FDA White Oak Campus, Maryland

The Food and Drug Administration exists to analyze, regulate, and restrict food and drugs sold in the USA to protect the health and safety of its citizens. Though administratively headquartered in DC, the FDA is being consolidated at its new White Oak Campus in Silver Spring, Maryland, where it has ten office buildings and four laboratory buildings. This new Federal Research Center is the repurposed and redeveloped Naval Ordnance Laboratory. The Navy built and operated this weapons development facility from 1944 to 1992, testing and developing and testing weapons in what was, initially at least, a fairly remote area. It was closed in 1995, and its functions moved elsewhere. The redeveloped campus used by the FDA takes up a small portion of the 700 acre naval site. There are still remains of several remote test facilities in the former tech areas of the mostly wooded ordnance station, which is adjacent to an Army test site, the Adelphi Laboratory Center, which is still active. The FDA also has more than 200 field offices and 13 labs across the country, and is part of the Department of Health and Human Services.