Bancroft Hall

Bancroft Hall at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, is the largest dormitory in the world. It has over 30 acres (120,000 m²) of floor space and three miles (5 km) of passageways. The building houses every midshipman (over 4,000). Bancroft Hall, designed by Beaux-Arts architect Ernest Flagg and built in 1901–06, is named after Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft, and has eight wings—arranged, as on a ship, with evens on the port side and odds on the starboard—of five decks each (numbered 0-4). In addition to the midshipmen rooms, Bancroft Hall houses offices for the Commandant of Midshipmen, six battalion officers, six battalion chaplains, thirty company officers and their senior enlisted leaders, a barbershop, a bank, a travel office, a textbook store, a general store ("The Naval Academy Store" or "The Mid Store"), a laundromat, a cobbler shop, and the USNA branch of the United States Postal Service. It is also home to King Hall (named after Fleet Admiral Ernest King), where all midshipmen are fed simultaneously twice daily and three times on Wednesdays (the day of the mandatory dress-up evening meal), and to Memorial Hall, where scrolls and plaques commemorate alumni lost in battle and those who lost their lives while still Midshipmen. Memorial Hall and the Rotunda of Bancroft Hall are open to the general public but access to the rest of the building is normally limited to assigned Naval personnel.