The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Headquarters Was Built Outside Of Washington, D.C. After The Soviet Union Detonated An Atomic Weapon

On August 1, 1946, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission was established by President Harry Truman after he signed the Atomic Energy Act.

A decade after the Atomic Energy Commission was created the federal government considered fifty different locations for the Atomic Energy Commission’s headquarters during the Cold War. The government decided to build the headquarters 20 miles north of DC in Germantown, Maryland in an area that 4,000 feet higher than the Nation’s Capitol. All of the offices of the commission’s staff were set on the norther side of the building so that if an atomic bomb went off in DC, only the southern side of the building would be damaged by the shock waves from the blast, leaving the northern side with minimal damage.

The Atomic Energy Commission was responsible for several nuclear weapon advances during the course of the Cold War.

In the 1960’s, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy visited the Atomic Energy Commission’s headquarters building.