The Commerce Department Building

The Commerce Department Building, which sprawls over eight acres, is in constant motion. Its building materials expand and contract with changes in temperature. Actually, the building is three complete rectangular buildings in one, with the three units joined with accordion-type expansion joints. It was constructed in this manner because the building sits over Washington's Tiber Creek. There was no bed rock into which foundation piles could be driven. Seepage water from this Potomac River tributary at the time excavating was finished created an eight-acre lake, necessitating unusual construction methods to make the building stable and to eliminate seepage in the sub-basement and basement. Completed in 1932, the building's expansion and contraction features are such that on the hottest day in summer the structure may be three inches longer than on the coldest day in winter, thereby protecting the building from suffering any structural damage.

Among the outstanding features of the building is the newly renovated Commerce Department auditorium, with seating for 509 persons. The auditorium has the most modern and up-to-date audio and visual equipment, and is made available to other Federal and District of Columbia

agencies, employee organizations, accredited representatives of foreign governments which make reciprocal privleges available to U.S. Government Pepresentatives in their countries, officially recognized organizations whose work is related to the Department, and charitable and veterans organizations.

Publications issued by various agencies of the U.S. Government are sold in a Government Printing Office sales office in Room 1605. The Department of Commerce library on the seventh floor has a collection that includes more than 340,000 volumes of economic, statistical and technical information.

A modern aquarium, maintained by the Department of the Interior's Fish and Wildlife Service is located in the basement. It occupies a space 128 feet wide by 48 feet in which there are 48 display tanks featuring fish, frogs, turtles, and other aquatic life common to the waters of North and South America.

Exhibits showing the work that various agencies within the Department do, such as the Maritime Administration or Bureau of International Commerce, are also featured on a continuing basis in the building's lobby. One lobby exhibit, the Census Clock, shows the population of the United States at any moment.