It depends on municipal and state regulations (I'm not familiar with regulations in the district of Columbia). The Health Department where I'm from only wants a "you are not locked out" sign with instructions posted next to a working release button on the inside of the cooler to prevent accidental death.
As I'm no DC expert, I can only use a bit of Googling. According to the DC Health Department website (http://doh.dc.gov/)), it looks like coolers need to be identified and labeled as per the 2012 IMC Chapter 3 (International Mechanical Code). So this basically means there is no separate permit for freezers (typical nearly everywhere) -- part of the Health Department signing off on construction plans to get a certificate of occupancy (or temporary certificate of occupancy) just requires that freezer construction adheres to the regulations in this document (linked if you're curious: https://law.resource.org/pub/us/code/ibr/icc.imc.2012.pdf)). The Health Department permit requires this and everything else (drain spec, food prep area size/accessibility, etc.) under one blanket sign-off, so there wouldn't be anything on record just about a freezer.
Original submitted plans to have a demo permit issued to begin construction have to go through the Health Department, so seeing those original plans that were stamped could be useful. This would require some HUMINT (calling DC DoH and having them faxed over, or perhaps the DC fire marshal who also has to sign off on original plans).
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Spindle ago
It depends on municipal and state regulations (I'm not familiar with regulations in the district of Columbia). The Health Department where I'm from only wants a "you are not locked out" sign with instructions posted next to a working release button on the inside of the cooler to prevent accidental death.
As I'm no DC expert, I can only use a bit of Googling. According to the DC Health Department website (http://doh.dc.gov/)), it looks like coolers need to be identified and labeled as per the 2012 IMC Chapter 3 (International Mechanical Code). So this basically means there is no separate permit for freezers (typical nearly everywhere) -- part of the Health Department signing off on construction plans to get a certificate of occupancy (or temporary certificate of occupancy) just requires that freezer construction adheres to the regulations in this document (linked if you're curious: https://law.resource.org/pub/us/code/ibr/icc.imc.2012.pdf)). The Health Department permit requires this and everything else (drain spec, food prep area size/accessibility, etc.) under one blanket sign-off, so there wouldn't be anything on record just about a freezer.
Original submitted plans to have a demo permit issued to begin construction have to go through the Health Department, so seeing those original plans that were stamped could be useful. This would require some HUMINT (calling DC DoH and having them faxed over, or perhaps the DC fire marshal who also has to sign off on original plans).