Dirksen Senate Office Building
The Dirksen Senate Office Building is one of three office buildings in the U.S. Senate. Built from 1956 to 1958 building is located north of the Capitol in Washington, DC
The plans for the Dirksen Building dates back to the year 1941. Given the increasing role of the United States after the First World War, the Senate introduced a more staff who cared for restricted space in the Capitol and the older Russell Senate Office Building. The Second World War, in which the United States entered a little later, but for now prevented the construction of a new building and increased the problems.
1946 Congress passed the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, which further improved, among other amenities, employees of the Senate. The Senate went on to rent as before the construction of the Russell Buildings, rooms in adjacent office buildings. The problem intensified further than Hawaii and Alaska joined as states and four new senators, including all necessary employees moved into the Capitol. In 1948, the Senate finally bought a plot of land on which the new building was to be erected.
The chamber of parliament agreed on plans by the architects Otto R. Eggers and Daniel Paul Higgins from New York. They provided a seven- building with a facade of white marble, which should be located from the Russel Building and northwest of the Capitol opposite. Although reluctant designed as Capitol and Russell Building, it should stylistically but form a unity with them. Bronze Ziercken between the second and third floor showed scenes from the American working life: navigation, agriculture, industry, mining and logging.
Although the Senate agreed to the building in 1949, took the start of construction until 1956. Increased costs in the meantime, made some cuts in the equipment necessary. Members of the Senate Office Building Construction Committee laid the foundation stone on 13 July 1956, the building was completed on 15 October 1958.
The building was built after the television began to establish itself as a new mass medium and the Dirksen Building should be set out. This means, among other things, new committee rooms that were set up as the telegenic in the Capitol and the Russell Building.
Since 1972, the building bears his name today, it is named after the former Minority Leader Everett Dirksen from Illinois. Since then, the Senate Hart Senate Office Building built as a third building, this is connected to the Dirksen Building by a covered walkway. A major renovation took place between 1999 and 2000. Cafeteria of the building is used outside the lunch time as a restaurant for visitors to the Capitol. This role is to deliver it when in 2007 the United States Capitol Visitor Center opens.