H. Paul Caemmerer

“ In earlier years Washington had noted the beauty of the broad eminence on which the Capitol was destined to be reared, and had marked the breadth of the picture and the strong colors of the landscape with its environing wall of wooded heights, which rolled back against the sky as if to inclose a beautiful area fit for the supreme deliberation of the governmental affairs of a great Republic in the New World, founded on the truths “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ”

“ Again, in 1893, the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, had a great effect on art in the United States. It stirred the whole world by the production of beautiful and impressive groups of buildings, so arranged and coordinated as to create the sense of unity in the whole composition. The White City along the shores of Lake Michigan still lives in the minds of many people to-day. The use of landscape effects, of canals and basins, of statuary and paintings, all contributed to impress the public and to lift people to new standards and ideals of achievement. ”

“ It is, therefore, easy to understand the lack of appreciation of the city park system during the first half of the nineteenth century. A few far-sighted individuals only realized the necessity for preserving these reservations until they would be needed as breathing spaces in a thickly settled city, and they had to wage a persistent and hard-fought campaign through the years against those who constantly wanted to sell off the public reservations for building development of some kind or other, or to have the Government itself use them for buildings. ”

“ The L’Enfant plan seemed either forgotten or entirely too large for the National Capital. In the city of Washington not a street was lighted up to 1860 excepting Pennsylvania Avenue. Pigs roamed the principal thoroughfares. Pavements, save for a few patches here and there, were altogether lacking. An open sewer carried off common refuse, and the police and fire departments might have sufficed for a small village rather than for a nation’s capital. ”

“ The rising hills, on each side of the Potomac, are truly picturesque; and as the river admits the largest frigates, their sails, gliding through the majestic trees which adorn its banks, complete the scenery.
The city extends from northwest to southeast about four miles and a half, and from northeast to southwest about two miles and a half. The public buildings occupy the most elevated and convenient situations, to which the waters of the Tiber Creek may be easily conducted, as well as to every other part of the city, not already watered by springs. ”

“ The most precious work of art in the United States is the life mask of George Washington by the noted French sculptor, Jean Antoine Houdon, who in 1785 was commissioned by the State of Virginia to execute a marble statue of George Washington. ”

“ What the people desire, their representatives in State legislature, in municipal body, and in the Congress of the United States desire for them. The art of our fathers, the art of our private citizens, is to be the art of our people and of our whole people. ”

“ Pennsylvania Avenue is the great historic avenue of the Nation, particularly that portion between the legislative and executive branches of the Government—the Capitol and the White House—extending a distance of 1 mile. It was named by Congress at the time the plan of Washington was under consideration, in compliment to the State of Pennsylvania. In the time of Thomas Jefferson it was a dusty highway, and to add beauty to it he planted quick-growing poplar trees. ”

“ This is a project in which both residents of the District of Columbia and of the States of Maryland and Virginia may take equal pride—namely, to preserve Great Falls and the banks of the Potomac, so that the Potomac River, as it flows through the National Capital, may flow through a continuous park from Great Falls to Mount Vernon. Washington is to be envied in having so near to it such beautiful scenery as the Palisades of the Potomac and Great Falls, which are said to be “the finest specimens of nature in this part of the country.” ”

“ In the Capital an example should be set for the country as a whole in the matter of planning. Our national monuments will attract seekers of the ideal in art. More and more it will become the tendency to establish the headquarters of societies of literature and art in Washington and to make bequests of collections to the National Capital. Already there is a definite project to establish here in Washington a national gallery of painting. Thus the Capital may be foreseen as an art center responding to the desire of visitors from all over the world and satisfying that demand. ”

“ L’Enfant was long maturing in his mind the plan he so quickly put on paper. In September, 1789, while yet the idea of creating a capital city was still in the air, he wrote to President Washington asking to be employed to design “the Capital of this vast Empire.” The nations of Europe wondered at the probable future of the new Republic. Visualizing the future, L’Enfant wrote:
No nation ever before had the opportunity offered them of deliberately deciding upon the spot where their capital city should be fixed, or of considering every necessary consideration in the choice of situation ”

“ The beneficent influence of the Chicago World’s Fair on our architecture is of inestimable value, not only for the architects but for the entire country. Many Americans owe their interest in buildings and architecture to a visit to Chicago in 1893, just as many cities and towns recall in their municipal and government structures the revival of classic splendor seen in the stucco palaces of the World’s Fair. ”

“ The act empowers the Zoning Commission “to regulate the location, height, bulk, number of stories, and size of buildings and other structures, the percentage of lot which may be occupied, the sizes of yards, courts, and other open spaces, the density of population, and the uses of buildings, structures, and land for trade, industry, residence, recreation, public activities, or other purposes * * *.”
Many people do not understand the importance and necessity of a zoning law in a city; they think it deprives them of private rights. ”

“ Thus, aside from the pleasure and the positive benefits to health that the people derive from public parks in a capital city like Washington, there is a distinct use of public spaces as the indispensable means of giving dignity to Government buildings and of making suitable connections between the great departments. ”

“ The idea of an avenue from the Capitol to the Washington Monument seems to have been abandoned for many years, and when the Smithsonian Institution was built in the Mall the plan made by A. J. Downing was adopted for the entire Mall, superseding that of L’Enfant. These were the days when the so-called naturalistic park development was in vogue, and everything had to be consciously picturesque. No road or path could be straight, and no regularity in planting or plan was tolerated. The L’Enfant plan was again disregarded in laying out the Department of Agriculture grounds in 1867. ”

“ When the Civil War began, the eyes of the Nation were turned on Washington. The city increased in population to over 100,000 in a few months time and was the center of great war-time activities. On April 18, 1861, 500 Pennsylvania troops, the first to answer President Lincoln’s call for volunteers, entered the city, and the day following they were joined by the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment. Soon thousands of additional men were here from all the States in the North. Washington became an armed camp. Schools, churches, and public halls were turned into hospitals to care for the sick and wounded. ”

“ The importance of open spaces and city parks, developed into beauty spots by the art of the landscape architect, should be evident to all.
As a matter of fact, perhaps the most unusual and original feature of the L’Enfant plan was the idea of building the city about two coordinate axes of parks—one a park system nearly a third of a mile wide, leading from the Capitol westward to the Potomac River, and the other the same width, leading from the White House south to the river, with the Washington Monument at their intersection. ”

“ The Library of Congress, the world’s largest and most elaborate building devoted wholly to library uses, occupies two city squares east of and facing the Capitol Grounds, also an addition recently completed.
The architecture is of the Italian Renaissance order, from plans made by J. J. Smithmeyer and Paul Pelz, and modified by Edward P. Casey. The exterior walls are of New Hampshire granite. Fifty masters of painting and sculpture worked together to make it a treasure house of the best contemporary American art, fit to shelter one of the greatest libraries of the world. ”

“ The public parks are under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior, which is also in charge of public buildings and grounds. The water supply is under an Army engineer officer, designated the district engineer, but the distribution of the water is under the jurisdiction of the commissioners. The zoning of private property as to height of building, use of building, area of ground to be built upon, is handled by a zoning commission, of which the three commissioners are members and, in addition thereto, the Architect of the Capitol and the Director of the National Park Service. ”

“ There is to be a series of neighborhood recreation centers from 10 to 20 acres in size for each residential community, with playgrounds for small children interspersed at intervals of about half a mile. The recreation system is to comprise fields for major sports and swimming pools and constitutes a reasonable effort to meet the policy that “every child shall have a place to play.”
The regional park system contemplates the acquisition of the shores of the Potomac from Mount Vernon to and including Great Falls as a memorial park in memory of George Washington. ”

“ But a new era began; trade increased, and the city began to grow rapidly. The Continental Congress was meeting in the old city hall, which had been used by the British as a prison and was in a dilapidated condition. As Washington was to be inaugurated in New York, the people thought that city would become the seat of government, so the city hall was torn down and a new building erected on the site where the subtreasury building on Wall Street now stands. ”

“ The Philadelphia Centennial of 1876 brought a sense of the power of the United States in material resources, coupled with an admission of poverty in the things of the spirit, and a determination to remedy shortcomings in this respect. The people then turned their attention to the finer things of life and became interested in erecting monuments and establishing art galleries. Thus, the Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington, D. C., the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts were chartered about the time of the centennial celebration. ”

“ With its probate court—district court, embracing admiralty, condemnation of adulterated articles under the pure-food act; the widening of streets, and the condemnation of alleys and privately owned property for carrying out the enlargement and beautification of Washington; its purely local jurisdiction to settle disputes in equity and law; the jurisdiction over Government officials and inferior courts of the District—it is taxed to the limit of human endeavor to keep up with the tide of modern requirements and hold all who come within its jurisdiction to an orderly and legal course of conduct. ”

“ It is to be hoped that Congress will not always consider the furniture of the President’s House as the scapegoat of all sumptuary and aristocratic sins, and that we shall soon be able to introduce strangers not only to a comfortable and well-appointed, but to a properly served and nicely kept, Presidential Mansion. ”

“ The center of each Square will admit of Statues, Columns, obelisks, or any other ornaments, such as the different States may choose to erect, to perpetuate not only the memory of such individuals whose Counsels or military achievements were conspicuous in giving liberty and independence to this Country, but also those whose usefulness hath rendered them worthy of general imitation; to invite the youth of succeeding generations to tread in the paths of those Sages or heroes whom their Country has thought proper to celebrate. ”

“ The space between Third and Seventh Streets, on the south side of the Mall is being considered for the Smithsonian Gallery of Art, authorized by Congress, to house the collections of works of art that have been given to the Nation. The planting and roadways continuous with those already in place on the Mall can then be put in.
The new National Museum Building was the first structure to be located and erected according to the plan of 1901, having been aligned in conformity to the new Mall axis. On the south side of the Mall the new Freer Gallery also conforms to the revised axis. ”