In February 1943 Newsweek reported the opening of the largest office building in the world in Arlington, Virginia: the $70 million, five-sided, five-tiered Pentagon, which had no less than sixteen and a half miles of corridors. Housing thirty thousand War Department personnel, the Pentagon was the new nerve center of the nation's war and defense effort. However, the enormous size of the building posed its own set of problems, particularly navigation. Visitors and employees were frequently getting lost in its miles of hallways. One woman, late for an appointment, spent more than two hours searching for her destination. It took the War Department another hour to extricate her from the labyrinth. Newsweek reported that visitors were handed a guide card with colored squares denoting the floors and numerals and letters telling the floor, ring, corridor, and bay of the office sought. Guides were...