The Pentagon
Since the Pentagon was attacked on September 11, 2001, public touring 202 has been greatly curtailed, but tours are available for certain groups, and you may be able to schedule a tour or join an existing tour by calling at least two weeks ahead. The side of the building that was hit by the airplane has been completely restored, and the Pentagon has been operating at full capacity.
The World's Largest Office BuildingThe five-sided headquarters of the U.S. military is the world's largest office building and houses more than 24,000 employees. It is huge in every sense of the word, from the 583 acres of land it occupies on to the 17.5 miles of interior corridors, about a mile of which you will have to walk through on the hour-and-a-half tour, so wear very comfortable shoes. Here are some other facts about the Pentagon:
It is twice the size of the Mercantile Mart in Chicago and has three times the office space as the Empire State Building in New York.
The 24,000 people who work in the Pentagon park approximately 8,770 cars in sixteen parking lots. There are 4,200 clocks, 691 water fountains, and 284 bathrooms. About 200,000 telephone calls are made daily through 100,000 miles of telephone cables.
The building was designed in such a way that even though there are 17.5 miles of corridors, it takes only seven minutes to walk between any two points in the building!
You have to pass through airport-quality security before you begin the tour, which starts at the Concourse area of the Metro station. There is a short film about the development of the Pentagon, which was built just after World War II in sixteen months on former swampland. The new structure consolidated seventeen buildings of the War Department. Tours were offered to the public in 1976 and were expected to be discontinued after the Fourth of July, but they turned out to be very popular, so the Pentagon has continued the service.
Part of the tour is a visit to the Air Force Art Collection, which includes some of Walt Disney's early cartoons, which he did while he was an ambulance driver in World War I, as well as more traditional art depicting historic events in air force history. You then pass the executive offices of the U.S. Air Force and the POW Alcove, where paintings of prisoner-of-war camps are displayed. Next you will pass the Marine Corps Corridor and then the Navy Corridor, where models of ships and submarines are on display in glass cases. Then you'll tour the Army Corridor, which displays the army command and divisional flags and 172 army campaign streamers from just after the Revolutionary War to the present.
Next up is the Time-Life Corridor, where civilian artists' paintings of war commissioned by the Time-Life Company during World War I hang. The MacArthur Corridor honors General MacArthur's fifty-two-year military career. The hall of heroes commemorates the 3,409 Medal of Honor recipients. The Military Women's Corridor tells the story of women in the military. The Navajo Code Talkers Corridor honors the 400 Navajo marines who created an indecipherable-to-enemies communication code based on the Navajo language to use during World War II. The two newest additions to the Pentagon tour are the African-Americans Corridor and the Hispanic Heroes Corridor. The Flag Corridor displays state and territorial flags throughout the nation's history.
The Pentagon cafeterias are not open to the public, but there is a mall inside the Pentagon with two banks, an Amtrak station, and a post office.
Location and HoursThe Pentagon is located off I-309; you can get there on the Metro Pentagon station (Blue or Yellow Line); if you choose to drive, be aware that limited parking is available. The Tour Office will accept only requests from educational and religious institutions, government agencies, or military organizations. Tours are conducted Monday through Friday, 9
