Ruth Building, Maryland

This technical building, located on the edge of the Dalecarlia Reservoir, was Building Number 1 of the Army Map Service, which moved here in 1942, to ramp up military map production for World War II. In 1945 mapping operations expanded north a half mile to the Brookmont campus, which grew over the years into the headquarters of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA). This isolated building continued to serve NIMA, and was renamed the Ruth Building after Charles H. Ruth, in 1953. Ruth established the Army Engineer Reproduction Plant, in World War I, and is considered the founding father of defense mapping. In 2003, NIMA became the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which now operates out of one of the largest federal buildings, located near Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The Ruth building remains an unmarked secure federal site.