Archives II: A New Building for the National Archives

With the onset of the design of Archives II, NARA needs to continue planning the division of its operations between the two facilities. NARA would appreciate comments and suggestions concerning this report from our constituents, particularly concerning the locations of its textual records. Please send all inquiries and suggestions to the Archives II Project (NAA), National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC 20408,or call Adrienne C. Thomas; 202/523-3076.

The National Archives Building, located on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, was completed in 1935. This building reached its records storage capacity of ap­proximately 800,000 cubic feet in the late 1960s. To alleviate space storage, over 500,000 cubic feet of archival records received since 1970 and various administra­tive support activities have been diverted to several federally owned and leased buildings in the Washington, DC area.

Some of the nation’s historically valuable records are currently stored in environmen­tal conditions not designed to prolong the life of these important documents. In the future, more records will have to be stored in ar­chivally unsuitable space unless a new ar­chival facility is constructed that meets the environmental requirements for archival records recommended by the National Bureau of Standards. Further dispersal of records to additional sites will increase operational inefficiencies, including the duplication of various support activities (e.g. research rooms and laboratories), and will further impede researchers wishing to use the records.

Additionally, a study of the National Ar­chives Building completed in 1985 by Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson, and Abbott, Inc., recommended renovations to the Na­tional Archives Building to correct deficien­cies in environmental and records storage conditions and to expand currently inade­quate public use areas. These essential renovations will require that records be tem­porarily stored offsite during work to the Na­tional Archives Building.

Planning for Archives II—Within this con­text, Summer Consultants, Inc. (engineers) and Cooper-Lecky Architects, P.C., experts infacility planning, began work in July 1987 on a major study for a new archival building. Completed in January 1988, the Design Program for a National Archives Facility in Maryland identifies  NARA’s program requirements, documents functional relation­ships, and recommends the type and con­figuration of a building that meets NARA’s special needs. The planners also prepared design and construction cost estimates and evaluated alternative building sites in Col­lege Park and Suitland, Maryland.

HOK/Ellerbe Becket will begin the design work in September 1988, to be completed in early 1990. Construction of Archives II is scheduled to begin in early 1990 and be com­pleted in the late fall of 1998. NARA will begin to move into Archives II in 1994.

The design program describes an archival facility of 1.7 million square feet for records storage and program support areas. A facility of this size will meet NARA’s require­ments to the year 2004. The building, however, will be specially designed to allow the addition of new wings to meet future storage needs. These wings, providing addi­tional records storage and processing space totaling 375,000 square feet, should fulfill NARA’s space needs to 2025.

Archives II will provide state-of-the-art storage, reference, and laboratory facilities. Current standards established by the Na­tional Bureau of Standards and the National Academy of Sciences will serve as the basis for the building’s environmental controls. Both national and international guidance relating to reference services, general build­ing security, and classified records security systems will be reviewed, aod the best of these guidelines incorporated into the build­ing design.

In addition to the archival functions, Ar­chives II will provide space for offices and general facilities, including a theater, con­ference rooms, and a cafeteria. The new facility is expected initially to house ap­proximately 600 professional and technical employees and 150–200 contract workers for security, maintenance, and food services. The building will accommodate the projected 50,000 researchers expected each year.

After much searching for suitable land in the District of Columbia aod surrounding suburbs. NARA selected a University of Marylaod site for the new facility. The proposed site is approximately thirty-three acres on the northwest end of the University of Maryland campus in College Park. A major benefit of this site is that the federal government will receive the use of this land without charge.

In NARA’s search for a suitable site, easy access for researchers was a top priority. Current plans for Washington’s subway con­struction include a College Park station on the Metro Green Line (scheduled for comple­tion in late 1993). In addition there will be parking available at the facility for re­searchers. While NARA realizes that there will be some inconvenience for researchers who will need to use records in both the downtown building and a suburb building, centralizing the records in one facility is not an option. NARA currently ensures that re­searchers have easy access to the three sites in the Washington, DC area, where archival records are stored, by running a free shuttle service and plans to provide this same shuttle service to and from the College Park subway station.

­Archives II will not replace the current Na­tional Archives Building in downtown Washington, DC. Both buildings will operate as archival facilities but will emphasize different programs. NARA will con­­tinue to use the downtown facility as a public use and records storage facility. Since Ar­chives II will be located outside the District of Columbia, the focus of most public activities will remain in the renovated National Ar­chives Building. Expanded public-use areas will include a new Genealogical Research Center and special areas for lectures, con­ferences, tours, exhibits, and film festivals. Archives II will host periodic historical and archival conferences, symposia, and educa­tional lectures. The new archival facility will complement the renovated National Ar­chives Building in preserving and providing public access to the historical memory of this nation.

Archival records will be located both in the downtown National Archives Building and Archives II. After renovation, the National Archives Building will house approximately 800,000 cubic feet of textual records, the same as is housed there today. Archives II will house all special media records, includ­ing motion pictures, photographs, maps, drawings, and machine readable records, in addition to over one million cubic feet of tex­tual records.

In order to determine the space require­ments for Archives II, the National Archives made some planning assumptions regarding the division of its textual records between the two facilities.

First, the downtown building has a finite amount of records storage space and its small loading dock is not adequate for bringing in large amounts of new records. Therefore NARA wants to minimize the amount of ac­ cessions that will come into the National Ar­chives Building. Archives II will have a large, modern loading dock and the space to accommodate growing records groups.

Second, NARA wants to ensure that records series will not be split between the two facilities.

Third, those records that are housed in the National Archives Building should comple­ment each other as much as possible.

Fourth, the downtown facility will remain NARA’s main public activity center and con­sequently should contain records that com­plement those activities.

Based on the above planning assumptions, NARA has tentatively decided to consolidate genealogically-related records, Congres­sional and Supreme Court records, and pre-1947 military records in the downtown build­ing. This will ensure that the core records needed for genealogical research are together and convenient to researchers using the new Genealogical Research Center. Con­gressional and Supreme Court records will continue to grow although their projected growth can be managed for many years within the confines of the National Archives Building. While 1947 is used as the general cut-off date for the military records to be lo­cated in the downtown facility, in reality not all military records can be split at that precise date. NARA will be dividing the military records series where appropriate breaks appear after World War II. All other textual records housed by NARA will be located at Archives II.

Conclusion—With the construction of Archives II, the National Archives will be able to vacate ten leased facilities in the Washington, DC area and consolidate its operations in the National Archives Building and Archives II. Most importantly, Archives II will enable NARA to do a better job of preserving the nation’s records and serve the citizens who use these records.