Excerpts from Historic Survey Report Building 52 – Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Wagner Halls, Fort Leavenworth Brenda Spencer, December 2009

2.2. Building 52 – Grant Sheridan, Sherman, and Wagner Halls and the Command General Staff College The following context was developed from a variety of published fort and college histories including: Fort Histories by Hunt and Barnard, College Histories by the Combat Studies Institute and Dastrup, the Fort Leavenworth National Historic Landmark District Nomination, and the dedication program for Bell Hall. The summary of the college’s modern history was provided by Kelvin Crow, CAC Historian. All sources are detailed in the bibliography at the end of the section.

The Command and General Staff College is known worldwide as the Army’s senior tactical school. In its 130-year history, the college has graduated thousands of military officers from 155 countries. The college counts among its alumni such luminaries as Generals Marshall, Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur and, more recently, Colin Powell and . For much of its history, from 1890 to 1958, the institution was housed in Building 52, also known as Sherman, Sheridan and Grant Halls.

The now-internationally acclaimed college evolved from humble beginnings in the years following the Civil War. Although the Mexican War (1846-48) was a proving ground for many soldiers, there was a severe dearth of professionally trained military leaders in the early 1860s. At the war’s start, the number of commissioned officers in the U. S. Army stood at a mere 1080, only a handful of whom had received formal military training. Generals , Philip Sheridan and Ulysses S. Grant, were among the few who held diplomas from the U. S. Military Academy at West Point.

The Civil War shed light on the American military’s shortcomings. A modern force, argued Civil War leaders, required a standing army with highly trained professionals at its core. In the years following the Civil War, Sherman, Grant, and Sheridan analyzed the shortcomings of military training in an effort to rebuild a more comprehensive and effective military education system.

Among the post-war initiatives to address this need was Fort Leavenworth’s School of Application for Infantry and Cavalry, founded by Commanding General William Tecumseh Sherman in 1881. Sherman was no stranger to military education. As noted above, he attended the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 1840. In 1859, he was appointed the first superintendent of the State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy. Sherman likely chose Leavenworth for his new school because he had spent time there in both military and civilian capacities. The curriculum was based upon his renowned tenets of military strategy. Sherman’s “total war” approach, illustrated in his destructive “March to the Sea,” later earned him the moniker “first modern general.” The school’s name “School of Application” reflected Sherman’s firm belief that military success relied not only on tactics, but also on practical (or applied) skills.

In 1859, when Sherman spent part of the year in Leavenworth as a civilian attorney, the Army constructed two brick warehouses at its new ordnance arsenal at Fort Leavenworth. When the arsenal closed in 1874, the westernmost building became a quartermaster depot. The easternmost warehouse was converted to the headquarters of the Army’s Department of the Missouri in 1882. When the department headquarters moved to St. Louis in 1890, the school, which had formerly been housed in a two-story building at the northwest corner of Kearney and McClellan Avenues (Building #44), was relocated to the headquarters building (east warehouse). To accommodate the school’s growth, an annex was constructed off the rear of the building in 1894. With the blessing of General Sherman, the building was named “Sherman Hall.” When the quartermaster depot moved out of the west warehouse the following year, the school expanded again, naming the building after the late General Philip Sheridan, who followed General Sherman as Commanding General of the U. S. Army.

The school’s first test was the Spanish-American War (1898). Among the alumni and faculty who played leadership roles in the conflict were Major General Elwell S. Otis, Lieutenant General Arthur MacArthur (father of General Douglas MacArthur), and Lieutenant General Adna R. Chafee, Sr. Otis, who had served as first commandant of the School of Application for Infantry and Cavalry from 1881 to 1885, was appointed Commander of the Department of the Pacific and Military Governor of the Philippines. MacArthur, who was assigned to teach tactics at the school, helped plan the assault on Manila. Chafee, who was in Leavenworth in the two years immediately preceding the conflict, “commanded the first unit to sail for Cuba,” and advanced to the position of Chief of Staff of the American Command. So many faculty and officers associated with the school were called to duty that it was forced to close for the duration of the conflict. Still, these well-trained officers were the exception to the rule when one-third of the officers serving in the conflict had no formal training in military science.

With its triumph over Spain, the United States emerged from the Spanish-American War as an international power. This new role in the increasingly complex industrial age would require a new approach to military education. The man who accepted the challenge was Secretary of War Elihu Root. Root’s General Order 155 established a new training system. Junior officers would be trained at their respective posts. But officers who demonstrated exceptional skills would receive an additional year of instruction at a post-graduate college. The school at Fort Leavenworth, which had been closed since the start of the Spanish-American War reopened in 1902. The curriculum was expanded to include instruction in five “schools,” the Army Service School, the Signal School, the Engineering School, and Medical and Field Service Schools.

Further changes in the Army’s command system helped secure Fort Leavenworth’s place as a center of advanced military study under the auspices of Commandant J. Franklin Bell. In 1903, the Army established a new layer of administration, the general staff, under the chief of staff. Because general staff officers assisted commanders in developing and carrying out policies, they required training in both field and logistical/tactical commands. To address the education needs of the new system, the course of study at the General Service and Staff College was expanded in 1904 from one year to two. In the first year, students would learn the ins and outs of infantry and cavalry, field command. The second year’s focus was logistics and tactics.

The school’s new focus ushered in a decade-long period of development – a period still interpreted by Building 52. For nearly a decade, the school had occupied two separate but adjacent buildings, Sherman and Sheridan Halls, constructed in 1859 as ordnance arsenals. In 1904, the year the curriculum was expanded, military officials decided to connect the two buildings by constructing a center building between them. In order to achieve this, engineers raised Sheridan Hall, the western of the two buildings, six feet to match the elevation of the adjacent Sherman Hall. To provide architectural unity, designers gave the two older buildings new clerestory levels and topped them with gabled roofs. The new center building was designed under the direction of Commandant J. Franklin Bell. Defined by its Classical Revival pediment and clock tower, the building was named Grant Hall after General U. S. Grant, who preceded both Sherman and Sheridan in the position of Commanding General of the U. S. Army.

Other construction projects followed. In 1910, an annex, constructed to house The Engineering School, was added as a south wing on Sheridan Hall. In 1916, Wagner Hall was built on the east end of Sherman Hall as the school library.

Leading the charge in the critical years that followed the construction of Grant Hall was Major John F. Morrison. Morrison, who taught at the school from 1906 to 1912, “completely reorganized the curriculum to teach tactics and staff procedures in a systematic, progressive manner.” Among Morrison’s student admirers was George C. Marshall, who entered the school in 1906 and stayed on to teach for two years after graduating at the top of his class. He and other protégés helped Morrison develop the Army’s Field Service Regulations, based upon German military doctrine.

Fort Leavenworth-trained officers, particularly the so-called “Morrison Men” who studied and worked under Major Morrison, held many key positions during . In the time immediately preceding the war, the officer training program was accelerated, allowing lieutenants to complete an abbreviated course of study in ninety days. Although Commanding General George C. Pershing was not a product of the school, he relied heavily on the “loyal assistance of the officers” trained there. Among his top aids were “Morrison Man” George C. Marshall and Chief of Staff James G. Harbord, an 1895 graduate of the infantry and cavalry school. Pershing and his aids drew heavily upon the Army Field Regulations developed by the Morrison Men as their guide to operations in France.

The alumni’s undeniable success in World War I justified continued investment in officer training during peacetime. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who attended the school in 1925-26, would later remark that “No investment by the American Government has returned such tremendous dividends as the amount of money spent on the Army school system during the years between the two World Wars.” As it had during the Spanish-American War, the school closed during World War I. And just as it had in the years following the Civil and Spanish-American Wars, the military education system was reorganized in the years following the Great War. In 1919, the War Department created a system of branch schools for each arm of the military. The system was further honed in 1920 with the National Defense Act. Following its critical role in the Great War, the school at Fort Leavenworth was given new emphasis. War-time experiences filled volumes of American military texts, many of which were published in Building 52. For the first time, Americans established their own brand of military strategy and tactics, independent of their European predecessors. These lessons were imparted to a new crop of military leaders, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, being trained at Fort Leavenworth. By 1939, 5000 officers had graduated from the school at Fort Leavenworth. The expansions and improvements made to the buildings in the decade prior to World War I continued to serve the school but numerous expansions were proposed in the decades that followed. World War II would leave administrators scrambling. Instead of closing the school, as it had during the Spanish-American War and World War I, the Army ramped up its training efforts. The officer training program was again accelerated, this time to a ten-week program. During the war years, the school hosted twenty-seven of these training sessions, graduating 17,874 officers. The volume of students was more than the school’s existing facilities could handle. Gruber Hall (1908), a cavalry drill hall, was converted into two large spaces, one of which came to be known as the “world’s largest classroom.”

While the school stepped up efforts to train new officers, its alumni were serving in key military positions. Most notable of these were Supreme Commanding General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, Commanding General George S. Patton, and Allied Commander Douglas MacArthur.

Fort Leavenworth’s role in officer education only grew in the years following World War II. The Army War College, located in Washington DC prior to the war, reopened at Fort Leavenworth in 1950 when Leavenworth alumnus George C. Marshall was Secretary of War. In July 1951, the college requested funds for the construction of a new building to serve the combined Staff College and War College. The same year, however, after Marshall resigned the office of Secretary of War, the Army War College was moved again to Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Despite numerous proposals for expansion of the existing complex, the school made do with its historic facilities until the late 1950s. According to Barnard’s History of Fort Leavenworth, Building 52 housed “offices and support facilities” for the college while “student classroom activities were concentrated … in Gruber and Andrews Halls.” In the 1950s, however, when Kansan and Fort Leavenworth alumnus Dwight D. Eisenhower occupied the White House, the college renewed its efforts to secure funds for a new building. The college’s pleas were answered in 1956, when $5.4 million was included in Department of Defense’s budget for construction. Planning for the new building coincided with a major reorganization. As noted by Major Robert Griffith, military training was in constant flux in the postwar years in an effort to “meet the growing demands placed on the Army by the Cold War and its related developments.”

The new building, named Bell Hall after former commandant James Franklin Bell, was dedicated in January 1959. The completion of Bell Hall allowed the school to consolidate a number of scattered functions under one roof. The number of officers, including foreign military leaders, trained at Fort Leavenworth grew exponentially.

The dedication of Bell Hall as the new home to the Command General Staff College marked the end of an era in Building 52’s history. Beginning with The School of Application for Infantry and Cavalry’s move to Sherman Hall in 1890, Building 52 had served as home to the school for nearly seventy years. For the next for thirty-five years, Building 52 housed a variety of administrative functions.

A 1973 reorganization, known as “STEADFAST,” divided the Army into two commands: the Forces Command and the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). Fort Leavenworth’s Combined Arms Center (CAC), which commanded both the College and Combined Arms Group, was essential in carrying out the military training and leadership development priorities of TRADOC. The Combined Arms Group evolved into the Combined Arms Combat Developments Agency (CACDA), which continued to occupy Building 52. Among the luminaries who directed the agency and officed in Building 52 was General Colin Powell (later Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff). In 1994, after the two-star CACDA position was eliminated, the CAC Commander and his small headquarters staff moved from Fuller Hall to Building 52. The building continues to serve as CAC Headquarters today.

For 150 years, Building 52 has played a pivotal role in American military history. The location on the banks of the had strategic significance in the pre-railroad years when the complex’s first two buildings were constructed to house ordnance. After river travel faded, the site came to hold less-practical significance, allowing for the development of administrative uses, including department headquarters. For nearly seven decades, the complex was home to the Command and General Staff College, which aimed to provide pragmatic and uniquely American solutions to military problems. As its alumni filled increasingly prominent military and political positions, the school moved into newer facilities; and Building 52 was converted to general office space. Although its uses have changed over time, Building 52 remains the identifying symbol of Fort Leavenworth as the world’s premier military training facility.

2.3.2 Summary of Building History Building 52 is a connected complex of buildings constructed between 1859 and 1916. The earliest two buildings included in the complex, later named Sherman and Sheridan Halls, were constructed in 1859 as part of the fort’s ordnance arsenal. In 1882, the easternmost building, later Sherman Hall, was converted to a headquarters for the Army’s Department of the Missouri. During this time, the westernmost building, later Sheridan Hall, was in use as a quartermaster depot. In 1890, the headquarters building was converted for use by the School of Application for Infantry and Cavalry and named Sherman Hall. To accommodate their continual growth, a south-projecting addition was constructed as an annex in 1894. In 1895, the school expanded into the west former ordnance building, which was named Sheridan Hall.

As the school expanded its scope in the years following the Spanish-American War, the complex grew. Early twentieth-century improvements included the 1906-08 construction of Grant Hall built to connect Sheridan and Sherman Halls, improvements to Sheridan and Sherman Halls to tie them to Grant Hall, the 1910 construction of the Engineering School as an addition to Sheridan Hall, and the 1916 construction of the Library (east of Sherman Hall) later named Wagner Hall. The complex continued to serve as the school’s main academic and administrative building until the construction of Bell Hall in 1958. Between 1959 and 1994, Building 52 housed a variety of administrative offices. In 1994, the building became the Combined Arms Center (CAC) Headquarters and continues to serve that function today.