Pan American Union Building
building in Washington, D.C., USA
The Pan American Union Building is the headquarters for the Organization of American States. It is located at 17th Street Northwest, between C Street and Constitution Avenue, in Northwest, Washington, D.C.
History
The cornerstone was laid on May 11, 1908, by Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, and Andrew Carnegie (who largely financed the building's construction) on the former site of the Van Ness Mansion. The building was dedicated on April 26, 1910.
It was designed in the style of a Greek temple, with large exterior stairways leading to palatial bronze gates. The building's roof is covered with Ludowici tiles in a blend of reds.
In 1919, the initial meeting of the International Labour Organization was held in the building.
Between 1921 and 1922, the building was used for committee and subcommittee hearings throughout the Washington Naval Conference while closely guarded by marines with fixed bayonets.
The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1969, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2021, for its architecture and its role in international diplomacy.
The Torrijos–Carter Treaties, handing control of the Panama Canal from the United States to the Republic of Panama, were signed in the building.
References
External links
Media related to Pan American Union Building at Wikimedia Commons
"-- holding: Pan-American Union Building, Washington, D.C. -- Philadelphia Architects and Buildings".
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Pan American Union Building” is building in Washington, D.C., USA. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through American, Union and Building, not as a finished interpretation.
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Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5755202. VIAF identifies the subject as 146736659. Authority coordinates are 38.893, -77.040. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1910, 1919 and 1921.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pan American Union Building” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.