As a conclusion to our series on the Government Printing Office, we will be taking you on a tour of the physical plant, which is comprised of three buildings and 1.5 million square feetthat is equivalent to 24 city blocks or 33 acres of space. The main building and annex have eight stories, which makes for an interesting challenge in organizing plant workflow. Director of Congressional Affairs Andrew Sherman, who was kind enough to take me on an extensive tour, said, We have a vertical workflow here. Most print operations operate horizontally and linearlyit is unusual to have an eight-story print plant. We have had to be creative in how we organize things to optimize how we move paper, equipment and other heavy materials from one floor to another.

The GPO first opened its doors on March 4th , 1861 , the same day Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated for his first term. None of the original buildings are still in existence.

The oldest of the three existing buildings was built in 1903 and still reflects much of the architectural detail you would expect to see in a building of that era. The last remaining GPO Bookstore is located on the first floor of the building to the left in the photo above. The back annex was attached in 1922, and as you walk through the building, you can see the metal expansion plates in the floors where the two buildings are connected. Much of the building has wood floorsbut not the type of wood floors you might expect to see. These floors are comprised of two-by-fours cut into approximately five-inch lengths and installed standing on end. Sherman explains, We used to have heavy carts moving back and forth all the time carrying lead type. The wood acted as a shock absorber for those heavy carts. The GPO still maintains some of those lead-type pages as shown in the image below.