History

The Federal Trade Commission was established in 1914 as the federal agency charged with enforcing antitrust law and protecting consumers from unfair or deceptive business practices. When the Federal Triangle development was planned, the FTC was assigned the triangular parcel at the apex of the development — the point where Pennsylvania Avenue, running on a diagonal from the Capitol to the White House, meets Constitution Avenue, running east-west along the north edge of the National Mall. This position was both the geometric and symbolic focus of the entire Triangle, and the building that occupied it would be the keystone of the development’s composition.

The architects designed a building whose plan followed the triangular site, with a curved eastern facade that addressed the apex of the two converging avenues, and two long facades running along Pennsylvania Avenue to the north-west and Constitution Avenue to the south. The result is a building whose relationship to the urban context is among the most sophisticated of any in the Federal Triangle: the curved apex turns the corner from one avenue to the other without a break in the facade, creating a sense of enclosure and formal completion that the straight-sided buildings of the Triangle’s flanks cannot achieve alone.

Michael Lantz was commissioned to create the two monumental sculpture groups flanking the Pennsylvania Avenue entrance in 1940, and they were installed in 1942. Each group depicts a male figure of heroic scale restraining a rearing horse — an image of human reason and law controlling the wild forces of commerce. The figures, in limestone and granite, are approximately 11 feet tall and are among the most powerful examples of New Deal public sculpture anywhere in the United States. They have become a symbol of the FTC and of the federal government’s regulatory mission.