Basin Battle

The cruciform-like rim of Washington's Tidal Basin was pink & white with cherry blossoms last week. As it has many times before, the city celebrated the event with a festival embracing barefoot dancers, band concerts, fireworks, and the crowning of the 10-year-old daughter of the Japanese Ambassador, Miss Sakiko Saito, as Queen of the Festival. The entire performance brought to the District of Columbia an estimated 200,000 visitors, who left behind in hotels, shops and theatres about $5,000,000 in cash.

With the boom of the fireworks still in their ears, an art squabble that has been busying the Washington press for several weeks suddenly made Washington realize that last week's Cherry Blossom Festival might be the last for many years to come. To honor the memory of First Democrat Thomas Jefferson (in the words of the Republican Washington Post): "A terrain world famous for its beauty would become a replica of a western mining camp. A decade would scarcely suffice to restore its present charm." Back of the battle over Washington's Tidal Basin stands the amiable, aging figure of John Joseph Boylan. Tammanyite, for 15 years the U. S. Representative of New York's 15th Congressional District. Congressman Boylan's lifelong hero has been Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, founder, among other things, of the Democratic Party.

Promptly at the opening of every session, with patience comparable to Senator Norris' in getting the Lame Duck Amendment, Representative Boylan would introduce a resolution to build a gigantic memorial to Statesman Jefferson that could hold its own with the Lincoln Memorial at the west end of the Mall. Promptly every session it was tabled, until the 73rd Congress found itself with buckets of New Deal money to spend. Quickly Representative Boylan's Jefferson Memorial bill was passed, an expenditure of $3,000,000 authorized (but not appropriated) and a commission set up to draw plans, with Congressman Boylan as chairman.

From April 1935 on, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission met, discussed projects, plans, sites. Because the New Washington, forested in Corinthian columns and paved with miles of linoleum, has been completed for the most part within the past four years, citizens are apt to think that New Washington is largely a New Deal development. It is nothing of the sort. New Washington was the pet scheme of Andrew W. Mellon. The new Department of the Interior building, into which Secretary Ickes moved last week, is the only one of the new Federal buildings designed under the New Deal. The favorite architect of Mr. Mellon's city planners was the late Cass Gilbert (Woolworth Building), who died in 1934.

A powerful contender for succeeding contracts appeared at once in the person of suave, socialite John Russell Pope of Manhattan and Newport. From the drawing boards of conservative Architect Pope have already come the Scottish Rite Temple on 16th Street and the new Archives Building. Easily he persuaded elderly Mr. Mellon that he would be the ideal architect for the proposed Mellon Gallery (TIME, Jan. 11).

Just as easily he persuaded Congressman Boylan and the other gentlemen of the Jefferson Memorial Commission that he would be an ideal architect for this too. Architect Pope's design for the $9,000,000 Mellon Gallery appeared in the newspapers last January. It showed a strong resemblance to the Pantheon at Rome, plus two long, windowless wings ending in Ionic porticos. Modernists winced, but most citizens felt that with his own money Mr. Mellon had the right to build any kind of building he chose. Few weeks later, plans for the Jefferson Memorial were disclosed, and the storm broke.

To honor the First Democrat, Architect Pope has designed, the Commission and President Roosevelt have approved, a building bigger, taller and very much rounder than the Lincoln Memorial. For this building Architect Pope has simply cut the wings off his Mellon Museum and presented the Pantheon at Rome complete except that the original Corinthian capitals are changed to Ionic.

Site chosen for this edifice is the edge of the cherry-rimmed Tidal Basin, directly on the North-South axis from the White House through the Washington Monument. The building will serve no purpose other than to house a monumental statue of Thomas Jefferson similar to the one now in the Capitol. To give the building due impressiveness, the irregular Tidal Basin will be drained, its cherry trees uprooted and transplanted. Three formal reflecting pools will be constructed to take the Basin's place, new streets will have to be built and paved, new traffic arteries allocated. Washington engineers estimate that nearly five times the voted $3,000,000 must be spent before the scheme is completed.

Strange bedfellows last week were the extremely vocal opponents of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. They included: modernist artists, objecting to the arid classicism of the scheme; Republicans and conservatives eager to spike this glorification of the Democratic Party; garden club members, fearing the threat to the cherry trees; utilitarians who favor a memorial to Thomas Jefferson but favor something of public use, specifically an auditorium where such ceremonies as a Presidential inauguration may be held in weather like that of the last one.

Wrote the League for Progress in Architecture: "It is true that Jefferson used the classic style, but in his day the classic was the natural expression of architecture, there was no other ... the classic of the proposed memorial is dead before it is built."

Added famed Architect Frank Lloyd Wright: "This proposed design is one more world-famous miscarriage of grace."

Among friends of John Russell Pope who sprang forward to defend him last week were Sculptor James Earle Fraser and President Archibald Manning Brown of the Architectural League. Their points:

A utilitarian memorial would be undignified. The temple at its proposed location will complete the fifth focal point of Major Pierre L'Enfant's famed 18th-Century plan of Washington, the Capitol, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and White House forming the other four. Emperor Hadrian's Pantheon was dear to Thomas Jefferson. Monticello, his own home, and the Rotunda of the University of Virginia are adaptations of its design.

"Cherries are short-lived trees," added Congressman Boylan.

"Those round the Tidal Basin are only good for a few years more anyway."

Ten times as much money as has been authorized for Washington's Jefferson Memorial is involved in another scheme to honor Patriot Jefferson at St. Louis. Though St. Louis, onetime capital of the great Louisiana Territory which President Jefferson bought from Napoleon in 1803, already has a Jefferson Memorial built for the Exposition of 1903,* real-estate interests put through a scheme to sell to the Government 37 blocks of river front property to become a national park. A taxpayers' injunction, obtained in September, has temporarily halted work.

*Now housing the medals, sombreros, plaster statuets and other memorabilia of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, whose Paris flight was financed by St. Louis citizens.

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