The D.C. government shelled out $1.01 million for a team of seven contractors to manually watch for fire inside one of the city’s largest office buildings at 441 4th Street NW, named after former D.C. mayor Marion Barry. This human fire watch was intended as a temporary stopgap while the city spent $529,835 repairing the building’s faulty alert system. But taxpayers continued to foot the growing bill for nearly a year while repairs dragged on and fire officials continued to declare the system out of service, according to interviews and records reviewed by the City Paper.

“A fire watch was put in place as a precautionary measure while repairs were underway. Following a comprehensive inspection conducted on April 15 with the Fire Marshal, the fire watch requirement was officially lifted,” Julia Jessie, a spokesperson for the Department of General Services, told City Paper in early May, adding later that “Prioritizing the safety of the occupants in the building is paramount and the fire watch was an essential service while repairs were underway.”

When asked about the length of time needed for the repairs—and the steep bill—Jessie explains, “This is an 800,000-square-foot, 12-story occupied facility, and safety systems must operate around the clock. That level of coverage, over several months, directly drives the cost.”

The Marion S. Barry Jr. Building’s fire watch ran from late May 2025 to April 15, 2026, according to the DGS spokesperson and records reviewed by City Paper.

Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George helms the D.C. Council’s Committee on Facilities, which oversees government building maintenance at facilities like the Marion Barry Building. During her January committee oversight hearing, she heard testimony from an employee who works at the building about the fire watch, among other safety issues such as elevator outages. Since then, her office has requested details on the various issues, per a spokesperson.

“[Lewis George] is particularly concerned about the risks to employee safety and the liability that arises from falling or stuck elevators and the $100,000-per-month round-the-clock Fire Watch in lieu of functioning fire detectors and alarms,” the spokesperson tells City Paper. 

The D.C. Office of Risk Management was “aware” of the issues at the Marion Barry building, according to department spokesperson Jasmin Holmes. “Over the past year, we monitored the work being performed by DGS contractors to resolve outstanding concerns,” says Holmes. When asked if the office knew of any buildings with a fire watch that went on so long, Holmes says, “We are not aware of any other buildings operating under a fire watch.”

Five hundred “trouble” alerts

DGS set up the fire watch with the blessing of the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services after a false alarm fire alert in May 2025 led employees to evacuate the Marion Barry Building, per an employee’s council testimony this year. Except, none of the alarms on the ninth floor went off, leaving those employees unaware of the (luckily nonexistent) fire below. 

A month later, an employee on the ninth floor “started an intense smoke-producing event in one of the break rooms when they accidentally microwaved a dry packet of noodles,” according to council testimony documents. The incident activated “industrial fans” to ventilate—but the floor’s smoke alarms again failed to go off. 

DGS then created the 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. workweek fire watch, hiring contractors from the ASAP Firewatch company in Fairfax, by submitting a plan to the Office of the Fire Marshal for approval. Fire watches are supposed to be a “short-term, emergency measure intended to provide an acceptable level of life safety when an unsafe or hazardous condition exists in a building or structure,” per FEMS’ policy, which emphasizes it is “only a compensatory measure.”

Fire inspectors visited the building several times between the original May incident and late 2025, originally finding nearly 500 “trouble” alerts plaguing the fire alert setup, per FOIA records. By August, DGS’ repairs had reduced the number of alerts to around 30. The same inspection logs also detail issues fire officials found with the fire watch itself: In June they were discovered to be understaffed by two contractors and the five contractors that were on-site were using cellphones to communicate instead of the required radios.

“The repair costs reflect the complexity of the building’s life safety systems,” DGS spokesperson Jessie says of the scale and scope of the system faults that had to be repaired. “Every floor contains interconnected fire alarms, sprinkler systems, mechanical equipment, and emergency systems that must all work together. Repairs are not isolated fixes. They require testing, coordination, and integration across hundreds of devices throughout the building to ensure the system functions as one.”

Jessie notes sourcing some of the aging building’s specialized parts “can extend timelines and cost.” 

FEMS declined to comment when asked for more information about inspections, the fire watch plan, elevator issues, and if there were plans to inform D.C. government employees or the public about the building’s safety issues.

“I used to work at 441,” Lewis George said of the Marion Barry Building during her January committee oversight hearing. “I don’t know how that building is still functioning and people are still functioning in it.”

D.C. government employee Zachary Love alleged during the same hearing that the building is rife with other “serious safety” issues, from roaches that have “fallen from the ceiling” onto employees, to the elevators. Love and other D.C. government employees have testified before the council as recently as two years ago with detailed complaints about having to pry themselves out of stuck elevators, and worse, elevators dropping with passengers trapped inside.

“To clarify, there have been no elevator ‘falls,’” says Jessie, when asked for details about the number of incidents. “Modern elevator systems include multiple built in safety redundancies designed to prevent that type of incident.”

“In some cases, elevators may temporarily malfunction or stop operating as intended, which can require assistance from building engineers or emergency personnel,” she says. “When an issue is reported through the elevator call system, notifications are received immediately and the elevator is taken out of service until it is inspected and cleared for operation.”

The Marion Barry Building hosts a staggering 14 elevators, all of which are currently being fitted with new doors and key components, which is expected to be completed by this fall, according to DGS. The department is currently seeking to replace and upgrade more elevator equipment, but funding for this expanded project may be in jeopardy as Mayor Muriel Bowser has proposed a 36 percent reduction to DGS’ municipal buildings maintenance budget for fiscal year 2027. This comes at a time when elevator repair costs and lead times in aging buildings across the U.S. are mounting, as mechanics in the niche industry retire and parts must increasingly be custom-made if they can be found at all.

Councilmember Lewis George tells City Paper she was “disappointed” by the mayor’s proposed cuts, which, she says, “will further limit DGS’s ability to prevent and repair facilities issues across all government buildings, including those in dire disrepair like the Marion Barry Building.”

‘The hands and feet of the District’

The Marion Barry Building houses offices for dozens of D.C. government agencies, including the State Board of Education and the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, and used to house many more when the Wilson Building was closed for repairs. 

Originally named One Judiciary Square, the building is also a bustling center for D.C. residents. A destination for protests and parades, it has also operated as a polling place and hosted press conferences for the Metropolitan Police Department and Attorney General. Its council chambers are sometimes converted to cooling and heating centers, and the whole building was even considered as a bargaining chip for the RFK Stadium deal. Five years after the D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson proposed renaming the 441 after the late Marion Barry Jr., Bowser, and former first lady Cora Masters Barry hung a large mural in the lobby illustrating the former mayor’s legacy. 

The 12-story building has also been an expensive one in the District’s portfolio. The city spent $230 million over 20 years to lease, then finally purchase, the property. And despite improvement projects such as Pepco’s $7.5 million 2012 green energy retrofit, 441 still ranked in the top five most energy-inefficient D.C. buildings the next year. It has also been plagued by a variety of safety issues for more than a decade, with repeated inspector general reports finding the security screening could be foiled by people slipping around via the food court. 

Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, who chairs the council’s public safety committee, declined to comment on the latest safety issues plaguing the Marion Barry building and referred City Paper to the Department of Buildings, where a DOB spokesperson declined to comment and referred the City Paper back to DGS.

“I think there is an impact most importantly to staff morale,” Marion Barry Building employee Love said during his January 2026 testimony. “Fire alarms and basic occupational safety are a cost of doing business, and if it is true that we are the hands and feet of the District government, then we are entitled to a minimum level of safety.”