THE TREASURY ANNEX:
20TH CENTURY SPATIAL FLEXIBILITY

Unlike the Treasury Building, the Annex is not symmetrical and is square in plan. In addition, the evolution of the construction materials and technologies used in the Treasury extensions meant that its structure, steel beams and girders, could span ever-greater distances. The lack of design constraints and the improved construction technologies produced large, open spaces whose possibilities were immense. Almost any permutation of the spaces in the Annex was possible -- offices and workrooms could be, and were, shifted and changed as needed. With the Annex, the Treasury finally possessed the spatial flexibility that it had needed for so long.

This 1917 drawing by Cass Gilbert is a study of the exterior of the Treasury Annex in its context, Lafayette Square.

This present-day photograph of the Treasury Annex shows that it appears much as Cass Gilbert intended in 1917.

This 1919 plan of the fifth floor of the Treasury Annex illustrates the simple arrangement of space in the building.

The Woolworth Building in New York, designed and constructed by Cass Gilbert between 1910 and 1913. This was one of the early skyscrapers in New York and is an early study in the arrangement of space around a core of elevators and other services, leaving the rest uninterrupted and usable.

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