The Andrew Mellon Auditorium stands, without question, among the very finest classical buildings in America. Exquisite in its external form and details, the building is especially sophisticated in the inter-relationship of its parts and in its urban design qualities. Similarly, the gilded auditorium and lobbies are among the nation's most magnificent interiors. The building is a testament to the remarkable talent of its architect and deserving of an exalted position as a masterpiece of American architecture.

Designed by San Francisco architect Arthur Brown, Jr. between 1926 and 1931, the Mellon Auditorium is the central focus of a tripartite building group occupying the two block area between 12th and 14th Streets on Constitution Avenue, in the Northwest quadrant of Washington DC. The building was erected between 1932 and 1934.

Colonnades and narrow wings connect the temple-form Auditorium building to symmetrically flanking office buildings originally occupied by the Labor Department on the west and the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) Building on the east. The planned modernization has relocated the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the complex. The building group occupies roughly six acres of ground. Its overall dimensions are 250 feet by 1000 feet. This three-part group forms the southern wing of what was intended as an enormous U-shaped group that includes Delano and Aldrich's New Post Office Building (1931-1934), now the Ariel Rios Building. The north arm of the larger building group was never executed.

The Customs-Auditorium-ICC building group is part of a larger nine building office complex, the Federal Triangle. The Triangle, erected between 1927 and 1938 at a cost of approximately $1 million, rests on a 70-acre site formerly comprised of 24 city blocks. The nucleus of Washington's monumental corridor, The Federal Triangle buildings are designed in a range of classically derived styles, united visually by common materials, massing and cornice lines.

History & Significance

At the time of its construction, the Mellon Auditorium was the largest government-owned assembly space in the city. One of the most magnificent settings for government ceremony, the building has been the site of national and international events of singular importance.

The room was inaugurated on February 25, 1935. On October 29, 1940, 13,000 people crowded the Auditorium to witness President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiate the Selective Service System lottery. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed here on April 4, 1949 with President Truman, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and ministers of 11 other nations in attendance. A decade later, the room was the setting for the NATO anniversary conference. When the building was to host a civil rights assembly in March 1956, 30 southern Congressmen protested its use for "a mass lobby meeting, which is avowedly political in nature." The General Services Administration, with the consent of the President, affirmed that the space was available for discussion of "nonpartisan social problems." Most recently, NATO held its fiftieth anniversary summit here.

The Andrew Melon Auditorium was listed in the National Registry of Historic places as part of the Pennsylvania Avenue Historic District on October 15, 1966.

As Secretary of Treasury, Andrew Mellon was instrumental in arousing and demonstrating support for the Federal Triangle building project. The Public Buildings Act of 1926 gave him direct responsibility for the huge public building program, including the acquisition of land by purchase or condemnation, the preparation of designs, awarding of contracts, and the supervision of construction.

Art historian George Gurney, in Sculpture and the Federal Triangle (Smithsonian Press, 1985), states, "In less capable hands, development of the large Federal Triangle project might have been fragmented." Gurney credits Mellon for the ability to think in large terms--never losing sight of the grand, esthetically unified design--while synthesized suggestions and advance from many sources.

Secretary Mellon was determined that the Federal Triangle would be the product of a unified plan. To that end, he created the Board of Architectural Consultants to establish an overall scheme and to determine the aesthetics of the project in advance of any of its individual components. In 1933, Andrew Mellon stepped down as Secretary of Treasury to become ambassador to Great Britain. In Gurney's words, "the Board has lost its most influential supporter of its goals." The function of the Board in carrying out the grand design of the Federal Triangle dissipated as the new Roosevelt administration in 1933 began appointing architects to the board whose backgrounds were not closely associated with the tradition of planning and architectural design in Washington.

Although the landscaped "Great Plaza" was never realized, the dignified architecture of the Federal Triangle, and the Mellon Auditorium in particular, remains intact.

In 1995, through initiatives by Senator Patrick Moynihan and Paul Mellon, Jr., the Auditorium was renamed "Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium." It had previously been known as the Departmental Auditorium.