The U.S. Department of Agriculture Cotton Annex is an office building located at 300 12th Street SW in Washington, D.C.United States Department of Agriculture Cotton Annex, 300 12th Street SW, Square 326, Lot 805
Historic Preservation Review Board (Historic Landmark Case No. 15-16). The size of the building has been variously given at 89,000 square feetDaniel J. Sernovitz

''Washington Business Journal'' (March 22, 2012). and 118,000 square feet.Jonathan O'Connell

''Washington Post'' (April 7, 2014).

History and architecture

The Cotton Annex was built from 1936 and 1937 for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).Sitting on our Assets: The Cotton Annex
Robert A. Peck, Commissioner, Public Buildings Service, U.S. General Services Administration, testimony for the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management of the United States House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure (March 22, 2012). The building was originally for offices and laboratories of the USDA's

Bureau of Agricultural Economics The Economic Research Service (ERS) is a component of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and a principal agency of the Federal Statistical System of the United States. It provides information and research on agriculture and economi ...

(BAE), which was previously housed in headquarters that were being demolished as part of the expansion of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The site selected for the Cotton Annex was in accordance with the 1901 McMillan Plan. Funds for the construction were appropriated by Congress in the Public Buildings Act of 1926. The Cotton Annex was designed by the

Supervising Architect of the Treasury The Office of the Supervising Architect was an agency of the United States Treasury Department that designed federal government buildings from 1852 to 1939. The office handled some of the most important architectural commissions of the nineteenth ...

, Louis A. Simon. It is a six-story brick building in the

Stripped Classical Stripped Classicism (or "Starved Classicism" or "Grecian Moderne") Jstor is primarily a 20th-century classicist architectural style stripped of most or all ornamentation, frequently employed by governments while designing official buildings. I ...

architectural style. The Cotton Annex "has distinctive walls of variegated buff-colored brick laid in an all-stretcher bond, and is covered with a flat roof with limestone coping and a tall parapet roof on the west and north elevations." The Cotton Annex was the headquarters of the USDA Cotton Division from the building's completion until 1964, when the Cotton Division's Standards section moved to Memphis, Tennessee. Other USDA divisions moved into the empty laboratory space, and other offices of the Cotton Division remained in the Cotton Annex until 1982. In 1982, the General Services Administration (GSA) acquired ownership of the building. The USDA vacated the building in 2007, giving maintenance and repair responsibilities to the GSA. In October 2007, the GSA and the Federal Protective Service (FPS) entered an agreement for the FPS to use land on the Cotton Annex complex as a screening facility for inspection of trucks making deliveries to the

Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, named after former United States President Ronald Reagan, is located in downtown Washington, D.C., and was the first federal building in Washington designed for both governmental and priva ...

. The building itself, however, remains vacant. In May 2007, the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management of the United States House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure held a "field hearing" at the Cotton Annex. Chairman John Mica of Florida, a Republican, pressured the GSA to sell the building. GSA Public Buildings Service Commissioner Bob Peck testified that although the complex's operation costs are $279,000, the FPS covers those costs as part of the rental agreement for the property. In April 2014, GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini proposed making a deal with developers to trade the Cotton Annex and the GSA's own regional headquarters in exchange for work on the GSA's main headquarters and the long-delayed Department of Homeland Security consolidation project, a project to build a new consolidated DHS headquarters at the former

St. Elizabeths Hospital St. Elizabeths Hospital is a psychiatric hospital in Southeast, Washington, D.C. operated by the District of Columbia Department of Behavioral Health. It opened in 1855 under the name Government Hospital for the Insane, the first federally oper ...

site in Southwest DC. February 9, 2017, Jemal Cotton Annex LLC bought the Cotton Annex with a bid of $30.3 million. December 14, 2018, an additional parcel north of the Cotton Annex property was sold to Jemal Cotton Annex LLC via sealed bid. JEMAL COTTON ANNEX LLC DR. Michael D Murdock, A J Congdon owners.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places Government buildings completed in 1937 Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Washington, D.C. Stripped Classical architecture in the United States United States Department of Agriculture facilities Cotton industry in the United States

History and architecture

See also

References