text: Two days before George Washington's birthday, U.S. President Herbert Hoover laid the cornerstone of the National Archives building on February 20, 1933. The structure's cost was set at $8.75 million. Just three days later, he laid the cornerstone of the Department of Justice building with a trowel made from wood and cooper nails from the USS Constitution. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, Associate Justice Harlan Fiske Stone, Associate Justice Owen Roberts, Associate Justice James Clark McReynolds, Solicitor General Thomas D. Thacher, and Attorney General William D. Mitchell all attended the ceremony. Five months later, a small fire at the Post Office construction site was extinguished by a security guard before it could do any damage. Late in 1933, the northern addition to the Internal Revenue building (the land had been condemned in December 1930) began to rise.
  Completion: Roosevelt administration
  Only one building remained to be constructed under the new administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. By December 1933, the President was preparing his proposal to Congress for full funding of the Apex Building construction project. But the Apex Building itself almost was not built, as Pope and others argued that it tended to hide the planned National Archives building. Still others thought the site should be used for the proposed Jefferson Memorial. Through Roosevelt's personal intervention, the building was saved—but nearly all its external ornamentation was stripped, and plans for a terraced fountain nearby eliminated, although a small fountain was built in what eventually became known as Patrick Henry Park. Construction of the building was re-approved on January 18, 1934. The building's final cost was estimated at just over $12 million.