Martin Puryear's statue "Bearing Witness," on Woodrow Wilson Plaza in the Federal Triangle complex. The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center is in the background.

In 1924, the Public Buildings Commission recommended that a new series of federal office buildings be built near the White House. The plan called for a complex of buildings to be built at "Murder Bay" -- a muddy, flood-prone, malaria-ridden, poverty-stricken region lacking in paved roads, sewer system, and running water and almost exclusively home to numerous brothels and an extensive criminal underclass.

Plans called for two buildings with hemicycles to face one another across a vast public plaza. The Post Office building was occupied on May 6, 1934, but funding cuts caused by the Great Depression meant that the other building never was built. Instead, a vast, ugly above-ground parking lot occupied the site.

A bill was passed (almost unanimously) by Congress on August 7, 1987, to provide $362 million for the construction of an "International Cultural and Trade Center" on the parking lot at Federal Triangle. The plan was to provide office space for both the Justice and State departments. The legislation also provided that although the U.S. government would finance the building, a private developer would construct it. The federal government would lease space from the private developer for 30 years, after which ownership of the building would revert to the government. With 1.4 millon square feet of office space and 500,000 square feet of space for trade center activities, the planned trade center would be larger than any other federally owned building except for The Pentagon.

After numerous design changes, construction began in mid-1989. Contractors estimated the cost of the building at between $550 million and $800 million, far higher than the anticipated $350 million original price tag. Significant cost increases led to the project being mothballed by the George H. W. Bush administration on January 25, 1992.

This decision was reversed on December 2, 1993, by the Clinton administration. Although the building was originally designed to be a major tourist destination and provide a boost to economic development in the downtown area, the building was repurposed to be a simple office building. Rather than a mix of federal and private renters, federal agencies were now scheduled to occupy 80 percent of the office space. The building was named for former President Ronald Reagan in October 1995.

The Ronald Reagan Building opened on May 5, 1998. President Bill Clinton and former First Lady Nancy Reagan dedicated the building. The structure's final cost was $818 million.