Pentagon (Civ5)/Civilopedia

The Pentagon is a large, five-sided building in Arlington, Virginia, USA, just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. It is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense and all three military branches: Army, Navy, and Air Force. The Pentagon was designed to consolidate the various parts of the War Department, until then scattered in seventeen separate buildings across Washington. Construction began in 1941, and was completed in 1943, an astonishingly short period for such a huge building, reflecting the frantic pace of American military expansion at the start of World War II. The Pentagon occupies some 30 acres and contains office space for 25,000 people, making it one of the largest office buildings ever constructed (it holds more workers than the Empire State Building, for example).
The Pentagon was struck by a passenger jet airplane piloted by terrorists on September 11, 2001. Fortunately, the area of the Pentagon that was hit was undergoing renovations at the time of the attack. The renovations were to improve the structural strength of the building, and many of the office workers occupying that portion of the building had temporarily relocated to other quarters. One hundred and twenty-five Pentagon workers were killed in the attack, along with all sixty-four passengers aboard the plane. The building has since been fully rebuilt and today remains the heart and brains of the US military.