“Washington, Pension Office”

General Montgomery C. Meigs “was ready to retire in 1881 when instead he was appointed by Congress to build a large new office building to house the burgeoning U.S. Pension Bureau that was in charge of distributing pensions to Civil War veterans. Meigs chose a block-long site at the northern end of Judiciary Square where the infamous “Blue Jug”—the city’s old decrepit jail—had stood in earlier days. On this site Meigs conceived an immense modern office building that would be relatively inexpensive to construct but nevertheless elegant in decoration and far more practical than most contemporary buildings of its type. The result was a great red-brick palace, or perhaps an “old red barn,” depending on your point of view. With an eclectic mix of styles and materials, the resulting structure was as grand and impressive as it was ungainly in proportions.”
Streets of Washington: Stories and Images of Historic Washington, DC