Social Security U.S.A.-- The Program & Its Administration

 

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SOME FACTS ABOUT THE SOCIAL SECURITY BUILDING

THE Social Security Building has been the headquarters of the Social Security Administration since 1960.

The Administration Wing, a ten-story structure at the front of the building, houses the Office of the Commissioner and administrative staff of the nine divisions. The Commissioner, the Division of the Actuary, and the Division of Research and Statistics also maintain offices in Washington, D.C. The offices of the Bureau of Hearings and Appeals and of the Bureau of Federal Credit Unions are also located in Washington.

The four-story Operations Wing, directly behind the Administration Wing, is the recordkeeping center; more than a million personal records a day are processed here by the Division of Accounting Operations.

The four-story structure adjacent to the Operations Wing is given over to disability operations and includes staff of both the Division of Disability Operations and the Baltimore Payment Center.

The electrical power used by the Social Security Building is equivalent to that used by a residential community of 35,000. And the building resembles a small city in other ways with its own post office, printing plant, credit union, graphics shop, and special police force.

SPACE 1,382,000 square feet.
COST $36 million. Financed with money appropriated by Congress from the social security trust funds.
PERSONNEL Approximately 10,000.
LIBRARY special (technical) library with 50,000 volumes including 10,000 legal books.
AUDITORIUM seats 500, can be expanded for additional 500 seats.
PARKING space for 4,000 cars.
CAFETERIA seats 1,000.
CIVIL DEFENSE SHELTER one of the largest public fallout shelters in the country--equipped to handle 42,000 people in the event of a nuclear attack.

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The Social Security Building, national headquarters for this country's social security program, is located on a 140 acre site about 9 miles from downtown Baltimore and 43 miles from the center of Washington, D.C.

In this building, the fifth largest Federal office building in the U.S.A., are kept the earnings records of more than 100 million people. Here social security benefits are figured for more than 70,000 men, women, and children each week. And from this headquarters the activities of 613 social security district offices all over the United States--from New York to Hawaii, from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands to Alaska--are directed.