The Mary E. Switzer Memorial Building is a federally owned office building located at 330 C Street SW in Washington, D.C. in the United States. The Egyptian Revival structure was originally named the Railroad Retirement Board Building. It was designed by Charles Klauder and Louis A. Simon and completed on September 15, 1940. Although intended for the Railroad Retirement Board, its first occupant was to the United States Department of War. By Act of Congress, it was renamed the Mary E. Switzer Memorial Building on October 21, 1972, becoming the first federal building to be named for a woman. The Switzer Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 6, 2007. Genesis The Railroad Retirement Board Building was first proposed in 1938 as part of a massive federal construction effort in the District of Columbia and around the country. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed the construction projects both as a way of providing employment to the millions of Americans out of work due to the Great Depression but also as a means of meeting the office space needs of the rapidly expanding federal government. Those needs, especially in Washington, D.C., had gone unmet for nearly a decade. On February 9, 1937, Roosevelt named an informal committee to study federal office space needs. The committee was chaired by United States Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, and included Senator Elmer Thomas (D-Oklahoma); Representative Ross A. Collins (D-Mississippi); Rear Admiral Christian J. Peoples, United States Navy; and Frederic A. Delano, chair of the National Capital Parks and Planning Commission. The President's Special Committee on Public Buildings recommended in April 1938 construction of a new headquarters for the Railroad Retirement Board, a federal agency created in 1935 to oversee a pension system for the nation's railroad workers. President Roosevelt proposed a construction bill on May 17, 1938, in which $3 million was set aside to purchase land, design, and begin construction on a new Social Security Administration Building and a new Railroad Retirement Board Building. The 75th Congress, due to adjourn on June 16, raced to get the bill approved. By June 11, the Senate had acted on the bill. Initially, the House of Representatives stripped the $3 million appropriation from the bill. The appropriation was restored on June 16 when House members agreed to pay the funds out of the $965 million Public Works Administration (PWA) funding