"Federal City"

"Federal City"

(See map, pages 10 & 11.)

Into the brown-paneled Council Chamber of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, last week, went President Hoover, Secretary of the Treasury Mellon, Chief Justice Taft, Senator Reed, Smoot, and many a member of the American Institute of Architects. They were gathered to talk of Washington's development as a beautiful city, to pledge allegiance to a capital building program now well under way. Speeches were made. Models of new Government buildings were admiringly examined. A cinema of the capital's rude start, its ragged growth, its sudden bursts of classic beauty, its future nobility, was shown. This story was told:

Site. A political trade planted Washington on the Potomac mudflats. Thomas Jefferson gave Southern support to Alexander Hamilton's campaign to have the U. S. assume the full cost of the Revolution. In return, in 1790, Hamilton helped Jefferson pass legislation locating the new capital in the South on the Potomac River. President Washington picked the site--100 sq. mi. ceded by Maryland and Virginia to the U. S. at the head of tide water. He called the new Capital "The Federal City." Jefferson, Madison and the three commissioners chosen to lay out the city, referred to it from the start as "Washington."

L'Enfant Plan. Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant, a French engineer and Revolutionary War officer, was engaged as chief city-planner. Engineer L'Enfant placed the Capitol on a low eminence ever since called "The Hill." About a mile west and north he set the President's House, connecting them with a broad avenue (Pennsylvania). From the Capitol and from the President's House (later the White House) were to radiate other avenues cutting the city's network of smaller streets. A parkway or Mall was to sweep westward from the Capitol to the Potomac. Stately public buildings were to fill the triangle between Pennsylvania Avenue and the Mall. President Washington's watchful eye saw the President's House begun (1792), the Capitol cornerstone laid (1793). But George Washington was dead before the Government took possession of its new city (1800).

"Wilderness City."Carved out of the wild, the city's growth was feeble at first. After being burned by the British in 1814, it made a fresh start, sprawled out of the bounds of the L'Enfant plan. Impatient at delays, President Jackson thrust his cane into the ground and said: "Here, right here let the corner stone of the Treasury Building be laid!"

Classic in design, the building rose there, squarely blocking the view between the White House and the Capitol along Pennsylvania Avenue.

Fifty haphazard years of jerrybuilding followed. The Civil War focused national attention upon the capital and its miserable estate. Arose Alexander R. Sheppard, great public spirit, great builder, to pave and light streets, lay sewers, plant trees, pauperize himself. Washington grew out of its youthful squalor, but recklessly, without unity or good taste. Architecture went on a gingerbread spree--viz. the State, War & Navy Building, the Post Office Department Building. The L'Enfant plan was forgotten.

Plan of 1901. For all its growth, Washington had little to be proud of on its hundredth birthday. A commission of architects and artists was formed to plan improvements. This, the McMillan Commission, brought forth the Plan of 1901, reviving the L'Enfant plan. Never officially adopted, the Plan of 1901 did cause the removal of railroad tracks and station from the Mall at 6th Street, the construction of the new Union Station as a worthy city gateway, the location of the Lincoln Memorial in Potomac Park on a line with the Capitol and the Washington Monument.

War. City plans for Washington were temporarily ruined by the War. Shacks of plaster and board to house workers sprang up in the Mall, in" parks, around the Capitol. To flat stucco "buildings on B Street were transferred the expanded activities of the War Department and the entire Navy Department. The U. S. rented office buildings at random about the city for Departments like Labor and Commerce, for independent bureaus and commissions.

Plan of 1926. President Coolidge found that for economy's sake it would be cheaper in the end to build Federal offices in the capital than to rent them. He had the strong support of Secretary Mellon, whose Department has charge of public buildings, and of Senator Smoot of Utah, potent on the Senate's Appropriations Committee and chairman of the U. S. Public Buildings Commission. A new program, known as the Plan of 1926, bringing the L'Enfant plan to life once more, was formulated. Congress voted 75 million dollars for new Federal buildings in the capital. An Assistant Secretary of the Treasury was assigned to handle nothing but public buildings.

Chosen for this Treasury post was Carl Schuneman, St. Paul lawyer and department store manager. Rebuilding the capital is only part of a comprehensive program, first of its kind since 1913, for housing expanded Federal agencies throughout the land. For this program as a whole, the Public Buildings Act of 1926 authorized 275 million dollars--a bill unique in that it gave the Treasury carte blanche to erect buildings "where needed," instead of specifying the desires of adroit log-rollers.

At the forefront of the capital planning has been Secretary Mellon himself, ably, painstakingly assisted by his self-effacing alter ego, Special Assistant David Edward Finley. The latter, a little South Carolina thoroughbred, lawyer by profession, connoisseur and cosmopolite by taste, engineers most of Mr. Mellon's personal, non-political doings. He it was who, between arduous hours of writing speeches, receiving newsgatherers, answering correspondence, gathered material, wrote the scenario and produced the historico-architectural cinema viewed by the President last week.

Pennsylvania Avenue. A sorry spectacle, this great connecting link between the Capitol and White House has come to be. Down it pass great official parades between lines of cheap hotels, souvenir shops, wholesale groceries, public markets, gas stations, meat packing plants, feed stores--all the tawdry adjuncts of a small-town business section. The Plan of 1926 calls for a clean-up of the south side of the avenue, to make way for new public buildings. Among the celebrated old structures to be razed were Poli's Theatre, vast and rickety old showhouse opposite the Willard Hotel, the G. A. R. Hall, Harvey's Restaurant, the St. James Hotel.

The Mall. This broad parkway is, as L'Enfant intended, to be developed into a fine landscape sweep from the Capitol westward. The Botanical Garden will be removed to a new site. Temporary Wartime buildings (Census Bureau, Prohibition Unit, etc., etc.), power houses with unsightly stacks, old junk heaps, will be swept away, leaving in the Mall proper only public buildings of a monumental kind. Room is to be provided for the Washington Memorial, a non-government undertaking in the form of an auditorium, now stalled in the excavation stage for lack of funds. The National Museum is to remain where it is. A National Art Gallery is projected for the western end of the Mall, necessitating the removal of the White House greenhouses which gleam there now. This Gallery is to be a private donation accepted by the U. S. for art treasures.

The Triangle. (See Map. The North side of Pennsylvania Avenue illustrates present conditions, the South side as projected with new buildings.) Of the 23 city blocks between 14th Street, the Mall and Pennsylvania Avenue, the U. S. has purchased four, is condemning nine, preparing to condemn six more. Within the so-called Triangle will then be erected seven huge Federal buildings of white marble. Their simple architecture will harmonize them into one group. In a sense they will serve as a wall to hold the city back from the greenery of the Mall.

Already under construction is the gigantic Department of Commerce Building, 1,000 ft. long, costing $17,500,000. Here will be gathered 5,000 employes whose functions touch Census, Steamboat Inspection, Fisheries, Coast and Geodetic Survey, Mines, Patents, besides the central field of foreign and domestic commerce. The Commerce Department at present occupies a rented yellow-brick at 19th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Fronting next upon the Mall will come a two-fold structure to house the Labor Department and the Interstate Commerce Commission. Behind will stand the Independent Offices Buildings in which will be gathered such Commissions as Tariff, Trade, Radio. Next, between loth and 12th Streets, will stand the Internal Revenue Bureau, now scattered under a score of widely-seperate roofs. Excavations have been begun for this ten-million-dollar tax headquarters which will be ready to receive 5,000 workers within two years.

The eventual completion of this building will some day entail the removal of the towering old Post Office Building on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Next along the Mall will come a library-like Archives Building ($8,750,000). Here all U. S. records will be filed, each instantly accessible in lightproof, dampproof, fireproof tiers.

Where now stands Center Market will rise a building for the Department of Justice ($3,400,000). housing 700 workers. Today this department functions in a rented building at K Street and Vermont Avenue.

A final site at the point of the Triangle is as yet undesignated.

Supreme Court. For 70 years the U. S. Supreme Court has sat in a room in the Capitol less impressive than many a county court room. Cramped in between House and Senate, the Justices lack adequate offices, take their cases home to work on. A new Supreme Court Building (ten millions) of classic lines will soon rise opposite the Capitol, north of the Library of Congress. To make room for this new structure the "Old Capitol"--in which Congress sat after the 1814 fire, in which Civil War prisoners were housed, in which the National Woman's Party now has its headquarters--must first be razed.

Other Developments. Between the Capitol and the Union Station are now either vacant lots or ramshackle old buildings, many of them of War-time origin. For five million dollars the U. S. acquired this land to develop it into a connecting parkway, to cut a new avenue through from the station to Pennsylvania Avenue.

Many a Congressman complains of having only one office-room. A $7,500,000 annex to the House Office Building will soon be built just west of the present building.