments between the second and third floors showed scenes from American working life: shipping, agriculture, industry, mining and logging.
Although the Senate approved the building in 1949, construction continued until 1956. The increased costs in the meantime made it necessary to make some cuts in the furnishings. Members of the Senate Office Building Committee laid the foundation stone on July 13, 1956, and the building was completed on October 15, 1958.
The building was already being built after television began to establish itself as the new mass medium and the Dirksen Building should be set up for it. This means, among other things, new committee rooms that were more telegenic than those in the Capitol and the Russell Building.
The building has had its current name since 1972; it is named after the former minority leader Everett Dirksen from Illinois. Since the Senate Hart built the Senate Office Building as the third building, this has been connected to the Dirksen Building by a covered corridor. Extensive renovations took place between 1999 and 2000. The building's cafeteria serves as a restaurant for visitors to the Capitol outside of lunchtime. She will give up that role when the United States Capitol Visitor Center opens in 2007 .
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Coordinates: 38 ° 53 '34.7 " N , 77 ° 0' 18.9" W.