Bancroft Hall

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Bancroft Hall at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, is the largest single dormitory in the World.^[1]^[2] Bancroft Hall, named after former Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft, is home for the entire brigade of 4,000 midshipmen, and contains some 1,700 rooms, five miles of corridors, and 33 acres of floor space. All the basic facilities that midshipmen need for daily living are found in the hall (Military Heritage, February 2005, Volume 6, No. 4, p.72). It is affectionately referred to as "Mother B" by Midshipmen.

Bancroft Hall, designed by Beaux-Arts architect Ernest Flagg and built in 1901–06, has eight wings—arranged, as on a ship, with even-numbered wings on one side ("port") and odd-numbered wings on the other ("starboard")—of five stories ("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, bank, travel office, textbook store, general store ("The Naval Academy Store" or "The Mid Store"), laundromat, uniform store, cobbler shop, the USNA Band, the USNA branch of the United States Postal Service, and full medical & dental clinics. The Hall has its own ZIP code (21412).

The building 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.