In 1972 the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration asked the architect of the Capitol to survey the space occupied by senators and staff and report on their work environment. In the decade and a half since the Dirksen Building had opened, the number of persons working for the Senate had grown from 2,500 to 7,000.

Until the 1940s, Senate staff positions were mostly clerical and custodial. President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the response to the nation's entry into the Second World War fueled the growth and domination of the executive branch. As a result, congressional leaders became convinced of the need to greatly expand their staffs to include experts on a growing list of complex policy issues.

The Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center is located on 45-acres near Culpeper, Virginia, 75 miles southwest of Washington, DC near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The campus is built into the side of Mount Pony, the highest slope in Culpeper County, and features an adaptive reuse and expansion of a previously existing underground Federal Reserve Bank facility.