The Lincoln Memorial Had its Opponents;
with the early 1900s media reporting it far more widely and diversely then
the late 1900s media reporting of "Extending the Legacy"

The Lincoln Conspirator
Illinois Congressman Joe Cannon was determined to stop the Lincoln Memorial from rising on the Mall. He almost succeeded.

By Susan Mandel

Sunday, February 3, 2008; W14

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/29/AR2008012904014.html

ON A CLOUDY MARCH WEEKEND IN 1902, three men trudged through the tall grass on the banks of the Potomac River. Two members of the Senate Park Commission -- Charles McKim, the nation's preeminent architect, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the nation's foremost sculptor -- and an aide searched for the right spot. They calculated its location, which was exactly in line with the Washington Monument and the dome of the U.S. Capitol. The men marked the area by planting a stake in the soft ground. They had determined precisely where the commission's proposed memorial to President Abraham Lincoln should be built -- on the newly filled-in marshes on the outskirts of the city, an area deserted but for bird hunters and boys looking for baby turtles in the spring. Not only would the monument create a central axis on the Mall, but it would also give Lincoln the prominent place they believed his legacy deserved.

Charles Follen McKim

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

The area was previously a bay large enough for oceangoing vessels. Erosion from farming upstream had caused a sizable buildup of soil in the river over time. By the 1880s, the river was barely a quarter-mile wide and only four or five feet deep in Georgetown. The marshes along the banks had developed the same way. Military engineers were still dumping millions of cubic yards of mud dredged from the bottom of the Potomac onto the marshes so that ships would no longer run aground. Filling in the foul-smelling Potomac Flats had its own benefits. The malaria-carrying mosquitoes that prompted wealthy residents to leave town each fall disappeared, and flooding became rare. It also extended the area between the Washington Monument and the river by nearly a mile.

Later that same day, McKim and Saint-Gaudens went to discuss their proposal with officials, including Secretary of State John Hay and Secretary of War Elihu Root. President Theodore Roosevelt had already given his support. Both Cabinet members were enthusiastic about the memorial. McKim must have felt confident as he traveled home to New York to draw up the initial plans. Little did he or anyone else at the meeting realize how controversial the proposal to build a Greek temple for the late president on the remote Potomac Flats would prove to be. This month, the nation begins celebrating the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, including a rededication of the Lincoln Memorial on May 30, 2009. The monument has become a deeply cherished site on the Mall. McKim and the others would not have guessed that the fierce battle over their plan would carry on well after most of them were dead.

THE STORY BEHIND THE CONTENTIOUS STRUGGLE TO GET THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL BUILT can be told by piecing together information from hundreds of sources: books, memoirs, historical newspapers, academic and architectural journals, the Congressional Record, a doctoral thesis, letters and other documents.

An attempt to create a national monument honoring Lincoln in Washington two years after his assassination in 1865 had foundered. Lingering divisions over the Civil War precluded further talk of the idea until Republicans won control of the White House and both houses of Congress in 1896. The Senate Park Commission came up with its proposal in 1901 as part of a larger plan to remake the Mall.

The key obstacle was Republican Congressman Joe Cannon of Illinois, chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee. Like his hero Lincoln, he was self-taught, having left school to support his family at age 14 when his father, a poor country doctor, drowned. He worked as a clerk at a county store for five years before saving $500 to study law. He became a successful country lawyer and then state's attorney. Cannon was able to quit work and enter politics thanks to the business acumen of his brother, with whom he'd entered a financial partnership. By 1902, he'd been in Congress 27 years and was considered one of its best debaters, despite being a self-proclaimed hayseed.

U. S. Congressman Joseph Gurney Cannon

Cigar-chewing "Uncle Joe," as he was known, was an arch-conservative who believed in limited government spending. At $2 million, the Lincoln structure would be the most expensive U.S. monument ever built. (The Washington Monument, built between 1848 and 1888, cost $1.2 million.) He also had little use for anything that wasn't practical. When Congress first designated the reclaimed flats as a future park in 1897, he wanted the park to include a vegetable garden for the poor. He was guided by that same principle in matters of architecture. When Congress wanted to build new office space, he suggested putting skyscrapers atop both ends of the U.S. Capitol.

But, most of all, Cannon couldn't envision Potomac Flats as anything other than what it was. The undeveloped area was hardly a fitting place for a memorial to Lincoln, whom he'd met twice as a young man in Illinois. Its isolation, high grasses and dense brush made it a favorite haunt for vagrants. The police caught men gambling there on Sundays. Dead bodies were found in the vicinity from time to time. "So long as I live, I'll never let a memorial to Abraham Lincoln be erected in that goddamned swamp," Cannon told Elihu Root.

As Appropriations Committee chairman, Cannon was in a position to block the memorial. Prospects for it grew even more bleak when he was elected House speaker in 1903. The monument proposal had no chance of being heard with Cannon as speaker.

Still, he wasn't leaving anything to chance. At the time, the Mall was full of trees, with railroad tracks across the middle and Victorian-era buildings encroaching the borders. Turning it into a vast open green space was essential to create the sweeping view that was a key feature of the proposed monument. To make that impossible, Cannon moved to place the new Agriculture Building on the Mall. It was rumored that he threatened Agriculture Secretary James Wilson with withholding his department's funding if he didn't go along.

The American Institute of Architects, the main proponent of the Lincoln Memorial proposal, led the fight against the location for the new Agriculture Building. The group had already overcome a major hurdle when the head of the Pennsylvania Railroad agreed to move the train station that dominated the Mall to Capitol Hill. Its lobbying effort in Congress to prevent new construction on the Mall was successful in the Senate but failed in the House. But then Roosevelt intervened and ordered the Agriculture Building site to be moved just off the Mall. Roosevelt had assumed the presidency when President William McKinley was assassinated three years earlier, and he was on his way to a landslide victory in the 1904 election.

McKim thought he had finally won the chance to put the memorial on the Mall. But Secretary Wilson considered the change of site for the Agriculture Building trivial and disregarded Roosevelt's orders. Excavation for the building's foundation began on the Mall unbeknown to McKim. Wilson refused to move the building once McKim found out because $10,000 worth of work had already been done. Roosevelt agreed to a meeting with both men to settle the matter. The president listened impassively to McKim's plea, then criticized him for seeking changes after construction started. McKim thought all was lost. But the president surprised him and convinced Wilson to agree to move the Agriculture Building.Then-Secretary of War William Howard Taft congratulated McKim on his victory afterward. "He turned and looked at me a moment and said: 'Was it a victory? Another such, and I am dead.'"

Cannon drove his new electric automobile to the final Agriculture Building site on a Sunday in July 1905. The speaker, nearly 70 years old, got out of his car and hobbled to the construction area to see for himself. He climbed over the high fence surrounding the site. When he saw how far away it was from where Congress had said it should be and how large an area had already been dug for the foundation, "he said things no man really ought to say on a Sunday afternoon," according to The Washington Post.

BY 1908, A YEAR BEFORE THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF LINCOLN'S BIRTHDAY, even Cannon had to acknowledge that public sentiment in favor of a national memorial to the late president was too strong to be ignored. So he backed a proposal to place a memorial near the new Union Station. No place was more convenient. Visitors arriving by train would see it without going out of their way, whereas they'd have to make a special trip by streetcar or carriage to the Potomac River location. Cannon said from the beginning that he wanted the monument located "where all who visit Washington would see it without expense."

The Union Station proposal was part of a bill to expand the Capitol grounds by purchasing the six blocks between the Capitol and the station. A monument to Lincoln would fit nicely somewhere in between, Cannon told the Washington Star. It only made sense for the government to acquire the land. The Irish slum that occupied the area was hardly a dignified approach to Congress. Nicknamed Swampoodle because of its marshy land near Tiber Creek, it was a mix of shanties, run-down buildings and alleys where many of the Irish laborers lived in crowded tenements. Schott's Alley, next door to the new Russell Senate Office Building, was home to 220 people, most of them fruit vendors. On one shack that housed a restaurant, the owner regularly painted his comments about current events on the outside walls.

The city's alley slums were notorious. The dilapidated brick or wood dwellings -- built to house emancipated slaves after the Civil War -- had dirt floors and typically lacked sewers, water, heat and light. Two families often shared four small rooms. A local doctor who took congressmen on tours of the alleys near the Capitol to motivate them to clean up the unsanitary conditions had a dramatic way of making his point. He'd open up an outhouse door and say, "Gentlemen, these flies are the same ones that come in your open window and land on your sandwich while you're having lunch on Capitol Hill," according to photographer Godfrey Frankel's book In the Alleys: Kids in the Shadow of the Capitol.

Cannon's effort to beautify the area around Union Station marked a total reversal of an earlier position. He'd tried to eliminate the 1,000-foot-long plaza in front of the train depot, calling it an unnecessary extravagance when the House approved the plan in December 1902. "Would it not be more harmonious still if we should make the plaza include 10 acres and . . . clean out all the buildings between the Capitol and the depot?" he sarcastically asked during the debate. His objection to the plaza was the only opposition to the bill to create Union Station. But now that the train depot had opened, Cannon agreed with the popular sentiment in Congress that such a slum-clearance project was exactly what was needed.

Former congressman James McCleary soon published a magazine article with a new idea for memorializing Lincoln that received considerable attention. He had been a member of the Lincoln Memorial Commission authorized by Congress in 1902, before Cannon was House speaker. At the group's one and only meeting, the members decided to send McCleary to Europe to study its monuments, as McKim and the other Senate Park Commission members had already done. McCleary went abroad but still hadn't submitted his report to the commission three years after it was due. The commission was basically defunct by that time anyway because its members didn't want to do anything that would anger Cannon.

What had most impressed McCleary during his tour of Europe was the Appian Way, the ancient road in southern Italy built by Roman censor Appius Claudius. "Who has not heard of the Appian Way?" he wrote in the article. "What a fitting memorial to Lincoln would be a noble highway, a splendid boulevard, from the White House to Gettysburg."

"The Lincoln Way" would include one roadway for automobiles and one for horse-drawn carriages and wagons; plus two electric railway tracks: one for express trains, the other for local trains. Stately rows of trees would border the highway. Down the middle would be a well-kept lawn 40 to 50 feet wide, with beautiful fountains and monuments at intervals along the way. Given "the possibilities of electrical illumination, the beauty of this boulevard when lit up at night may be left to the imagination," McCleary wrote.

He wasn't the first to think of combining a memorial to a great American with some practical purpose. In 1882, there was serious talk of putting a weather station at the top of the Washington Monument once it was completed.

But, with widespread support in Congress, the proposed Lincoln Memorial near Union Station seemed certain to win quick approval. Cannon confidently told newspapers that he planned to have the bill passed and ready for Roosevelt to sign on the upcoming Lincoln centennial February 12, 1909.

McKim was in poor health by then. So, Glenn Brown, secretary of the American Institute of Architects, took over advocating for a memorial near the Potomac River. He was from a distinguished old Southern family. His background was similar to that of his elite clientele. But his modest, gentlemanly demeanor belied his tenacity and shrewd political skills. He was determined to stop the Lincoln Memorial from being built near Union Station, where it would be overshadowed by the station and the Capitol building and obstruct the view. Besides, a statue of Christopher Columbus was already planned for the most prominent spot in front of the station.

It's ironic that Brown grew up admiring Robert E. Lee more than he did Abraham Lincoln. His father, a physician, had been a field surgeon in the Confederate Army and later inspector of hospitals and camps. Brown used to sneak over to the slaves' cabins as a boy to teach them to read. One day, he saw his grandfather standing on the back porch and telling the 150 slaves on his 1,000-acre North Carolina plantation that they were free, plunging the family into financial ruin.

With just days before the House was expected to approve Cannon's memorial near Union Station, Brown and three of his colleagues went to Roosevelt and asked him to create an expert panel to advise him on all new federal buildings, monuments and works of art. It had been a long-term goal of Brown's, who was hardly alone in considering much of the public art in Washington mediocre. One congressman suggested the commission take broadaxes and go on a tour of the city "smashing half the so-called works of art," a newspaper article said. But Brown then saw the advisory body as his only hope for thwarting the competing memorial proposal.

Roosevelt paced up and down the Red Room of the White House as he listened to the architects late one Sunday night, according to accounts by Brown and American Institute of Architects President Cass Gilbert, who accompanied him.

"Mr. President, the proposition to belittle the dignity of Lincoln by making his memorial an ornament and part of the railway station shows the need of expert advice," Brown pointed out. "Isn't the station a good place for it?" the president asked. "They tell me it is all right."

After Brown explained his objections, Roosevelt turned to his trusted aide Gifford Pinchot, who would become head of the U.S. Forest Service, and said, "Giff, I'm going to do what these men want."

Roosevelt told Brown that "Congress will . . . become indignant and say I am exceeding my authority, but I consider it my right and duty to secure expert advisers when I need them. The more violent the congressional objection, the more publicity the papers will give the subject." Roosevelt knew that would generate public support for the commission. "Congress will listen to the public demands." He understood the value of publicity better than anyone else of his era. His remarkable ability to use the press for his own aims had propelled his rise to the Oval Office.

In January 1909, near the end of his term, the president established the Council of Fine Arts and asked it to immediately take up the question of the Lincoln Memorial. The council -- made up of architects, painters and sculptors -- unanimously ruled in favor of the site by the Potomac River. Infuriated, Cannon responded by inserting a provision revoking the council's authority in a government funding bill. Roosevelt signed the bill on his last day in office, but he attached a note declaring the provision on the Council of Fine Arts unconstitutional and therefore not binding on any president.

The furor in Congress produced the favorable press and public support that Roosevelt had predicted. Public opinion turned against putting the memorial near the train station. Backers of that proposal were forced to retreat.

Roosevelt's successor, President William Taft, also favored the proposed Lincoln Memorial near the river. He disbanded the Council of Fine Arts in 1909 and named one of the authors of that plan, Daniel Burnham, chairman of the new Commission of Fine Arts the following year. This new commission, created by Congress, merely advised on local fountains, statues and monuments and had no legal authority. Burnham, who ran the most profitable architecture firm in the country, had been on the now-defunct Senate Park Commission with McKim and Saint-Gaudens, both of whom had died by now.

Around the same time, a group of insurgent Republican congressmen unhappy with Cannon's dictatorial rule led a revolt against their party leader. Nebraska Congressman George Norris cleverly seized on a parliamentary ruling Cannon had made to introduce a bill to remove him as chairman of the Rules Committee, through which the speaker determined the schedule of business, recognized members to speak, made all committee appointments and thus controlled every aspect of House activity. A constituent once asked for a copy of the House rules, and his congressman simply sent him a picture of Cannon.

Cannon and his allies launched a filibuster to stall for time so they could round up enough votes to rescue him. His lieutenants made calls and sent telegrams to absent Republican supporters to ask them to return to vote. Word of the long-awaited showdown quickly spread, and the galleries filled with spectators. The speaker listened quietly for hours as his critics enumerated his alleged crimes and his defenders praised him. Decorum broke down as the debate wore on into the night with members jeering and yelling insults at one another and Cannon. The speaker broke his gavel from banging it all night. By morning, it was apparent that Cannon couldn't get enough votes to win. His friends pleaded with him to step aside for the good of the party. But he refused.

The two Republican factions tried to negotiate a compromise, but their efforts proved fruitless. The speaker finally ended his 26-hour filibuster at 4 p.m., knowing he faced defeat when the measure to throw him off the Rules Committee was voted on the next day. The 74-year-old Cannon was still full of energy and fresh-looking. "Boys, it looks as though we're beaten, but we'll die game," he said to his allies, according to a biography of George Norris.

As the votes went against him, Cannon remained cool and dignified. Afterward, he promptly asked to address the House. He said he wouldn't resign because he'd done nothing wrong. Then he stunned everyone by inviting a vote to remove him as speaker. He knew that the Republican insurgents would vote to keep him to avoid having a Democrat become speaker. Cannon won that vote. His supporters cheered wildly and rushed to congratulate him. He managed to make his defeat look like a great victory. But the biggest obstacle keeping Congress from even considering the proposed Lincoln Memorial in Potomac Park, as the area was now called, was gone. That fall, winning its approval became urgent. In midterm elections, the Republicans lost control of the House for the first time in 16 years, and Southern Democratic leaders had little interest in a memorial to Lincoln.

With the Democrats set to take control in March, Brown got Sen. Shelby Cullom of Illinois to introduce a bill to establish a commission to create a memorial. The 81-year-old senator had been a family friend of Lincoln's. He had warned Lincoln about rumors that he was in physical danger, but Lincoln said he would have to take his chances, Cullom later wrote in his memoir. Three weeks later, Cullom accompanied the president's body back to Springfield, Ill., for burial. His bill to create a memorial finally became law in February 1911, one month before the new Congress convened.

BUT THIS WAS ONLY PHASE ONE OF THE BATTLE. As a member of the new Lincoln Memorial Commission, Cannon still aimed to block the Potomac Park location. He secretly persuaded a majority of his fellow commission members to vote for a new location at Arlington National Cemetery, the former home of Robert E. Lee and where Union soldiers were buried. Commission of Fine Arts member Frank Millet, who would soon die onboard the Titanic, happened to overhear talk about Cannon's plan the night before the memorial commission meeting. There was no time to warn Taft, who chaired the commission. So Millet had his friend Texas Congressman James Slayden convince one of the panel's Southern members that Arlington was unsuitable.

When the memorial commission met the following morning in the White House executive office, Cannon argued against the Potomac Park site, calling it a swamp and saying that "the memorial would shake itself down with ague and loneliness." He then made a stirring plea to put the memorial to Lincoln alongside his fallen troops in Arlington. House Speaker Champ Clark of Missouri sat quietly. When it was his turn to speak, he stretched his long legs under the table and said, "I, for one, will never consent to the erection of the Lincoln Memorial in any part of the South. We should not imitate the custom of the ancient Romans by placing a memorial of the conqueror in the territory of the conquered," repeating just what the Texas congressman had said to him.

Taft quickly realized that Cannon's new scheme had been quashed. "Well, Uncle Joe, I guess you and I will have to give up Arlington!" said the president, a genial man who hid his dislike for Cannon.

The question of the memorial's location was still unsettled at the end of the meeting. Cannon kept pushing for other locations. When the Fine Arts Commission recommended McKim's former assistant, Henry Bacon, as the architect, Cannon opposed him, too. He persuaded the memorial commission to have Bacon and architect John Russell Pope compete for the job. While Bacon drew up plans for Potomac Park, Pope made plans for Cannon's new favored sites: the Soldiers' Home in Northwest Washington, where Lincoln had his summer cottage, and Meridian Hill on 16th Street, north of the White House. Models of the architects' plans for three locations were placed on exhibit at the new National Museum (now the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History). Cannon wasn't the only one trying to undermine the commission's recent recommendation. Proponents of the Lincoln Memorial highway launched a national campaign to get Congress to approve the road to Gettysburg instead. The commission wasn't allowed to consider anything outside of Washington, but Taft met with them anyway.

Speaker Clark joined the growing number of highway supporters, telling the Washington Star that "Lincoln was a practical man; a great man, with practical ideas. If we are to expend that much money, we should expend it where it will do some good, and the most good that can be done is by building a great highway from Washington to Gettysburg."

There were no decent roads to Washington or to most towns. Rural America's dirt roads were the worst in the developed world. Fifteen years after the first automobile appeared in the nation's capital in 1897, few people owned cars because of the cost. The $1,200 average price of a car in 1912 is equivalent to about $26,000 today. But their numbers were growing, and the country's miserable roads became a political issue. John Stewart, president of the International League for Highway Improvement, was quoted in a 1912 New York Times article as estimating that the cost to build adequate roads throughout the country would be at least $25 billion.

The memorial commission finally approved Bacon's modernized version of an ancient Greek temple on the Mall in December 1912. Cannon had lost his reelection bid the previous month in the Democratic sweep that would bring Woodrow Wilson into the White House three months later.

The Senate quickly adopted the panel's recommendation of a Greek-style temple, but it still faced an uphill battle in the House. Rep. William Borland, the Missouri congressman who led the highway effort, predicted an easy win for the road. He believed cars would become more popular, though he didn't drive one himself. Many congressmen found the prospect of obtaining federal dollars for road projects in their own districts tempting. Road supporters, backed by the auto industry, were well-organized. They flooded Congress with telegrams and petitions. Architect Glenn Brown's campaign in favor of a Greek temple was no match. Everyone knew that a House victory for the Lincoln highway would create a stalemate and indefinitely postpone the creation of any memorial because the Senate wouldn't agree to the road.

Brown organized a meeting of local memorial supporters just before the vote. Sen. Elihu Root of New York launched a searing attack at the meeting that made front-page headlines. He'd learned that a group of speculators in Washington had obtained options on the land where the Lincoln highway would run. "A cabal is at work to defeat this Lincoln Memorial plan," he charged, in order to build a road as part of a scheme to boost property values in the area, according to newspaper accounts.

Tensions were high when the memorial resolution was debated the following week. House members wore carnations in their lapels in memory of Lincoln. Brown sat in the gallery alongside Bacon.

Highway advocates attacked the memorial plan as foreign and not representative of Lincoln, according to the Congressional Record. "There is nothing in this Greek temple . . . that even suggests . . . the character . . . of Abraham Lincoln," said Rep. Isaac Sherwood of Ohio. "It is time we had some American art and . . . American ideas in this national capital."

A highway is "nearer to expressing the epoch of American history than any other form of memorial," said Borland, who emphasized that a road was unanimously endorsed by the Grand Army of the Republic, whose members were Union veterans. The Greek temple is the most hackneyed form of architecture known, he added. Another called the memorial "utterly useless."

Rep. Samuel McCall of Massachusetts, defended its design, saying: "There is nothing more beautiful in architecture than the column of the Greek . . . It illustrates dignity, beauty, simplicity and strength," all qualities that Lincoln represented.

Knowing that aesthetic arguments weren't likely to sway members, Brown had prepared a cost estimate for the Lincoln highway, which Rep. Lynden Evans of Illinois used effectively during the debate. "It will cost at least $20 million to build a really distinctive road," he said, and pointed out that it could be used only by those who could afford a car. "If a trolley line was placed upon it so that the plain people could use it, it would be valuable and useful . . . But it would not be a memorial of Abraham Lincoln."

Other members accused Lincoln highway supporters of being more concerned about roads than honoring Lincoln. The fundraising letter stated that the road would become the nucleus of a national highway system, Rep. John Stephens of Texas noted, warning that "it would be an entering wedge for the appropriation of hundreds of millions for public roads."

At one point, Rep. Henry Cooper of Wisconsin rushed onto the floor waving a telegram and asked to be heard. He said he'd just received the telegram from an official of the Grand Army and that the group had endorsed the memorial in Potomac Park, contrary to Borland's claim. The news caused some commotion.

After five hours of debate, the opposition collapsed. Many road advocates ended up not voting. Brown's cost estimate turned out to be the fatal blow. Other members had proposals of their own. But Bacon's memorial was their second choice. It passed the House overwhelmingly. The chamber erupted in applause. Shelby Cullom, Lincoln's friend, wept with joy. An agreement to build the Lincoln Memorial had finally been reached more than 10 years after Charles McKim drove a stake in the ground marking the spot along the Potomac River where it would stand.

CANNON RETURNED TO CONGRESS IN 1915. Not long after, Brown ran into him on a streetcar and sat down next to him. He congratulated Cannon on his reelection and then asked how he liked the Lincoln Memorial now that it was taking shape.

"I have been in many fights -- some I have lost, many I have won. It may have been better if I had lost more," Cannon replied, according to Brown's memoir. "I am pleased I lost the one against the Lincoln Memorial." Cannon went on the House floor later and publicly acknowledged that he was wrong to have ever opposed the monument.

"We tenderfeet . . . perhaps ought not to have our way in matters of art," he conceded. "Looking through hindsight, I am inclined to think the Art Commission and the majority of the Memorial Commission located this memorial where it ought to be located."

Susan Mandel is a freelance journalist in Arlington. She can be reached at susantamara@yahoo.com.

Where was the AIA during the 1990s and early 2000s with the proposed South Capitol Mall?

When did they ever object to the location of Nationals Stadium?

National Stadium Whitewash

Irresponsibly placed baseball stadium
in D.C. South Capitol Mall space
touted in Washington Post letter as a "green building"

Telling a Green Ballpark's Story

Sunday, February 3, 2008; Page B08

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020102342.html

This spring, will baseball fans leave the Washington Nationals' new stadium -- the first "green" major league ballpark -- with a new environmental awareness to go with peanuts and statistics about their favorite players?

If not, Nationals Park may end up as a muted tribute to the far-thinking D.C. Council, which has legislated that all new large construction in Washington, such as office buildings and shopping centers, be built according to green standards -- reducing their impact on the environment.

While the stadium is a hit toward the goal of a newer, greener Washington, city officials have dropped the ball by not stirring up interest in green building through educational outreach programs. Part of the problem is that the green building standards mandated by the D.C. Council and created by the U.S. Green Building Council make education only optional. This is a serious mistake, because the ballpark can hold 41,000 people at a time.

Last summer, during an internship in Washington, I conducted a survey on people's awareness of green buildings in the District. Nearly 75 percent of the Washingtonians I surveyed could not identify a green building within their community. The few who could were predominantly white and college-educated. Yet 95 percent of respondents said they were interested in learning more about green building. These results indicate that the public need for education on green buildings is unmet.

Without knowing where green buildings are and how they help, the public won't be able to contribute to the growth of Washington's green building market. Nationals Park could become a modern day "Field of Dreams" that draws the public into the wonder of green building and furthers the goals of Washington's new green building policy: "To become an environmental leader."

Just imagine the shift in consciousness if the public were given a chance to learn about green building technology through an interactive "Environmental Learning Center" at the ballpark. Fans could learn about the stadium's high-tech groundwater and stormwater filtration system, which surrounds the park to purify water before it reenters the Anacostia River watershed. Through other green technologies, water consumption will be reduced by 37 percent, saving more than 3.6 million gallons per year. Energy consumption will be reduced by 21 percent through the use of energy-efficient field lighting, and through the construction of a 6,300 square-foot green roof covered with plants to provide increased roof insulation.

While the architects promise an educational component, current plans suggest only the use of signage and green tours. Will Washington officials hit a grand slam by combining a state-of-the-art green building with quality green education? If yes, then this field of dreams truly would be green.

-- Annette Bellafiore

New Haven, Conn.

The writer wrote her master's thesis on green building in Washington and was an intern at the U.S. Green Building Council last summer.

Nationals Stadium and Eminent Domain


starting at 5:11

I actually think baseball did buy them out, somehow, somehow..

The word will be known someday.

Likewise with the abortion of Washington, D.C.'s South Capitol Mall.

From Sphairos Productions:

We are currently developing a feature fiction film with director Eric Cheevers (Parasite Films) based on the recent destruction of a 4 square block area of Southeast Washington DC where a baseball stadium is currently being built. The film revolves around the stories of people who worked & lived in this exceptionally diverse neighborhood, focusing on the infamous male entertainment nightclubs.

Some 35 hours of video was shot of the neighborhood's demolition and the months leading up to it. These sounds and images will not only constitute a parallel documentary but will also be included in this neo-realist inspired film.

South Capitol/Frederick Douglass Mall

www.HighwaysAndCommunities.com/southcapitolstreet
[should be available at way back machine]

It would have been the 1st major addition to monumental Washington, D.C. since the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials ...

Yet it would be quietly aborted, un-reported by the media and the private "environmentalist" organizations, with the sole building along South Capitol Street saved being the St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church ... a conflict also un-reported ...

Illustration from N.C.P.C.'s 1997
"Extending the Legacy: Planning America's Capital for the 21st Century"

St Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church:
monument to the selfishness of the Roman Catholic Church heirarchy
in aborting the South Capitol Mall

located at the north-east quadrant of the intersection with M Street,
and the sole building along South Capitol Street necessarily spared by the abortion of the South Capitol Mall

In the 1990s, the United States National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) began exploring ideas for Washington, D.C.'s long term planning, as a follow up to the early 1900s McMillan Commission.

A 1993 article in The Washington Post listed the basic ideas of NCPC's long term thinking to expand upon the cities’ various axis and focal points- e.g. the West and East Capitol axis respectively with the Lincoln Memorial and R.F.K. Stadium -- with attention focused on the axis of South Capitol Street.

Currently a 6 lane surface street with a 4 lane underpass beneath its crossing with M Street, all within a 130 foot building line to building line right of way, South Capitol Street is similar to many other D.C. streets. Its axis though has potential given its potential vista from Capitol Hill to the Anacostia River. And the buildings along it with but one exception are not architecturally significant, and which would be relatively uncontroversial to demolish. Hence, NCPC's vision for South Capitol Street was to redevelop it with a significantly wider space between its flanking building lines for a new open landscaped green space extending as wide as Half Streets SW and SE. In short, the South Capitol axis would be reborn with what would logically be called a South Capitol Mall.

Although NCPC apparently never gave this Mall a name, it's the concept championed by NCPC.'s 1997 publication, "Extending the Legacy: Planning America's Capital for the 21st Century", with its numerous renderings of the future "Mall" along South Capitol, including that on its cover. However, with the South Capitol Street Bridge being officially known as the Frederick Douglass Bridge, the South Capitol Mall could likewise be named the Frederick Douglass Mall.

Cover: NCPC's 1997
"Extending the Legacy: Planning America's Capital for the 21st Century"

South Capitol at Virginia Avenue at site of today's elevated SW/SE Freeway
(Time magazine's 1997 report include the above illustration, but none of the illustrations below that clearly show the broad Mall/Promenade)

South Capitol at M Street

South Capitol at the Anacostia River

Cover: NCPC 2001 "Memorials and Museums"

NCPC 2001 "Memorials and Museums"
Conceptual Framework
(think of the Lincoln Memorial and RFK Stadium)

NCPC 2001 "Memorials and Museums"

"One of several recent concepts for a revitalized South Capitol Street with mixed land uses and new public spaces reaching from the U.S. Capitol to the Anacostia waterfront"

"One of...?!" This would be a hint of things to come...

South Capitol Street Physical Realities

The Abortion of the South Capitol Mall

South Capitol Avenue
(Boulevard)

Passonneau and Partners
www.passonneau.com

This illustration appeared within a slide show by Joseph Passonneau FIA, AIA, and a member of the "Committee of 100" in August 2000 at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. The general topic of that presentation was a proposal for a SE Freeway Tunnel between the 11th Street Bridges and the start of the SW Freeway at (or rather above) South Capitol Street. That proposal would not be fully developed: it would show its western tunnel portal being fed by the existing elevated freeway. But it would offer a glimpse of what influential people were pushing quietly.

Can anyone point to any reporting in The Washington Post and other large circulation newspapers, nor the television media, about the opponents of the Frederick Douglas Mall (Promenade), or their efforts to block it?

As this Passonneau plan was shown in August 2000, it came during the Administration of U.S. President Clinton, whose autograph is on the front cover of a copy of NCPC's 1997 "Extending the Legacy: Planning America's Capitol for the 21st Century" affixed to the wall of their headquarters' reception area.

I would call this a South Capitol Avenue because that would be consistent terminology used for other major Washington, D.C. surface streets with a building line to building line right of way width of 130' or 160', such as New Jersey Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue. The term "boulevard" is not used for such roads, and is more of a term to make it sound more different -- indeed more desirable, special or exotic -- then it actually is.

This is the earliest known to me post 1997 South Capitol proposal to exclude the Frederick Douglass Mall (Promenade), and to instead tear down every building along South Capitol Street and replace with new development, except for one cluster of buildings to the west (left) and St. Vincent de Paul Church to the east, immediately north of M Street SE. Asides from Time Magazine's strange to me reporting in 1997 of NEITHER showing any of the illustrations showing the South Capitol Frederick Douglass Mall (Promenade), nor making any text mention, this was the 1st sign that something was afoot to abort it.

The only opposition I have found mentioned in the various planning reports is in the 2003 NCPC South Capitol Street Urban Design Study: people living along Carrollsburg Place and Half Streets SW whose dwelling would be demolished for the Promenade, or for new real estate development: a distinction forgotten with the DC government's enthusiasm for eminent domain for the latter for such things as Nationals Stadium.

Notably, Passonneau makes no mention of this Promenade, nor this issue, in any of his public writings that I have found, including his web site. Go cruise it -- www.passonneau.com -- and attempt to find anything about South Capitol Street, even his proposal for a narrow South Capitol Street lined almost entirely by new buildings significantly larger then those replaced. Indeed, public discussion or controversy or consciousness over this planning substitution appears to be about non-existent.

It's like those behind this planning substitution feel its would not stand the light of day.

Joseph Passonneau: apologist for the abortion of the South Capitol Mall

Choices!

South Capitol Frederick Douglass Mall

(Promenade)
Illustration from National Capital Planning Commission's
"Extending the Legacy: Planning America's Capital for the 21st Century"

or

South Capitol Avenue
(Boulevard)

Illustration by Passonneau and Partners,
presented in a slide show August 2000 by Joseph Passonneau at the National Building Museum

Un-official stamp "commemorating" N.C.P.C.'s apostacy
Artwork by Ian Goddard' directed by Douglas Willinger

Washington, D.C.'s aborted South Capitol Mall: un-reported by the "mainstream" media and "environmentalist" organizations.

An Unreported Story:

South Capitol Street Frederick Douglass Mall

Illustration from N.C.P.C.'s 1997 "Extending the Legacy"

In the 1990s, the National Capital Planning Commission began exploring ideas for long term planning.

A 1993 article in The Washington Post listed the basic ideas of NCPC's long term thinking to expand upon the city's various axis and focal points- e.g. the West and East Capitol axis respectively with the Lincoln Memorial and R.F.K. Stadium -- with attention focused on the axis of South Capitol Street that would be lined by new buildings replacing most or all of the existing buildings, most of which are industrial buildings, and a good amount of open parking lots, one block of 34 residential dwellings to the west between O and P Streets SW, and the one building with by far the best architecture of anything along South Capitol Street south of the SW/SE Freeway, located at the northeast corner of the inetrsection with M Street SE: St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church.

Currently a 6 lane surface street with a 4 lane underpass beneath its crossing with M Street, all within a 130 foot building line to building line right of way, South Capitol Street is similar to many other D.C. streets. Its axis though has potential given its potential vista from Capitol Hill to the Anacostia River. And the buildings along it with but one exception are not architectually significent, and which would be reletively uncontroversial to demolish. Hence, NCPC's vision for South Capitol Street was to redevelop it with a significently wider space between its flanking building lines for a new open landscaped green space: in short, the South Capitol axis would be reborn with what we would otherwise call a South Capitol Mall, or, taking and adopting the same of the South Capitol Street Bridge's official name as the South Capitol Frederick Douglass Mall.

Although N.C.P.C. apparantly never gave this Mall a name, it's the concept championed by N.C.P.C.'s 1997 publication, "Extending the Legacy: Planning America's Capital for the 21st Century", with its numerious renderings of the future "Mall" along South Capitol, including that on its cover.

This "legacy" that was to be extended was that of Pierre L'Enfant and of the 4 architects of what is better known as the McMillan Commission plan. L'Enfant established the street grid with its grand west capitol axis National Mall to the Washington Monument The McMillan Commission plan extended this west Mall further to create the Lincoln Memorial west via new landfill. It also significantly reconciled the idea of urban railroads with this L'Enfant/McMillan classicism, by replacing the central north-south railroad link that went across the west Mall as an open cut, with an all new railroad tunnel beneath 1st Street NE/SE. It would further blend this utilitarianism and classicism magnificently with the Beaux Arts Union Station with its curved segment of Massachusetts Avenue NE


This legacy extension would have followed that of the creation of the western extension of the west Mall with its Reflecting Pool and Lincoln Memorial.


It was celebrated by the U.S. Post Office release of a $1 stamp featuring the Lincoln Memorial on February 12, 1923. (scott 571)

The next time the U.S.P.S. released a stamp that illustrated some portion of the west Mall that comes to mind is a 37 cent "commemorative" stamp for Washington, D.C. on September 23, 2003. (scott 3813) It has a diamond orientation -- mimicking that of D.C. featuring a plan view (overhead) portion of the L'Enfant street grid, flanked by isometric photographs of the Washington Monument and a row of charming late 1800s townhouses.

http://www.usps.com/communications/news/stamps/2003/sr03_048.txt

Background and details on the stamp:

The District of Columbia stamp is shaped like a diamond, as was the original 100 square mile tract of land chosen to be the permanent site of the nation's capital.

Early in U.S. history, different cities took turns serving as the U.S. capital. Then, in 1790, the U.S. Congress authorized the establishment of a permanent capital on federal land. That land would become the District of Columbia (for Christopher Columbus). President George Washington selected the exact site in the District where the capital city would be built (the city would eventually bear his name). The land for the District was ceded to the United States by Maryland and Virginia; about a third of that land was returned to Virginia in the mid-1800s, and the diamond shape was no more. Today the District encompasses almost 69 square miles.

Designed by Greg Berger, the District of Columbia stamp design features in its top quadrant a detail from a plan of Washington developed by Pierre Charles L'Enfant in 1791. This French-born engineer and architect was asked by President Washington to design the plan for the city. Though L'Enfant was dismissed from his job the next year, much of his plan was eventually implemented and can be seen in the wide avenues radiating from the White House ("President's House" on the plan) and the U.S. Capitol ("Congress House" on the plan). L'Enfant also envisioned the sweeping view from the Capitol westward along the National Mall - the long expanse of green visible near the center of the plan, as shown on the stamp.

The right quadrant of the stamp shows typical row houses in a Washington neighborhood. These particular houses are in the Shaw neighborhood. Shaw was designated an historic district in 1985.

Cherry blossoms fill the bottom quadrant of the stamp. In 1912 Japan presented Washington with cherry trees as a symbol of international friendship, and today more than 3,700 trees grow around the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial; in East Potomac Park; and on the Washington Monument grounds. Each spring hundreds of thousands of residents and visitors celebrate Washington's famous blooms at the annual Cherry Blossom Festival.

The left quadrant of the stamp is a view along the National Mall featuring three of the most widely recognized structures in the country: the U.S. Capitol (background), the Washington Monument (center) and the Lincoln Memorial (foreground). The red towers of the Smithsonian Institution Building, or "Castle," also can be seen just to the right of the Washington Monument.

Notably to me, is how this L'Enfant street view is cropped.

To the left, it is cropped to truncated the National Mall to roughly its originally proposed length.

This makes sense when one realizes that this is the L'Enfant street grid and not the L'Enfant/McMillan street grid. This is apparent with magnification with its open canal and its lack of any Union Station (or any sign of any railroads, let alone grade separated highways.

To the right it is cropped by the row of charming townhouses, far enough away from the U.S. Capitol to show some of the street grid, but close enough to obscure the area of South Capitol Street where NCPC's Extending the Legacy envisioned its "Mall" for South Capitol Street.

How this stamp arrays these images appears largely symmetrical, as does the L”Enfant plan which centers its diamond not at the North Capitol Street axis, but rather to the west, with this stamp centering the diamond between 7^th and 9^th Streets NW/SW.

However, its presentation of an illustration of the un-extended plan surrounded by illustrations of latter additions, with the text commemorating "USA Washington District of Columbia The Nation's Capital", obscures the very South capitol Street corridor that was targeted by 3 separate official government studies that very same year this stamp was issued.

Its selection of using the original western end of the west National Mall as a line to mirror to the east could suggest the idea of not extending any legacies with extending any green ways/linear parks beyond the Lincoln Memorial shown in the photo to the stamp's left.

That stamp would have made a good means to commemorate this future National Mall extension, supplementing the existing West Mall with a South Mall.

Instead, its design would subtly reflect a decision to abandon the concept of a Mall for South Capitol Street, symbolically cropping/obscuring South Capitol Street; its March 23, 2003 release would fall right between the release of the present idea of an all new stadium up against the east side of South Capitol Street as an option in November 2002, and the U.S. National Capital Planning Commission’s abandonment its "key-note" concept from its 1990s planning. The selection of that stadium site was publicly announced around September 22, 2004.

That location for the stadium, combined with the idea of insisting upon symmetricy sometimes, would shrink the very idea of a "monumental gateway" for South Capitol Street southwards from a 50-400 foot wide linear park extending from Virginia Avenue to the Anacostia River, a traffic circle entirely south of Potomac Avenue, squished vertically to somewhat appear as a "Mall-like park."

In light of this, obscuring the South Capitol Street area on this stamp has an undeniable irony.

The Un Reporting 2003+

The Un Reporting 1996+

Why Was Not The Public Informed?

Would this have helped?

Useful reading

(excerpt)

Why does the District need a planning commission? It would help educate the city government, developers and citizens in every neighborhood about the planning process, which currently is not well understood. Yes, we have a comprehensive plan, but it is, in effect, a triumph of good graphics and ballyhoo over substance. A planning commission could help citizens and public officials understand this and set their sights higher. The D.C. Council vacuously cites the comprehensive plan, but always manages to find a way to defer final action on anything the plan suggests. Then, in haste, it adopts whatever has emerged. This amounts to political flatulence, rather than legislating as the law requires.

A planning commission for the District would provide some parity with the National Capital Planning Commission, a heavily funded agency interested primarily in the federal government’s holdings. The NCPC also calls the shots, ultimately, on whatever the local planning and development office produces in the way of a comprehensive plan.

There is no legal barrier to the city establishing a planning commission. The power of the mayor to do exactly this was confirmed in a 2003 legal opinion by Covington & Burling. Copies of that memorandum of law written for the Committee of 100 were furnished to members of the Council, then-Mayor Tony Williams and Office of Planning officials. They ignored it. The same memorandum was given to the current mayor and his director of planning. They, too, have ignored it. A planning commission might, after all, provide some sort of check on the mayor’s and deputy mayor’s adventures in development.

Pope Benedict to Hold Mass at Washington Nationals Stadium:
Expect the "... King of the World!!!"

The Pope will tentatively hold Mass next April at Washington Nationals Stadium, days after its opening day.

In describing this stadium's clubhouse, Jacqueline Dupree uses the term "I'm King of the World".

I think that's a plausible description of someone who will be there next April.

With the Douglass Bridge viaduct now demolished, the views looking north on South Capitol Street easily encompass both the ballpark and the Capitol dome. The Administration building at right is now topped out. (10/21/07)
Above photo and caption by Washington Post real estate reporter Jacqueline Dupree http://www.jdland.com/dc/stadium.cfm?tab=no2

Note the knife-edged clubhouse to the right.

Looking across the roof of the under-construction admin building (or, as I call it, the bow of the S.S. Nationals), toward South Capitol Street and points south, including the new intersection at South Capitol and Potomac. I'm King of the World!!! (9/1/07) above photo and caption Washington Post real estate reporter Jacqueline Dupree http://www.jdland.com/dc/stadium.cfm?tab=no3

Jacqueline Dupree said it. That's the sentiment of someone who will be standing near that "bow" next April!

More...

U.S. N.C.P.C.'s Lies about Latest Demolition Special-
Camden's 1325 South Capitol Street
Falsely Claims Compliance with recommendations of Extending the Legacy

NCPC Executive Director Patricia E. Gallagher (center),
with NCPC Chairman John V. Cogbill, III (right)

http://www.ncpc.gov/UserFiles/File/NCPC%20Commission%20Actions%20and%20EDRs/2007%20NCPC%20Commission%20Actions%20and%20EDRs/August%202007/8.2.07%20-%20ZC%2006-41%20(delegated)%20Camden%20dev.%20on%20South%20Capitol%20St._.pdf

Pursuant to delegations of authority adopted by the Commission on August 6, 1999, 40 U.S.C. §8724(a), and DC Code §2-1006(a), I find that the proposed planned unit development and related map amendment for the Camden residential development at 1325 South Capitol Street would not be inconsistent with the Comprehensive Plan for the National Capital, nor would it have an adverse impact on any federal interests. ...

The project is located at 1325 South Capitol Street on Square 653, Lot 111. The proposed map amendment will rezone the property to C-3-C (Commercial) from C-2-C. The C-3-C zoning permits a maximum height of 90 feet and Floor-to-Area Ratio (FAR) of 6.5. The C-2-C permits 90 feet in height and an FAR of 6.0. The project consists of an 11-story residential structure at 110 feet in height. The project is setback 15 feet from the South Capitol Street right-of-way, and steps down to 70 feet on its western side, adjacent to the existing residential town homes.

This map amendment is consistent with the recommendations of the South Capitol Street Task Force and the Extending the Legacy Plan. The project respects the 15-foot setback for South Capitol Street as recommended by the Task Force [BUT NOT BY EXTENDING THE LEGACY] and provides new residential opportunities for the emerging redeveloped neighborhood. As such, this proposal will not negatively impact any federal interests nor be inconsistent with the Comprehensive Plan for the National Capital.

Opening up the South Capitol vista was a major point of NCPC's planning through the 1990s with Extending the Legacy: Planning America's Capital for the 21st Century, and as late as September 2001 with its publication Memorials and Museums.


But NCPC like the rest of our government would mysteriously go apostate- a decision benefiting only a single building along South Capitol Street, the St. Vincent de Paul Church at the intersection with M Street.

Demolition to Begin for New Demolition Special:
The Continuing Desecration of the Extending the Legacy Plan

Future -- post 2012 -- Eminent Domain for Public Use?

A rendering of 1345 South Capitol Street, a 244-unit residential building under development by Camden. Plans are for construction to start in 2008; site demolition is scheduled for late October/early November 2007. (Rendering from the WDG Architecture web site.) Illustration and caption from Jacqueline Dupree

Land to be cleared for condo project -- 1345 South Capitol Street SW -- which itself conflicts with U.S. National Capital Planning Commission's South Capitol Mall seen on the cover of Extending the Legacy: Planning America's Capital for the 21st Century, and hence will require eminent domain for public use.

Anyone moving into this structure should know of this conflict, and thus understand that it will need to be removed, via eminent domain for public use.

Of course this could be avoided simply if the project were shifted a few hundred feet west.

Then it would ultimately be worth more money because it would be fronting the grand monumental promenade of the South Capitol Mall.

As of this writing, that could still be done.