Capitol Square

“ It is about 40 feet above the river, and is well built, with wide and shaded streets. Capitol Square (10 acres) contains the capitol building, of granite, which cost $3,500,000, and is the largest State capitol in the United States. Other prominent structures are the State land office, county court-house, and the buildings of the State University. There are also the State asylums for the insane, the blind, and the deaf and dumb; institutions for the colored deaf, dumb, and blind ”

“ By the plans the public buildings of the future will be arranged around Capitol Square (which has now two sides occupied by private residences) , and will then extend on both sides the mall, or flat, low-lying district 1,600 feet in width, extending from the Capitol building to the Potomac, a distance of one and a half miles, and inclosing the Washington monument. The buildings are all to be of white marble, harmonious in design, and with a standard sky-line. The latter feature is not pleasing in effect in the model. ”

“ The public buildings of Washington do not attempt architectural display: with scarcely an exception, they are severely simple and square. But there is a certain grandeur in the masses of white marble, which is everywhere lavishly employed, and the Capitol stands right well—alone, on the crest of a low, abrupt slope, with nothing to intercept the view from its terraces, seaward, and up the valley of the Potomac. ”

“ She had told him to meet her at the statue of Washington in the Capitol Square. They would wait there for the appearance of the President and follow him. His habits were simple and democratic. He walked daily from the Confederate White House to the Capitol grounds, crossed [Pg 259] the Square and at the foot of the hill entered his office in the Custom House on Main Street, unaccompanied by an escort of any kind.
Anybody on earth could approach and speak to him. The humbler the man or woman, the easier the approach was always made. ”

“ Broad Street is planted with four rows of shade-trees for its entire length east of Capitol Square, where it penetrates the fashionable residence district. High Street is the leading business thoroughfare. Capitol Square, a miniature park of ten acres, is situated at the intersection of these streets, two squares east of the Scioto River. The residence portions of the city contain many beautiful homes and fine mansions. There are numerous apartment buildings; the houses of the average people are substantial and comfortable. On the business streets are many handsome, commodious blocks ”

“ On East Capitol street, at a distance of about one mile from the Capitol, is a square comprising six and a half acres, beautifully laid out and adorned with trees, shrubbery and walks. In this enclosure a bronze group called Emancipation has been erected; Abraham Lincoln is represented holding in his right hand the proclamation which gave freedom to the negroes of the South. A slave kneels at his feet, with manacles broken, and in the act of rising as they fall from his hands. ”

“ At the northeast corner of the square stands the Governor’s Mansion.
On the north side, in Broad Street, is the City Hall, a handsome Gothic structure with a clock-tower. To the east of the Capitol is the State Library. In Twelfth Street, at the corner of Clay Street, a little to the north of Capitol Square, is the Jefferson Davis Mansion, or “White House of the Confederacy,” occupied by Mr. Davis as President of the Southern Confederacy. It is now fitted up as a Museum of Confederate Relics. ”

“ In Lincoln Park, about a mile east of the Capitol, is the Emancipation statue, and in front of the City Hall there is an insignificant standing figure of Lincoln, perched on a pillar so high that the features can be seen only dimly. A statue of Grant will later occupy the central pedestal of a group in the little park at the foot of the western slope of the Capitol grounds, which it is proposed to call Union Square. On either side of Grant, the plan originally was to place Sherman and Sheridan ”

“ It is located in the district of Colombia—a territory of ten miles square, formed into a separate and detached jurisdiction by the constitution of the United States. The city was laid out by General Washington, and Congress took up its abode there in 1800. The Capitol is situated in an area of twenty-two and a half acres; is a splendid building, on an eminence close to the Potomac river. The Hall of Representatives is in the second story of the south wing, and is of the form of the ancient Grecian theatre. There are twenty-four columns of variegated native marble from the banks of the Potomac. ”

“ The ground actually covered by the Capitol is 153,112 square feet or 652 square feet more than 3 1⁄2 acres. Of these the old building covered 61,201 square feet and the new wings with connecting corridors, 91,311 square feet.
The dome of the Capitol is the highest structure in America. It is one hundred and eight feet higher than Washington Monument in Baltimore; sixty-eight feet higher than Bunker Hill Monument and twenty-three feet higher than the steeple of Trinity Church, New York. ”

“ The Architect of the Capitol, in consultation with the District of Columbia, is authorized to maintain and improve the landscape features, excluding streets in the irregular shaped grassy areas bounded by Washington Avenue SW on the northeast, Second Street SW on the west, Square 582 on the south, and the beginning of the I-395 tunnel on the southeast. ”

“ For a pedestal wall, coping, railing, and foot way at the north front of the President’s house, ten thousand dollars. For improving the Capitol square, including the gardener’s salary, and lighting the lamps, two thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars. ”

“ Rosen said, no, it would not take on the lead?
A No.
Q Okay. So, later—is there anything you want to add about that call that you had on January 3rd?
A No. Just, as you can see from the notes, we discussed the, sort of, key locations—the Capitol, Lafayette Square, Washington Monument, Freedom Plaza.
We talked about who had responsibility for which of those key areas. So, for instance, the Park Police had the monuments. Capitol Police had the Capitol. FPS had the various Federal buildings. We had DOJ. MPD had the city overall for all the areas that were not covered by someone else. ”

“ It is true that you would never suspect that they have a government; this is the principal seat, but, save for three or four big buildings, most of them affreux, it looks like a settlement of negroes. No movement, no officials, no authority, no embodiment of the State. Enormous streets, comme toujours, lined with little red houses where nothing ever passes but the tramway. The Capitol—a vast structure, false classic, white marble, iron and stucco, which has assez grand air must be seen to be appreciated. ”

“ As in most southern inland towns, its one great artery, Main street, runs from the river bluffs to the Capitol, perched on a high hill a full mile away. This street, wide and sandy, was in the cradle days badly paved, but rather closely built up. Nor was the Capitol a peculiarly stately pile, either in size or architectural effect. Still it dominated the lesser structures, as it stared down the street with quite a Roman rigor. The staff upon its dome bore the flag of the new nation, run up there shortly after the Congress met by the hands of a noted daughter of Virginia. ”

“ If the Capitol Park at Washington, with the National Capitol cresting it, should suddenly begin to move down into Pennsylvania Avenue at the rate of about three feet a day the authorities of the city would naturally feel some degree of annoyance. ”

“ A small, straggling city, with very muddy streets in winter; plain living and high thinking; rather uncomfortable quarters in the hotels and boarding-houses; here and there a grand house, but not many of them; the White House, serene and squalid; a few large public buildings; the Capitol, with its splendid dome, like an architect's dream, overhanging and dominating the scene, as it does to-day, one of the most splendid public buildings in the civilized world. Such was the early Washington to me. ”

“ Standing on the rising ground among the rich foliage it has an aspect of quiet strength, an impressive assurance of dignity and permanence peculiar to itself among massive buildings in the great cities. Everyone goes, or should go, to see Congress at work, and to explore the corridors trod by generations of the nation’s legislators, soldiers, jurists, orators, in short, by all the great makers of the nation since Washington laid its foundation stone. A singular instance of fate thwarting intention is found in the situation of the Capitol. ”

“ Even with all the beauty of Washington and the vast sums that have been expended within the past fifteen years in the incomparable structure for the Library of Congress, and in other fine public buildings, and the splendor of the private residence region,—even with all this, and the fact that the Capitol itself is one of the notable architectural creations of the world, the nation is great enough and rich enough to found a new capital which should far surpass the present one, however fine that present one may be. ”

“ From the very beginning the Capitol has suffered as a National Building from the conflicting and foreign tastes of its decorators. Literally begun in the woods by a nation in its infancy, it not only borrowed its face from the buildings of antiquity, but it was built by men, strangers in thought and spirit to the genius of a new Republic, and the unwrought and unimbodied poetry of its virgin soil. ”

“ The exclusive aristocracy of Washington is found in that part of the city known as Capitol Hill. Upon the emerald heights crowned with gardens and flowers, the proud old families of ancient lineage occupy their ancestral acres almost under the dome of our beloved Capitol. ”

“ Its one truly magnificent building, the Capitol, seems to have absorbed everything else. Like a huge wen, it has apparently sucked up all the life of the other buildings. Feeble, shapeless, ineffective, they huddle along the sides of the vast avenues, and, however closely they stand, give nothing but the impression of a straggling and clumsy village. Then there is the eternal absurdity of the plan. It is not only a straggling and clumsy village, but it is utterly dislocated. Washington is laid out upon the plan of cart-wheels within cart-wheels. The stranger is always going wrong. ”

“ This District, which has neither voice nor vote in your deliberations, looks to you for protection and aid, and I commend all its wants to your favorable consideration, with a full confidence that you will meet them not only with justice, but with liberality. It should be borne in mind that in this city, laid out by Washington and consecrated by his name, is located the Capitol of our nation, the emblem of our Union and the symbol of our greatness. Here also are situated all the public buildings necessary for the use of the Government, and all these are exempt from taxation. ”

“ The Navy Yard Bridge crosses the Anacostia River, at the foot of Eleventh street, having supplanted the wooden structure built in 1819, over which Booth made his escape after the assassination of Lincoln.
The various buildings occupied by the Executive and Legislative branches of the Government are worthy of especial notice. The Capitol is considered one of the largest and finest edifices of the kind in the world, and in point of durability of structure and costliness of material, it certainly has no superior. ”

“ The New Capitol, on the site of the Old Capitol, is a magnificent edifice in the renaissance style, built of New England granite, at a cost to the State of many millions. On passing quaint bits of architecture or the suggestive aspect of some out-of-the way corner, one turns naturally to the days of wigs and kneebreeches, before the capital of the Empire State was thought of, and when the forests of fair Columbia were overrun by the bronzed warriors who still held undisputed sway. ”

“ In its whole conception, Washington is an ideal capital for the United States—not least typical, perhaps, in its factitiousness, since this Republic is not so much a product of natural development as a deliberate creation of will and intelligence. It represents the struggle of an Idea against the crude forces of nature and human nature. The Capitol, with its clear and logical design, is as aptly symbolic of its history and function as are our Houses of Parliament, with their bewildering but grandiose agglomeration of shafts and turrets, spires and pinnacles ”

“ The Americans all seem greatly to admire this city, and to give it the preference in point of beauty to all others in the Union, but I do not agree with them. There are some very handsome buildings, but none of them so placed as to produce a striking effect, as is the case both with the Capitol and the President’s house, at Washington. ”

“ Now that we are outside, let us look around. To the eastward lies the part of the city broadly designated as Capitol Hill. As far as the eye can reach, it is a beautiful, evenly graded plateau—an ideal residence region as far as natural topography, verdure, sunshine, and pure air are concerned. It is the part which George Washington and other promoters of the federal city picked out for its residential end, and the Capitol was built so as to face it. ”

“ I walked down by the back streets to the steps mounting to the Capitol--that long inclined plane, rather, broken at every two paces, which is the unfailing disappointment, I believe, of tourists primed for retrospective raptures. Certainly the Capitol seen from this side isn't commanding. The hill is so low, the ascent so narrow, Michael Angelo's architecture in the quadrangle at the top so meagre, the whole place somehow so much more of a mole-hill than a mountain, that for the first ten minutes of your standing there Roman history seems suddenly to have sunk through a trap-door. ”