The Pentagon Has Twice as Many Bathrooms as Necessary

When construction began on the Pentagon on September 11, 1941, Virginia was still under the grip of Jim Crow laws, which mandated racial segregation in public facilities. Consequently, the original designs for the massive office building included separate sets of bathrooms for white and Black employees, resulting in a total of 284 restrooms, double the number required for its workforce. This adherence to discriminatory state law during the construction of a major federal building highlights the deeply entrenched nature of segregation in the United States during that era. The construction itself was a monumental and rapid undertaking, with around 15,000 workers on site around the clock to address the urgent need for office space during World War II.

However, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had previously signed Executive Order 8802 in June 1941, which prohibited discrimination against government workers based on race, creed, color, or national origin. When Roosevelt visited the Pentagon during its construction and inquired about the excessive number of washrooms, he was informed they were to comply with Virginia's segregation laws. In response, he ordered that the signs designating "white" and "colored" were never to be installed.

As a result of Roosevelt's directive, the Pentagon became the only building in Virginia where segregation was not enforced upon its opening. While the extra sets of bathrooms remained, they were never used for their intended segregated purpose. This unique situation made the Pentagon an early, albeit small, step toward the desegregation of federal facilities, years before the broader civil rights movement would dismantle segregation laws across the country. The superfluous bathrooms stand as a physical reminder of a legal and social battle that played out within the very walls of the nation's defense headquarters.