C a p i t a l E n g i n ee r s

T h e U . S . A r m y C o r p s o f E n g i n ee r s

i n t h e De v e l o p m e n t o f Wa s h i n g t o n , D . C .

17 9 0 – 2 0 0 4

P a m e l a S c o t t
“B

uilding forState, War, and

Navy Depts, North-Wing, 

Washington, D.C. Iron Work

DrawingNo. 13, CastIron

Columns andPilasters for

BasementStory.” ThomasLincoln

Casey, Lieut. Col., Corps of

Eng’rs. U.S.A., September 1, 1879

Natio

nalArchives, Cartographic

Branch, RG121, Folder 47, 

Drawing 13

“B

uilding forLibrary of

Congress. GeneralPlan of

Streets & Approaches.” Paul J. 

Pelz, Architect. BernardR. 

Green, Superintendent and

Engineer. April 1892

LibraryofCongress, Prints & 

PhotographsDivision, ADE-UNIT

2043, no. 983

“Washington

Aqueduct, Cabin

John Bridge, Scaffolding.” Capt. 

M. C. Meigs, U.

S. Engineers, Chief

Engineer. AlfredL. Rives, 

Division Engineer. DrawnbyA. L. 

R. 30 November 1859

WashingtonAqueductDivision, 

BaltimoreEngineerDistrict

“LongitudinalSection, South

Wing. OriginalRevisedPlan for

Extension of Capitolby Capt. 

M. C. Meigs, U.S. Engineers.” 

[Adopt]edby thePresident of

the U.S. 27 June 1853

Architectof theCapitol, 74263

“Fan

Room, H. ofR. [House

ofRepresentatives], U.S.C. 

[Capitol] Extension. Section

Thro. C.D. ofPlan.” M. C. 

Meigs, Capt. of Engineers in

charge of Capitol Extension, 

21 Sept. 1858

Architectof theCapitol, 59184

“Map of th

e City of

WashingtonShowing the

Varieties ofStreetPavements

Laid and Under Contract

on January 1st, 1891.” To

Accompany theAnnualReport

of Cap’t. W. T. Rossell. 

(Rossellwas theAssistant to

the Engineer Commissioner of

the District of Columbia.)

Copy courtesyofPamelaScott.

CoverMap

Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, Office ofPublic Buildings andGrounds. 

“T

heHistoricMall DesignedbyL’Enfant andApprovedby Washington. 

S

tudy for itsRealization and Embellishment in ConnectionwithPotomac

Park an

dMemorial Bridge, by ColonelTheo. A. Bingham, U.S. Army, 

Mar

ch 1, 1900; Compiled and DrawnbyF. D. Owen, Asst. Eng., First

S

tudy.” Ayear before theSenatePark Commissionconvened, Colonel

Bingham, th

eengineer officer incharge ofpublic buildings and grounds, 

had three mapsdrawn. They includeda vignette ofL’Enfant’sMall and

a “SecondStudy” that proposedacampus of office buildings between

P

ennsylvaniaAvenue, NW, and B Street, now ConstitutionAvenue. The

map on thecover, the “FirstStudy,” depicted hisideas of how theMall’s

intimatepedestrian-oriented gardenscould beretained but also included

proposals inresponse toseveralcontemporarysuggestions touse the

newacreage thatengineerdredge and fill operations hadcreated west

of the WashingtonMonument. Bingham’s map aligned the proposed

M

emorial BridgewithNewYorkAvenue in thedistrict and placed trium-

phal arches atbothends of thebridge, elements initiallysupported

butultimatelyrejectedby theSenatePark Commission. Bingham’s plan

included pleasuredrives along theperimeter ofPotomacPark, which

wereadopted, whilea vast military parade ground southwest of the

WhiteHousewas not. Binghamdid not site theLincoln or Jefferson

memorials becauseneither hadyet beenlegislated.

Annual

Reportof theChiefofEngineers, 1901. 

Copy courtesyofPamelaScott.
C a p i t a l E n g i n ee r s

T h e U . S . A r m y C o r p s o f E n g i n ee r s

i n t h e De v e l o p m e n t o f Wa s h i n g t o n , D . C .

17 9 0 – 2 0 0 4

P a m e l a S c o t t

Office of History

Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Alexandria, Virginia

2011

EP 870-1-67
Scott, Pamela, 1944–

Capital engineers : the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the development of Washington, 

D.C. 1790–2004 / Pamela Scott.

p. cm.

“EP 870-1-67.”

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Military engineering—Washington (D.C.)—History. 2. United States. Army. Corps of 

Engineers. Washington District—History. 3. Washington (D.C.)—Buildings, structures, etc. 

I. Title.

UG24.D58S36 2008

307.1’41609753—dc22

2005025779

First printing 2005

Second edition 2008

Third edition 2011
F o r ew o r d v i i

P r e f a ce i x

A c k n o w l ed g m e n t s x i i

1 | T h e G r a n d D e s i g n 1

1 7 9 0 – 1 8 0 0

L’ E n fa n t P r o p o s e s C o r p s o f E n g i n ee r s 2

T h e F ede r a l Ci t y P r o p o s ed 4

T h e I m pa c t o f L’ E n fa n t ’ s 1 7 8 0 s De s i g n s 5

Wa s h i n g t o n Hi r e s L’ E n fa n t 6

S i t i n g t h e F ede r a l Ci t y Wi t h i n t h e F ede r a l Di s t r i c t 8

L’ E n fa n t ’ s De s i g n P r o ce s s 1 0

L’ E n fa n t ’ s I n de p e n de n ce 1 2

L’ E n fa n t ’ s Ur b a n I n t e n t i o n s 1 6

L’ E n fa n t ’ s Do w n fa l l 1 8

2 | T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y 2 1

1 8 0 0 – 6 5

T h e F ede r a l Go v e r n m e n t Mo v e s t o Wa s h i n g t o n , 1 8 0 0 2 1

T h e Mi l i t a r y Ac a de m y at We s t P o i n t a n d t h e C o r p s 2 3

C o r p s - De s i g n ed F o r t s P r o t ec t Wa s h i n g t o n 2 5

C o r p s E n g i n ee r s C o n s u lt o n C a p i t o l C o n s t r uc t i o n 2 8

I s a a c Ro b e r de a u a n d t h e C o r p s ’ T o p o g r a p h i c a l B u r e a u 2 9

T h e C o r p s ’ I n c r e a s i n g Re s p o n s i b i l i t i e s 3 1

C o r p s E n g i n ee r s a n d t h e S m i t h s o n i a n I n s t i t u t i o n 3 6

S u p p ly i n g Wa s h i n g t o n w i t h Wat e r 3 9

U . S . C a p i t o l E x t e n s i o n 4 7

T h e C o r p s i n Ci v i l Wa r Wa s h i n g t o n 6 5

C o n t e n t s

iii
iv

C o n t e n t s

3 | T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y 7 1

1 8 6 5 – 9 0

I n t r o duc t i o n 7 1

Of f i ce o f P u b l i c B u i l d i n g s a n d Gr o u n d s 7 2

Wa s h i n g t o n Mo n u m e n t 8 1

S t at e , Wa r a n d Nav y B u i l d i n g 8 9

U . S . Nat i o n a l Mu s eu m 9 6

Ar m y Med i c a l Mu s eu m , r a z ed 1 9 6 9 9 7

P e n s i o n B u i l d i n g 9 8

L i b r a r y o f C o n g r e s s 1 0 3

E n g i n ee r C o m m i s s i o n e r s 1 1 1

B u i l d i n g C o de s 1 1 7

P e r m a n e n t S y s t e m o f Hi g h way s 1 1 8

P o t o m a c a n d An a c o s t i a Ri v e r B r i d g e s 1 2 0

Wa s h i n g t o n E n g i n ee r Di s t r i c t 1 2 5

4 | T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y 1 3 1

1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5

I n t r o duc t i o n 1 3 1

T h e S e n at e P a r k C o m m i s s i o n P l a n , 1 9 0 2 1 3 2

T h e P r e s i de n t ’ s Ho u s e 1 3 4

Go v e r n m e n t P r i n t i n g Of f i ce 1 4 0

Ar m y Wa r C o l l e g e a n d Ag r i cu lt u r e De pa r t m e n t B u i l d i n g 1 4 4

T h e C o r p s a n d t h e A m e r i c a n I n s t i t u t e o f Ar c h i t ec t s 1 4 7

Gr a n t Me m o r i a l 1 4 9

L i n c o l n Me m o r i a l 1 5 3

Ro c k C r ee k P a r k 1 6 0

Wa s h i n g t o n Aq ueduc t 1 7 0

P o t o m a c Ri v e r F l at s Rec l a m at i o n 1 7 7

An a c o s t i a Ri v e r F l at s Rec l a m at i o n 1 8 0

P o t o m a c Ri v e r B r i d g e s 1 8 4

Mi s ce l l a n e o u s Di s t r i c t P r o j ec t s 1 8 5
v

C o n t e n t s

5 | T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y 1 8 9

1 9 1 5 – 5 0

E n g i n ee r C o m m i s s i o n e r s 1 8 9

Of f i ce o f P u b l i c B u i l d i n g s a n d Gr o u n d s 1 9 4

Ar l i n g t o n Me m o r i a l B r i d g e 1 9 8

B r i d g e s , Wat e r S u p p ly , a n d An a c o s t i a Rec l a m at i o n 2 0 2

Wa s h i n g t o n P a r k s 2 0 8

Of f i ce o f P u b l i c B u i l d i n g s a n d P u b l i c P a r k s 2 0 9

Wa s h i n g t o n C h a n n e l I m p r o v e m e n t s 2 1 7

Mo u n t Ve r n o n Me m o r i a l Hi g h way 2 2 1

Wa s h i n g t o n Nat i o n a l Ai r p o r t 2 2 1

F o r t Dr i v e 2 2 3

P e n t a g o n 2 2 6

Wo r l d Wa r II i n Wa s h i n g t o n 2 3 0

T r u m a n Wh i t e Ho u s e 2 3 3

6 | M e t r o p o l i s 2 4 1

1 9 5 0 – 2 0 0 4

I n t r o duc t i o n 2 4 1

Ur b a n Rede v e l o p m e n t 2 4 3

Hi g h way P l a n n i n g 2 4 7

Ma i n t a i n i n g a n d E x pa n d i n g Go v e r n m e n t F a c i l i t i e s 2 5 0

Wa s h i n g t o n Aq ueduc t 2 5 5

P o t o m a c a n d An a c o s t i a Ri v e r B a s i n P l a n n i n g a n d

Ma i n t e n a n ce 2 5 8

Mu n i t i o n s Cl e a n u p at S p r i n g Va l l e y a n d C a m p S i m m s 2 6 5

Di s t r i c t o f C o l u m b i a P u b l i c S c h o o l s 2 6 7

Ko r e a n Wa r Me m o r i a l 2 6 9

T h e P e n t a g o n 2 7 0

S u m m at i o n 2 7 2

A p p e n d i x 2 7 3

N o t e s 2 7 5

B i b l i o g r a p h y 2 9 1

I n de x 2 9 9

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is best known for its water resources and environmental 

work and its construction of facilities on military bases; however, in its long history the Corps 

has performed many missions, some of which continue to the present and others that reflected 

the needs of a particular period of our nation’s history.

Although not forgotten, but perhaps imperfectly remembered, the Corps’ critical role in the 

development of Washington, D.C., is a fascinating and important chapter in U.S. Army Engineer 

history. The Corps’ role began when the federal government called on the expertise of the few 

formally educated engineers in the early republic to provide urban services such as a reliable 

water supply or to contribute to the expansion of the Capitol.

As the small and rudimentary city expanded during and after the Civil War, the requirement 

for greatly increased engineering services became evident, both for the city’s governmental center 

and for its neighborhoods where residents lived and businesses operated. For almost seventy years, 

Army Engineer officers supervised the monumental, federal core of the city as the Mall grew, 

evolved, and became the primary focus for the tributes the nation erected for its heroes. The Office 

of Public Building and Grounds was at the heart of the transformation of the city’s federal center.

At almost the same time, Army Engineers were given a critical role in governing the city 

where Washingtonians lived and worked. As one of three commissioners who ran the city, the 

Engineer Commissioners were powerful figures directing public works and providing the expanding public urban infrastructure that a modern city needed as it grew in size and complexity after 

the Civil War.

And finally, Army Engineers performed their traditional missions in the Washington area 

by maintaining navigation on the city’s rivers and building facilities on its many military installations. But those missions were magnified as the Washington Engineer District literally created 

new land that became the site of a national airport, monuments, and parks on the banks of the 

Potomac River.

By the fourth decade of the twentieth century, the Army Engineers’ role in the capital began 

to decline as new federal agencies, such as the National Park Service, created to maintain the 

F o r ew o r d

vii
viii

F o r ew o r d

country’s natural and man-made monuments, assumed duties formerly performed by the Corps. 

Three decades later, Washingtonians received more self-rule as elected officials replaced the 

federally-appointed city government. Only the water resources and military construction roles 

remain for the Corps, now performed by its Baltimore District. 

Army Engineers fulfilled the needs of the time but eventually the needs evolved in new 

directions. In the process the Corps relinquished its central role in Washington, D.C., proud of 

its accomplishments and ready to fulfill its remaining duties. This book chronicles their contributions to the city and to the nation.

R. L. Van Antwerp

Lieutenant General, US Army

Chief of Engineers
Capital Engineers began as a revision and update of Albert E. Cowdrey’s A City for the Nation: 

The Army Engineers and the Building of Washington, 1790–1967, published in 1979 by the 

Office of History, Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, under its old title, the Historical 

Division. Cowdrey’s book was a quarter of a century old, long out of print, and did not, of course, 

reflect the tremendous growth of interest and research in the history of Washington, D.C., since 

its publication. In addition the book did not reflect the growing interest in and capability of providing sophisticated and valuable graphic material. While A City for the Nation included many 

images, it did not begin to tap the rich visual resources available on the history of Army 

Engineer work in the city. So the desire for an improved, more current, and better illustrated 

history of the role of Army Engineers in the development of the nation’s capital led to this book.

The new publication began when Dr. Martin Gordon, a historian in the office and specialist in the history of the District of Columbia, engaged Ms. Pamela Scott, a well-known and 

well-respected architectural historian and historian of Washington, to revise the Cowdrey text. 

When Dr. Gordon left the office for a new position, I inherited the project. When I saw the 

excellent revised text that Ms. Scott was producing and looked at the now dated look and concept of the old history, it seemed to me that both the subject matter and the resources available 

argued for a much more ambitious publication.

The office had already engaged Mr. Douglas J. Wilson and Ms. Emelie M. George of R&D 

Associates, a historical research and writing company, to undertake an intensive inventory of 

the visual resources available on the history of the Corps of Engineers, including its work in 

Washington, in local archives and libraries. Mr. Wilson’s research was unearthing a wealth of 

images beyond the already substantial collection in the office’s own Research Collections.

The new technology of digital photography and scanning made access to this visual material 

easier and more effective. For example, the Annual Reports of the Chiefs of Engineers are filled 

with maps, charts, and photographs that have scarcely been exploited due partially to the difficulties of reproducing the material. Now very large maps and charts can be scanned and enhanced if 

they are in poor condition and used very effectively as illustrations. Ms. Jean Diaz, editor, Office 

P r e f a ce

ix
x

p r e f a ce

of History, and Ms. Jessa Poppenhager, a student formerly employed in the office, were adept at 

scanning difficult images, especially large ones that had to be reassembled digitally, and cleaning 

and enhancing these historic maps and images without losing their authenticity and charm.

An excellent text and access to a plethora of visual materials led me to envision a publication 

that relied on both text and images. After all, the Army Engineers’ work involved to a large extent 

construction of edifices, and it makes little sense to write about the built environment and not 

show it. Text and images with captions can be intertwined to both complement and supplement 

each other producing a more nuanced and sophisticated historical product than either could produce alone. So the new conception of this publication involved a heavy investment of time in both 

textual and image writing and research.

The group responsible for producing this history readily agreed to the new conception and 

worked long hours to make it a reality. Ms. Scott gave (and I use that word partially in its literal 

sense) generously of her time and effort. The newly-conceived book was much more than she had 

originally anticipated and would not have been possible without her enthusiastic support. She 

also kindly shared material from her own rich collection of documents and images on the history 

of Washington.

Douglas J. Wilson combined a talent for image research with a talent for image management. 

In some ways the revolution in printing that allows books to go to print on CDs has complicated 

the job of the book’s producers. The entire team played a role in selecting the images for the book 

from the wealth of choices Mr. Wilson provided. He deftly managed paper copies, photographic 

copies, and digital scans of images and combined them with captions, credits, and other information along with the status and even size of the image into a complex but essential Excel chart that 

became the Bible of the group. Mr. Wilson and I wrote the captions and Ms. Scott reviewed, corrected, and embellished them. In addition the entire group reviewed the text and the page proofs.

No publication can succeed without the services of a good editor. Ms. Jean Diaz was a key 

member of the group. She carefully and conscientiously edited the text and captions and reviewed 

all the page proofs. We relied on her not only to correct our grammar and punctuation but also to 

clarify our meaning. She watched our schedule closely urging us on to greater efforts as deadlines 

grew near. Her patience and good humor helped everyone through those days and weeks that 

were the most trying. Even in this digital age, mistakes are made, and an editor is on the front 

lines and in the most exposed position in the battle to find and correct them. Jean’s careful eye 

on the text, images, and design of the book were critical to the production of this publication.

My colleagues in the Office of History assisted in the preparation of this book in a variety 

of ways. Dr. John Lonnquest and Dr. Michael Brodhead read early chapters of the text and 
xi

p r e f a ce

provided invaluable comments. Mr. James Garber assisted with image research and scanning. 

Ms. Anna Punchak, administrative officer, provided administrative support. Other colleagues 

were interested and encouraging and helped by relieving me of some of my other duties. Dr. 

Paul K. Walker, chief of the office, supported the project enthusiastically but critically from the 

beginning. All departures from standard practice and every commitment of resources received 

his careful scrutiny helping us to focus on what was important and clarify our decisions to 

embark in new directions. But he never hindered our creativity nor dampened our enthusiasm.

Mr. Mark Baker, historian in the Baltimore Engineer District, provided valuable comments 

on the final chapter, and he and Dr. Charles Walker, a historian and former executive assistant in the district, helped define the areas in which the Baltimore District played a role in the 

recent history of Washington. In addition Mr. Baker provided very useful photographic material. 

Mr. Thomas Jacobus, chief of the aqueduct; Mr. David MacGregor; and Mr. Billy Wright of the 

Washington Aqueduct Division of the district gave us access to the collection of images stored in 

the headquarters building at Dalecarlia, and Mr. Wright was both patient and very helpful as we 

delved into the rich resources of the collection.

We were fortunate to obtain the services of EEI Communications for the production of the 

book. About a decade ago, EEI worked for a multi-service group, including the Office of History, 

to produce Robert P. Grathwol and Donita M. Moorhus’s American Forces in Berlin: Cold War 

Outpost, 1945–1994 (Washington, DC: Department of Defense Legacy Resource Management 

Program Cold War Project, 1994), a visually striking publication. Fortunately the project manager 

for the earlier book, Jayne Sutton, was also EEI’s project manager for this publication. A book 

that relies so heavily on visual material requires the early participation of the production team. 

We explained our concept of the book to Jayne and her colleagues, especially Roy Quini who was 

responsible for design of the cover and special features of the book, and Sharon Martin, and 

worked closely with them to define what was possible and worked interactively to obtain a visually attractive and effective design. Everyone worked on a tight schedule and sought to accommodate our vision of the book and the realities of time and funding. EEI’s handsome and intelligent 

design helped us approach the goal of maximizing the effectiveness of both text and images.

Authors get their names on a book’s cover and spine, but good authors know that many other 

names should accompany theirs. This book in particular because of its conception and its history 

was truly a collaborative effort. Every member of the group was critical to its completion, and every 

member of the group is willing and able to say that they share in its failings and accomplishments.

William C. Baldwin

September 2005
Capital Engineers began life as a revised and expanded version of Albert E. Cowdrey’s 

A City for the Nation: The Army Engineers and the Building of Washington, 1790–1967

(1979). The only one of Cowdrey’s six chapters to be completely rewritten was the first 

devoted to L’Enfant’s design for the federal city. Occasional paragraphs and frequent 

sentences from his other five chapters were incorporated in the text of Capital Engineers,

as was some text taken from manuscripts for new final chapters by Roberta Weiner on file in 

the Office of History.

Capital Engineers benefited from a wide range of contemporary scholarship on Washington’s 

built environment including unpublished Ph.D. dissertations and reports by government agencies 

as well as recent and older books, articles, and newspaper accounts. The result remains an overview of the Corps’ extensive contributions towards making Washington one of the world’s great 

cities. Readers might expect bridges and management of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, possibly even the engineering expertise to raise the Washington Monument to its lofty height, but 

most will be surprised by the Engineer Commissioners’ nearly century-long service as the city’s 

leading municipal authorities. Every part of public and private Washington has been informed by 

decisions made by a Corps engineer.

My first thanks go to Dr. Martin K. Gordon, formerly of the Corps’ Office of History, 

Alexandria, Virginia, who commissioned the new edition of A City for the Nation. Corps historians Mr. Mark Baker, Dr. Michael J. Brodhead, and Dr. John Lonnquest corrected errors and 

questioned assumptions. Mr. Douglas J. Wilson collected a broad range of wonderful photographs and drafted many of their captions. Mr. Michael R. Harrison copied relevant parts of 

the Corps’ annual reports and digested their technical aspects. Colleagues who quickly 

responded to queries were Mr. William C. Allen, Dr. William B. Bushong, Dr. Kay Fanning, 

Dr. Kenneth Hafertepe, Dr. Christopher A. Thomas, and Dr. Barbara Wolanin. Ms. Jean R. 

Diaz, editor, Office of History, was an excellent and congenial editor. At EEI Communications, 

Jayne O. Sutton’s enthusiasm and Roy Quini’s beautiful book design made the last stages of 

the project a pleasure. I am very grateful for all their contributions.

xii

A c k n o w l ed g m e n t s
xiii

A c k n o w l ed g m e n t s

My greatest debt of gratitude is owed Dr. William C. Baldwin, Office of History, who 

patiently, thoughtfully, and with great humanity shepherded Capital Engineers through its completion. Dr. Baldwin checked every fact, identified and provided me copies of many little-known 

contemporary sources, researched and selected images and drafted their captions, and wrote 

several paragraphs for the last two chapters that strengthened them immeasurably. I have never 

had a better colleague.

Pamela Scott

August 2005

1 The Grand Design

1790–1800

T h e G r a n d D e s i g n

“To found a city in the center of the United States, for the purpose of making it the 

depository of the acts of the Union, and the sanctuary of the laws which must one day 

rule all North America, is a grand and comprehensive idea,” were the opening words 

of the “Essay on the City of Washington,” published in the Washington Gazette on 

November 19, 1796. The anonymous essay described Washington in extravagant allegorical terms, some of them very suggestive of ideas discernable in Major Peter Charles 

L’Enfant’s visionary 1791–92 plan, but most did not correspond to what was being implemented. The first description of the federal city, written by “Spectator” and appearing 

in the September 26, 1791, issue of the Maryland Journal, was a reliable description 

of the strikingly picturesque land adjacent to Georgetown, Maryland. Moreover, it was 

a laudatory précis of the city’s revolutionary design—“everything grand and beautiful 

that can possibly be introduced into a city.” In 1794 President George Washington’s 

secretary, Tobias Lear, published Observations on the River Potomack, a factual account 

that focused on what businessmen and developers would need to know about local conditions and services.1

Opposite page: L’Enfant’s “Plan of

the City of Washington,” 1792

Library of Congress, Geography and 

Map Division
Thus, before the federal government moved to the permanent capital in 1800, the 

public already had been apprised of its unique character because the entire range of 

L’Enfant’s intentions had been discussed in the public press. To design a beautiful city 

that addressed the political realities of its location within the country, its pragmatic 

problems due to its site, and its symbolism as an expression of the Revolution’s achievements were the French engineer-architect’s goals. L’Enfant (1755–1825), the son of a 

painter at the French court of Louis XVI, came to America in 1777. Although no record 

has been found in France of L’Enfant’s military training, and only cursory notice of his 

artistic education as his father’s student, from the age of twenty-two, L’Enfant served 

first in the French and then in the Continental Army as a military engineer. During the 

winter of 1778, he served with the Continental Army at Valley Forge where he was one 

of the illustrators for acting inspector general Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben’s manual 

of military maneuvers, and served as one of Washington’s trusted couriers. L’Enfant was 

appointed captain of engineers in April 1779, after which he was assigned to work with 

General Johann de Kalb. Fighting in the southern theater, L’Enfant was wounded at the 

battle of Savannah in October 1779, taken prisoner at Charleston in May 1780, and 

exchanged in November.2

L’ E n f a n t P r o p o s e s C o r p s o f E n g i n e e r s

On January 1, 1784, when L’Enfant was honorably discharged from the Continental 

Army, he decided to remain in the United States because he expected that he would 

lead the Corps of Engineers in his adopted country’s reorganized peacetime Army. On 

December 15, 1784, he wrote the president of Congress:

Having been led to expect that such an establishment would take place I should 

now be doubly disappointed if it should not as by remaining here I have lost the 

opportunity of getting employment in my own Country from which I have been 

the more encouraged to absent myself as Brigadier General Kosciuszko at leaving this Continent gave me the flattering expectation of being at the head of a 

department in which if successful I shall endeavour to render my services agreeable to the United States.3

The accompanying “memorial” L’Enfant submitted to Congress proposed a peacetime 

Corps, with an emphasis on a broad technical and cultural education for engineers. He 

proposed that they be proficient in mathematics, mechanics, architecture, hydraulics, 

2

C h a p t e r 1

Silhouette of Peter Charles 

L’Enfant. This is the 

only known authentic 

image of L’Enfant.

Diplomatic Reception Rooms, 

U.S. Department of State
drawing, and “natural philosophy,” the latter “necessary to judge of the nature of the 

Several materials which are used in building” because L’Enfant foresaw the Corps as 

playing a key role in the development of the country’s public as well as its military 

infrastructure.

The duty of the said Corps shall be to attend to and have the direction of all 

the fortified places that of all military and civil building, the maintenance of 

the Roads bridges and Every Kind of work at the public charge. [S]urveys of 

the several places Shall be by them made and properly drawn with a view to 

make out an atlas of the whole Continent from which the Supreme power may 

be able to obtain a more just idea of its situation and forme a distinct opinion upon its advantages and defects. [T]o these plans Shall be added proper 

Notes and Remarks with Schemes for taking advantage of good positions or 

of preventing the defects of some unavoidable inconveniency.4

The visionary rather than practical nature of L’Enfant’s proposed Corps of Engineers, 

coupled with his self-serving and convoluted means of expression, probably led the 

congressional committee that reviewed it to conclude, “the situation of the military posts 

in the U. States does not require the establishment of a Corps of Engineers on the plan of 

the memorialist.” Yet the elite, educated Corps that L’Enfant envisaged became a reality 

within a quarter century.5

L’Enfant’s model for the American Corps of Engineers was a synthesis of the French 

government’s system for commissioning public and military works: public architecture was 

centralized under the king, the “architecte du roi” holding a ministerial post equivalent 

3

Detail from L’Enfant’s 

panorama of West Point, 1780

U.S. Military Academy Library
to the secretary of war who oversaw all military installations. In contrast, the traditional 

English system for overseeing large civic building projects was to appoint commissioners 

(typically three, one of whom often was the architect), leading citizens who posted a bond 

to guarantee their honesty as they had control of the project’s finances; jointly they made 

all decisions regarding design and construction.

T h e F e d e r a l C i t y P r o p o s e d

During the late 1780s L’Enfant kept in close contact with his former military comrades, 

including Washington, while he pursued a civilian career as an architect and engineer. 

L’Enfant later claimed, “when it was contemplated by the old Congress to establish a 

federal city on the bank of the river delawar in the year 1787 I had made considerable 

progress in the survey of ground, and in the preparation of the plan of a city first intended 

there, but the project of that national establishment having been given up, I was encouraged to expect due compensation at some future day.” L’Enfant may have been mistaken 

about the date; on February 2, 1785, Samuel Hardy nominated L’Enfant as one of two 

commissioners “for erecting the federal buildings.” Ten months later L’Enfant wrote the 

Marquis de Lafayette about his disappointment concerning failed projected plans for a 

federal city.6

In 1789 Congress debated “laying the foundation of a city which is to become the 

Capital of this vast Empire” on the Susquehanna River. L’Enfant wrote Washington in 

September seeking the appointment as its projector and renewed a suggestion he made 

in his 1784 proposal, the need to fortify America’s seacoast.

[H]aving had the honor to belong to the Corps of Engineer acting under your 

orders during the late war, and being the only officer of that Corps remaining on the Continent I must confess I have long flattered myself with the hope 

of a reappointment....I view the appointment of Engineer to the United 

States as the one which could possibly be most gratifying to my wishes and 

the necessety of such an office to superintend & direct the fortifications 

necessary in the United States is sufficently apparent[.] [T]he advantage to 

be derived from the appointment will appear more striking when it is considered that the sciences of Military and Civil architecture are so connected as 

to render an Engineer equally serviceable in time of Peace as in war, by the 

employment of his abilities in the internal improvement of the Country.7

C h a p t e r 1

4
T h e I m p a ct o f L’ E n f a n t ’ s 1 7 8 0 s D e s i g n s

L’Enfant’s most significant non-military national contributions in the 1780s were in the 

realm of spectacles, emblematic designs, and public architecture. The form and general 

content of these projects contributed to his appointment as the federal city’s designer 

early in 1791. In 1782 L’Enfant designed a forty-foot by sixty-foot dancing pavilion at 

the Philadelphia residence of French Minister Chevalier de la Luzerne for a party to 

celebrate the birth of the French Dauphin. Newspapers and journals described L’Enfant’s 

design and decorations as the intermingling of French and American symbols, principally 

a rising sun representing America and a sun at its zenith representing France. On 

June 10, 1783, L’Enfant sent to von Steuben, President of the Society of The Cincinnati of 

which L’Enfant was a founding member, drawings and a description of the society’s eagle 

badge; L’Enfant subsequently traveled to France to arrange for its diploma to be engraved 

and its eagle badges to be made by a French jeweler. America’s official emblem, the Great 

Seal of the United States, evolved between 1776 and 1782: an American eagle with a 

shield of thirteen stripes on its breast and an aureole of thirteen stars over its head, an 

olive branch with thirteen leaves symbolizing peace grasped in one claw, and in the other, 

thirteen arrows symbolizing war. Its first non-governmental use was on the emblems 

L’Enfant designed for the Society of The Cincinnati.8

Of all the constructions made by American cities in 1788 to celebrate ratification of 

the U.S. Constitution (generally floats in parades), the largest and most symbolically inclusive was L’Enfant’s banqueting tables erected in New York at the destination of its July 23rd 

parade. Ten 440-foot-long tables represented the states that voted for the Constitution, each 

terminating in a pavilion decorated with state flags and insignia for state officials. They 

radiated from a central podium where members of the federal government and foreign 

ministers dined under a dome surmounted by a figure of fame. Six thousand people were 

served dinner at L’Enfant’s banqueting tables, which were erected in less than five days.9

The success of New York’s Federal Procession was L’Enfant’s success and, in 

September 1788, led to the acceptance of his proposal to renovate New York’s old City 

Hall into Federal Hall. L’Enfant added a neoclassical façade and a Senate chamber to the 

existing building where the First Federal Congress met for two sessions and where George 

Washington was inaugurated president on April 30, 1789. His emblematic decorations for 

the façade—the eagle of the Great Seal of the United States in the pediment above the 

balcony, thirteen stars representing the original states in the entablature below the pediment, and relief sculpted panels with olive branches and arrows above the second story 

T h e G r a n d D e s i g n , 1 7 9 0 – 1 8 0 0

L’Enfant’s watercolor of the 

Eagle Badge of the Society of 

The Cincinnati

Courtesy of the Society of The Cincinnati

5
windows—identified Federal Hall’s function. L’Enfant designed elaborate nationalistic 

decorations for the House of Representatives (a room he totally renovated), and Senate 

chambers so large and architecturally complex that they were not completed before they 

were dismantled. Federal Hall’s rich and imposing appearance was a great success among 

Federalists, but suspect among many Democratic-Republicans who found it too grand to 

represent a republican government. Yet, the success of all these projects convinced many 

that L’Enfant had a genius for innovative design and worked well with craftsmen who built 

his elegant structures quickly, albeit not economically.10

W a s h i n gt o n H i r e s L’ E n f a n t

On July 16, 1790, Congress passed the Residence Act that established the permanent 

seat of government on the Potomac River. The city’s boundaries were to be defined by 

three commissioners appointed by the president, its design “according to such plans as 

the President shall approve, the said commissioners, or any two of them, shall, prior to 

the first Monday in December 1800, provide suitable buildings for the accommodation 

of Congress, and the President, and for the public offices of the government of the U.S.” 

On January 22, 1791, Washington appointed Daniel Carroll and Thomas Johnson of 

Maryland, and Virginian David Stuart, all personal friends and political allies, as the 

commissioners for the District of Columbia. A week later Secretary of State Thomas 

Jefferson wrote Johnson that Washington had written L’Enfant (letter not found) because 

he considered him “peculiarly qualified to make such a draught of the ground as will 

C h a p t e r 1

L’Enfant’s design for the 

federal banquet pavilion to 

celebrate the ratification of 

the Constitution, New York 

City, 1788

Collection of The New-York 

Historical Society, no. 1864.17

Federal Hall in New York, 

1788–89, designed by L’Enfant

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-333

6
enable himself to fix on the spot for the public buildings.” Jefferson and Washington 

both wrote Georgetowners Francis Deakins and Benjamin Stoddert on March 2, to alert 

them of L’Enfant’s arrival.11

The same day, Jefferson ordered L’Enfant to Georgetown where he would find Major 

Andrew Ellicott already engaged on 

a survey and map of the federal territory. The special object of asking your 

aid is to have drawings of the particular grounds most likely to be approved 

for the site of the federal town and buildings. You will therefore be pleased 

to begin on the Eastern branch, and proceed from then upwards, laying 

down the hills, vallies, morasses, and waters between that, the Patowmac, 

the Tyber, and the road leading from George town to the Eastern branch, and 

connecting the whole with certain fixed points on the map Mr. Ellicot is 

preparing. Some idea of the height of the hills above the base on which they 

stand would be desireable.12

No further written instructions, nor offer of payment, to L’Enfant have been located. 

Major Ellicott (1754–1820), whose Revolutionary War commission was with the Maryland 

militia rather than the Corps of Engineers, began working as a surveyor in 1784 on the 

Pennsylvania boundaries. Early in 1791 Washington appointed him to survey the District 

of Columbia’s ten-mile-square, assisted by the African-American amateur astronomer 

Benjamin Banneker, and later, his brother, Benjamin Ellicott. In 1799 Ellicott published 

his account of the survey in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 

thirteen years after election to that body’s membership. He continued to receive federal 

and state government commissions to survey state boundaries in Florida, Pennsylvania, 

Georgia, and South Carolina until his appointment in 1813 as professor of mathematics 

at West Point, a position that L’Enfant refused.13

Jefferson continued to send L’Enfant his orders, but L’Enfant addressed most of his 

reports to Washington. By the autumn of 1791, L’Enfant was in open revolt against the 

authority of the commissioners; when he turned to Washington for support he was told that 

the commissioners represented the law and that he was answerable to them. Washington 

cited L’Enfant’s letter of appointment from the commissioners, which has not been found. 

Understandably, L’Enfant was confused about the chain of command, receiving orders from 

Washington, the commissioners, and Jefferson—if, in fact, he received all three letters. We 

only know that Jefferson asked L’Enfant initially to make a topographical survey of the land 

T h e G r a n d D e s i g n , 1 7 9 0 – 1 8 0 0

7
between Georgetown and the Eastern Branch, later called the Anacostia River. L’Enfant 

believed that Washington commissioned him to design the federal city and all of its public 

buildings, to be in effect the “engineer-architect to the President” on the French model he 

proposed to Congress in 1784 and again to Washington in 1789. He either ignored or did 

not understand the import of the traditional English system of building commissioners who 

met regularly, made decisions, and paid the bills, the common practice in America during 

the eighteenth century.

S i t i n g t h e F e d e r a l C i t y W i t h i n t h e F e d e r a l

D i s t r i ct

In his first report written on March 11, 1791, L’Enfant gave Jefferson his impressions 

of the varied and extensive ground between Georgetown and the Anacostia River as he 

sought the best location for a “small town,” although he ventured that “the intended city 

on that grand Scale on which it ought to be planed” was more appropriate to express the 

United States. Jefferson’s reply was to order L’Enfant to make topographical drawings of 

the land between Georgetown and Tiber Creek, the area where Jefferson himself located 

his own federal city design, which he presented to Washington sometime between August 

1790 and March 1791. In a postscript to his letter, Jefferson cautioned L’Enfant not to 

divulge the results of his surveys.

There are certainly considerable advantages on the Eastern branch: but there 

are very strong reasons also in favor of the position between Rock creek and 

Tyber independent of the face of the ground. It is the desire that the public 

mind should be in equilibrio between these two places till the President 

arrives, and we shall be obliged to you to endeavor to poise their expectations.

L’Enfant’s surveys over the entire ground excited great speculation in Georgetown because 

one of two local groups—those landowners whose holdings were contiguous to Georgetown 

or those whose property lay near the town of Carrollsburg near the Eastern Branch— 

would benefit materially by his decision as to where to locate the federal city within the 

ten-mile-square federal district.

Three weeks later, when Washington came to Georgetown in late March, L’Enfant 

handed him an eight-page report that described the beauty of the Eastern Branch site, 

evaluated it in practical terms, and enumerated its potential as the capital of an “Extensive 

Empire.” The engineer immediately saw the need for two bridges, one across the Eastern 

C h a p t e r 1

8
Branch above Evans Point (where East Capitol Street now crosses the Anacostia River), 

and the other across the Potomac River where Key Bridge now crosses the Potomac. Both 

bridges were depicted on the surviving manuscript map and some of the early published 

maps, which also show the location of the ferry that crossed the Anacostia near the Navy 

Yard. They were crucial to L’Enfant’s initial scheme of centering the federal city on Jenkins 

Hill: “begining the Setlement of the Grand City on the bank of the eastern branch and 

promoting the first improvement all along of the Height flat as far as w[h]ere it end on 

Jenkins Hill.”

To connect the federal city to Georgetown, L’Enfant planned a

large avenue [now Pennsylvania Avenue] from the bridge on the potowmac to 

that on the Eastern branch....with a midle way paved for heavy carriage and 

walks on each side planted with double Rows of trees to the end that by 

making it a communication as agreeable as it will be convenient....

L’Enfant speculated that such an avenue traversing the entire city would encourage 

owners to build on contiguous properties and thus visually diminish its length, as well as 

reflect the “Greatness which a city the Capitale of a powerful Empire ought to manifest.”14

L’Enfant’s intention from the outset was to benefit all the local inhabitants, a principle 

that he incorporated into his final design. No topographical surveys of the two locales 

Jefferson requested are known to survive and L’Enfant seemingly ignored the Secretary 

of State’s order to turn his attention to the area adjacent to Georgetown. Moreover, he far 

exceeded both Jefferson’s and Washington’s expectations by recommending the Eastern 

Branch site. L’Enfant’s independence in this regard was a precursor of his future behavior.

On March 28, 1791, Washington met with the “contending interests of Georgetown and 

Carrollsburg” to settle on the federal city’s site. He laconically noted in his diary that after 

meeting with them he examined the works of L’Enfant, who had been (reiterating for the 

record) “engaged to examine, & make a draught of the grds in the vicinity of George town 

and Carrollsburg.” Washington’s response to L’Enfant’s report and his meeting with him is 

recorded in the agreement he made with the proprietors of land, information he immediately conveyed to Jefferson on March 31, 1791.15

The terms agreed on between me, on the part of the United States, with the 

Land holders of Georgetown and Carrollsburg are. That all the land from 

Rock creek along the river to the Eastern-branch and so upwards to or above 

T h e G r a n d D e s i g n , 1 7 9 0 – 1 8 0 0

9
the Ferry including a breadth of about a mile and a half, the whole containing from three to five thousand acres is ceded to the public, on condition That, 

when the whole shall be surveyed and laid off as a city, (which Major 

L’Enfant is now directed to do) the present Proprietors shall retain every other 

lot; and, for such part of the land as may be taken for public use, for squares, 

walks, &ca., they shall be allowed at the rate of Twenty five pounds per acre.16

On April 4 Washington wrote L’Enfant, “it will be of great importance to the public interest to comprehend as much ground (to be ceded by individuals) as there is any tolerable 

prospect of obtaining.” Washington then outlined the land he wanted included in the 

federal city.

Washington, who began his career as a surveyor, also suggested that L’Enfant include 

land as far north as the Bladensburg Road—presently K Streets, NW and NE—and 

across Rock Creek above Georgetown. Thus, stimulated by L’Enfant’s visionary idea of 

a great city as an analogue of an “extensive empire,” and influenced by the political need 

to reconcile all of the local inhabitants in order to ensure the success of the entire undertaking, Washington decided on a city that he estimated would be three to five thousand 

acres in extent. L’Enfant’s final plan encompassed 6,111 acres and the public reservations and streets comprised 54.6 percent of the total land area to the decided advantage 

of the government. Writing to Alexander Hamilton on April 8, L’Enfant took credit for 

suggesting the city’s immense scale: “I gave imagination its full Scope in invading all 

the property....and carrying on my scheme further in extending my ideas so to lead the 

way to future and progressive improvement[.] I ventured some remarks thereon the which 

I submitted to the President on his arrival at this place and was fortunate enough to see 

meet with his approbation.”17

L’ E n f a n t ’ s D e s i g n P r o c e s s

On the same day Washington wrote L’Enfant, the engineer wrote Jefferson asking him for the 

“number and nature of the publick building with the necessary appending” and for maps of 

eight specific European cities “together with particular maps of any such sea ports or dock 

yards, and arsenals as you may know to be the most compleat in their Improvement.” Six 

days later Jefferson sent L’Enfant maps of twelve cities he collected during his five-year 

tenure as America’s minister to France between 1784–89; only Paris and Amsterdam corresponded with those on L’Enfant’s list. Jefferson reiterated Washington’s suggestion about 

C h a p t e r 1

10
generous apportionment for public grounds. “Considering that the grounds to be reserved 

for the public are to be paid for by the acre, I think very liberal reservations should be 

made for them.”18

When he wrote his April 10, 1791, letter, Jefferson must have seen the pencil sketches 

L’Enfant had given Washington, read the engineer’s March 26 report, or the president had 

explained L’Enfant’s general concepts, because Jefferson further noted “those connected 

with the government will prefer fixing themselves near the public grounds in the center, 

which will also be convenient to be resorted to as walks from the lower & upper town.” 

Washington enclosed Jefferson’s own federal city plan in the letter he sent L’Enfant on 

April 4; one of its outstanding features was extensive “public walks” along the shores of 

the Tiber Creek that connected the “Capitol” and “President.” In his April 10th letter, 

Jefferson wanted to ensure that L’Enfant knew the federal city’s genesis was a collaborative 

effort on the part of many individuals. “[H]aving communicated to the President, before he 

went away, such general ideas on the subject of the town, as occurred to me, I make no 

doubt that, in explaining himself to you on the subject, he has interwoven with his own 

ideas, such of mine as he approved.”19

In this same letter, Jefferson looked forward to the design of the public buildings. 

“[W]henever it is proposed to prepare plans for the Capitol, I should prefere the adoption 

T h e G r a n d D e s i g n , 1 7 9 0 – 1 8 0 0

L’Enfant’s “Plan of the City 

of Washington,” 1792

Library of Congress, Geography 

and Map Division

11
of some one of the models of antiquity which have had the approbation of thousands of 

years; and for the President’s house, I should prefer the celebrated fronts of Modern 

[Renaissance and post-Renaissance] buildings which have already received the approbation of all good judges. [S]uch are the Galerie du Louvre, the Gardes meubles, and two 

fronts of the Hotel de Salm.”20

L’Enfant’s second report to Washington made on June 22, 1791, was accompanied by 

a now lost map of the city. The grandeur of his conception is evident throughout this report, 

but apparently he only designed the city’s central core at that point. The “Congressional 

building” would be located on the west side of Jenkins Hill “which stand as a pedestal 

waiting for a monument” and the “presidential palace” would combine the “sumptuousness 

of a palace the conveniance of a house and the agreableness of a country seat 

situated on that ridge which attracted your [Washington’s] attention at the first inspection 

of the ground.” While L’Enfant the visionary was the predominant 

voice in this report, L’Enfant the engineer (albeit a visionary one) did 

surface. Speaking of the Capitol’s site, he noted that other locations 

might require less labor to “be rendered agreable” than Jenkins Hill, 

“but after all assistance of arts none Ever would be made so grand.”21

The Mall, canal, executive department offices (adjoining the 

president’s house), “grand Equestrian figure” (presumably of 

Washington), and forty-foot­tall cascade “issuing from under the base 

of the congress building,” had been conceptualized by mid-June. 

Although they were told some details would change, L’Enfant’s unique fusion of the orthogonal grid of streets irregularly transversed by wider diagonal avenues to be the city’s plan 

was shown to the proprietors of land on June 28 after they signed the deeds. Prior to its 

public display, Washington himself chose the exact location of the public buildings, 

moving the president’s house “more westerly for the advantage of higher ground.” The 

proprietors also were promised a “Town house, or exchange” located between the two 

principle government complexes.22

L’ E n f a n t ’ s I n d e p e n d e n c e

During July 1791 L’Enfant began making inquiries about engraving the map. This seemingly simple task became a major complication, partly because he wanted the map to be 

on a large scale and no copper plate of sufficient size could be found in Philadelphia. In 

addition, L’Enfant did not want sales of lots to go forward until the city’s true complexity 

C h a p t e r 1

...the “presidential palace” would 

combine the “sumptuousness of a 

palace the conveniance of a house and 

the agreableness of a country seat 

situated on that ridge which attracted 

your [Washington’s] attention at the 

first inspection of the ground.”

12
shown on the plan also was apparent on the ground; he feared that only lots near the 

Capitol and president’s house would be sold. Once again, he made an important political 

decision based on his own perspective without Washington’s, Jefferson’s, or the commissioners’ prior knowledge or approval. In August Washington ordered him to Philadelphia, 

and on the 19th he delivered two maps, one, a “map of doted lines” that indicated the 

progress of the survey, the second, the city’s virtually completed design with its many 

public buildings delineated. L’Enfant concluded his accompanying report with a discussion of how the city’s development should be managed, suggesting that a loan be sought 

rather than a public sale of lots: “it is in this manner and in this manner only I conceive 

the business may be Conducted.” Washington, Jefferson, and James Madison met with 

L’Enfant on August 27; the following day Jefferson wrote the commissioners proposing 

a meeting on the 7th or 8th of September so that “certain measures may be decided on 

and put into a course of preparation” to ensure that a sale of lots could take place on 

October 17th.23

Beginning in September the commissioners took a more decisive role in the affairs 

of the city. On the 24th they ordered L’Enfant to employ 150 laborers “to throw up clay at 

the presidents house and the house of Congress” to begin the process of laying their foundations. On October 10th they resolved that the surveyor Andrew Ellicott “proceed to lay 

off directly a number of Lots immediately around and fronting the Squares on which the 

president’s house and Capitol are to be built.” These orders were given before L’Enfant 

had produced plans for either building. After the engineer had been dismissed, Jefferson 

wrote Commissioner Thomas Johnson on March 8, 1792, that “Majr. L’Enfant had no 

plans prepared for the Capitol or government house. [H]e said he had them in his head. 

I do not believe he will produce them for concurrence.” The dimensions of L’Enfant’s 

president’s house have been calculated to be about 696 feet east to west and 206 feet 

north to south based on the convergence of sightlines of the neighboring streets. (James 

Hoban’s building is 170 feet long by 86 feet deep.)24

Jefferson and Johnson were cognizant of the discrepancy between the scale of the 

public spaces and the probable buildings that would be located there. “I fear your other 

apprehension is better founded,” Jefferson wrote Johnson, “to wit, that the avenues are 

made to converge to the ends of a building of supposed extent, that the building may very 

probably be of less extent, and consequently not reach the points of view created for its 

use.” The larger issue was the credibility of the entire federal city: if the published maps 

showed plans of buildings that did not correspond with those being built, sales of lots 

T h e G r a n d D e s i g n , 1 7 9 0 – 1 8 0 0

13
would suffer and those who wished to keep the government in Philadelphia would prevail. 

On April 11, 1792, the commissioners wrote Jefferson concerning the problem with 

L’Enfant’s location of the Capitol. Notley Young’s new house stood within the grounds 

designated for the Capitol and he would have to be compensated as much as fifteen 

thousand pounds unless the Capitol were moved about nine hundred feet. Their concern 

was the public’s negative perception of changes to the plan (the map had not yet been 

published but its characteristics were widely known).

We cannot but be uneasy of the situation Chosen for the Capitol....Ellicott 

says...it will not take above 3, or 4 weeks to correct what will be necessary. 

This may be shortened, we have no doubt by introducing a few accurate 

measures, and the difference of expence much in favour of it....[Ellicott] says and 

the Fact is that the Deviation from the Plate will be imperceptable but on 

measuring, and that the Plate will convey an Idea of the work sufficiently 

exact to any man living.25

Descriptions of the problems of placing L’Enfant’s plan on the varied topography abound. 

For example, Benjamin Ogle Tayloe came to Washington in 1801, and later recalled that the 

“distinguished John Cotton Smith told me that when he was a Senator from Connecticut he 

attended President Adams’s levee in Washington, in 1801, and that members of Congress 

living, like himself, on Capitol Hill, found it necessary to send to Baltimore for hackney 

coaches to convey them to the President’s House; and to avoid the swamps of Pennsylvania 

Avenue, they had to travel along F Street and the high grounds adjoining.” Although the 

same difficulties would be faced implementing any geometric plan, the combination of the 

federal city’s immense scale; the difference in widths between its grid streets (meant for 

neighborhoods) and its avenues (meant to be processional); the unequal size of the blocks 

(necessary for the diagonals and grid to interlock); very hilly terrain; multiple streams and 

two rivers; and, tidal marshes complicated the matter considerably.26

The time between L’Enfant’s arrival in March 1791 and when he was expected to 

produce the finished map and drawings of the public buildings was unrealistic. However, 

he created this situation himself when he convinced Washington to include more than six 

thousand acres in the city; the heavily wooded land could not be adequately surveyed 

before the October sale of lots. Washington recognized these difficulties. “The work of 

Majr. L’Enfant (wch. is greatly admired) will shew that he had many objects to attend to 

and to combine; not on paper merely, but to make them corrispond with the actual

C h a p t e r 1

14
circumstances of the ground.” L’Enfant’s projected public buildings could not be drawn on 

the scale and with the elaborateness that he conceived within a few months without a large 

number of draftsmen. Again, L’Enfant was responsible for this situation; he may well have 

made sketches of the dozen buildings whose convincing plans were on his manuscript map 

and, later, engravings. However, to translate such sketches into presentation and then 

working drawings for construction was the labor of months.27

L’Enfant’s known assistants were Isaac Roberdeau, Stephen S. Hallet, and Charles 

de Krafft. Roberdeau was his most trusted ally, eventually arrested in January 1792 for 

following L’Enfant’s orders rather than those of the commissioners. In 1816 Roberdeau, 

now a major in the Topographical Engineers, returned to Washington and had an important career carrying forward one of L’Enfant’s 1784 dictates for the Corps—mapping 

the continent. Hallet, a French-trained architect who emigrated at the outbreak of the 

French Revolution, worked as L’Enfant’s draftsman during the autumn of 1791, making 

a reduced version of the plan for the engravers. His design in the 1792–93 Capitol 

T h e G r a n d D e s i g n , 1 7 9 0 – 1 8 0 0

Andrew Ellicott’s “Map of the 

District of Columbia,” 1793. 

Andrew Ellicott, assisted by 

Benjamin Ellicott and 

Benjamin Baneker, surveyed 

the boundaries of the ten-milesquare District of Columbia 

while L’Enfant was designing 

the federal city.

Library of Congress, Geography and 

Map Division, 1069.1

15
competition placed second and, in a compromise intended to take advantage of his 

superior architectural education, he was put in charge of constructing the Capitol—the 

exteriors following the winning design by William Thornton, the interiors designed by 

Hallet. In 1794 Thornton, now one of the commissioners, fired Hallet for deviating 

from this compromise plan. Little is known of Hallet’s later career, although he remained 

in Washington for a short time, hired by real estate developer Theophile Cazanove to 

design houses.28

The Georgetown Weekly Ledger of July 2, 1791, reported that “a large number of gentlemen attending, a plan of the city, which had for several weeks occupied the time and talents 

of Colonel L’Enfant, assisted by the Baron de Graff, and which, with some small alterations 

[Washington] had determined to adopt” was shown to the public. Scholars have long speculated who “Baron de Graff” was. In 1800 “Charles de Krafft, Surveyor and Draftsman” 

advertised in a local newspaper that he “was employed by [the] government in the year 

1791 (at Georgetown) to assist Major L’Enfant to plan and lay down the first draft, for the 

city of Washington.”29

L’ E n f a n t ’ s U r b a n I n t e n t i o n s

Variations on traditional urban planning concepts make L’Enfant’s plan for Washington 

a unique physical and symbolic solution to city design. The beauty of L’Enfant’s city 

was achieved by his sympathetic exploitation of the picturesque landscape. In his 

“Observations explanatory of the plan,” printed on the manuscript map placed before 

Congress on December 13, 1791, and first published in Philadelphia newspapers on 

December 26, L’Enfant outlined his methodology. He began by choosing prominent 

topographical features “commanding the most extensive prospects” for numerous public 

squares. He then connected them through a system of broad, diagonal avenues for both 

“prospect and convenience.” Lastly, L’Enfant inserted a grid of city streets oriented in 

the cardinal directions to create neighborhoods around the squares. Fifteen of the squares 

were dedicated to the states, L’Enfant intending to encourage prominent citizens to buy 

property contiguous to their states’ square. Thus, fifteen far-flung neighborhoods would 

gradually coalesce with those that would naturally grow up around the public buildings. 

This ambitious scheme supposed a large population within a few years. However, the 

multiple squares solved an immediate political problem: treating the proprietors with 

some equality, although everyone understood that those owning land near the president’s 

house and Capitol had a distinct advantage.30

C h a p t e r 1

16
To this simultaneity of functions—a beautiful city that also served pragmatic and political ends—must be added the city’s symbolic meaning. On September 9, 1791, Jefferson, 

Madison, and the commissioners met, choosing “Washington” as the city’s name to be 

located within the “Territory of Columbia.” They also determined that the streets on the grid 

be denominated by letters and numbers. Three days later, Ellicott wrote L’Enfant, “the diagonal Streets are to receive names.” The names for the diagonals first appeared on Samuel 

Hill’s engraved map published in the May 1792 issue of the Massachusetts Magazine. No 

known surviving document tells who chose to name the avenues after the states.31

Washington’s symbolic meaning is embedded in the names of the avenues and their 

relation to the public squares. There are at least three patterns discernable in the arrangement of the state-named boulevards. Those named for the New England states were located 

in the northern part of the city, the central states were in the city’s center, and the southern 

states were located on Capitol Hill, the southernmost part of the city. The three largest 

states (also the only commonwealths)—Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—gave 

their names to avenues that traversed the entire city. They fell geographically within the 

city as the states do in the country, Massachusetts to the north, Pennsylvania in the center, 

and Virginia in the south.

T h e G r a n d D e s i g n , 1 7 9 0 – 1 8 0 0

View of Georgetown 

and the site of the 

federal city

Library of Congress, Prints 

and Photographs Division, 

LC-USZ62-4702

17
The avenues also seem to have been grouped to reflect America’s founding political 

history. With the exception of Delaware, those radiating from the Capitol were states 

where the Continental and Confederation Congresses met—Maryland, 

Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. Delaware may have merited this special 

location because it was the first state to offer a federal district and the 

first to ratify the Constitution. The White House and its grounds probably bisect New York Avenue because Washington was inaugurated at 

Federal Hall in New York. Because L’Enfant determined the placement 

of the avenues before they were named, and the complex system has 

such internal logic, it would seem that he originated their names as part 

of the city’s symbolic meaning. Grand scale, the idea that power radiates 

from centers, and building the names of the states into the national capital’s plan all were 

elements of urban design that L’Enfant would have known from his French heritage.32

L’ E n f a n t ’ s D o w n f a ll

L’Enfant’s inability to adapt to the fluid situation the federal government was undergoing 

during this initial evolutionary period was his downfall. Washington lost faith both in 

his honesty and judgment, but showed remarkable understanding of his character. In 

November 1791 L’Enfant ordered his workmen (without consulting the commissioners) 

to tear down the house Daniel Carroll of Duddington (a nephew of Commissioner Daniel 

Carroll) was erecting in the middle of one of the new streets. After the episode was 

settled, Washington wrote the commissioners in mid-December. “His aim is obvious. 

It is to have as much scope as possible for the display of his talents, perhaps for his 

ambition....I submit to your consideration whether it might not be politic to give him 

pretty general, and ample powers for defined objects; until you shall discover in him a 

disposition to abuse them.” On February 22, 1792, Jefferson wrote L’Enfant outlining the 

conditions of his continued employment in subordination to the commissioners. L’Enfant’s 

response on the 26th was a diatribe against the commissioners and the following day 

Jefferson replied

It is understood that you absolutely decline acting under the authority of the 

present commissioners. If this understanding of your meaning be right, I am 

instructed by the President to inform you that notwithstanding the desire he 

has entertained to preserve your agency in the business, the condition upon 

which it is to be done is inadmissible, and your services must be at an end.33

C h a p t e r 1

“Grand scale, the idea that power 

radiates from centers, and building 

the names of the states into the 

national capital’s plan all were 

elements of urban design that 

L’Enfant would have known from 

his French heritage.”

18
By the first of August 1792 Alexander Hamilton invited L’Enfant to design an 

industrial town—both a radiating town plan and a scheme for harnessing the falls of the 

Passaic River to power adjacent mills—for the Society for the Encouragement of Useful 

Manufactures at Paterson, New Jersey. L’Enfant remained in 

the society’s employ for less than a year. In 1794 he was in 

Philadelphia working on Fort Mifflin on an island in the Delaware 

River. Private employment followed, but he quit all of his projects 

before they were completed. Most of the rest of L’Enfant’s life was 

spent airing his grievances. Beginning in 1800 (he waited until 

after Washington’s death), L’Enfant submitted ten memorials to 

Congress asking to be compensated for what he had lost monetarily 

and in reputation. “Major L’Enfant was of ordinary appearance, 

except that he had an abstracted manner and carriage in public,” 

wrote painter and art historian William Dunlap in 1834. “It appears that he had the irritability belonging to ambition, but which is falsely made appropriate to genius; and that 

he thought himself wronged.”34

T h e G r a n d D e s i g n , 1 7 9 0 – 1 8 0 0

“It is understood that you absolutely 

decline acting under the authority 

of the present commissioners. If this 

understanding of your meaning be 

right, I am instructed by the President 

to inform you...your services must be at 

an end.”

19

The Antebellum City

1800–65

T h e F e d e r a l G o v e r n m e n t M o v e s t o W a s h i n gt o n , 

1 8 0 0

In 1800 the three branches of the federal government moved in stages from Philadelphia 

to Washington. The 1790 Residence Act required Congress to convene in the Federal City 

on the third Monday in November 1800, but in May, President John Adams ordered 

the executive departments to be open for business by June 15, 1800. Secretary of 

War Samuel Dexter had four clerks and a messenger, while the accountant for the War 

Department had ten clerks and a messenger out of the government’s 130 full-time 

employees. Because the War Department’s designated building was not yet finished, 

it leased Joseph Hodgson’s brick building on the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue 

between 21st and 22nd Streets. On November 8, 1800, most of the department’s records 

were lost when the building was destroyed by fire.1

In 1798 the English-born and -trained architect George Hadfield designed a standardized office building for the Treasury Department on the east of the president’s house 

and the War Department on the west side. The Treasury Department’s building was 

Opposite page: Capitol dome

enlargement, ca. 1861–62

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

2
completed first because it was the largest executive department with sixty-nine employees. 

On August 6, 1799, Maryland builder Leonard Harbaugh contracted to erect the War 

Department building at the corner of 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue for $39,511. 

It was finished in late 1800 or early 1801 and its twenty-four rooms were occupied by 

both the War and Navy Departments until 1819 (except for the two years when it was 

being rebuilt after being burned by the British on August 24, 1814). The Navy Department 

moved into the former War Department, which occupied a new, larger building at the 

corner of 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in 1819.2

The legislation that appropriated monies for the government’s move to Washington 

authorized $10,000 to be spent by the four cabinet secretaries to pave streets in the 

embryonic city, establishing the precedent for the cabinet officers sharing responsibility 

in carrying out congressional mandates concerning the city’s physical development. 

House and Senate Committees on Public Buildings and Grounds, the Library, and 

the District of Columbia decided what measures needed to be taken in developing 

Washington’s public spaces and securing designs for the public buildings. Initially, as 

was the case with James Hoban and the president’s house, architects also superintended 

22

C h a p t e r 2

The four executive department 

buildings in the 1820s. The 

Corps of Engineers’ headquarters was located in the War 

Department Building west of 

the president’s house.

Washingtoniana Division, D.C. Public 

Library
construction. With complex buildings, such as the U.S. Capitol, and the emergence of 

architecture and engineering as separate intellectual professions—exemplified by the 

arrival on the scene of the British-born and pan-European-educated architect-engineer 

B. H. Latrobe (1764–1820)—the need to divide design and construction superintendence to ensure building craftsmanship became evident. Latrobe educated apprentice 

architects in the first decade of the nineteenth century to carry on his conviction 

that the intellectual aspects of architecture were separate from the work of America’s 

eighteenth century builder-architects, such as William Buckland, whose work in the 

Chesapeake Bay region was, and is, admired.3

T h e M i l i t a r y A c a d e m y a t W e s t P o i n t a n d t h e C o r p s

Although the Corps of Engineers eventually played the leading role in managing the building of Washington, this responsibility evolved slowly during the first half of the nineteenth 

century. When the Continental Congress established the Continental Army on June 16, 

1775, a Chief Engineer was among its ranking officers. As early as September 20, 1776, 

the Continental Congress appointed a committee who resolved that “the Board of War be 

directed to prepare a Continental Laboratory, and a Military Academy, and provide the 

same with proper Officers.”4

 In 1783 at the end of the Revolution, most of the U.S. Army, 

including the Corps of Engineers, was disbanded, with only a small contingent left headquartered at West Point, New York.

In 1802 newly-elected President Thomas Jefferson persuaded Congress to re-establish 

the Corps of Engineers and create a national military academy at West Point staffed by 

the engineers, thus forging a strong link between the Corps and the academy. Jefferson 

wished, as did George Washington, to establish a National University in the city of 

Washington, but decided that a military school would better serve the country’s needs 

by educating civil and military engineers. In Jefferson’s view, the Corps, running the 

nation’s first school of engineering, might have more than military duties, and he considered having its headquarters located in Washington. Poor in science but rich in resources, 

the United States might in the future look to its Army Engineers for internal improvements as well as defense. By 1816 approximately twenty-seven civilian civil engineers 

were active in the United States, and West Point’s small early graduating classes gradually 

produced military engineers whose civic works paralleled those of civil engineers working 

for states or for private canal companies. For example, Joseph G. Totten, who became 

Chief Engineer, was the academy’s tenth graduate, one of three in the class of 1805. 

23

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5
However, by 1837 Secretary of War John C. Calhoun noted that West Point had 940 

graduates in total, most of them becoming artillery officers.5

The Congressional Act of March 16, 1802, that established the military’s role during 

peacetime, stipulated: “The 27th section provided that the said Corps, when organized, shall be stationed at West Point...and shall constitute a Military Academy....

and that the Engineers, assistant Engineers, and cadets, shall be subject to do duty at 

such places, and on such service, as the President of the United States may direct.”6

Traditionally West Point’s top students were commissioned into the Corps of Engineers 

and their tours of duty allowed them to confront problems in many parts of the country 

involving surveying, building fortifications, or laying out roads and canals.

Jefferson’s choice of the first peacetime Chief of Engineers emphasized the unusual, 

even elite, nature of the Corps despite his determination to establish a meritocracy in 

the federal government’s civil, judicial, and military branches. As American minister 

to France, Jefferson in 1785 met Jonathan Williams (1750–1815), grandnephew to 

Benjamin Franklin, whom Jefferson replaced in the Paris diplomatic post. Upon his 

return to America, Williams completed his education at Harvard College in 1787, and 

the following year became a member of the American Philosophical Society, eventually 

serving as its vice president. Williams’s scientific talents were variously expressed in 

practical articles on thermometric navigation and the study of mathematics, botany, and 

medicine. In 1801 President John Adams commissioned Williams as a major in the 

Second Regiment of Artillerists and Engineers, and in the spring of 1802 he was 

appointed the first superintendent of the Military Academy. There Williams “occasionally read lectures on fortifications, gave practical lessons in the field, and taught the use 

of instruments generally,” while colleagues taught mathematics.7

 During his superintendence, Williams hired professors of drawing and French (most contemporary engineering 

treatises were written in French), skills that in conjunction with their engineering 

prowess gave the academy’s students a combination of abilities that undoubtedly was 

unique in American education at this time.

Thus, from the outset, members of the Corps of Engineers were drawn from the best 

students at West Point who had been educated primarily in practical aspects of the arts 

and sciences. To provide his faculty and students with wider intellectual horizons, in 

1803 Williams founded the U.S. Military Philosophical Society at West Point, whose 

motto was Scientia in Bello Pax, “Science in war guarantees [leads to; promotes] peace.” 

Although the academy’s early years were halting, increasingly larger numbers of students 

24

C h a p t e r 2
were among the country’s few men formally educated in the practical sciences and they 

soon proved their worth. No post designed by a West Point graduate was captured by the 

British during the War of 1812. By the 1820s and 30s, “internal improvements” nationally either relied on surveying and mapping undertaken by the Topographical Engineers, 

or these public works were directed by members (and sometimes former members) of the 

various branches of the Corps. In 1812 L’Enfant was offered a professorship at West 

Point in the “Art of Engineering in all its Branches,” but he declined.

C o r p s - D e s i g n e d F o r t s P r o t e c t W a s h i n gt o n

Both the Corps’ military and civil expertise were used in and near the District of 

Columbia from an early date. On March 20, 1794, Congress authorized a series of forts 

to protect the harbors of American cities, the country’s first permanent defensive system 

to be built. George Washington, concerned for his new capital, chose a bluff, Digges’s 

Point, on the Maryland side of the Potomac, for the location of a future fortification. But 

it was not until 1807, when an incident in the Napoleonic Wars—a British attack on an 

25

Plan of Fort Washington, 1823. 

American troops blew up Fort 

Warburton, a weak and illpositioned battery, in 1814 upon 

the approach of the British fleet. 

Afterwards L’Enfant was placed 

in charge of demolishing the 

old fort and beginning a new 

one. He was relieved by the 

War Department scarcely a 

year later.

National Archives no. 79-117.8-15
American frigate in coastal waters—prodded the government into action, and the government’s second system of fortifications was begun. On October 31, 1807, the Secretary of 

War ordered Chief Engineer Jonathan Williams to Washington to draw plans for defending American ports and harbors. Williams also was to examine the site at Digges’s 

Point, six miles downriver from Washington and within sight of Mount Vernon. Arriving 

in 1808, the Chief Engineer noted that Digges’s Point commanded the river but was 

overlooked by higher ridges. However, the government purchased land for the fort and 

ordered Captain George Bomford (c. 1780–1848), an 1805 graduate of the Military 

Academy who had been commissioned a lieutenant of engineers on graduation, to lay 

out a fortification at the site.8

By mid-summer, 1808, Bomford reported that Fort Warburton was “in a condition 

of forwardness,” and by the first of December 1809, it was “completed, to placing the 

merlons of sod on the parapet.”9

 A water battery and little more, the work had semielliptical face and circular flanks, mounted thirteen guns, and enclosed quarters for 

two ordnance companies. “The parapet of this squat and sprawling fort was a solid ten 

feet, four inches thick and soared forty-one feet above the river.”10 Atop the bluff was 

an octagonal brick citadel—an ineffective defense against attack from the land, in 

the opinion of the Army’s senior general, James Wilkinson, who declared, “being calculated against musketry only, [it] could have been knocked flat by a twelve pounder.”11

26

Drawing of Fort Washington 

(n.d.). Lieutenant Colonel 

Walker K. Armistead and 

Captain Theodore W. 

Maurice designed and built 

the new fort that was 

completed in 1824.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
Colonel Decius Wadsworth, Army Chief of Ordnance, however, was of a different 

opinion when advising about strengthening the country’s defenses after the War of 1812 

was declared. On May 28, 1813, he wrote Secretary of War John Armstrong that Fort 

Warburton’s “situation is so elevated, the result of a cannonade by ships from the river 

should not be dreaded,” and he discounted an attack by land.12 Wadsworth concluded 

his report advising against additional heavy guns at Fort Warburton or constructing a 

neighboring fort.

On August 24, 1814, a British force defeated the Americans at Bladensburg, Maryland, 

and pushed on to capture Washington and burn the public buildings. Meanwhile, a 

squadron of the British fleet worked slowly up the Potomac River, maneuvering through 

a maze of shoals and unknown currents against contrary winds. On the evening of 

August 27, the invaders bombarded Fort Warburton for two hours. Shortly after arriving 

to take command of the fort on August 6, and convinced that he would have to lead a 

rear-guard action, Captain Samuel T. Dyson told Lieutenant James Edwards, who had 

formerly been in command of the fort’s small garrison, to “plan the trail of gunpowder in 

case they had to demolish the fort themselves.” Seeing the smoke rising from Washington 

where the Capitol had been fired on the evening of August 24, and the other public 

buildings the following day; receiving reports from civilian visitors to the fort on the 25th 

and 26th about the enemy’s advance; and sighting the British fleet sailing up the Potomac 

River on the 27th, Dyson ordered the fort’s cannons spiked and its evacuation that 

evening. (During the day President James Madison returned to Washington where he 

appointed James Monroe the new Secretary of War.) Dyson led his retreating forces only 

fifty paces before the first shell fired from the English warships landed near them; they 

had walked about three miles before the powder magazine containing 3,346 pounds of 

powder blew up from their own charges while mortars and rockets launched by the 

British were landing on and near the fort. At his court martial, which began on 

November 1, Dyson asked, “Was I not justified in concluding that the overwhelming force 

of the enemy had driven back all opposition and that my miserable post and little band 

was all that survived the general wreck?” The following day, Sunday, August 28, the 

British occupied the fort and the now defenseless city of Alexandria surrendered; Dyson 

was court martialed and barred from future military service.

Major Peter Charles L’Enfant was called as a witness in Dyson’s defense at his court 

martial, but it is not certain he testified. He had played some part in defending the city. From 

March until July 1815, L’Enfant oversaw the reconstruction of the wharf at Fort Warburton 

27

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5
and the building of a ravelin at the water’s edge. Early in 1816 the Topographical Engineers, 

Colonel Walker K. Armistead and Captain Theodore Maurice, began a new fort, now renamed 

Fort Washington, on the higher bluff above the earlier work.13

C o r p s E n g i n e e r s C o n s u l t o n C a p i t o l C o n s t r u c t i o n

On March 17, 1817, President James Monroe consulted with Army Engineers about 

rebuilding the Capitol that had been gutted by explosions and fire on August 24, 1814. 

After architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe made proposals for its reconstruction, Monroe 

sought the expertise of Brevet Brigadier General Joseph G. Swift (1783–1865), one of the 

first two graduates of West Point in 1802, and a decade later Chief Engineer, and Colonel 

George Bomford, since 1815 the chief of the Ordnance Department. Latrobe proposed 

vaulting with brick the rebuilt House and Senate chambers (which originally had been 

vaulted). Monroe was concerned about the weight of the vaults compromising the safety 

of the Capitol (its foundations had been damaged in the fire), but also stressed that “this 

28

Alexander J. Davis’s ca. 1832 

watercolor of the House of 

Representatives as completed 

with a wood dome

Avery Architectural and Fine Arts 

Library, Columbia University
building should be finished with the greatest possible expedition.” Although Swift and 

Bomford agreed that Latrobe’s structural engineering of the vaults was sound, they reluctantly agreed to wood vaults, citing time, reduced cost, and public fears about masonry 

vaulted rooms. Latrobe responded to the engineers on March 31, arguing that wood domes 

above a stone colonnade and entablature were inadvisable because they would be susceptible to dry rot, “expand and contract with the weather,” be subject to fire, and “would 

require more time to erect, plaster, and paint than to turn a brick dome.” Monroe and the 

engineers prevailed and wood domes were built over both chambers, however, in 1901 

they were replaced with cast plaster supported by steel trusses.14

Swift and Bomford, who had known Latrobe through their joint membership in the 

U.S. Military Philosophical Society, were asked by Monroe to mediate a quarrel between 

Latrobe and George Blagden, the superintendent of the Capitol’s stonecutters. Latrobe 

wished to use a small deposit of a variegated breccia stone found in a Virginia quarry near 

the Potomac River for the colonnades in the legislative chambers, but Blagden believed 

the stone to be inferior in quality. Monroe accompanied Swift, Bomford, and Latrobe to 

inspect the quarry and decided that the government should take over the quarry’s operation. This collaboration of Swift, Bomford, and Latrobe affected the range of American 

materials that Latrobe then used in rebuilding the Capitol as he could now call upon 

experienced construction engineers to help him select the best limestone and marble. In 

1817 Swift traveled to New York to oversee preparation of the marble entablatures for 

the Senate chamber, taking Latrobe’s drawings with him.15

I s a a c R o b e r d e a u a n d t h e C o r p s ’ T o p o g r a p h i c a l

B u r e a u

In October 1817 President James Madison appointed South Carolinian John C. 

Calhoun as Secretary of War. A gifted administrator with his eyes on the White House, 

Calhoun was determined to create a better Army. Among other reforms, he ordered 

Chief Engineer Swift to Washington, declaring, “he should be stationed at the seat of 

Government, to superintend, under its immediate control, the great and important duties 

assigned to the corps.” November found Swift packing for the move from Brooklyn, and 

on April 1, 1818, he was in his new “office in Washington City.” Swift, however, did 

not remain in Washington long; he resigned from the Army in October when Calhoun 

appointed the French-born engineer Simon Bernard his equal in rank (but his subordinate within the Corps).16

29

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5
Born in Philadelphia in 1763, Isaac Roberdeau studied engineering in 

London and returned to the United States in 1787 to write about, survey, 

and study astronomy. In 1816 he was commissioned a major, his time 

divided between West Point and Washington until 1818 when the 

Topographical Engineers’ headquarters were permanently located in 

Washington and Roberdeau became its chief. During the early 1820s, 

Roberdeau accompanied Calhoun on intermittent inspection tours, but most 

of his time was spent caring for the Topographical Corps’ maps, plans, and 

mathematical instruments. Before his death in 1829, Roberdeau collected 

public and private surveys of all parts of the country, his composite maps 

redrawn from them used by many government offices as well as private 

individuals during the decade the American frontier began to expand 

dramatically. This was only one part of the War Department’s “collections 

in geology, paleontology and ethnology, including the remarkable series of paintings of Indians and Indian 

scenes.” Roberdeau’s two decades spent surveying and superintending the construction of canals (1792 until 

1813), combined with his military experience, gave him the expertise to author the unpublished “Mathematics 

and Treatise on Canals,” written about 1828, a decade before the first published work by an American on 

canals. John Quincy Adams, a fellow savant, spent “many hours discussing astronomy and other sciences” with 

him. Roberdeau’s duties as the curator of the War Department’s collection of maps, surveys, and instruments 

were seemingly not strenuous for someone of his education and capabilities. When Congress questioned his light 

responsibilities, Roberdeau was defended by both the Chief of Engineers and the Secretary of War, rather than 

transferred, which suggests that his unofficial duties may have included moving in diplomatic circles, perhaps 

even gathering information gleaned during his notably active social life.17

“Among the residents of our town,” the Metropolitan and Georgetown Commercial Gazette reported on 

October 19, 1824, “we noticed at the Mayor’s [reception for the Marquis de Lafayette] the Secretary of War, 

the Post Master General, the gallant Generals McComb [sic] and Jessup, and Col. Roberdeau of the Corps 

of Engineers.” After visiting Georgetown College, Lafayette “repaired to the Secretary of War’s residence. 

He was handed down from his carriage by Colonels Cox [Georgetown’s mayor] and Roberdeau.” Between 

October 12, 1824, when the Marquis de Lafayette first arrived in Washington, and September 9, 1825, when 

the frigate Brandywine passed Cape Henry light returning him home to France, Roberdeau was a frequent 

guest at several of the official functions honoring the Revolutionary War general during his farewell trip to 

America. President John Quincy Adams led the dignitaries at Roberdeau’s funeral on January 17, 1829; he 

and Adams had been fast friends as well as fellow amateur astronomers, with Roberdeau’s daughters frequent 

guests at the White House where they often assisted at banquets.18

Major Isaac Roberdeau

Courtesy of Historical Society 

of Pennsylvania
In 1813 Congress created the Topographical Engineers to carry out surveys of 

seacoasts, rivers, and the country’s interior to support the work of the Corps, which 

was engaged in building fortifications. The Topographical Engineers were abolished on 

June 15, 1815, but revived the following year. In 1816 Isaac Roberdeau was commissioned a Major, his time divided between West Point and Washington until 1818 when 

the Topographical Engineers’ headquarters were permanently located in Washington 

and Roberdeau became chief of the newly established Topographical Bureau. During the 

early 1820s, Roberdeau accompanied Calhoun on intermittent inspection tours, but most 

of his time was spent caring for the Topographical Bureau’s maps, plans, and mathematical instruments. Before his death in 1829, Roberdeau had collected public and private 

surveys of all parts of the country, his composite maps redrawn from them used by many 

government offices as well as private individuals during the decade the American frontier began to expand dramatically. This was only one part of the War Department’s 

“collections in geology, paleontology and ethnology, including the remarkable series of 

paintings of Indians and Indian scenes.”

T h e C o r p s ’ I n c r e a s i n g R e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s

The Corps of Engineers and its Topographical Bureau played an intermittent role in 

government construction and public works in the District of Columbia before 1853. As 

Congress gradually took a bolder line in local spending, engineer officers contributed to 

individual projects as their expertise was required. In 1822, for example, when Congress 

appropriated funds for the installation of cast-iron pipes to carry water from the government-owned spring in Franklin Park to the executive buildings in the President’s Park, 

Roberdeau supervised the work. In 1830 a civil engineer employed by the Topographical 

Bureau made a pioneer study of Washington springs, and two years later Congress voted 

$45,700 to improve water service for the government by purchasing Smith Spring north 

of the city and piping its water to the Capitol.19

In 1831 a freshet swept away part of the wooden superstructure of the Long Bridge, 

which crossed the Potomac from the foot of 14th Street in Washington to Arlington, 

Virginia. Authorized in 1808, and built by a chartered company, for decades this toll 

bridge connected Washington to Virginia. Although temporary repairs were made, Congress 

purchased the bridge in 1832 to improve the connection to the south and provide public 

access without a toll. The president selected topographical engineer Lieutenant Colonel 

James Kearney to survey the condition of the existing bridge and propose a plan for its 

31

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5
reconstruction.20 When Congress authorized funding for the actual rebuilding, however, 

it delegated the work to the Secretary of the Treasury, who chose the West Point-educated 

civil engineer George W. Hughes to superintend the work.21

Congress also took an interest in the Aqueduct Bridge in Georgetown, which 

provided another link to the Virginia shore. Congress had invested $1 million in the 

Chesapeake and Ohio Canal when, in 1831, the Alexandria Canal Company began to 

construct a branch south of the Potomac. Congressional appropriations backed this 

new venture, and when an aqueduct—essentially a wooden trough and causeway on 

massive stone piers—was needed to carry the canal across the river, “the company 

considered it advisable...to have its expenditure placed under the direction of an 

officer of the corps of topographical engineers.” This would provide direct federal 

oversight of federal monies, and, “in so difficult and rather unprecedented an undertaking, allow the company to avail themselves of the presumed science of [the 

Topographical] officers.”22

Topographical Captain William Turnbull (1800–1857) was assigned the aqueduct 

work. He initially worked in close collaboration with the engineer of the Canal Company, 

surveying the riverbed, designing the structure, and devising the means of its construction. After building cofferdams to hold out the river, Turnbull laid the foundations of the 

32

Long Bridge across the 

Potomac River, 1860, taken 

from its landfall at 14th Street 

and Maryland Avenue, SW 

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
33

piers nearly forty feet deep to reach bedrock covered by twenty feet of mud, noting that 

the sight “of men busily at work so far below the surface of the river, seemed to interest 

the public exceedingly; but to the engineer, whatever might be his confidence in the 

ability of the dam to resist the immense weight which he knew to be constantly pressing 

upon it in the most insidious form, the sight was one which filled him with anxiety, and 

Perspective view of the 

interior of the cofferdam for 

the construction of pier 5 of 

the Aqueduct Bridge, 1838

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

Plan of Long Bridge, showing the 

existing span and a modification 

proposed in 1890

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, 

ARCE 1890
urged him to the most unceasing watchfulness.” Turnbull was assisted by Lieutenant 

M. C. Ewing, an artillery officer, and briefly by another officer from the infantry. At the 

end of 1835, as one of the project’s many dams went up, Turnbull lamented, “it could 

not have been altogether completed and tested this season; but a force of mechanics 

sufficient for the purpose could not be obtained. Another extensive work in the vicinity 

being in progress at the same time, the demand for labor was very great.” Begun in 1833 

and completed in 1843, the bridge remained in private hands when completed, with the 

United States as a shareholder in the company.23

As Federal construction work grew, Army Engineers increasingly supplied the skills 

that made its accomplishment possible. A young lieutenant, Andrew A. Humphreys, 

34

C h a p t e r 2

Barge using the 

Aqueduct Bridge across 

the Potomac River (n.d.)

Office of History, Corps of 

Engineers

Aqueduct Bridge from the east 

bank of the Potomac River above 

Georgetown, 1860s, with the 

Georgetown Canal on the left

National Archives no. 77-HCS-1B26
superintended construction of a bridge over Rock Creek, and spent the summer of 1843 

determining the grades of Washington streets. By 1838 citizens were complaining about 

the dust on the rapidly wearing Pennsylvania Avenue, and, at Senate request, head of 

the now independent Topographical Bureau, Colonel John James Abert (1788–1863), 

suggested repairs in his report on the paving of Pennsylvania Avenue west of the White 

House. George W. Hughes and Topographical Bureau Captain Campbell Graham repaired 

Pennsylvania Avenue, directed the paving of 15th and 17th Streets, and constructed the 

15th Street sewer. The two worked with architect Robert Mills on unrealized designs for 

the new War Department building during the early 1840s.24

During the 1820s Mills had been the architect for the South Carolina Board of 

Public Works, which undertook civic projects on the state level similar to the Corps’ 

national projects. Throughout this period, Mills sought employment with the Corps of 

Engineers. He first wrote Secretary of War (and fellow South Carolinian) John C. 

Calhoun on October 4, 1824, sending him his map and treatise on cutting a canal 

between the Susquehanna and Potomac Rivers. Nearly two years later, on September 12, 

1826, Mills again wrote Calhoun asking to be appointed to the Board of Engineers for 

Internal Improvements and reapplied in May 1827. On November 8, 1827, Mills wrote 

Brigadier General Macomb concerning how the Corps of Engineers might use his 

A Manuel on Railroads. Brigadier General Charles Gratiot responded to Mills’s 

August 15, 1829, letter of application sent directly to President Andrew Jackson; Gratiot 

again informed Mills that there were no openings for civilian engineers. Mills continued 

to correspond with Gratiot during the 1830s concerning water supply systems and brick 

manufacturing.25

In 1838 Mills’s persistence resulted in Secretary of War (and fellow South Carolinian) 

Joel R. Poinsett appointing him to design the new barracks at the Military Academy at 

West Point and its Library and Philosophical Apparatus (scientific laboratories), which was 

slightly altered when constructed by Army Engineer Richard Delafield. This contributed to 

the growing competition between the Corps of Engineers and private architects who worked 

for the government, an antagonism present until the end of the nineteenth century and 

often inflammatory and counterproductive.

In 1831 the Topographical Bureau was separated from the Corps of Engineers, and 

throughout the next two decades the activities of the parent branch were largely confined 

to military construction. Although the Corps was not actively involved in building the city, 

its headquarters was staffed by some of the country’s best-educated men drawn principally 

35

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5

Colonel John James Abert

Courtesy of Historical Society of Pennsylvania
from prominent families who easily fit into the federal city’s intellectual and political 

circles. A key figure in the Corps’ growing prestige and in its later role in public buildings was Colonel Joseph G. Totten (1788–1864), appointed Chief of Engineers in 

December 1838.26

C o r p s E n g i n e e r s a n d t h e S m i t h s o n i a n I n s t i t u t i o n

Genial and courteous, a skilled soldier, and a scientist whose interests ranged from sea 

shells to ballistics, Totten found full scope for his talents in the nation’s capital. A friend 

of powerful men, in 1840 he joined John Quincy Adams, Secretary of War Poinsett, and 

Chief Topographical Engineer Lieutenant Colonel John J. Abert to found the National 

Institute for the Promotion of Science. The group, which included many Army and Navy 

officers stationed in Washington, held monthly meetings where members occasionally 

delivered papers of general scientific interest. More frequently, they viewed and discussed 

books, drawings, and objects (historical as well as scientific) sent by sister organizations 

or collected by their own members. One of the chief reasons for founding the National 

Institute was to be the intellectual society in place able to accept the bequest of English 

scientist James Smithson “to found at Washington...an establishment for the increase and 

diffusion of knowledge among men.” The 1846 law establishing the Smithsonian Institution 

stipulated that two members of its board of regents be members of the National Institute. 

Totten, and scientist and former Army Engineer Alexander Dallas Bache, superintendent 

of the U.S. Coast Survey, were both chosen and served with six members of Congress, the 

vice president, chief justice, secretary of state, the mayor of Washington, and a few private 

citizens who were known educators, a total of fifteen eminent professionals who each 

contributed their expertise.27

At the first meeting of the regents in September 1846, Representative Robert Dale 

Owen of Indiana, Totten, and Washington Mayor William W. Seaton (also the publisher 

of the National Intelligencer) were named to the executive committee. They, along with 

the Smithsonian’s chancellor, Vice President George M. Dallas, and temporary Secretary 

of the Smithsonian, Representative William Jervis Hough, constituted the new institution’s building committee. “The committee was to determine the best methods of 

warming, lighting, and ventilation, the best material for the exterior of the building, and 

the best site.” Beginning on September 14, 1846, some building committee members 

interviewed architects in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, visiting some of their 

buildings. Totten was unable to join the team until they arrived in Boston where they 

36

C h a p t e r 2

Bvt. Maj. Gen. Joseph G. Totten 

by Robert W. Weir 

West Point Museum Art Collection, United 

States Military Academy, #7511
consulted with architects Isaiah Rogers and Ammi B. Young, both mature builderarchitects who had successfully completed federal works.28

Although Totten initially supported Francis Markoe (a clerk in the State 

Department and a founding member of the National Institute) to be the 

Smithsonian’s permanent secretary, he became one of Joseph Henry’s most influential allies after the Princeton scientist was chosen to lead the institution in 

December 1846. About Totten, Henry confided to his wife: “Bache told me 

that when we became acquainted with each other we would draw together. 

Now that he is on the ground many things will go on well with reference 

to the building.” In December 1847 Totten asked to be excused from the 

building committee because consulting on contracts and checking the 

quality of workmanship on the building was becoming too time consuming. Eighteen months later, the Smithsonian’s youthful architect, James 

Renwick, was required to submit to Totten several alternative plans for the 

arrangement of rooms in the east wing (which contained laboratories and 

the chemical lecture hall) when the original configuration was found to be 

unworkable. It fell to Totten to choose the best scheme and he continued to 

support Henry when the secretary proposed other internal changes.29

In the spring of 1850 Totten was one of six regents appointed to a special committee 

“to determine the extent of any contractual violations and to estimate the cost of repairing 

the damage” after part of the floor in the Smithsonian’s main hall collapsed. This 

37

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5

Smithsonian Institution, ca. 1852, 

with some of the evergreens and 

deciduous trees planted under the 

direction of A. J. Downing

Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record 

Unit 95, Box 30, Folder 7, image #36881

Smithsonian interior

Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record 

Unit 95, Box 41, Folder 7, image #16847
committee called in three 

impartial experts: Colonel 

William Turnbull of the 

Corps of Topographical 

Engineers and two architects who were currently 

constructing government 

buildings elsewhere, South 

Carolinian Edward B. White 

and Baltimorean John R. 

Niernsee. In August Totten 

played a key role that 

allowed Renwick (who had 

several important Washington 

connections) to submit final 

bills indicating the 

Smithsonian was completed. 

Immediately, Captain Barton S. Alexander (1819–1878) of the Corps of Engineers 

prepared drawings for fireproofing the unfinished central block. Two years later 

Alexander was detailed to design the first building for the Soldiers’ Home and supervise 

its construction.30

Between 1853 and 1855 Alexander worked closely with Henry to redesign and 

construct rooms in the Smithsonian’s main block and to rebuild some parts of the east 

wing, adding a second story to serve as the secretary’s residence. Alexander’s function 

at the Smithsonian differed from Totten’s; he was the superintendent of construction, 

consulting with Henry and the building committee and suggesting changes to Renwick’s 

design. His most important contribution was the spartan, two-story lecture room that 

dominated the top two floors of the central section of the main block. Henry considered 

Alexander as “rather too extravagant, having been used to the purse of the government.” Alexander considered his room to have dignity and simplicity: “There is not 

much ornament, but still enough, I think, to enable the building to do its duty with 

grace and dignity.”31

Fireproof, masonry-encased iron beams installed by Alexander in 1853–54 did 

their job on January 24, 1865, when a fire broke out on the roof above the lecture room. 

38

C h a p t e r 2

Smithsonian Institution lecture 

hall, designed by Captain 

Barton S. Alexander, who, 

between 1853 and 1855, 

redesigned many interiors 

to be fireproof

Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record 

Unit 95, Box 31, Folder 40, image #43804K
The roof collapsed and the second floor was gutted, but Alexander’s beams prevented 

the total destruction of the building. Henry immediately applied to Secretary of War 

Edwin M. Stanton asking for the Army’s help in raising a temporary roof. Alexander 

surveyed the damage, discovered the cause of the fire, and estimated that thirty to forty 

carpenters could erect a temporary roof in two days, work that was completed under the 

Army’s supervision by January 31. German émigré architect Adolf Cluss was given the 

job of rebuilding and once again the Smithsonian’s interiors were changed to adapt to 

the institution’s changing nature with the lecture hall eliminated. The role of the Corps 

reverted once again to a supervisory one; General Richard Delafield served as the chairman of the Smithsonian’s building committee during Cluss’s rebuilding campaign.32

S u pp l y i n g W a s h i n gt o n w i t h W a t e r

The Corps’ more traditional role as hydraulic engineers occupied a number of men who 

designed and built Washington’s water system during the 1850s. President Millard 

Fillmore declared in his first annual message to Congress in 1851 that “nothing could 

contribute more to the health, comfort and safety of the city and the security of the public 

buildings and records than an abundant supply of pure water.” A few months before, in 

39

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5

Influent gatehouse, 

Georgetown Reservoir, 

1858, built on the site of 

the present Georgetown 

Library

Library of Congress, Prints 

and Photographs Division, 

LC­USZ62­88575
the fall of 1850, Congress confronted the long-standing problem of the city’s water supply 

by voting $500 for a War Department survey to locate the best sources. The survey was 

undertaken by Captain George W. Hughes of the Topographical Corps, who, due to the 

limited amount appropriated, confined his report to the use of Rock Creek as a supply.33

In December 1851 a fire broke out in the Capitol, destroying the Library of Congress 

and threatening the wooden dome. The following summer Congress voted 

$5,000 for “surveys and estimates of the best means for affording the 

cities of Washington and Georgetown an unfailing and abundant supply 

of good and wholesome water.” This bill was prepared by Fillmore’s 

Secretary of the Interior, assisted by local banker William W. Corcoran 

and by Chief of Engineers Colonel Totten. Fillmore assigned the survey 

to the Corps. Totten turned the job over to Captain Frederick A. Smith, 

his long-time deputy, but Smith died one month later. Casting about 

for a successor, in October 1852, Totten picked a young lieutenant, 

Montgomery C. Meigs.34

C h a p t e r 2

Drawing of Aqueduct 

equipment, 1857

Office of History, Corps 

of Engineers

“Thus quietly and unostentatiously 

was commenced the great work. Which 

is destined I trust for the next thousand 

years to pour healthful water into the 

Capital of our union. May I live to 

complete it & connect my name 

imperishably with a work greater in 

its beneficial results than all the 

military glory of the Mexican War.”

40
For three months, Meigs, assisted by civil engineer William H. Bryan, surveyed the 

countryside northwest of Washington and worked on his report. After careful study, he 

proposed that the city draw its water supply either from Rock Creek or from the Potomac 

River at either Little Falls or Great Falls. Using Great Falls would entail the greatest 

engineering effort and cost the most money, but it would produce the largest and most 

reliable supply. Meigs preferred an aqueduct capable of serving a growing city for 

centuries to come. “Let our aqueduct be worthy of the Nation,” he wrote. “Let us show 

that the rulers chosen by the people are not less careful of the safety, health, and beauty 

of their Capital than emperors [of Rome].”35

When Congress asked the president to choose among the three alternatives Meigs 

suggested, newly inaugurated Franklin Pierce chose the Great Falls plan. On March 29, 

1853, Jefferson Davis, secretary of war and strongman of the new cabinet, selected Meigs—

scion of a prominent Democratic family—to head the project. A demonstration of his 

individualistic style followed. Meigs refused to give bond, telling Davis, “The security of 

41

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5

Captain Montgomery C. Meigs 

with Aqueduct equipment, 1859

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
C o n s t r u c t i o n o f

C a b i n J o h n B r i d g e

The Corps built the bridge using 

the Roman arch construction 

technique of a central keystone 

holding wedge-shaped stones 

(voussoirs) in position.

May 1858

December 1858

Washington Aqueduct Division, Baltimore Engineer District 

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-88285

National Archives no. 77-HCS-1C7 

1858
June 1859

August 1861

Civil War Era

Washington Aqueduct Division, Baltimore Engineer District 

Washington Aqueduct Division, Baltimore Engineer District

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
an Engineer officer’s commission and character [is] better than the bond of a civil agent.” 

A new force had arrived on the Washington scene.36

Over the decade that followed, Meigs directed the building of a dependable water 

supply system marked by touches of striking originality. The main conduit was a circular 

masonry tunnel nine feet in diameter and ten miles long. It ran from the Potomac to a 

fifty-acre receiving reservoir near the district line, created by damming the Little Falls 

Branch, which provided sedimentation and storage. Two miles further along, a thirty-sixacre distributing reservoir on the Potomac Palisades served for additional storage, before 

two cast-iron mains, one thirty inches and the other twelve inches in diameter, carried the 

water into the city. A third storage reservoir was a domed rotunda building fifty feet high 

on the heights of Georgetown at the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and R Street. Additional 

pipes carried the Aqueduct’s water to the Capitol and then as far as the Navy Yard, the 

total length of the system being 18.6 miles.37

Underground work was craftsman-like and durable; that aboveground was graceful and 

bold. Meigs built classical temples to hide the machinery and serve as gatehouses. At Cabin 

44

C h a p t e r 2

Digging tunnels for the 

Aqueduct, August 1858

National Archives no. 77-HCS-1B4
John Run, he adopted a design prepared by his gifted assistant, Alfred L. Rives, and spanned 

the deep ravine with the longest ashlar masonry arch in the world. He carried the Aqueduct 

across Rock Creek by an ingenious bridge in which two forty-eight-inch cast-iron tubes 

served both as supporting arches and water mains. The structure carried both the city’s 

water supply and the traffic of Pennsylvania Avenue. Throughout its length, the Aqueduct 

bore the marks of an original engineering mind.38

It also bore Meigs’s name, for vanity was no small foible of his. He recorded in his diary 

for October 31, 1853, the turning of the first spade of soil at Great Falls. “Thus quietly and 

unostentatiously was commenced the great work. Which is destined I trust for the next thousand years to pour healthful water into the Capital of our union. May I live to complete it & 

connect my name imperishably with a work greater in its beneficial results than all the military glory of the Mexican War.” Although the workforce of seven hundred free and slave 

laborers received no memorial, Meigs did order the names of his assistants—Alfred Rives, 

W. H. Bryant, C. Crozel, C. G. Talcott, and W. R. Hutton—engraved on stone tablets, though 

Rives’s name, like that of Secretary Davis, was later erased when he joined the Confederacy. 

45

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5

Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge 

over Rock Creek supported 

by forty-eight-inch cast-iron 

water mains with Georgetown 

in the background. In 1876 the 

Engineer Officer in Charge of 

Public Buildings and Grounds 

decided that the bridge was 

no longer capable of carrying 

heavy loads, provoking outrage 

from Montgomery Meigs. The 

Chief of Engineers appointed 

a board of engineer officers to 

examine the bridge, which was 

declared sound and remained 

in service until 1916.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
46

C h a p t e r 2

But Meigs saw the Aqueduct largely as a memorial to himself. Throughout the Aqueduct’s 

length, he had his name engraved on and cast into bridges, gatehouses, pipes, staircases in 

pipe vaults, even on the derricks and hoisting gear. No one then or later would forget that 

the project was his.39

 In 1852 Captain Alexander H. Bowman (1803–1865), an 1825 graduate of West 

Point, was chosen to head up the new Bureau of Construction in the Treasury Department 

and promoted to major. His previous experience constructing defenses on the Gulf of 

Mexico and Charleston (he built Fort Sumter), while at the same time working on rivers 

and harbors, prepared him to manage several large-scale projects simultaneously. In his 

1853 annual report to Congress on the state of finances, Secretary of the Treasury James 

Guthrie appended a list of thirty-eight “Regulations for the construction of custom-houses 

and other buildings.” The regulations were probably written largely by Bowman to 

summarize his experience with divided administration and working with local contractors 

in areas distant from Washington but answerable to the War Department. The regulations 

laid out in some detail the responsibilities of everyone along the chain of command on 

what procedures to follow if an officer in charge suspected poor quality construction in 

a fail-safe bureaucratic system of checks and balances in order to avert fraud both in the 

field and in Washington.40

This emphasis on accountability led to Bowman being detailed to the Treasury 

Department. Until 1860 he worked with architect Ammi B. Young erecting approximately 

seventy federal buildings throughout the country during the government’s second great 

building campaign. In 1855 President Franklin Pierce chose Bowman and Young to 

undertake their largest project, to carry out Thomas U. Walter’s design for the Treasury 

Extension. Walter and Meigs hoped to secure the job in addition to their other work, 

principally superintendence of the Capitol Extension. Three years earlier Walter and 

Meigs had replaced Robert Mills as the architect and engineer of the Patent Office 

Extension and a few weeks before Pierce’s decision on the Treasury Building, Walter’s 

design for the General Post Office Extension was chosen with Meigs put in charge of 

its construction.41

The Aqueduct was the Corps’ major project in Washington before the Civil War, but 

not its only one. In 1857 the mayor of Georgetown, concerned about the navigability of 

the Potomac, asked the secretary of war to assign an Army Engineer to superintend a 

survey of the river’s Georgetown Channel. Secretary John Floyd delegated Captain 

Isaac C. Woodruff, an assistant in the Corps of Topographical Engineers, to the task. 
Woodruff’s January 1858 report was the first thorough description of the river’s conditions in the district since 1792. It noted both the Potomac’s central role in supporting 

local commerce and in moving materials for the Aqueduct and the Treasury Building 

extension. Woodruff quoted a letter from Bowman, citing “great delays and inconveniences [that] have arisen from the detention of vessels loaded with granite, by 

grounding on the bars, with serious loss to the contractor, in detention and lighterage on 

granite intended for [the Treasury] building.” The city undertook dredging the channel 

and private entrepreneurs built a new dock in Foggy Bottom to unload materials for the 

Aqueduct and the Treasury Extension.42

U . S . C a p i t o l E x t e n s i o n

Two American titans in their respective professions clashed over control of Washington’s 

major mid-nineteenth century building projects, the extension of the U.S. Capitol and the 

design and construction of its new cast-iron dome. For nine years Captain Montgomery C. 

Meigs of the Corps of Engineers and Philadelphia architect Thomas U. Walter divided the 

47

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5

U.S. General Post Office 

Extension under construction, 

August 1858. Captain Meigs 

was in charge of constructing 

the extension to the General 

Post Office, 1855–60, at the 

same time Captain Bowman 

was in charge of building the 

Treasury Building’s south wing 

extension.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC­USZ62­88920
responsibilities for these monumental tasks, initially working in concert, but eventually in 

competition with one another professionally and personally.

The Capitol’s extension began before the formal competition of 1850–51 that resulted 

in Walter being named architect of the Capitol Extension. On March 3, 1843, Congress 

requested the Secretary of War to direct the Corps to prepare a design “for the better 

accommodation of the sittings of the House of Representatives,” a room with serious 

acoustical faults that defied the efforts of three architects, Charles Bulfinch, William 

Strickland, and Robert Mills, and the Corps engineers who worked with them during the 

1820s and 30s.43

C h a p t e r 2

T h e W a s h i n gt o n M o n u m e n t g r o u n d s w e r e n o t a l w a y s

m o n u m e n t a l . T h e g r o u n d s w e r e f e n c e d i n d u r i n g

t h e C i v i l W a r a n d c a tt l e w e r e r a i s e d t h e r e t o f e e d

U n i o n t r o o p s s t a t i o n e d i n W a s h i n gt o n . T h e S o u t h

w i n g o f t h e T r e a s u r y B u i l d i n g , o n t h e r i g h t , w a s

c o m p l e t e d u n d e r t h e d i r e c t i o n o f C a pt a i n B o w m a n

s h o r t l y b e f o r e t h i s p h o t o g r a p h o f 1 4 t h S t r e e t w a s

t a k e n i n t h e 1 8 6 0 s . T h e B o a r d o f P u b l i c W o r k s i n

t h e 1 8 7 0 s f i l l e d i n t h e c a n a l n o r t h o f t h e c a tt l e . 

T o d a y , t h e f i l l e d c a n a l i s C o n s t i t u t i o n A v e n u e .

National Archives no. 111-B-5147
During the spring and summer of 1843 Topographical Corps engineer A. A. Humphreys 

(1810–83), working under Colonel Abert, determined that lateral additions to the existing 

Capitol would solve the need for increased space for congressional business, offer the opportunity to construct new legislative chambers upon better acoustical principles, and improve 

what the Corps and others considered the aesthetic fault of the disproportionate height of 

Charles Bulfinch’s dome, completed in 1824. Humphreys and Abert reported that a new 

House wing, 103 feet by 152 feet placed symmetrically at right angles directly against the 

Capitol’s south wall, could be constructed without disrupting the normal work of Congress. 

The engineers consulted the writings of acoustical experts and concluded that the new 

House of Commons in London would be the appropriate model. Corps engineers designed 

a rectangular room 75 feet by 105 feet within the wing to have a flat ceiling and level floor 

overlooked by public galleries on two sides. The Corps made detailed estimates that also 

included modern methods of heating and ventilating such a large room.

After determining the form, position, and scale of the wing additions (the new Senate 

Wing would be built following that for the House), Abert asked Strickland to suggest an 

alternate interior arrangement for the House wing, and to calculate its cost to compare 

to the government’s estimates for the Topographical Corps’ design. Strickland designed a 

rectilinear, galleried House, its flat, cast-iron ceiling admitting light through four cupolas with its lateral galleries able to accommodate six hundred spectators. Estimates 

for both the Humphreys-Abert and Strickland schemes were just under $300,000 per 

wing, a sum apparently too great at this time because Abert wrote the architect on 

April 5, 1844, that the entire idea had been abandoned. However, the early formula 

49

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5

Corps of Topographical 

Engineers’ 1845 drawing of the 

extension of the Capitol, with 

porticoed lateral wings attached 

directly to the original building

Architect of the Capitol, 63447
for how to extend the Capitol and design new legislative chambers on better acoustical 

principles, first suggested by the Corps, was further developed during the 1850s by 

Walter and Meigs.

Six years later Congress decided to go ahead with the project to extend the Capitol. 

On July 4, 1851, the cornerstone for the extension was set, and Walter, hired by the 

Department of the Interior, contracted for a year’s work on foundations. Immediately he 

encountered difficulties prompted primarily by aesthetic issues—republican simplicity 

versus the Victorian splendor and opulence of his winning design. The government’s 

financial situation also changed dramatically when the mineral rights gleaned from the 

Gold Rush began filling the federal treasury.44

Walter’s first skirmish was over the Massachusetts marble chosen for the wings. 

The Secretary of the Interior appointed General Totten, Smithsonian secretary Joseph 

Henry, the commissioner of the Patent Office, and Walter to a commission to test 

various marbles. The result of their December 22, 1851, report was the decision to use 

marble from Massachusetts, Maryland, and New York. The second difficulty Walter 

encountered concerned the foundations of the wings; on April 2, 1852, engineers 

Frederick A. Smith and J. L. Mason reported that the gneiss and hydraulic cement 

50

C h a p t e r 2

Capitol with its low dome, 

1851. South, or House wing, 

extension, in relationship 

to Charles Bulfinch’s 

dome built in 1823

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-62168
51

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5

Thomas U. Walter’s eastern 

elevation of the north wing 

of the Capitol extension, 1855. 

Meigs decided to place pediments 

above each portico and supervised 

Thomas Crawford’s sculpture in 

the Senate wing pediment.

Architect of the Capitol, 59142

being used were excellent, the Corps having been called in as consultants by the 

Senate’s Committee on Public Buildings.

On December 24, 1851, fire destroyed Bulfinch’s Library of Congress, which 

spanned the west wing’s top two stories. Between March 1852 and July 1853, Walter 

replaced it by inserting a three-story cast-iron cage of shelves and balconies manufactured by the Janes, Beebe & Company of New York. Although the new Library of 

Congress officially had America’s first cast-iron ceiling suspended from an iron truss 

roof, all of the rooms’ other iron elements were the logical conclusion of Walter’s earlier 

Philadelphia works using iron construction. Walter’s innovative use of cast-iron in the 

library soon became the basis for Walter’s and Meigs’s design and construction 

of the Capitol’s wings as well as additions they made to the Patent Office (1853–67) and 

General Post Office (1855–69).45

When the administration changed in 1853, Democrat Franklin Pierce quickly 

transferred oversight (on March 23) of the Capitol’s construction from the Interior 

Department to the War Department at the request of Secretary of War Jefferson Davis. 

Allegations against Walter concerning his contracts for materials were investigated and 

explained but the government was leery of any appearances of malfeasance. On April 4, 

1853, Davis chose Captain Meigs to carry out Pierce’s executive order calling for the 

Corps’ general supervision and control of the whole work. In April 1854 the propriety of 

having military engineers supervise civil works in general, and public buildings in particular, was debated by two Washington newspapers. The Daily Union, reporting on Kentucky 

Congressman Richard H. Stanton’s charge that about seventy Army officers were currently 

unlawfully involved in civil projects, noted that the engineers were carrying out their legitimate duties “in compliance with the laws of Congress and the orders of their government.” 

Longitudinal section through 

the north wing of the Capitol 

extension. Meigs moved the 

chambers to the center of each 

wing from their perimeters as 

Walter had planned.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-88915
52

C h a p t e r 2

The Washington Sentinel disagreed on the grounds that it was foolhardy to assign engineers 

to civil works projects when there was a critical shortage of engineers to carry out military 

projects. The Sentinel particularly argued that Meigs’s supervision of the Capitol Extension 

was contrary to the original legislation and cited an 1824 law that allowed the Army to hire 

civilian engineers when its workload required extra expert labor.46

In spite of the controversy over military control of civilian projects, Meigs took over the 

writing and managing of all contracts for materials and labor from Walter, while the architect retained his responsibilities as the Capitol’s designer. With Meigs as the “engineer 

in charge,” a working relationship was established that became the model for the design 

and construction of the government’s post-Civil War buildings in Washington. Meigs’s 

Meigs combined exceptional mental gifts, physical stamina, and an indomitable 

will—characteristics that made him the Corps’ most colorful personality on 

the Washington scene for more than three decades. He was “high-tempered, 

unyielding, tyrannical towards his brothers, and very persevering in pursuit of 

anything he wishes” at the age of six, according to his mother. Oversight of the 

Capitol’s extension might have been full-time work, but during the 1850s Meigs 

also was in charge of the Washington Aqueduct, extensions to two other 

major government buildings, and a score of lesser projects. Descended from a 

Revolutionary War General, Meigs was born in Augusta, Georgia, on May 3, 

1816, the son of a Yale-trained physician, and the grandson of a Yale professor. Meigs was raised in Philadelphia and at the age of fifteen entered the 

University of Pennsylvania while awaiting an appointment to West Point. 

He graduated fifth in his 1836 class of forty-nine cadets, was commissioned an 

officer in the Corps of Engineers, and began the typical round of two- to fouryear assignments by surveying the Mississippi River followed by building forts on the Great Lakes. By 1839 

Meigs was in Washington serving on the Board of Engineers for Atlantic Coast Defenses where he married 

Louisa Rodgers, daughter of Commodore John Rodgers of the U.S. Navy. They lived in the Rodgers house 

on H Street, a short walk to the War Department and St. John’s Episcopal Church, of which they were 

members. After other tours of duty, in 1852, Totten called Meigs back to Washington to survey the best route 

for Washington’s aqueduct. Except for a few months in 1859 and 1860, Meigs spent the remainder of his 

career in Washington.47

Montgomery C. Meigs

Office of History, Corps of 

Engineers
instructions gave him wide latitude. “As upon you will rest the responsibility for the proper 

and economical construction of these buildings, you will consider yourself fully empowered to make such changes in the present administration as you may deem necessary, and 

to regulate the organization thereafter as your experience may dictate.” Meigs might have 

taken this opportunity to fire or replace Walter, but he did not do so. Meigs’s first assignment under orders was to reexamine the foundations, the source of charges brought against 

Walter. At the same time he and Walter collaborated on a major change in the wings. 

Walter had placed the chambers on the west sides of the wings for views over the Mall 

and city; Meigs suggested moving them to the center of each wing. This improved circulation between them and congressional committee rooms, and allowed the chambers to be 

sunken wells with public galleries on all sides to ensure acoustical quality. Meigs’s arrangement meant illuminating the rooms with skylights, the entire design already suggested in the 

Abert-Strickland scheme of 1843. Meigs claimed

we obtain a pleasanter light, ample for all useful purposes, as proved by its 

adoption in all the best constructed picture galleries. We also exclude the 

sounds of the exterior, which, saturating the air, as it were, distract the 

attention, and even overpower the voice we wish to hear....Open windows for 

hearing will be worse than closed ones; they not only let irregular, disturbing 

currents of air in, but they let the voices out.48

Plan of the principal story 

of the north wing, with the 

central chamber separated 

from committee rooms by 

a wide corridor

Architect of the Capitol, 74028

53
Meigs’s revised 1853 plan included two monumental imperial marble 

staircases per wing, “the most stately in the country and when embellished 

with our beautiful native marbles,” Meigs claimed, “will, I trust, compare 

favorably with any abroad.” These staircases were primarily to take visitors to 

the public galleries, and their Victorian splendor reflected the contemporary 

taste of a newly rich country. Meigs’s reports describe the new plans “in terms 

of richness, luxury, and elegance, reflecting the administration’s determination 

that the Capitol extension” be comparable to contemporary European public 

buildings increasingly being visited by congressmen, cabinet officers, and 

high government officials.

Walter continued to control the design of the Capitol’s exteriors with one 

exception. Meigs suggested including pediments above the east porticoes of 

the wings to match the central pediment above the portico that led to the 

rotunda. These pediments were to be filled with sculpture, and Meigs chose 

the artists, suggested appropriate themes to them, critiqued their work, and 

ensured they were paid.49

In July 1853 Meigs wrote Edward Everett (a former president of Harvard 

as well as former congressman and governor of Massachusetts) asking for 

recommendations for sculptors; Everett recommended Hiram Powers and 

Thomas Crawford. In August 1853 Meigs wrote Crawford, who like some other 

contemporary American sculptors, lived and worked in Rome. “The pediments 

and doorways should be part of the original construction of the building, and 

I do not see why a republic richer than the Athenian should not rival the Parthenon 

in the front of its first public edifice.” Meigs cautioned Crawford that complex 

allegories were not acceptable to the American public and Crawford responded 

with a design for the Senate wing’s pediment titled the Progress of Civilization.

Crawford’s central statue allegorized America while twelve flanking figures represented the Euro-Americans in appropriate dress bringing European civilization to 

the new world and a Native American family in great sorrow. Once the Capitol’s 

dome was underway, Meigs turned again to Crawford for a figure of Freedom.50

Meigs’s attention to construction details was legendary. When he noticed that 

windowsills on the eastern side of the south wing were a little more than an inch 

higher than those on the west, he had it corrected. His professional logs and 

personal journals record such daily minutiae as the cost of laying one thousand 

C h a p t e r 2

54

“I do not see why a 

republic richer than the 

Athenian should not rival 

the Parthenon in the front 

of its first public edifice.”

Sketch of Meigs’s arrangement for 

hoisting the cast-iron pieces of 

the new dome

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs 

Division, LC-USZ62-88572
T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5

bricks ($4.07), the number of government employees and contractors’ workmen per day, 

and the progress of minor construction details. Obtaining good quality materials, especially bricks in sufficient quantities, was an ongoing problem and the Capitol’s letter 

books attest to Meigs’s visits to quarries and brickyards along the eastern seaboard and 

his rejection of shoddy products.51

Meigs was particularly anxious to use America’s richly veined native marble and 

pursued sources at the same time Army (and Navy) Engineers were testing their strength 

Roof over the House of 

Representatives’ chamber, with 

Meigs’s glass roof suspended by 

a truss system he designed

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-62170

55
and durability for general use. It was 

not solely the Capitol’s stability and 

construction technology, however, that 

Meigs wanted to his credit, but its place 

among the world’s great buildings. He 

argued early in 1854 that the 100 new 

exterior columns should be monoliths cut 

from single pieces of stone, a subtle but 

effective aid to the appearance of stability, 

but, more importantly, a rare architectural 

achievement in Europe. Steam engines 

to cut monoliths from quarries, steam 

engines to convey them to the site, and 

steam engines to hoist them in place 

made a once vastly expensive architectural 

luxury perfectly possible; Meigs convinced 

Congress to bear their extra cost, double 

that of shafts composed of individual 

drums.52

In 1854, the enemies of the “military 

rule” at the Capitol questioned Meigs’s 

competency as the Capitol’s design partner, 

but not his abilities as an engineer, at a 

time when radical changes in national taste 

were occurring. Representative Richard H. 

Stanton of Kentucky, in particular, was 

very outspoken about preferring Walter’s 

“refined” taste to the opulence, even garishness, that Meigs was introducing in highly 

colored marble, tiles, and fresco paintings. 

Such enmity also was motivated by congressional power struggles and partisan politics, a 

constant factor throughout the Capitol’s history of construction beginning in 1793. Walter 

himself was initially delighted with the division of responsibilities between architect and 

engineer and admired Meigs. He wrote his father-in-law on June 20, 1854:

C h a p t e r 2

Thomas U. Walter and Capt. W. B. 

Franklin, “Section through Dome 

of U.S. Capitol,” Dec. 9, 1859. 

Both the trusses and the dome’s 

exterior and interior decorative 

parts are made of cast-iron.

Architect of the Capitol, 74001

56
57

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5

The Captain is as noble a man as the country can produce, and he is 

better fitted for his post than any one they could find whether soldier

or civilian, and I most sincerely desire that he may not be removed; 

such a thing would be a disaster for the country in general and me in 

particular—you have no idea what a luxury it has been to me during 

the past year to be able to devote myself to the legitimate professional 

duties, and be freed from the annoyances of contractors, appointments, 

disbursements, and the like, all of which take time, unhinge the mind, 

and create an army of enemies.53

From his youth, Meigs was part of the government and he understood the ways of politicians and the bureaucracy and how to manipulate the one and navigate the other, 

while Walter was often at the mercy of both. Both men had their friends and 

enemies in Congress and often that was the arena where differences of taste and 

credit were fought.

In May 1854 Walter began working on a new dome, from the outset planned 

to be built of cast-iron. He excited Congressmen with spectacular drawings—one 

seven feet long—and Meigs regretted that he did not have a larger part in its design. 

On December 26, 1854, he recorded in his diary: “I think the sketch I have made is 

a better outline than the one Mr. Walter and myself settled upon before, and I wish to 

have had something to do with this design myself. I can make a little greater height and 

more graceful outline and a very noble and beautiful interior arrangement.”54

Meigs’s journal entry for December 29, 1854, indicates the kind of suppressed hostilities between architect and engineer that later broke out into open warfare.

I showed Walter today my sketch for the dome....He was very decided in his 

opinion that his is better but offered to have both worked up so that they could 

be [compared]. It was evident that he is disgusted that I should attempt such a 

thing as design a dome. The arrangement of the rooms is mine. The form of the 

ceiling is mine. The style of decoration is that which I directed....He has not a 

dome in the building. I have introduced many. So that, in fact, the design is 

quite as much, if not more, mine than his....55

Meigs acted speedily in February 1855 to ensure that both houses of Congress 

voted to place the dome’s construction under the Corps of Engineers, it not having been 

“The Captain is as noble 

a man as the country can 

produce, and he is better 

fitted for his post than any 

one they could find whether 

soldier or civilian....”
1857

March 4, 1861

January 1856

Architect of the Capitol, 5002

Architect of the Capitol, 79256

Picture History, 1860.0143
E n l a r g e m e n t o f t h e

C a p i t o l D o m e

Partially completed for President 

Abraham Lincoln’s first inauguration on 

March 4, 1861, construction continued 

during the Civil War. By January 1856 

the old dome had been removed in 

preparation for construction of the new, 

larger dome. The 1857 photograph 

shows new iron work projecting from the 

support wall of the old dome. This new 

iron work would support the peristyle of 

the new dome. 

November 1862

ca. 1861–62

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
part of the original legislation for the Capitol Extension. In order to get the greatest 

exterior width at the dome’s base, Meigs suggested embedding iron brackets in the 

existing octagonal brick drum to support a cantilevered iron ring from which thirty-six 

columns would rise. Meigs designed a special scaffold with a triangular base to avoid 

a weak spot in the center of the rotunda’s floor, later raising a mast and boom powered 

by a steam engine that Meigs fueled with wood from Bulfinch’s dismantled outer dome. 

This structure made it possible to raise the large iron pieces efficiently and economically, a great savings in time. Meigs kept up to date with European and American 

advances in technology and was quick to apply what he learned to projects under his 

direction. Because of concern about the weight of the much larger new dome, the old 

dome was weighed as it was dismantled, the cast-iron dome found to weigh only twentypercent more than Bulfinch’s dome. When the original congressional appropriation of 

$100,000 was deemed inadequate, Meigs claimed that he repeatedly refused to estimate 

the new dome’s cost based solely on Walter’s elevation drawing; the dome eventually 

cost $1,047,271.56

Within two months of Congress authorizing the new dome, Meigs asked sculptor Thomas Crawford to sketch a figure for its summit, an element present on Walter’s 

drawings but its subject undefined. On May 11, 1855, Meigs wrote the sculptor: “We 

have too many Washingtons; we have America in the pediment, Victories and Liberties 

are rather pagan emblems, but a Liberty I fear is the best we can get.” Crawford’s 

design was received on July 12, its subject “Freedom Triumphant in Peace and War,” 

its emblems consisting of a sword, olive branch, and shield of the United States, all 

elements readily comprehensible to the American people. Meigs returned the design 

asking for a base to be added that would fit the tholos on which it was to stand; 

Crawford’s photograph of his revised sketch maquette arrived in January 1856, with 

the figure wearing a liberty cap, a Roman emblem of freed slaves that had been revived 

first during the American Revolution and then the French Revolution. Secretary of War 

Jefferson Davis objected to this addition to the statue, arguing, “history renders it inappropriate to a people who were born free and would not be enslaved.” In January 1856 

Meigs noted in his diary that despite Davis’s objection to the liberty cap, “he leaves the 

matter to the judgement of Mr. Crawford,” who was sent Davis’s letter and decided to 

give “Freedom” an eagle headdress.57

Marble in a great variety of colors and patterns from many American quarries 

were the Capitol extension’s most expensive elements and Meigs had complete 

60

C h a p t e r 2

Tholus and Statue of Freedom 

of the New Dome of the Capitol

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-88881
61

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5

control over their choice and contracting for them. Although marble floors originally 

had been specified, Meigs substituted English Minton encaustic tiles—highly 

patterned and very colorful, as well as being very durable. He substituted iron door 

and window frames for marble because they could be made more rapidly. During the 

nine years that Meigs oversaw the Capitol’s construction, he was always conscious of 

applying new technologies to save time and money without sacrificing the quality of 

construction. He used steam power whenever possible to replace man-hours. However, 

cost savings in these areas was more than balanced by Meigs’s expenditures on beautifying the Capitol according to his (and currently popular) taste, all duly authorized 

by Congress.58

Meigs began seeking artists to decorate the Capitol’s interiors in 1854, and in 

January 1855, when the Roman expatriate fresco painter Constantino Brumidi came to 

the Capitol seeking work, Meigs invited him to paint a lunette in his office, the subject 

being the Calling of Cincinnatus from the Plow. Meigs considered this an appropriate 

theme because it fused the Revolution’s military and civic history in an allegory cast in 

the timelessness of classicism. The Society of the Cincinnati had been founded in 1784, 

with George Washington its first president, to honor American military officers who 

served their country during the Revolution. Contrary to Crawford’s realistic sculpture 

for the Capitol, Brumidi carried out under Meigs’s direction great cycles of paintings 

in which American historical events were cast in the visual language of traditional 

European allegories. The architectural and decorative frameworks in which they were 

placed were derived from Italian Renaissance buildings, considered to be the acme of 

human civilization by Meigs’s generation. Some of Brumidi’s paintings were portraits of 

actual people engaged in real events, but the majority, including the grisaille frieze and 

the Apotheosis of Washington in the rotunda, used the traditional allegorical language 

drawn from ancient mythology as more appropriate to the European origins of the 

Capitol’s architecture.59

Meigs also received a great deal of credit during the nineteenth century for his engineering work on the Capitol Extension. Because of frequent night sessions in the House 

of Representatives and because of its large size, the chamber was lit by an impressive 

array of 1,260 gas burners on the ceiling containing forty-five thousand individual 

jets. The jets reportedly ignited in twenty seconds when the system was first used on 

December 2, 1857. Meigs also was responsible for the Capitol’s unique steam heating 

system, “thought to be superior to anything of the kind ever invented.” Air was heated 
as it passed over “seven or eight miles” of steam pipes and dispersed to the Senate 

chamber and committee rooms.60

When James Buchanan was sworn in as president in 1857, he appointed Virginia 

Governor John B. Floyd as secretary of war. Meigs’s championing by the War 

Department gradually came to an end because Floyd saw the Capitol’s large workforce 

as an opportunity to exercise political patronage. Meigs repeatedly refused at first 

hints and then direct orders to replace his trusted and experienced workmen with those 

suggested by Floyd. At the same time, competition between Walter and Meigs for credit 

of the Capitol’s design erupted over the issue of the new Hall of Representatives. Walter 

complained that Meigs had undertaken all of its decorations without consulting him and 

that “it is the most vulgar room I was ever in.” Meigs wrote the National Intelligencer on 

December 7, 1857, promoting his design.61

The style is new in this country where our public buildings generally, through 

the poverty of the public purse or perhaps the greater poverty of the architect’s 

taste, starve in simple white-wash. This, new in this country, rich and magnificent decoration, naturally, when first seen excites surprise. The colors are so 

rich, so various, so intricate, so different from anything seen before, that the 

impression is that it must be, what? Gaudy? But what is gaudy? Are the colors 

of the autumnal forest gaudy?...Let not the noisy babble of ignorance forestall 

public opinion on its merits.62

On November 1, 1859, Floyd relieved Meigs of his duties at the Capitol. Meigs recounted 

in his journal a particularly acrimonious meeting with Floyd on September 15, 1858.

He said that he thought the skill and taste of Mr. Walter could not be spared, 

that he supposed I would not be ready to assume a sufficient skill as an architect to complete the building without him or someone in his place.

I told him that he was mistaken. I assumed to be able to complete it as well 

as Mr. Walter or any man living, that it was now mine, the exterior alone 

being Walter’s, and that not entirely his; that the interior was my design, 

Mr. Walter having been the draftsman only, to execute such drawings as 

I directed; that the design and construction of the halls for legislation were 

entirely mine and to me alone was due the success of the building its great 

object. That the reputation which I had thus won, Mr. Walter endeavored to 

62

C h a p t e r 2

“The colors are so rich, 

so various, so intricate, 

so different from 

anything seen before, 

that the impression is 

that it must be, what? 

Gaudy? But what is 

gaudy? Are the colors 

of the autumnal forest 

gaudy?”

“...it is the most 

vulgar room I was 

ever in.”
rob me of, etc. That I was entirely unfitted to take the position he proposed, 

of a mere executive agent, a disbursing officer, to carry out the designs of 

Mr. Walter or any other architect. That I had made a reputation which 

neither Walter nor any other man could take from me.63

Meigs was more extreme in his attitude towards architects than other Corps engineers who worked as superintendents of construction on post-Civil War buildings in 

Washington. His exceptionally strong ego combined with his rightful intellectual 

ownership of many design decisions at the Capitol led him to believe that his artistic 

contributions were not being properly recognized. Meigs, as many West Point engineers 

of his generation, was trained to solve architectural problems including issues of 

design; recognition of his own considerable abilities as a designer and acutely 

conscious of contemporary aesthetics so different from those of Walter’s more sedate 

generation, drove him to adopt this position. Seemingly, Meigs was unable to recognize 

the differences between his education in design, which focused on literal reinterpretations of prototypes (but innovative solutions of technical problems), and the architects’ 

education, which emphasized the transformation of traditional historical archetypes in 

the creative process. Walter, one of the founding members of the American Institute of 

Architects, began a campaign to assert the supremacy of architectural design over the 

mechanics of coordinating the construction of such a complex building. He was unwilling to recognize Meigs’s actual architectural and design contributions; personal 

jealousies between the two men became institutionalized during the following decades 

when Congress dictated that architects design public buildings and Army Engineers 

build them.

Throughout his private journal kept during the 1850s, Meigs lamented that his 

captain’s salary was barely enough to support his family, certainly not enough to entertain as he felt his position required and merited. Despite his grumbling that he could 

earn a much higher salary as a civilian engineer, Meigs remained a military man to the 

end of his life. Two factors offset his desire for a larger salary: the opportunity to have so 

much control over such momentous projects as the Capitol Extension and the Washington 

Aqueduct, and the entrée into Washington society that his position and family connections afforded him. It was not until well after the Civil War that General Meigs was given 

the opportunity at the Pension Building to fully exploit his talents as both engineer and 

architect in a highly individual work of architecture.64

63

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5

“I had made a 

reputation which 

neither Walter nor any 

other man could take 

from me.”
T h e W i n d e r B u i l d i n g , a t t h e c o r n e r

o f 1 7 t h a n d F S t r e e t s w e s t o f t h e

W h i t e H o u s e , w a s b u i l t i n 1 8 4 7 – 4 8 

b y W i l l i a m H . W i n d e r , w h o l e a s e d

m o s t o f t h e s p a c e t o t h e U . S . 

g o v e r n m e n t . T h e C o r p s o f E n g i n e e r s

m a d e i t t h e i r h e a d q u a r t e r s f r o m

t h e n u n t i l 1 8 8 9 . T h e b u i l d i n g , s e e n

h e r e i n t h e C i v i l W a r e r a , h a s b e e n

s u b j e c t t o v e r y f e w a l t e r a t i o n s a n d

s t i l l s t a n d s t o d a y .

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Lot 12668
T h e C o r p s i n C i v i l W a r W a s h i n gt o n

The Corps of Engineers contributed extensively to the physical makeup of the district 

during the Civil War.65 At the end of May 1861, Union troops occupied defensive positions on the Virginia side of the Potomac, and there established the first defensive works 

to protect the capital from southern military threats. After the July 1861 Union defeat at 

Manassas, greater emphasis was placed on the thorough planning of a protective system 

for the city. The next month Major General George B. McClellan assigned engineer 

Major John G. Barnard to be chief engineer of the city’s defenses, in charge of construction of a planned ring of batteries, redoubts, lunettes, and forts. Barnard began by 

protecting major roadways, first on the Arlington Heights, then on the roads connecting 

the city to towns in Maryland to the north. By the end of 1861, forty-eight defensive 

works protected Washington—twenty-three in Virginia, seventeen on the northern sweep 

from the Potomac to the Anacostia, and eleven to the southeast and south of the 

Anacostia. Much of the labor was supplied by soldiers, supervised by the dozen or so 

engineer officers assigned to the work. As the war progressed, the Army Engineers came 

65

Fort Stevens in the Northwest 

section of the district. Engineers 

built the fort to defend 

Washington from attack along 

the 7th Street Pike (now Georgia 

Avenue). On July 11, 1864, 

confederate Lieutenant General 

Jubal Early’s forces attacked 

that section of the city’s defenses 

but were driven off.

National Archives no. 66-DC-18-4
to rely upon numerous civil engineers and civilian overseers. A pair of civil engineers, 

previously employed on the Aqueduct, directed substantial work done in 1863: “They 

exhibited great zeal and intelligence, and soon mastered all those branches of military 

engineering which concerned their duties of construction. They were required to execute 

the plans prepared in the office of the chief engineer, to exercise a close supervision 

over their respective divisions, and generally to act as administrative officers in the 

details of the work.”66 As subsequent military campaigns moved soldiers to the field, 

Barnard also relied increasingly on hired labor. As he wrote after the war, “Details of 

troops were used whenever (and to the fullest extent) practicable; but this force was 

variable and uncertain, generally furnished with reluctance by the commanding officers, 

and comparatively inefficient when furnished....During the year 1863 large details were 

drawn from the convalescent, stragglers, and deserters’ camps south of the Potomac, and 

made up in numbers what they lacked in individual efficiency.”67

66

C h a p t e r 2

Fort Totten in the northeastern 

part of the District of Columbia

National Archives no. 111-B-376
The initial detached line of forts was only later filled in and 

strengthened with supporting fortifications. Congressional appropriations in 1862 could not be used to start new works, although 

reevaluation of the defenses of the capital city came after the 

Battle of Antietam in October. A commission created by Secretary 

of War Edwin Stanton reported that twenty-five thousand infantry, 

nine thousand artillerymen, and three thousand cavalry were 

needed to defend the city adequately—plus another twenty-five 

thousand additional men to act as a mobile force outside the ring 

of defenses. The commission also called for changes to the existing works, the creation of half a dozen new forts, and additional 

shore defenses. Stanton’s commission was well positioned to help 

the secretary of war gain congressional approval for expanded 

defenses: it included Chief of Engineers Totten and Quartermaster 

General Meigs, in addition to W. F. Barry, Chief of 

Artillery; G. W. Cullum, chief of staff to the General-in-Chief; 

and J. G. Barnard.

Despite labor and funding difficulties, by the end of 1863 

Washington possessed 60 forts, 93 batteries, and 837 field guns. 

Rifle pits wide enough for two ranks of soldiers tied the ring 

of defenses together. The campaigns of 1864 removed both 

troops and guns from Washington. Lieutenant Colonel Barton S. 

Alexander replaced Barnard, reassigned to General Grant’s staff 

as his chief engineer. When Confederate Lieutenant General 

Jubal Early moved on Washington in July—the only substantial 

fighting the city actually saw—only nine thousand soldiers 

manned the defenses. The engineers worked to improve and 

perfect the city’s defensive works through the end of the war, although no major threat 

followed Early’s unsuccessful campaign. By April 1865 the Corps had overseen the use 

of $1.4 million to construct twenty miles of rifle pits and thirty miles of military roads 

serving more than fourteen hundred gun emplacements in sixty-eight forts and ninetythree batteries. Among the roads was a five-and-a-half-mile stretch connecting Fort 

Sumner along the Potomac to Fort Stevens to the east of Rock Creek, “a very excellent 

road, thoroughly drained by side ditches and with substantial bridges and culverts...to 

67

T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 1 8 0 0 – 6 5

Plans for Fort Ethan Allen on the 

western side of the Potomac River, 

one of the many earthen and wood 

fortifications built to defend 

Washington during the Civil War

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
which was given a width of forty-five feet and a full, rounded surface.” Within a few 

years after the return of peace, the defensive works—which had briefly made 

Washington one of the most heavily fortified cities in the world—had been abandoned, 

although some of the roads and parks on the grounds of former forts became lasting 

contributions to the city.68

68

Lithograph of the 15th New 

York Volunteer Engineers 

experimenting with rope 

suspension bridges and India 

rubber pontons and ponton 

bridges at Camp Alexander 

on the Anacostia River 

during the Civil War

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

Opposite page: Engineer map

of the defensive positions

surrounding Washington

during the Civil War

Office of History, Corps of 

Engineers, Maps
69

[Caption

Credit]

I n t r o d u c t i o n

Within a decade of the Union Army’s three-day victory march down Pennsylvania Avenue 

celebrating the end of the Civil War, late May 1865, three major administrative changes 

involved U.S. Army Engineers in the unanticipated tasks of overseeing the construction of 

Washington’s most important late nineteenth century buildings, rebuilding and expanding 

the city’s municipal infrastructure, and reclaiming the Potomac flats. In 1863 the Army 

Engineers had been reunited when the Topographical Engineers merged with the Corps. 

Four years later, on March 2, 1867, largely as a result of Congress’s approval of Meigs’s 

supervision of the Capitol Extension and the Aqueduct, the Office of Public Buildings and 

Grounds was transferred from the Interior Department to the War Department. 

(Another factor was the civilian building commissioner B. B. French’s support of Andrew 

Johnson during congressional impeachment proceedings.) This act meant that the Chief of 

Engineers became responsible for overseeing construction of some individual government 

civilian buildings in Washington, in addition to military ones. In 1874 Washington’s shortlived territorial government failed, and a temporary board of three civilian commissioners, 

3 The Victorian City

1865–90

Opposite page: Plaster casts

of stock sculptures used to

decorate the Library of

Congress, October 1894

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, 

LC‐USZ62‐120936
assisted by an Army Engineer in charge of public works, took over running Washington’s 

municipal affairs. The commissioner form of government was made permanent in 1878 

and lasted until 1967 with an Army Engineer now one and perhaps the most powerful of 

the three commissioners. Finally, in 1875, the Washington Engineer District was formed, 

its initial responsibilities being the management of the Potomac River. The tidal flats 

adjacent to the west end of the Mall were filled and the Tidal Basin created, the long-term 

result being Potomac Park, which more than doubled the public grounds of the Mall.1

O f f i c e o f P u b l i c B u i l d i n g s a n d G r o u n d s

The Corps of Engineers returned to peacetime civil projects in 1866 when the Senate 

ordered a report recommending sites for a major public park and a new Executive 

Mansion. Major Nathaniel N. Michler (1827–1881) quickly assembled the requested 

information. The next year, a youthful Major John A. Tardy took charge of Fort 

Washington and the surveying of the Potomac.2

 Of greater significance, lawmakers that 

year decided to remove the care of public buildings from a civilian commissioner. They 

transferred it, along with “the superintendence of the Washington Aqueduct and all the 

public works and improvements of the government of the United States in the District of 

Columbia” to the Corps of Engineers. The Office of Public Buildings and Grounds was 

the result. Chief of Engineers General A. A. Humphreys appointed Michler as the logical 

man to fill the new post, and for the first time the Corps took a regular and routine hand 

in running the nation’s capital.3

The transfer of responsibility for the federal lands and property in the District of 

Columbia made Michler the chief maintenance man for the federal buildings and the 

landscape architect of the federal reservations. “Not since L’Enfant had anyone examined the physical city as broadly and with as much care as Michler,”4

 as evidenced by 

his 1867 report. He carefully made a copy of Andrew Jackson Downing’s 1851 picturesque plan for the Mall for the use of his office. The seriousness of his commitment to 

his job and to Washington’s development set a high standard for the Corps’ engineers 

and was rarely dishonored. Like subsequent members of the Corps of Engineers to 

hold such an important position in Washington, Michler had broad practical experience in many parts of the country before being given administrative responsibilities 

in Washington.

Moreover, Michler continued the precedent set by L’Enfant, Roberdeau, Totten, and 

others of the gentleman-engineer tradition, descended from families long in public service 

72

C h a p t e r 3
and educated in far more than the arts of war. A Pennsylvania Moravian and the son of 

a state legislator, Michler excelled at surveys and map-making. He rebuilt the White 

House conservatories in 1867, doubling their size and even selecting some of the new 

plants, outlined plans for the development of the Mall, began to beautify parks and 

squares, and started grading some of the streets and avenues. He lobbied for money to 

cover “that pestiferous ditch of water styled the ‘Washington City canal,’ ”5

 and managed 

a workforce of watchmen, doorkeepers, clerks, and gardeners. In 1869 when Congress 

allowed the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association a $7,000 indemnity for the loss of revenue 

when the Potomac River was blockaded during the Civil War, Regent Ann Pamela 

Cunningham specifically asked that Michler be placed in charge of its disbursement for 

Mount Vernon’s restoration. Finally, Michler was responsible for disbursing “one of the 

most charitable and disinterested appropriations...[,] that for the care of such transient 

paupers as are in need of medical advice and treatment.”6

On June 12, 1866, R. D. Mussey, formerly a military secretary to the president, wrote 

Thaddeus Stevens, chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, upon learning 

that Stevens’s committee was looking for a new executive mansion with the intention of 

turning the White House over to the State Department. Mussey, “painfully conscious of the 

imperfections and deficiencies of the present building,”7

 because of its low-lying situation 

73

Andrew Jackson Downing’s Plan 

for the Mall, 1851, was copied 

by Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel 

Michler to aid the Office of Public 

Buildings and Grounds in 

implementing its five sections, 

including the Ellipse south of 

the president’s house intended as 

a military parade ground.

National Archives, Cartographic Branch, 

RG77, Civil Works File F116-1.
near the malarial Potomac River, suggested Meridian Hill as the best locale in the city for a 

new executive residence. The historic White House might then become entirely offices. 

On July 18 the Senate directed the Secretary of War to select a “park and site for a 

Presidential Mansion that shall combine convenience of access and healthfulness, good 

water and capability of adornment.”8

Michler’s January 29, 1867, report addressed the “park and site” separately, beginning 

with a lyrical and emotive description of the picturesque beauties of the Rock Creek valley 

and an impassioned plea that the government purchase large tracts in anticipation of future 

growth. “There should be a variety of scenery, a happy combination of the beautiful and 

picturesque—the smooth plateau and the gently undulating glade vying with the ruggedness 

of the rocky ravine and the fertile valley, the thickly mantled primeval forest contrasting with 

the green lawn, grand old trees with flowering shrubs.”9

 These were the effusions of a midnineteenth-century romantic soul and not the stuff of the usual engineer’s report to Congress. 

(Michler’s obituary in the New York Times noted that his father, Peter Michler, was the “owner 

of one of the finest estates in that portion [Easton] of Pennsylvania.”)10 Michler’s intensity of 

commitment to secure the best possible location for the executive is complemented by his 

foresight in thinking about the city’s future needs. He compared the extent of European 

(London’s 6,000 acres) and American (Central Park’s 840 acres) public parks to land available along Rock Creek ranging from tracts of 1,800 to 2,540 acres. Michler appended to his 

report “Remarks on the Vegetation of the District of Columbia,” by Dr. Arthur Schott, which 

characterized the habitats and characteristics of trees and shrubs in Washington.

A pragmatic concern for the safety of a future presidential residence is also evident 

in Michler’s discussion of Rock Creek, as is the flexibility he was allowed to fulfill his 

special duty: to find suitable sites for both a public park and a presidential mansion. He 

identified four possible sites and their probable cost for the mansion that would “combine 

convenience of access and healthfulness, good water and capability of adornment,”11 as he 

was directed to do. All were on high ground within four miles of the White House and he 

rejected two of them because Meridian Hill was “too near the city to afford any retirement 

and repose for the Chief Magistrate,” and Eckington because it was “not sufficiently high 

to afford any extensive views.” W. W. Corcoran’s already beautifully landscaped estate, 

Harewood, “would be a most eligible site for a presidential mansion” near the Soldier’s 

Home off North Capitol Street.12

However, Michler favored Moncure Robinson’s estate, also adjacent to the Soldier’s 

Home, because it fulfilled all of his criteria as to a beautiful and healthful locale, was three 

C h a p t e r 3

“There should be a variety 

of scenery, a happy 

combination of the beautiful 

and picturesque—the smooth 

plateau and the gently 

undulating glade vying with 

the ruggedness of the rocky 

ravine and the fertile valley, 

the thickly mantled primeval 

forest contrasting with the 

green lawn, grand old trees 

with flowering shrubs.”

74
miles from the Capitol, and would be the least expensive to purchase. It is possible that 

Michler designed a new presidential mansion for this site, but no drawings have been 

found. Michler’s aspirations set a precedent for future Army Engineers who invested a 

great deal of time and effort in planning for better quarters for the presidents’ private, 

ceremonial, and official lives.

Alongside these civic duties, Michler received additional engineer assignments, 

including being made chief of the Aqueduct. In 1868 he prepared a report on the 

Potomac River for the House of Representatives. Comparing his data with surveys from 

1792, 1858, 1862, and 1867 (the 1858 report being topographical engineer Woodruff’s 

report, while the studies from the 1860s were made by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic 

Survey), Michler reported the dramatic increase over time of the tidal flats between the 

river’s Virginia and Washington channels. Michler recommended extensive dredging to 

preserve navigation in the channels. With the rock causeway of Long Bridge obstructing 

half the width of the river and exacerbating the accumulation of silt, he stressed the need 

to modify or remove the bridge.13

The Office of Public Buildings and Grounds was responsible for the improvement and 

maintenance of Washington’s federal reservations, which included both large public parks 

and hundreds of small triangular and trapezoidal parcels, by-products of L’Enfant’s combining grid and radial systems of streets. Many of these lots had never been improved, and 

Michler and his successor, Colonel Orville E. Babcock (1835–1884), who was appointed in 

1871, set about systematically identifying and improving them citywide. Toward the end of 

making these “places of sand and mud” into sites that were “green and beautiful,”14 the 

office published in 1872 its first location and condition survey of the entire park system. 

This survey was updated periodically; the 1894 version, which became the official reservation map by act of Congress in 1898, showed 301 reservations covering about 405 acres.15

As the street plan of Washington was formally extended beyond L’Enfant’s original 

boundaries at the end of the nineteenth century, even more reservations were added to 

Office of Public Buildings and Grounds’ responsibilities. An 1898 act placed the District 

of Columbia park system under the “exclusive charge” of the engineers, and specified 

that they were to take care, as well, of any land the District Commissioners set aside 

from the street system to be parks.16 Consequently, as the district improved and modified 

its road system, additional small reservations were transferred to the Office of Public 

Buildings and Grounds. By the same token, engineer-controlled reservations also were 

periodically returned to the District Commissioners when needed “for street purposes.”17

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

Colonel Orville E. Babcock turned 

the Mall into a Victorian pleasure 

garden, planting trees, shrubs, and 

flowers during his tenure as the 

superintendent of Public Buildings 

and Grounds from 1871 to 1877.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs 

Division, LC-BH83-3715 (detail)

75
Work on these lands included grading; planting trees, shrubs and flowers; irrigating; 

and building walks and roads. In Babcock’s first year in office, workers in his employ 

laid forty-six thousand feet of sod, constructed one thousand feet of curbing, ten thousand yards of pavement and walks, and put in four miles of drains.18 As Theodore 

Bingham put it when he was in charge in 1899, “the parks in and around Washington 

should form a systematic and well-considered whole....an emerald setting for the beautiful city within.”19 Consequently, the engineers built watchmen’s stations and fountains 

in some larger parks and purchased benches, lamps, and ornamental vases. In 1874 

Mary Clemmer Ames exclaimed: “Seats—thanks to General Babcock—everywhere invite 

to sit down and rest beneath trees which every summer cast a deeper and more protecting shadow.” The office even requested sixteen statues and six vases from the St. Louis 

Louisiana Purchase Exposition for public decoration during the inaugural of 1905, and 

these were subsequently installed in Potomac Park and President’s Park.20

Map of Federal Reservations, 

1894. The Office of Public 

Buildings and Grounds was 

responsible for these 301 parcels 

of land, large and small, 

scattered throughout the city.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, 

ARCE 1894 

C h a p t e r 3

76
The standing bronze figure of 

Civil War Naval hero Admiral 

Samuel F. Dupont was erected 

under the auspices of Colonel 

Almon F. Rockwell in 1884 when 

Pacific Circle was renamed 

Dupont Circle. The present 

fountain replaced it in 1921.

Washingtoniana Division, D.C. Public 

Library

Babcock introduced worm- and insecteating European sparrows to the parks,21

and accepted donations of eagles, prairie 

dogs, deer, and owls.22 When public funds 

fell short for feeding the animals, he dipped 

into his own pocket.23 The Territorial 

Government’s Board of Public Works 

praised Babcock for his “cordial co-operation with local authorities, his wise counsel, 

energy, and ability.”24 The Office of Public 

Buildings and Grounds encountered periodic difficulties keeping the parcels free 

from illegal private occupation—dumps, gardens, buildings, and railroad tracks appeared 

on them—and undertook to mark unimproved reservations with six-inch granite markers 

and to surround improved lots with post-and-chain fences and, later, concrete copings.25

Four designs for parks and 

squares done by the Office of 

Public Buildings and Grounds 

in 1886 to serve Washington’s 

rapidly expanding residential 

neighborhoods

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, 

ARCE 1886 (photo illustration)

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

77
A joint congressional resolution of March 2, 1867, authorized a statue of Lieutenant 

General Winfield Scott, the first of many of the Union Army’s Civil War generals to be so 

honored. The July 15, 1870, act appropriating funds for the statue directed the Secretary of 

War to choose a location, contract with the sculptor and architect of the base (both of whom 

had been chosen by a commission), and oversee all aspects 

of construction, including disbursing the funds. These duties, 

which were carried out by the Corps Officer in Charge of 

Public Buildings and Grounds (Babcock for the Scott statue), 

became routine for all of the statues destined for Washington’s 

public parks. By 1872, when the Major General John A. 

Rawlins’s statue was approved by Congress, the Officer in 

Charge of Public Buildings and Grounds (again, Babcock) 

served on the design jury, along with the Architect of the 

Capitol and the Librarian of Congress. Thereafter it became 

the accepted practice for the Secretary of War to be appointed 

to the commission that chose designs for Washington’s public 

art if some private organization had not already initiated the project and chosen the 

artists. Some secretaries chose to be directly involved; when they delegated this privilege, 

the public buildings engineer officers were their logical surrogates because they would 

manage all the affairs of dealing with both artists and contractors while they oversaw 

construction. Babcock himself may have designed the base for the Major General 

James B. McPherson statue for which $25,000 was appropriated in 1875. Most of these 

sculptures were minor duties for the engineer officers, but their daily lives were generally 

consumed with overseeing a number of small and medium-sized projects.26

In 1872 Babcock began a cleanup of the Washington Monument grounds and within 

a year had transformed them from the cattle pen they had been during the Civil War into 

a beautiful park. Natural depressions were replaced by ornamental ponds and a fish 

hatchery called Babcock Lake. Drained, graded, its depressions filled, planted with 

trees, and surrounded by a broad carriage drive, the area became a respectable setting 

that invited completion of the monument itself. Babcock added a fountain jet in the 

middle of the lake on axis with the monument and noted in his report that “during cold 

weather the lake formed safe and good skating for children, and was much enjoyed by 

them.”27 Soon after Babcock’s work was finished, local columnist George Alfred 

Townsend was effusive in his praise:

Logan Park undergoing 

improvements, 1913. The 

District Commissioners 

transferred the public 

reservation (260 feet long and 

40 feet wide) in the middle of 

what was then called Pierce 

Street in Anacostia, to the Office 

of Public Buildings and Grounds 

in 1907. At the request of the 

Anacostia Citizens’ Association 

in 1908, the office named the 

area Logan Park in honor of 

Major General John A. Logan.

National Archives no. 42-SPB-12

“...every day last fall 

equestrians and carriages 

enlivened this old haunted 

corner by the river side, and 

a sense of gratitude toward 

the Engineer was felt by 

every thoughtful visitor.”

C h a p t e r 3

78
The old grounds around the Washington Monument, which the very goats 

disdained to frequent and truant school-boys passed through with awe; 

where the stench of the canal and the river’s miasma blended their odors, 

and half-dismantled houses, sheds, and hulks of boats dozed on the 

unsightly margin, were now brought into civilization...so that every day 

last fall equestrians and carriages enlivened this old haunted corner by the 

river side, and a sense of gratitude toward the Engineer was felt by every 

thoughtful visitor.28

The Office of Public Buildings and Grounds continually oversaw the labor-intensive maintenance of the federal 

reservations for almost sixty years. “The employees of this 

office...are mostly laboring men,” Babcock reported in 1872. 

“The work necessary to improve the public grounds is of such 

a character that it cannot be done by contract.”29 In addition to designing new improvements, the office’s yearly tasks 

included painting, raking, planting, cutting, gutter cleaning, 

snow removal, road repair, and record keeping. The engineer officers in charge oversaw 

the park watchmen and sought to increase their numbers and pay. They even arranged 

in the summer of 1904 for military band concerts in the public parks, including some 

performances by “the Engineer Band from Washington Barracks.”30

One of the most pleasant duties inherited from the civilian Commissioner of 

Public Buildings was the care and maintenance of the president’s house. Although 

Samples of stone and cement 

coping used by the Office 

of Public Buildings and 

Grounds, 1899, as low walls 

setting off the public 

reservations under its control

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, 

ARCE 1899

Residents facing Lafayette 

Square demanded a public 

hearing to review the 

placement and design of 

the new “gardener’s lodge” 

in 1914. Vine-covered 

trellises were to obscure the 

building’s main purpose—

public restrooms.

National Archives no. 42-SPB-9

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

79
seemingly mundane, these tasks gave the military public buildings’ officers in charge 

control over alterations and redecorations of the house, cabinet room, and presidential 

offices. Babcock orchestrated the Victorianization of the East Room during the Grant 

administration. Because the Officers in Charge of Public Buildings and Grounds were 

de facto the military attaché to the president, they enjoyed broad exposure at a variety 

of diplomatic and social events. They arranged presidential levees with the power to 

contribute to the guest list and were frequently themselves dinner guests at the president’s house. Other functions they planned included unveiling ceremonies for statues, 

welcoming official guests, and national parades. All of these duties required coordinating the efforts of several groups of people, the same skills used in supervising a 

building project.

Dedication of statue of Major 

General George B. McClellan at 

the intersection of Connecticut 

Avenue and Columbia Road, 

NW, 1907. The Office of Public 

Buildings and Grounds 

frequently orchestrated large 

public dedication ceremonies.

National Archives no. 77-H-8859-6

80
Babcock, who had been President Grant’s secretary until 

his 1871 appointment to the Office of Public Buildings and 

Grounds, was one of territorial governor Alexander R. 

Shepherd’s best friends. Shepherd appointed three of the Corps’ 

engineers who were already engaged in the city’s public works 

for the government—Babcock, Meigs, and Humphreys—as 

well as Boston landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, to 

a panel to advise the city’s Board of Public Works.31 Babcock 

defended Shepherd and his Board of Public Works before 

Congress more than once, and when the Territorial Government 

fell, he was discredited and suspected of defrauding the public 

in some way because he, like Shepherd, had accomplished a 

great deal in a very short time. Evidence for such suspicions included Babcock hiring 

Shepherd (a building contractor by profession), in 1872, to install a copper roof on the 

White House for nearly $35,000.32 In 1876 Babcock was accused of planting documents 

stolen from a safe on one of Shepherd’s critics—but was acquitted.33 Ben Perley Poore 

mentions Babcock in his Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis (1886), 

recounting the two-week federal trial implicating Babcock in the 1875 Whiskey Ring, a 

conspiracy to defraud the government of liquor taxes.34 Babcock was again acquitted, but 

the Army Engineer who had graduated third in his 1861 class at West Point now had the 

same kind of shady reputation as some architects and engineers involved in public works 

in other American cities. Babcock damaged one of the Corps’ great boasts, its disinterestedness and probity in handling large government contracts. One of Grant’s biographers 

noted “Babcock seems to have had intimate contacts with most of the corrupt men of a 

corrupt decade. He fished for gold in every stinking cesspool, and served more than any 

other man to blacken the record of Grant’s Administration.”35

W a s h i n g t o n M o n u m e n t

One of the greatest achievements of the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds was 

completion of the Washington Monument. The Washington National Monument Society 

was founded in 1833 by local Washingtonians—many of them military officers—who 

were dismayed that the previous year Congress commissioned a statue of Washington to 

commemorate the centenary of his birth rather than an important monument. Although 

no design was chosen from among the entries submitted in their 1836 competition, the 

Street cleaning on Pennsylvania 

Avenue, NW, 1918, done under 

the auspices of Engineer 

Commissioner Charles W. Kutz 

whose contributions to 

Washington’s civic betterment 

was considered exemplary 

by its citizens

National Archives no. 220-PA-16-7

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

81
society mounted a nation-wide campaign to raise $1 million to erect the largest monument in the world in recognition of Washington’s greatness.

In 1845 the society selected a design proposed by one of its members, architect 

Robert Mills, for a 600-foot obelisk surrounded by a colonnaded pantheon base 250 feet 

in diameter and 100 feet high. Soon after the monument’s cornerstone was laid on July 4, 

1848, many members of the society doubted their ability to raise the money for such a 

complex design. Their alternate choice was the obelisk supported by a stepped pyramidal 

base composed of thirteen levels to commemorate the original states. Construction 

progressed smoothly until 1854 when a controversy arose over including a piece of the 

Temple of Concordia from the Roman Forum, sent by the Vatican as one of several 

emblematic stones to be included in its stairwell. The anti-Catholic Know Nothing, or 

Native American party, strongest in the Baltimore-Washington region, objected to including what they dubbed the “Pope’s Stone.” Their real objection was to the large number 

of recent Irish immigrant laborers who, working cheaply, were building the monument. 

During the night of March 5, 1854, members of the Know Nothings broke into the 

Montgomery Meigs’s 1850 sketch 

of the unfinished Washington 

Monument with Jefferson’s 1803 

meridian stone shown in its 

original location near the banks 

of the Washington City Canal

National Museum of American History, 

Smithsonian Institution, negative #38876‐B

82
Washington Monument grounds, stole the Pope’s Stone, and reputedly dumped it in the 

Potomac River. The following year they attended the monument society’s annual meeting 

and voted in their own officers. After the original society was deposed and members of 

the Know Nothing Party took over, public support for the monument’s completion waned.36

The Corps’ involvement in the post-Civil War history of the Washington Monument 

changed character as the monument passed from private to public ownership. During the 

decade following the war, the two goals of the Washington National Monument Society 

were raising money for the obelisk’s completion, and convincing Congress to accept 

the structure they believed should have been undertaken by the government in 1832. 

Several structural reports by Corps engineers were commissioned, some agreeing with 

the 1859 assessment by Lieutenant Colonel J. C. Ives of the Corps of Topographical 

Engineers that the original foundations were adequate, and others disagreeing. Ives 

was unequivocal in his report:

To those who are aware of the care which was taken in laying the foundation of the Monument, both in the selection and preparation of the bed, and 

in the execution of the masonry work, it will be scarcely necessary to enter 

into any statements in regard to its present condition. The test, to which it 

has been already subjected, may however be mentioned. If raised to the 

height of six hundred feet, the weight of the entire shaft, together with the 

foundation, will be a little more than seventy thousand tons. The weight of 

the portion now built is more than forty thousand tons. For five years, therefore, while the work has been suspended, the foundation has been bearing 

about four sevenths of the pressure that it will ultimately be required to 

sustain, and, in the recent examination, I was unable to detect any appearance of settling or indication of insecurity.37

Lieutenant William L. Marshall (1846–1920), however, wrote two contradictory 

reports that suggested continued questioning of the monument’s stability was putting 

pressure on the engineers to find fault with the original construction. On February 19, 

1873, he noted, “all questions as to the stability of the shaft itself have been answered 

by Lieutenant Ives, in whose conclusion I concur.”38 However, a year later, on April 20, 

1874, Marshall reported, “it seems inadvisable to complete the Washington Monument 

to the full height of 600 feet. The area covered by its foundations is too small for a structure of the proposed dimensions and weight, causing an excessive pressure upon a soil 

“I was unable to detect any 

appearance of settling or 

indication of insecurity.”

“The area covered by its 

foundations is too small for 

a structure of the proposed 

dimensions and weight....”

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

83
not wholly incompressible.”39 Yet in the same report, Marshall noted “there 

are no sufficient grounds for doubting the security of the foundation under the 

present load.”40 He calculated that the monument shaft was already exerting a 

weight of 4 8/10 tons per square foot.

As a compromise, Marshall recommended the monument be raised to only 

400 feet; in 1875 the society agreed to reduce the monument’s height to 437 

feet. Marshall recommended reducing the thickness of future masonry walls by 

four feet, using brick on inside walls of the future shaft, and roofing the finished 

obelisk with cast-iron rather than stone vaulting, all to reduce additional weight. 

Marshall also proposed that a broad terrace be built up to the height of the 

doors, its stone abutments and fill providing additional support at the monument’s base. A commission of three senior engineers stationed in New York, 

headed by J. G. Barnard, reported to Chief Engineer A. A. Humphreys on 

August 7, 1874, on Marshall’s second report, and concluded “there is a lack of 

accepted data on this important subject of the weight bearing capacity of soils.” 

They compiled data on the weights of several recent American buildings and concluded, 

“5 tons is an excessive pressure for soils composed of clay and sand. We could not, therefore, with the information before us, recommend that any additional pressure should be 

thrown on the site of the Washington Monument.”41

A joint resolution of July 5, 1876, required Congress to “assume and direct the 

completion” of the monument, and on August 2nd, Congress appropriated $200,000. This 

act established a Joint Commission whose members were the president, Supervising 

Architect of the Treasury, Architect of the Capitol, Chief of Engineers, and the first vicepresident of the Washington National Monument Society. The society intended to continue 

raising funds for the monument’s erection but transferred all their property rights to the 

government. The Joint Commission named Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey, the 

new head of the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds, succeeding Babcock in 1877, as 

construction manager for the project.

The Joint Commission’s first goal was to definitively settle the question of the existing 

foundation’s capacity to support an obelisk between 500 and 600 feet tall. In 1877 a board 

of three engineer officers, Lieutenant Colonel J. D. Kurtz, Lieutenant Colonel Q. A. 

Gilmore, and Lieutenant Colonel J. C. Duane, submitted a lengthy and detailed report, the 

results of further investigation by Second Lieutenant Dan C. Kingman. Robert Mills’s 

reports on the original excavations and all previous engineers’ reports, both pro and con, 

Although Robert Mills’s 1845 

design for the Washington 

Monument, lithographed by his 

son-in-law Charles Fenderich, 

called for a pantheon base 

100 feet high and 250 feet in 

diameter, he designed the 

obelisk’s foundations to carry 

the monument’s weight 

without buttressing.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-58544

C h a p t e r 3

84
were examined in detail. They concluded that the earth around the monument 

was not sufficiently resistant to compression and had already been compressed, 

weight added to the 156-foot-tall shaft would probably cause splitting of the 

marble at the base, and that Mills’s foundations had not been spread sufficiently 

to buttress the full weight of the finished obelisk. Kingman’s report was received 

critically on technical grounds but also aroused particular concern that it might 

lead to the existing shaft’s demolition.

Shortly after this report was published, Washington architect Henry R. 

Searle published a pamphlet illustrating and describing his design for completing the monument. He specifically cited the Kurtz report as determining his 

scheme of erecting three massive terraces ranging from twenty-four to forty feet 

in width to buttress the shaft. Other designs for the completion of the Washington 

Monument featuring substantial buttressing were published in art and architectural journals during the 1860s–70s and also may have been influenced by 

reports made by the Corps’ various engineers on the obelisk’s stability.42

The great disparity among the findings of several of the Corps’ engineers 

suggests there were internal and external political forces at work. Competition 

between the Army’s engineers and Robert Mills had been fierce, was ongoing, and 

involved other architects who were supervising construction of public buildings in 

Washington that they had designed. Another possibility was the desire to discredit Ives’s 

report; in 1861 he declined a captaincy in the Union Army and joined the Confederacy 

where he became a colonel of engineers and one of Jefferson Davis’s aides-de-camp.43

Whether reinforcing the Washington Monument’s foundations was necessary, or not, is 

now of academic interest only. In the 1870s the issue was public confidence in any major 

undertaking by Congress. The Corps’ decision to provide for all foreseeable structural 

problems the finished monument might encounter protected the government’s interests 

and assured the longevity of the monument itself.

On June 14, 1878, Congress authorized $36,000 to strengthen the monument’s foundations, and on July 1st, the Joint Commission ordered Colonel Casey to proceed. Casey 

chose Captain George B. Davis as his assistant to manage daily operations and administer 

contracts. Bernard Green (1843–1914), a Harvard-educated civil engineer and civilian 

employee of the Corps of Engineers, was Casey’s partner in devising the system of underpinning the monument and constructing its pyramidion. Casey examined two proposals on 

how to secure the foundations but found both inadequate. Within a month he “decided to 

Architect Henry R. Searle’s 

1877 design to complete the 

Washington Monument 

conformed to recommendations 

made by three Corps engineers 

regarding buttressing the 

obelisk’s base.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-4055

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

85
C o mp l e t i o n o f t h e

W a s h i n g t o n M o n u m e n t

The view of the monument 

before construction began 

shows the Department of 

Agriculture Building (left) 

on the Mall and the Potomac 

River and Tiber Creek close 

behind the incomplete 

structure. Before the 

engineers began work on 

the monument, they struggled 

with the question of whether 

the old foundation could 

support an obelisk that 

should be 550 feet tall 

according to ancient 

Egyptian proportions. Casey 

ordered the foundation 

strengthened and completed 

the monument in 1885 at 

555 feet with a tall 

pyramidion topped by a cast 

aluminum capstone that 

served as a lighting rod.

October 1879

ca. 1879

January 1880

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-90246

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-30612
87

May 1880

September 1882

February 1884

1885

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-15294

Office of History, Corps of Engineers 

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
underpin and extend the surface of the base of the foundation.” A pyramid of Portland 

concrete covered the original stepped tiers of stone and a concrete bed twelve feet deep 

that extended eighteen feet under the existing foundation was inserted along with a “leg 

of concrete under the middle of the foundation.”44 Casey’s estimate for this work was 

$99,102 in comparison to the $36,000 Congress had appropriated, and the increase was 

authorized on June 27, 1879.45

The height of the obelisk and its termination were additional aspects of the Washington 

Monument’s design addressed by Casey during construction. The width of its base was fiftyfive feet and Casey’s correspondence with George Perkins Marsh, ambassador to Italy, led 

the engineer to taper the shaft to terminate at 550 feet. This accorded with Marsh’s study of 

the numerous Egyptian obelisks in Rome, which he determined had been designed to be ten 

times as tall as their width at the base. Moreover, Marsh noted that the angled sides of the 

Egyptian pyramidions were the same height as the width of the obelisk’s base, and eventually Casey’s pyramidion was fifty-five feet tall. In 1878, however, he proposed to top the 

Washington Monument with a twenty-five-foot-tall, iron and glass pyramidion to light the 

interior of the shaft whose walls were to be decorated with more than 200 memorial stones. 

It was Green who designed the final pyramidion, its exterior cladding in marble, but iron 

was used for its interior structure, deck, stairs, and elevator shaft.46

In 1880 Casey estimated it would take an additional $677,000 to complete the 

monument in four years. He was so determined to meet his schedule that the 100-ounce 

aluminum capstone was set during a raging storm on the day appointed, December 6, 

1884. The aluminum capstone was part of the Washington Monument’s system of lightning rods but also recalled the gold-topped pyramidions of the Egyptians. Obelisks were 

sacred to the sun god and caught the first rays of the morning sun. Copper, bronze, or 

brass, each platinum-plated, were Casey’s first choices of material for the capstone, but 

Philadelphia founder William Frishmuth convinced Casey to use aluminum even though 

its first successful casting occurred only five years earlier. Frishmuth, the only American 

supplier of aluminum at the time, argued that the material’s “conductivity, color, and 

non-staining qualities” merited experimenting with casting a pyramidion of the size 

needed. When completed in 1884, the Washington Monument was the tallest structure 

in the world, surpassed five years later when the Eiffel Tower was erected in Paris. An 

1885 thunderstorm caused a small crack in the aluminum, and copper rods connected 

to the aluminum were inserted. Subsequent lightning strikes further damaged the 

aluminum but repairs were possible allowing the original capstone to remain in place.47

C h a p t e r 3

88
S t a t e , W a r a n d N a v y B u i l d i n g

Immediately after the close of the Civil War, Montgomery Meigs, now Quartermaster 

General, was the key figure in promoting a new War Department Building. On April 12, 

1866, he sent Secretary of War Edwin Stanton alternate designs for extending the Winder 

Building, across 17th Street from the War Department, for its short-term use. He noted, 

“at some future time Congress will doubtless make provision for the erection of a building 

on 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in style and construction to correspond in some 

degree with the Treasury Building.” Three months later Congress passed the necessary 

legislation and Meigs was one of six generals charged with obtaining a design. The design 

competition was announced in the autumn of 1866, Meigs bringing to the October 26 

board meeting plans of the Treasury Building and White House grounds, as well as “wood 

cuts from the London Times of the British Foreign and India Offices and Museum at 

South Kensington,” massive French Second Empire style buildings.48

The information circular sent to 144 respondents addressed the new building’s architectural character in general terms. “The Board desires to have the designs of rich 

architectural effect, but as the building is for use for office purposes, would exclude designs 

with large porticos, long colonnades and heavy and expensive columns.” In February 1867 

John Crump of Philadelphia won the competition for his imposing Second Empire style 

design, a U-shaped building facing Pennsylvania Avenue that allowed for future expansion 

into a rectangular building enframing a courtyard. Although Crump was not notified that he 

had won, his design became the basis for the State, War and Navy Building begun in 1871.49

Several political factors led to housing the three departments in a single building 

located on the west side of the president’s grounds. The State Department Building was 

razed in 1866 when the north wing of the Treasury Building on the east side of the White 

House was begun. In April 1869 Architect of the Capitol Edward Clark, Supervising 

Architect of the Treasury A. B. Mullett, Officer in Charge of Public Buildings and Grounds 

Lieutenant Colonel Nathaniel Michler, and the secretaries of State, War, and Navy, were 

appointed to a special Senate committee to select a site for the State Department and possibly the War Department.50

Which department was to occupy the choice location on the president’s grounds was 

one issue; the second was which of the government’s architectural and engineering offices 

was to take the lead. Mullett was immediately given the job of designing the State 

Department Building by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. It was a modified version of 

Crump’s 1867 design for the War Department. In April 1870 Fish announced that the 

“[A]t some future time 

Congress will doubtless make 

provision for the erection of 

a building on 17th Street 

and Pennsylvania Avenue 

in style and construction to 

correspond in some degree 

with the Treasury Building.”

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

89
multi-departmental building, a rectangular version of Mullett’s State Department, was 

to be built. While proposals to move the federal capital to a mid-western location were 

under consideration by Congress, no appropriations for Washington buildings were 

considered. Soon after Congress placed the city’s administration under federal control in 

February 1871, the first government building to be funded was the State, War and Navy 

Building. Mullett was placed in charge of its construction from June 21, 1871, until he 

resigned as Supervising Architect effective January 1, 1875. The south wing housing the 

State Department was completed in November 1875 under his successor William A. 

Potter, Mullett having declined to supervise the entire building’s completion as a private 

architect. On January 26, 1875, Fish requested that he “be relieved from further scrutiny 

and control in the construction of the remaining part of the building.”51

Mullett’s very large, relatively ornate, and extremely expensive building was a major 

project of the Ulysses S. Grant administration, intended as a symbol of the federal government’s stability and resurgence after the Civil War. By 1877, when Grant’s presidency 

Born into a military family (the son of Major General Silas Casey), Lieutenant 

Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey (1831–1896) graduated first in his class at West 

Point in 1852, was a professor there for five years, and had ten years experience 

as head of the Fortification Division of the Corps of Engineers just prior to his 

appointment to complete the government’s major office building. He finished his 

distinguished career as Chief of Engineers from 1888 to 1895.

His professional credentials as a creative engineer were excellent and his 

personal character impeccable; during the ten years when Casey supervised 

construction of the State, War and Navy Building, he acted as his own disbursing 

officer. Casey’s contemporaries measured his successful completion of the building 

in financial terms. Upon his retirement in 1895, the Washington Star published a 

lengthy article recounting the highlights of Casey’s entire career. At the State, War 

and Navy Building, “Gen. Casey put on the roof of the east wing and built the 

north, west and center wings entire. The total cost of the building was 

$10,038,482. The south and east wing and approaches cost $6,016,226 [sic], and the north and west wings and 

approaches and the center wing $3,992,236 [sic]. In other words, Gen. Casey did three-fourths of the work for 

about $2,000,000 less than the other fourth had cost.” In his final report, Casey noted that $10,124,500 had 

been appropriated between 1871 and 1886, and that he was returning to the Treasury $86,017.58.52

Brigadier General 

Thomas Lincoln Casey 

as Chief of Engineers

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, 

U.S. Army Signal Corps Photo

C h a p t e r 3

90
ended amidst charges of widespread corruption, the State, War and Navy Building (along 

with Mullett’s similar Second Empire-style government courthouses, post offices, and 

customs houses erected throughout the country) became highly visible evidence of political patronage and graft in awarding contracts to loyal Republicans. In addition, Mullett’s 

role on the Territorial Government’s Board of Public Works in expending $4 million on 

public improvements, particularly street grading and paving on 17th Street to benefit his 

building and the contractor, Territorial Governor Alexander Shepherd, was investigated by 

Congress. Multiple other allegations of patronage contracts and suspicions of even greater 

corruption forced Mullett to resign in October 1874.

After Fish’s January 1875 removal from duties associated with the State, War and 

Navy Building, Grant specifically appointed (rather than leaving the choice to the Chief 

of Engineers) Orville Babcock, his former secretary and now Officer in Charge of Public 

Buildings and Grounds, to superintend the completion of the east, or Navy Wing, whose 

foundations had been laid in 1872. “If Mullett’s resignation had been conceived as a 

gesture to placate reformers, Babcock’s appointment counted as a reassertion of authority by 

Grant’s inner circle.” Babcock held his position as Officer in Charge of Public 

Buildings until the end of Grant’s presidency, but was forced to resign the partly ceremonial 

White House post enjoyed by the commissioners of public buildings shortly after his acquittal in February 1876 for participation in a Whiskey Ring. None of the drawings produced 

by the office during Babcock’s superintendence have his authorizing signature, making 

it difficult to assess his contributions to the development of the State, War and 

Navy Building. When he was relieved in March 1877, the “masonry of the [east] wing 

had been carried to the level of the fourth-story window sills in front and to the top of 

the courtyard walls in the rear.”53

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey, appointed to replace Babcock on March 3, 

1877, was the antithesis of his predecessor. Casey’s efficiency, well established before 

he took over superintendence of State, War and Navy, was integral to his ability to devise 

“new methods for novel challenges which he encountered in building fortifications, especially on tidal sites.” He was able to cut costs dramatically on three quarters of the State, 

War and Navy Building by changing the way the government conducted its construction 

business. By hiring its own employees and contracting only for materials and specialty 

services such as heating systems, plumbing, and elevators, Casey was able to implement 

different ways for work teams to function most effectively. One example was the elaborate 

doors at State, War and Navy. “The Government bought mahogany, white pine, maple for 

“Babcock’s appointment 

counted as a reassertion 

of authority by Grant’s 

inner circle.”

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

91
92

C o n s t r u c t i o n o f t h e S t a t e , W a r a n d N a v y B u i l d i n g

After the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department completed the 

south wing of the State, War and Navy Building, Colonel Orville Babcock, 

Officer in Charge of Public Buildings and Grounds, continued the east wing 

until he was relieved in 1877. His successor, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas 

Lincoln Casey, completed the rest of the building, including the middle wing, 

in 1888. Shown is the construction of the west, or War Department, wing.

1884

October 1884

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-56743
93

October 1884

June 1885

February 1886

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-56747

National Archives no. 121-BD-90A
dowels, zinc sheets, and hardware, and craftsmen made the doors on the site. The veneering, paneling, and doweling demanded skills of high order. The same workmen also cut 

and joined the mahogany handrails for the staircases, fabricated the window sashes, and 

built the screen doors.”54

Casey’s close associate on this project, as well as on the completion of the Washington 

Monument and the Library of Congress, was the civil engineer Bernard Green. Both respected 

the integrity of Mullett’s design by removing two courses of granite and the coping at the top 

of the walls on the east front (done under Babcock’s direction) in order to match the height 

of Mullett’s south wing. Casey wished the entire building to appear as a seamless construct, 

rather than one done piece-meal, as it indeed was. Also at stake was Casey’s own professional 

pride. Both Casey and Green worked closely with the Venetian-born and Austrian-trained 

engineer and designer Richard von Ezdorf (1848–1926), who had been hired as a draftsman 

by the Office of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury on July 14, 1873. Ezdorf worked 

with Mullett on interior designs and structure, especially relating to cast-iron, for the south 

wing. In 1876 Ezdorf was transferred to the War Department specifically to work with 

Babcock to maintain continuity of design in the east wing’s interiors and details.55

Ezdorf’s greatest achievements were his three cast-iron libraries, designed as multitiered balconies overlooking central, sky-lit wells with shallow book stacks located behind 

the balconies. This horizontal layering of open spaces connected to quasi-open spaces was 

based on Thomas U. Walter’s cast-iron Library of Congress built behind the Capitol’s west 

“[T]he version chosen by 

Casey contained no figures, 

but instead drew on the 

Roman cuirass, Phyrigian 

helmet and battle standards 

of the official seal of the 

United States Army, and 

surmounted the group with 

an American eagle.”

Cast-iron columns and 

pilasters for the basement 

story of the north wing of the 

State, War and Navy Building, 

1879. Thomas Lincoln Casey 

signed the drawings.

National Archives, Cartographic 

Branch, RG121, Folder 47, Drawing 13.

C h a p t e r 3

94
front balcony between 1851 and 1853, the first room to be built with a cast-iron 

ceiling. Walter used cast-iron because it was fireproof, inexpensive, and rapidly 

assembled; because he designed its decorative parts to imitate carved stone or 

wood classical details, the mass of iron was physically and visually heavy. 

Ezdorf embraced in part the modern French Neo-Grec (New Greek to distinguish from the Greek Revival of the early nineteenth century) attitude toward 

the use of iron that emerged in the 1860s. This French theory, in part, held 

that decorative cast-iron should reflect visually its structural facts as well 

as the mass production methods by which it was made, rather than imitate 

naturalistic ornament hithertofore carved in wood or stone. Often, the resulting 

ornaments looked mechanistic and even included elements like gears and ball 

bearings. Thus Ezdorf’s cast-iron libraries used iron more sparingly than 

Walter’s massive, hollow shells that appeared to be solid. His State Department 

library’s balconies, designed under Mullett and finished under Babcock, give 

the appearance of a filigree cage composed of multiple linear elements set in 

front of cast-iron walls. Ezdorf’s War Department library, designed for the west 

wing’s central pavilion in 1884 under Casey, was a filigree cage, its fragmented 

walls and pierced balconies calculated to use a minimum of materials.

In many cases alternate designs by Ezdorf survive and Casey’s choice between them 

reflects his own contributions to the State, War and Navy Building’s aesthetic development. One of Ezdorf’s two designs for the cast-iron ornament in the north wing’s pediment 

“featured undraped allegorical figures of War (male) and Peace (female) flanking a laurel 

wreath, emblematic of victory.” However, “the version chosen by Casey contained no 

figures, but instead drew on the Roman cuirass, Phyrigian helmet and battle standards of 

the official seal of the United States Army, and surmounted the group with an American 

eagle.”56 Modest allegorical sculpture in each wing’s pediments identified its occupants 

and Casey chose the least expensive alternatives as well as those that were more comprehensible to most Americans. Casey also independently hired other architects or designers 

to undertake special projects. On January 15, 1887, Casey wrote Secretary of War 

William Endicott: “I have the honor to request authority to employ the personal services 

of Stephen D. Hatch as architect; for the purposes of making under my directions, designs 

for the finish of certain rooms in the west wing of this building.” Hatch, a New York 

architect, designed very elaborate decorations for the Secretary of War’s suite, the most 

ornate of any of the offices in the building.57 

Details of the iron work 

ornamentation on the dome and 

skylight of the west wing of the 

State, War and Navy Building 

designed by Richard von Ezdorf 

under Casey’s supervision

National Archives, Cartographic Branch, 

RG121, Folder 63, Drawing 88

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

95
U . S . N a t i o n a l M u s e u m

Montgomery Meigs, the Army’s most distinguished prewar builder, completed a number 

of significant projects in Washington after the Civil War. Two trips to Europe in 1867–68 

and 1876, during which he studied ancient, Renaissance, and contemporary architecture 

and engineering projects of all kinds, particularly in Italy, influenced his postwar work. 

The first was for the Smithsonian Institution. The United States National Museum (now 

the Arts and Industries Building, Smithsonian Institution) had emerged in the 1850s 

when government-owned collections were transferred to the Smithsonian and federal 

money was appropriated for their care. These collections crowded the institution’s Mall 

building, and, when a flood of donations of objects arrived in the wake of the 1876 

Centennial Exposition, Smithsonian Regents petitioned Congress to fund a separate 

museum building. A February 5, 1877, memorial to Congress stated, “Careful inquiries 

have been instituted to ascertain the smallest sum which would be adequate to [erect a 

building], and the plan of a convenient structure has 

been made by General Meigs....”58

The House Committee on Public Buildings and 

Grounds noted the constraints on the museum project. 

“To erect an edifice of the necessary magnitude, in the 

style of architecture heretofore adopted by the 

Government for its use in Washington, would involve 

expenditure of many millions of dollars, and it could not be completed and available for 

occupation in a shorter period than from five to eight years. Nevertheless on a simple plan 

originally suggested by General Meigs, a building somewhat similar in character to those 

erected for the National Exposition...perfectly fireproof, amply lighted, and properly 

adapted for all its objects, can be constructed for about $250,000, and can be ready for 

occupation within ten months, or at most a year.” Meigs’s experience with iron used in 

constructing the Capitol, General Post Office, and Patent Office Extensions in the 1850s 

led him to study alternative uses of iron in fireproof construction.59

Congress appropriated exactly that amount and approved the building site in 1879. The 

Regents established a National Museum Building Commission, chaired by regent General 

W. T. Sherman. “The committee at the outset invited Gen. M.C. Meigs...to act in 

the capacity of consulting engineer to the commission, and also selected Messrs. Cluss & 

Schulze, whose plans for the new building were those approved by Congress, as superintending architects.”60 Ground was broken in April 1879, on the single-floor brick and iron 

Preliminary drawing by Adolf 

Cluss and General Montgomery C. 

Meigs of the proposed United 

States National Museum, 

February 1877

Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record 

Unit 95, Box 32, Folder 2, image #1307

C h a p t e r 3

96
structure, to be set without a basement on concrete foundations. The U.S. 

National Museum was substantially finished by the end of 1880, and its final 

cost, including additional appropriations to cover buildings systems and marble 

flooring, came to $315,400, the least expensive, permanent government building 

constructed in Washington up to that time, according to the final report.61

A major factor in the museum’s low construction cost was Meigs’s suggestion of a “tent” roof, an exposed iron truss that had been used in industrial 

and manufacturing buildings since it was introduced in 1835. Meigs had 

concealed iron roof trusses above the drop ceilings that spanned the House 

and Senate chambers in the Capitol Extension in 1855. Just four years earlier, 

at London’s Crystal Palace, Joseph Paxton used exposed iron trusses for the 

exhibition hall’s entire structure. It established a precedent for using iron to 

roof temporary exhibition buildings, a technology soon used for permanent 

exhibition halls that required large interconnected spaces. At the National 

Museum, many different roof heights and shapes, as well as numerous monitors, had to be accommodated; the underside of the roof and the upper walls, 

and perhaps the trusses themselves, were painted a light sky blue to appear 

nearly invisible and heighten the effect of open, airy spaces. The trusses themselves 

were not decorated in any way to mask their industrial character and their simple bolted 

joints were left exposed.

A r m y M e d i c a l M u s e u m , r a z e d 1 9 6 9

The museum, library, and historical records of the Surgeon General’s Office were housed 

in Ford’s Theater from 1866 until the Army Medical Museum was built on the south side 

of the Mall at the corner of B (now Independence Avenue) and 7th Streets, SW, between 

1885 and 1887. Secretary of War Robert T. Lincoln, son of President Abraham Lincoln 

who had been assassinated at Ford’s Theater in 1865, sent a special message to Congress 

on January 19, 1882, urging construction of a building. These records and objects (that 

included the bullet that killed Lincoln) were in “imminent danger of destruction” if they 

remained in the decaying theater. Two recent museum fires in Washington—at the 

Smithsonian Institution in 1865 and the museum in the Patent Office in 1877—were 

given as reasons to erect a building to house the Surgeon General’s collection. Although 

Congress appropriated $200,000 on February 28, 1883, for a “plain, fire-proof [building] 

with a large amount of floor space,” opponents felt that the library could be merged with 

Adolf Cluss’s 1885 design for the 

Army Medical Museum, located 

on the Mall’s south side at 7th 

Street, SW, was built by Colonel 

Thomas Lincoln Casey using 

inexpensive brick, terra cotta, 

and iron materials. The 

building, on the site now 

occupied by the Hirshhorn 

Museum, was razed in 1969. 

(Photographed ca. 1940s)

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC‐A7‐4130‐Lot 

11661‐9 (G)

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

97
the Library of Congress and the museum artifacts displayed either at the Pension 

Building or the State, War and Navy Building, both then under construction.62

President Chester Arthur signed the legislation on March 2, 1885, to place the metal 

and brick museum on the site selected by a commission composed of the Secretary of 

War, the Architect of the Capitol, and the Secretary of the Smithsonian, with the War 

Department overseeing construction. On April 14, 1885, Colonel Casey was put in 

charge of its construction. Adolf Cluss had earlier designed the Medical Museum to 

complement his nearby National Museum Building and was able to comply with the 

government’s mandate for an inexpensive and fireproof building by using mass produced 

bricks and decorative molded terra-cotta panels for exterior walls and easily maintained 

glazed bricks for interior walls. The Army Medical Museum employed metal roofs with 

monitor lights supported with iron trusses that covered the two forty-seven-foot-tall 

exhibition wings—an inexpensive and fireproof system similar to what Cluss and Meigs 

had employed in the National Museum and Meigs was to use at the Pension Building. 

On November 9, 1887, Colonel John Wilson, now in charge of the Office of Public 

Buildings and Grounds, transferred the museum to the Surgeon General’s Office after 

only a three-month delay in its completion.63

P e n s i o n B u i l d i n g

Based on his role in making the National Museum building a success by keeping 

construction costs low, in 1881 the Senate Appropriations Committee appointed Meigs 

to design and construct a building to centralize the operations of the post-Civil War 

Pension Bureau’s 1,500 clerks. The building’s second mandate, possibly suggested by 

Meigs himself, was a large hall for Washington’s great social and state occasions, particularly inaugural balls. The Pension Bureau was under the Interior Department, but from 

the outset it was determined that Meigs would be both the architect and the superintendent of construction. Thus the legislation was co-sponsored with the War Department, 

and construction supervision was specifically placed under the Quartermaster General’s 

Office, rather than the Chief of Engineers. Meigs retired from active service in 1882, the 

year the Pension Building was begun, and he devoted all of his formidable energy for the 

next five years to produce “a building the like of which is not to be seen anywhere else 

in the country.”64

The Pension Building often is judged as Meigs’s masterpiece; it was the only 

monumental architectural work over which he had total control and he put into it his 

Montgomery C. Meigs began his 

Washington career in the 1840s as 

a lieutenant and ended it in the 1880s 

as a major general. His most prominent 

post-Civil War project was the Pension 

Building, designed to be fireproof, 

inexpensive, and provide a humane, 

naturally air conditioned environment 

for its office workers—mainly Union 

Army veterans.

 Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs 

Division, LC-BH83-137 (detail)

“...a building the 

like of which is not 

to be seen anywhere 

else in the country.”

C h a p t e r 3

98
considerable accumulated knowledge of architecture and engineering. The Pension 

Building is unique among Victorian buildings but partakes of many late Victorian 

architectural characteristics: synthesizing several historical models to create something 

new; combining traditional building methods with new ones born of modern technology; 

and, symbolizing by its form and its symbolic decoration nineteenth-century positivism 

that promoted the idea of progress driven by technological and scientific advances. The 

engineering aspects of the Pension Building are inventive, ingenious, and imaginative, 

as Meigs considered all the pragmatic issues involving its construction, especially its 

ventilation, because one major goal was a humane physical environment for the 

bureau’s employees.

While in Rome on February 16, 1868, Meigs sketched an idea for the War 

Department Building, a solid three-and-a-half-story Roman palazzo. Fifteen years later 

he executed a very similar design for the Pension Building. Rome’s brown brick Palazzo 

Farnese (ca. 1515–46), the largest of the Renaissance urban palaces, provided Meigs 

Montgomery Meigs, “Section 

of Hall,” April 16, 1886. This 

drawing created mid-way 

through the Pension Building’s 

construction shows its fourth 

floor and skylights added 

during construction as well as 

the final configuration of the 

roofs. The fluted finish for the 

massive columns in the 

courtyard was not carried out.

National Archives, RG 15

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

99
with the Pension Building’s form of a hollow rectangle with 

offices ranged around its exterior, and internal circulation 

around arcaded loggias that lined the inside of the rectangle. 

Some of the Farnese’s details, including staircases constructed 

with shallow risers and deep treads to allow the bureau’s 

clerks, who were disabled war veterans, to easily traverse, 

demonstrate how Meigs, the Victorian, selectively chose from 

history any element that served his purpose.65

Two additional Roman buildings provided Meigs with 

historical design models, the courtyard loggia of the 

Cancelleria palace, and the massive ancient Roman columns 

incorporated into the Renaissance church Santa Maria degli 

Angeli—appropriate sizes to serve as the prototype for the 

seventy-five-foot-tall columns needed to support the Pension Building’s roof. Meigs 

doubled the size of the Farnese palace and used 15.5 million bricks to build the Pension 

Building, the largest brick building in the world, he claimed, when it was finished. Brick 

and terra cotta—the Pension Building’s decorative details were in terra cotta—were the 

only truly fireproof materials in Meigs’s opinion. Ancient and 

much of Renaissance Rome had been built of brick and Meigs 

consciously designed and built the Pension Building to stand 

for a millennium and then be as impressive as a fallen ruin 

dominating its entire Washington block.

As the architect of the Pension Building, Meigs was 

committed to giving it an important artistic character within 

the confines of his limited budget. Brick allowed him to erect 

a massive building cheaply, but to make it appear monolithic, 

he colored the mortar the same color as the brick. He hired 

the Bohemian-born sculptor Caspar Buberl to model in clay 

a 1,200-foot-frieze based on subjects he chose, a continuous 

parade depicting the infantry, cavalry, artillery, naval, quartermaster, and medical corps that comprised the men in whose service the building was 

erected. No such frieze existed on the Palazzo Farnese; rather Meigs and Buberl turned 

to ancient and modern monuments for their inspiration. The Parthenon in Athens is often 

cited as their model because Meigs and Buberl corresponded on the “pedestrian figures 

Pension Building under 

construction showing the 

massive brick central columns 

and the rows of columns on 

the first and second floors, 

November 1885

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-51277

Pension Building under 

construction showing holes for 

shallow domes on the third 

floor, November 1883

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-59413

C h a p t e r 3

100
followed by the youths of Athens on horseback” that were familiar from the Parthenon’s 

Panathenaic Procession. But this procession depicted a recurring religious event; Meigs’s 

and Buberl’s buff-colored terra cotta frieze depicted a victorious marching army in the 

uniforms of their time—not unlike the frieze on Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, completed in 

1836 to celebrate the feats of Napoleon’s armies. Soldiers stand like sentinels at attention on the corners of each nineteenth-century structure as the entire panoply of their 

respective modern armies pass in review. Again, Meigs and Buberl were participating in 

the eclecticism of their age by fusing together ancient (Athen’s Parthenon) and modern 

(Paris’s Arc de Triomphe) in the frieze’s sculptures.66

As the Pension Building’s engineer, Meigs was equally creative in the way he used 

brick, incorporated heating and ventilating, and roofed the 116-foot by 316-foot courtyard. 

The solid bearing walls—four feet wide at their foundation—were tied into the cross walls 

that supported the vaults of each twenty-five-foot by thirty-seven-foot office. Meigs chose 

brick domes on pendentives for office ceilings and structural supports for the floors above 

Exterior of Pension Building 

under construction, 

November 1885. The city block 

occupied by the Pension Building 

was not one designated for public 

buildings on the L’Enfant plan.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-56363

101
them. This elegant design, rare in the United States, required the use of “more expensive 

experienced bricklayers and careful supervision.”67

Meigs’s system of heating and ventilating the Pension Building was integral to his entire 

design because it required the exterior walls, offices, courtyard, and roof to function in 

concert. Airshafts under each window (observable as the three stretcher bricks missing under 

each window) passed through an L-shaped conduit that opened at the base of each of the two 

windows per office. Steam radiators under each window warmed this air during cold weather. 

During warm weather, air was drawn through the offices, which had tall arched openings 

rather than doors, by suction artificially created in the courtyard via windows in its three-part 

roof. Meigs redesigned the roof three times in order to perfect this system (and to add a fourth 

floor for document storage). The building’s maintenance engineers could open different sized 

windows, including monitors in the higher, central section, either with pulleys reached from 

the top balcony or from the exterior. Meigs spent months determining the number of degrees 

the temperature would drop in offices on each side of the building depending on the time of 

day and the direction of the prevailing wind. He calculated that the courtyard’s air could be 

completely exchanged once every two minutes under optimum conditions. After one year in 

the new building, the Pension Bureau reported that employee absenteeism was down 8,622 

days. Yet there were problems with the system because after two years, employees petitioned 

that it be shut down as their offices were wind tunnels filled with flying papers. They also 

found that their offices were too cold during the winter months and so the arches were filled 

and doors installed.68

The immense size of the enclosed courtyard and the powerful effect of its eight plastercoated Corinthian columns that divide it into thirds was made possible by the iron and 

steel trusses that support the hollow clay tile roofs. These columns were later painted to 

resemble veined marble. The columns in the first-floor arcade are terra cotta covered with 

cement while those on the second floor are hollow cast-iron. The only wood used in the 

building (other than for window frames and sashes) was behind the cornice because Meigs 

could find no other economical way of attaching terra cotta heads of lions to the cornice. 

The wood soon rotted and the lions’ heads were removed. Meigs wanted to install trees and 

shrubs in the courtyard for oxygen/carbon dioxide exchange, but settled for hanging plants 

from urns on the top balcony for reasons of economy.69

In 1881 Congress appropriated $250,000 for the Pension Building’s site, an entire 

city block. The Pension Building was first occupied in 1885 and completed in 1887 at a 

cost of $866,614.04, which, according to Meigs, was $4.691

⁄2 per square foot and 103⁄4 cents 

“The sum for which it is to 

be built, amounting only to 

five dollars for every square 

foot of ground covered, is 

very small for a fire-proof 

building, but the lesson to be 

learned from it will be none 

the less useful, as showing 

the dignity which can be 

given to simple materials in 

the hands of one who knows 

how to use them.”

C h a p t e r 3

102
per cubic foot of space. The final cost of the State, War and Navy Building—seventeen 

years in construction—was about $10 million. In the previous generation, the Smithsonian 

Institution’s medieval revival architecture (and its Seneca Creek brownstone) cost 171

⁄4

cents per cubic foot compared to the Treasury Building’s neoclassical style (and Aquia 

Creek sandstone) at 421

⁄2 cents per cubic foot. The 1882 American Architect and Building 

News article that briefly described Meigs’s design and its projected cost, concluded: “The 

sum for which it is to be built, amounting only to five dollars for every square foot of 

ground covered, is very small for a fire-proof building, but the lesson to be learned from it 

will be none the less useful, as showing the dignity which can be given to simple materials 

in the hands of one who knows how to use them.”70

L i b r a r y o f C o n g r e s s

Revisions in 1870 to the copyright law centralized its functions in the Library of Congress 

and further required that multiple copies of materials to be copyrighted be deposited and 

registered. Its passage made T. U. Walter’s 1853 cast-iron Library of Congress, located 

in the Capitol, too small to accommodate anticipated amounts of new books and other 

materials. The 1873 competition to design a new library building was the beginning of a 

protracted history that resulted in the adoption in 1886 of one of several designs submitted by the Washington-based German-American architects, John L. Smithmeyer and Paul 

Pelz; they were hired to oversee its construction under the jurisdiction of the Department 

of the Interior.71

A three-man building commission included Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Spofford, 

who in 1873 had conceptualized how the building was to be laid out with a central octagonal reading room and corner pavilions linked by curtains. Within a year, lawsuits brought 

by contractors caused construction delays and an investigation led to Smithmeyer’s 

dismissal. Between May and September 1888, hearings held by the House Committee to 

Investigate Contracts for the Construction of the Library of Congress Building recommended 

transferring jurisdiction of the library’s construction to the Treasury Department. The new 

Secretary of Interior, William F. Vilas, suggested that the Corps of Engineers take over its 

construction supervision; on October 8 General Casey, now Chief of Engineers, was put in 

charge. Thus Casey reported to the Secretary of the Treasury, not the three-man commission.

This decision led to contradictory claims of authorship for many of the Library’s most 

notable features and culminated in a second lawsuit brought by the architects. Modern 

scholarship has not yet unraveled where all the credit is due during the complex quarter 

“[T]hanks to the perfect 

discipline of Mr. Green, the 

300 men engaged on the 

work move almost as one, 

 without jar or friction, 

nobody getting into his 

neighbor’s way.”

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

103
century when dozens of architects, specialty contractors, engineers, muralists, 

and sculptors were directly involved or consulted. In reality, the design process, 

once responsibilities began to be shared, was so fluid and so interwoven with 

constructing the decorated parts of a very ornate building, that several people 

might have or did contribute many elements of the Library’s facades, interiors, 

and art works.

Civil engineer Bernard Green, who had been hired in the spring of 1888 

by the building commission, was promoted to “Engineer and Superintendent 

of Construction” in charge of day-to-day operations by Casey, while Pelz 

retained the title and functions of the Library’s architect. The Evening Star, 

which generally reported favorably on supervision of architectural projects 

by the Army Engineers, on September 24, 1889, commented “thanks to the 

perfect discipline of Mr. Green, the 300 men engaged on the work move 

almost as one, without jar or friction, nobody getting into his neighbor’s way.” 

Green kept a daily diary from October 4, 1888, to August 19, 1902, the 

source of much detailed information about the Library’s construction.72

Under Casey’s direction Pelz made two sets of drawings for the Library, presented 

to Congress based on Smithmeyer and Pelz designs done in 1884–85. The more costly 

was for a larger building than originally planned by the architects in 1873. Designs for 

a smaller building were estimated at $4 million before members of the Joint Committee 

on the Library toured European national libraries during the summer of 1885. Working 

with a joint congressional committee, Casey secured appropriations for a $5.5 million 

building “capable of extension without marring its symmetry or involving costly demolitions.” This appropriation was eventually increased to $6,245,000.73

Casey and Green worked closely with Spofford, who provided them with fifteen functional considerations relating to abundant light, ventilation, dimensions of rooms, and 

efficient movement between them, as well as innovative alcove and stack systems. Because 

of Spofford’s insistence on the rapid movement of books and other materials from stacks to 

reading rooms, Green invented a “bookcarrying apparatus,” the first pneumatic tube and 

conveyor belt system in an American library. Green’s most famous invention was his 1890 

patent for cast-iron book stacks, manufactured for the Library of Congress in Louisville, 

Kentucky, then subsequently available for general library use.74

In his first annual report, Casey predicted that construction of the Library of Congress 

would take eight years. The engineer’s ability to efficiently manage the logistics of 

Civilian engineer Bernard R. 

Green spent most of his career 

working with Corps engineers 

on Washington projects. For 

the Library of Congress, 

where he worked closely with 

Thomas Lincoln Casey, Green 

invented a pneumatic tube and 

conveyer belt system to order 

and transport books from the 

stacks to the reading rooms.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-90221

C h a p t e r 3

104
Library of Congress under construction

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Lot 12042-1 no. 12 (OSE) 

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Lot 12042‐2 no. 42 (OSE) 

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Lot 12042‐2 no. 58 (OSE)

October 1890

January 1894

November 1892

105
constructing a very large, complex, and highly decorated building in which traditional 

masonry walls, cast-iron-supported floors, roofs, and dome, modern utilities including nine 

pneumatic elevators, multiple lavatories, and electric lights was proven beyond doubt in 

the Library of Congress. Knowing when and where to employ each subcontractor’s team in 

concert with the library’s own workforce of about 400 men was coordinated with the delivery of materials and pre-fabricated elements, such as the patented book stacks. The Corps 

of Engineers, along with architects trained in the Treasury’s Office of the Supervising 

Architect, brought to such large projects a coordination matched by few large private 

architectural or engineering firms during the era that typically overran budgets and schedules. Casey’s estimate that the Library could be built in eight years was exceeded by only 

a few months; costs were $200,000 less than appropriated.

The efficiency of Casey’s and Green’s management of the Library of Congress 

construction, particularly in containing its costs, is most remarkable when one considers the 

considerable extra expense of ornamenting the building. Casey’s most visible contribution 

to the building, always credited to the architects Smithmeyer and Pelz, was to enlarge upon 

and realize the library’s iconographical and decorative schemes. Spofford was particularly 

adamant that the central reading room’s walls be “decorated” with tier upon tier of books, 

Private reading room, House 

of Representatives, under 

construction, designed by 

Edward P. Casey

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC‐USZ62‐102087

“If Gen[eral] Casey had 

stated to the Committee 

his program, it is quite 

likely it would have been 

approved....I suppose 

it did not occur to him 

that such statuary was 

anything more than 

architectural decoration.”

C h a p t e r 3

106
rather than “crass architectural display.”75 Smithmeyer had from the 

beginning considered the Library of Congress to be “more of a museum 

of literature, science and art, than strictly taken as a collection of 

books,” and thought that the building itself should provide visitors with 

an insight into the range of human knowledge.76

Casey started hiring muralists and sculptors as early as 1890 but 

they were not singled out in his reports. By subsuming the work of the 

sculptors under “marble work,” and that of the artists under “painting,” in his annual reports, Casey may have wanted to avoid lengthy 

congressional debates and public criticism by the many vocal opponents of elaborate government buildings. Green’s report for 1896 

(Casey having died on March 25) summarized which contractors had 

been responsible for supplying materials or building specific parts of 

the building, information not given by Casey in his reports that listed that year’s accomplishments. Significantly, Green included two pages (out of ten) listing all of the artists and 

their works.77

Casey embarked on the library’s decorative scheme without prior approval by 

Congress, or even the knowledge of the members of the Joint Committee on the Library. 

It is a mark of the general respect for, and confidence in, Casey that Senator Justin 

Morrill of Vermont, when he learned in 1893 that Casey had contracted with artists, 

asked first if the library’s decoration could be done without additional appropriations. 

“Morrill admitted that it did ‘look strange that the Gen[eral] sh[oul]d not have talked 

over with us so important [and] valuable [a] point in the progress of his great work,’ but 

explained this away by adding, ‘If Gen[eral] Casey had stated to the Committee his 

program, it is quite likely it would have been approved....I suppose it did not occur to 

him that such statuary was anything more than architectural decoration.’”78 American 

government buildings, with the exception of the Capitol, had little allegorical painting 

and sculpture in comparison to their European counterparts and many American municipal and commercial buildings.79

Each of the key participants in the library’s formation contributed some part either to the 

literary or artistic realization of its theme of collective world knowledge and culture. In 1894 

Casey set up a “committee of selection” to choose artists and their themes consisting of 

himself, his Columbia University educated son, architect Edward Pearce Casey (whom he 

designated the Library’s “decorative designer,”) and Green as supervisor of construction. 

Grand staircase in the Great 

Hall of the Library of Congress

National Archives no. 200(S)-MHW-8

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

107
They wrote to and met with the country’s leading artists to ensure high quality work. Yet 

Green later recounted: “So Casey and I just went ahead and hired artists on our own.” Casey 

did direct the muralists and sculptors, leaving them free to choose their subjects within the 

established schema, but subject to his approval. Both the architects and engineers sought 

credit for what they realized would be one of America’s most important buildings.80

General Casey and his son invited three prominent sculptors to be members of a 

committee to advise on the building’s sculptural decoration.81 John Quincy Adams Ward, 

Olin Levi Warner, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, all of whom had undertaken many public 

commissions, first met with the engineers on January 26, 1894, when they collectively 

Main reading room of the 

Library of Congress, (n.d.)

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-59277

“So Casey and I just went 

ahead and hired artists 

on our own.”

108

C h a p t e r 3
laid out a sculpture program for forty-four free-standing 

figures or relief panels. Casey and Green carefully managed 

contracts so that the art works were accomplished within their 

regular construction budget.82

Spofford chose the subjects of the portrait busts set in the 

bull’s-eye windows above the central entrance. He also chose the 

sixteen great men to be commemorated by bronze statues 

embodying ancient and modern practitioners of the eight branches of knowledge represented 

by each side of the reading room: art, science, religion, history, law, commerce, poetry, and 

philosophy. But Casey and Green had the authority to veto his choices and they rejected his 

selection for “modern law.” The engineers also invited Harvard president Charles W. Eliot to 

choose the quotations for the main reading room, while Spofford selected those for literature 

within the Great Hall. Spofford set the height of the reading room’s dome at seventy feet in 

his original instructions to competing architects in 1873. Casey and Green raised the dome 

to 195 feet, a height that appeared on Pelz’s revised design accepted by Congress on March 

2, 1889. This height interfered with vistas of the Capitol along Pennsylvania Avenue from the 

west and the east.83

On March 29, 1892, Casey terminated Pelz’s services 

“as you have now entirely completed the designs of the 

[library’s] architectural characteristics and features.”84

During these early years of construction, professional relations between Green and Pelz were antagonistic because 

each claimed credit for solutions to design problems and 

because Pelz had joined with Smithmeyer in a lawsuit 

against the government seeking full monetary compensation 

and intellectual ownership of the library’s design. Edward 

Pearce Casey was officially named architect of the Library of 

Congress on March 12, 1896, two weeks before his father’s 

sudden death. When he exhibited a section drawing of the 

Library of Congress in New York in 1895 claiming the 

design as his own, the Washington chapter of the American Institute of Architects wrote 

a letter of censure and New York architectural critics questioned his rights to this claim.85

In his 1889 annual report on the library’s construction, Casey quoted the Congressional 

act of March 2, 1889, that stated “said building shall be constructed in accordance with the 

Muralist Henry Oliver Walker’s 

“Lyric Poetry” located in the 

south corridor of the Great Hall

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-104456

Plaster casts of stock sculptures 

used to decorate the Library of 

Congress, October 1894

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-120936

109

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0
plans marked ‘D,’ submitted by the Chief of Engineers with his annual report to Congress” in 

1888. In the same report, Casey noted that “the architect, Mr. Paul J. Pelz, has been engaged 

in preparing the drawings necessary for the work for the coming year as well as for the year 

past, in all their varied and complicated details, and the progress made on the building 

[masonry cellar walls] has been materially assisted by his work.”86

At congressional hearings held on November 20, 1896, Green claimed that the 

plans from which the library was built “were made in the office under General Casey’s 

and my own direction between October 2 and November 23, 1888,” but in the same 

hearing acknowledged that the “small plan was a reduction and modification of the 

original Smithmeyer plan.” Several hundred signed and dated drawings for the Library 

of Congress preserved in its Prints and Photographs Division indicate that all design 

aspects were determined by Smithmeyer and Pelz except for the patented system of 

metal stacks and the decoration of very extensive areas beyond the vestibule and main 

reading room. Certainly, Casey expanded the scope and extent of this program and 

chose the artists to execute the work.87 General Casey provided additional intellectual 

stimulus for the library’s symbolic ornamentation and the organizational abilities to 

The Washington Canal, 

constructed along the courses of 

the Tiber and St. James Creeks, 

was an open cesspool before 

a series of sewers replaced it 

beginning in 1872. The Board 

of Public Works under the 

territorial government began 

the project, later inherited by 

Army engineers in July 1874. 

The portion pictured above 

(ca. 1859–61) lies roughly 

along the current path of 

Constitution Avenue, NW.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC‐USZ62‐62174

110
build it. Upon the Library’s completion in 1897, Green wrote an illustrated article, “The 

Building for the Library of Congress,” concentrating on their joint functional, rather than 

artistic, achievements.88

E n g i n e e r C o mmi s s i o n e r s

Part country town, part capital city, Washington after the Civil War promised much to its 

residents but provided little in necessary urban services. “Upon the whole,” Walt Whitman 

wrote during the war, “the city, the spaces, buildings, etc., make no unfit emblem of our 

country, so broadly planned, everything in plenty.” Yet, he added, “the fruit of the plans, 

the knit, the combination is wanting...many a hiatus yet.”89 L’Enfant’s public reservations 

remained empty, weed-grown fields or had been turned to other uses, a few even having 

had churches built on them illegally. The Washington Monument stood incomplete on the 

unkempt Mall, its grounds having been used to pen cattle during the war. Sloops and scows 

nosed along the Washington Canal beside North B Street. Tiber Creek, the canal, and other 

streams were open sewers. Slash Run marsh and tidal flats near Foggy Bottom were breeding grounds of malaria, and the Potomac Flats were a noisome marsh uncovered twice a day 

when the river fell. Cursed with slums adjacent to mansions, Washington in many ways 

remained a village where cattle, geese, and chickens roamed at will.90

The sheer discomfort of the capital, combined with memories of its Southern sympathies, convinced many that it was not a fit place for the government. At the end of the 

Civil War, Congress debated proposals from mid-western states to move the capital to 

America’s heartland, the Ohio or Mississippi valleys. Worried by the agitation to move 

the government, Washingtonians embarked on a new effort to recreate their city as a 

worthy national capital. Alexander R. Shepherd, a native Washingtonian, an alderman, 

a wealthy contractor, as well as a friend of President Grant, led local boosters who advocated a more active district government and a building program to make the city 

handsome and to revitalize it with modern amenities becoming common in other 

American and European cities.91

Washington’s population of 130,000 in 1870 had doubled since 1860, yet the city 

“was less advanced in the matter of civic conveniences than many a State capital of 

smaller size.” The aqueduct’s water did not serve all parts of the city and water in all 

of the city’s quadrants continued to be pumped from wells or from springs; septic 

systems were rudimentary and individual to each structure; and the hilly landscape over 

which L’Enfant’s streets had been laid was picturesque to look at but very difficult to 

“[T]he city, the spaces, 

buildings, etc., make no unfit 

emblem of our country.... 

[T]he fruit of the plans, 

the knit, the combination is 

wanting...”

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

111
navigate for carts, carriages, and pedestrians. These rolling streets also impeded 

organized urban growth, especially the siting and building of row houses. Moreover, 

“Pennsylvania Avenue alone enjoyed the distinction of being lighted and that but 

poorly.” Sewers, a healthy supply of water, street lighting, and street paving and grading 

were of the first importance.92

Urged on by these forces, on February 21, 1871, Congress fused L’Enfant’s original 

city with the “county,” the land ceded by Maryland that still comprised the District of 

Columbia (the Virginia portion had been retroceded in 1846), into a single national 

territory under a territorial form of government. A governor to serve four years was to 

be appointed by the president, as was a council of eleven members, each serving two 

years, representing eleven new districts, two in Georgetown and two in the old county. 

Washington’s citizenry, however, elected the twenty-two members of the House of 

Delegates. The president also was to appoint four members of a board of public works to 

serve four-year terms, the fifth member to be the governor. The duties outlined for the 

Board of Public Works (the Board of Health being the only other municipal office under 

the territorial government) gave them: “entire control of and [the power to] make all regulations which they shall deem necessary for keeping in repair the streets, avenues, alleys, 

and sewers of the city, and all other works which shall be entrusted to their charge by the 

legislative assembly or Congress.” Army Engineers later inherited this authority.93

President Grant chose as governor Henry D. Cooke, brother of banker Jay Cooke, 

whose name and connections would be useful in selling bonds. But it was Shepherd, 

appointed vice president of the Board of Public Works in May 1871, and governor, and 

thus its president, in 1873, who emerged as the dominant figure in transforming the 

district. In his three-year reign, “Boss” Shepherd worked with architects Alfred B. 

Mullett and Adolf Cluss to pave over a hundred miles of streets, build sidewalks, set 

up about three thousand streetlights, install a sewer system, and cover the Washington 

Canal as far as Third Street. Most noticeable to visitors was the landscaping that went 

hand-in-hand with paving and grading the streets, as public reservations were planted 

with trees and flowers and the “parking” (public land between the streets and building 

façades), was landscaped on the wide avenues; this amenity can still be appreciated 

on East Capitol Street where the public “parking” is maintained by private owners as 

their front gardens. Although Shepherd’s Board of Public Works of 1871–74 (notably 

its architects Cluss and Mullett) are always given credit for conceptualizing as well as 

overseeing the “parking” and paving of Washington’s streets, Army engineer Nathaniel 

“...an officer of the Engineer 

Corps of the Army, 

because...under such an 

officer, whatever work is 

done will be well done, and 

by an officer responsible 

to the executive and to 

Congress.”

The city “was less advanced 

in the matter of civic 

conveniences than many a 

State capital of smaller size.”

C h a p t e r 3

112
Michler reported on the results of Meigs’s 1867 study trip to Europe concerning the 

most advanced technology for roadbeds being employed in Berlin and Paris. The 

engineers also suggested “parking” on these European models as the way to humanize 

L’Enfant’s inordinately wide avenues. Shepherd’s pell-mell pace, ruthless treatment of 

property owners, and financial juggling brought the territorial government down in a 

major scandal. In the summer of 1873 the bankrupt district faced a major change in 

its political life.94

The board’s maladministration led to a federal takeover of the city. In 1874 congressional investigators probed the board’s work, discovering irregularities (but no positive 

evidence of fiscal corruption), that led them to recommend a new government of three 

civilian commissioners to be appointed by the president. To assume the duties of the 

abolished Board of Public Works, the committee recommended “an officer of the Engineer 

Corps of the Army, because...under such an officer, whatever work is done will be well 

done, and by an officer responsible to the executive and to Congress.”95 Cluss had been 

discredited by allegations of contract irregularities during the 1873 investigations, and 

Mullett (whose term ended in June 1873) was overworked and under criticism in his main 

position as the Supervising Architect of the Treasury.

Tours of duty for the engineer officers were frequently rotated, giving them valuable 

experience solving difficult engineering problems in difficult situations all over the country. Throughout their careers they were required to write (and illustrate) concise reports 

stating the problems they faced, their solutions, and their costs. Thus they were uniquely 

equipped to go beyond the administrative and oversight duties that Mullett and Cluss had 

performed from 1871 to 1874. President Grant chose another protégé as the municipal 

engineer in what was thought to be a temporary form of government, First Lieutenant 

Richard L. Hoxie (1844–1930), a West Point friend of his son Frederick Grant. In 1878 

an act made the Board of Commissioners permanent and stipulated that one of the three 

commissioners be an engineer officer above the rank of a captain. In 1890 a joint resolution of the board required that its engineer officer must have served fifteen years in the 

Corps of Engineers as a requirement for appointment.96

The sensational is news and Washington’s short period of territorial government was 

reported widely in local and national newspapers and journals because Shepherd became 

at first infamous for his reckless extravagance and later famous for his vision. “The work 

of reconstructing the city had been so thoroughly begun that there was no option but to 

complete it. This was cautiously and carefully done,” reported the Century Magazine

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

113
in 1884. Although Shepherd’s name figured prominently in this article on “The New 

Washington,” Hoxie’s name was not linked with his accomplishments during the decade 

he worked first as the sole engineer during the temporary government beginning in 1874, 

and after 1878, as one of the assistants to Major William J. Twining, who served as engineer commissioner until his early death in 1882. In fact, the Century Magazine writer who 

found little to criticize in Shepherd’s accomplishments—wood paving blocks that “went to 

pieces very quickly” being the exception—was in reality praising the results of much of 

Twining’s, Hoxie’s, and Captain F. V. Greene’s (assistant from 1879 to 1885) work. “Year 

by year the wood has been replaced with asphalt, which now covers a length of fifty miles, 

and is a great luxury for all who use the streets, whether with cushioned carriage or heavy 

express wagon. By far the greater part of the streets used for residences are covered with 

these asphalt pavements, which are somewhat similar to those in Paris, but cover an 

extent three times as great.”97

Beginning in 1878 one of the Engineer Commissioner’s two assistants was assigned to 

sewers and the other to streets. Twining developed plans for increasing the water supply, 

extended the sewage system, paved many miles of streets, and urged upon Congress a plan for 

reclaiming the Potomac flats. In the course of work to drain and fill the old city canal, Greene 

employed 1,500 people, “laborers, carts, and water-boys...selected by the police from among 

the needy and deserving poor.”98 In 1879 Greene urged Congress to prevent further unplanned 

growth in the district by adopting a unified street plan, although nothing happened until 1888. 

Such essential, but mundane, jobs were the underlying infrastructure of the “new 

Washington,” but did not lend themselves to the sensational when no scandal was involved.

Humane and competent administration won Twining great popularity, and his death 

from overwork in 1882 was regarded as a public misfortune and grave loss to the Corps. 

President Chester A. Arthur, members of the cabinet, and lawmakers from both houses 

of Congress attended his funeral.99

The three members of the temporary commission appointed in 1874 were Republican 

politicans, but when the commissioner form of government became permanent in 1878, 

President Rutherford Hayes initiated the practice of appointing a civilian commissioner 

from each major political party, a practice that became customary. Congress apparently 

believed that the third member should be a non-partisan expert. According to Congressman 

Joseph Blackburn of Kentucky, “No third man could be found who would come nearer 

meeting the requirements and demands made than an officer of the U.S. Army, who ought 

not to be burdened with politics; an officer detailed from the Engineer Corps than who 

“By far the greater part 

of the streets used for 

residences are covered with 

these asphalt pavements, 

which are somewhat similar 

to those in Paris, but cover an 

extent three times as great.”

C h a p t e r 3

114
T h i s 1 8 8 5 v i e w s h o w s

t h e s p a r s e d e v e l o pm e n t

o f m u c h o f t h e a r e a

s o u t h w e s t o f t h e

W h i t e H o u s e , i n c l u d i n g

n e w l y r e c l a im e d l a n d . 

V i r g i n i a A v e n u e a pp e a r s

g r a d e d t h o u g h u n im -

p r o v e d . T h e E n g i n e e r

C o mmi s s i o n e r m a p

( d e t a i l ) r e v e a l s t h a t b y

1 8 9 3 t h e c o mmi s s i o n e r s

h a d p a v e d p o r t i o n s o f

t h e a v e n u e a n d

s u r r o u n d i n g s t r e e t s . 

T h e s e c t i o n f r o m t h e

W a s h i n g t o n M o n u m e n t

t o B S t r e e t r e m a i n e d

u n imp r o v e d a n d w o u l d

e v e n t u a l l y b e a b a n -

d o n e d . T h e p o r t i o n s

b e t w e e n 1 8 t h a n d 2 1 s t

S t r e e t s a n d b e t w e e n

F a n d G S t r e e t s w e r e

c o v e r e d wi t h g r a v e l ; 

t h e s m a l l s e c t i o n

b e t w e e n 2 5 t h a n d

2 6 t h S t r e e t s p a v e d

wi t h c o b b l e a n d b l u e

r o c k ; a n d t h e s t r e t c h

f r o m 2 1 s t t o 2 3 r d

S t r e e t s p r o p o s e d f o r

imp r o v e m e n t t h e

f o l l o wi n g y e a r .

Washingtoniana Division, D.C. Public Library 

Image Archives of the Historical Map & Chart Collection/Office of Coast Survey/National Ocean Service/NOAA, MSSP (detail)
I am free to say there is no set of men to be found in all the land who have maintained 

through war and peace an escutcheon more perfectly free from stain and blot.”100

After many upheavals, Washingtonians largely acquiesced to the 1878 “Organic Act.” 

Blacks saw Congress as their protector, while white property owners noted Congress’s apparent promise to pay half the expenses of the district and to underwrite the local debt. Local 

finances failed at last under the strain of supporting Shepherd’s building program, and the 

federal government had taken over the city. At the cost of the franchise, the district became 

the nation’s city under the nation’s care. As a direct result, the Army Engineers acquired an 

unprecedented role in the regular, peacetime government of an American city. The Organic 

Act remained in force until 1967 with a member of the Corps of Engineers one of three 

people who conducted the city’s business for nearly nine decades.

In 1902 Rufus Rockwell Wilson noted the social and political results of Washington’s 

governance by the Board of Commissioners:

Free from scandal of every sort, successive boards of commissioners of ability and character have administered the affairs of the District during the 

past twenty-seven year more efficiently and economically than the affairs of 

any other American municipality have been administered, and to such 

general satisfaction that there has been no lasting criticism. Indeed, to quote 

the words of an experienced and acute observer, “Washington is one of the 

best governed cities in the world. There is no political party to profit from 

the knavery of contractors or the finding of places for henchmen, no boss to 

whom universal tribute is paid. Its streets are clean and well lighted, its 

policemen polite and conscientious, its fire department prompt and reliable, 

its care for the public health of the sick and indigent admirable, and its rate 

of taxation one of the lowest in the country.”

Wilson went on to describe many beauties and amenities found in Washington at the 

turn of the century, noting, “all money for street improvements is virtually controlled by 

the engineers.”101

The engineer commissioners and their assistants lived in the city they administered and 

participated in its social and cultural life. Hoxie’s life and career were unusual for a career 

American military officer, in that he was educated in Italy in his youth and joined the Union 

Army in 1861 while a student at Iowa State University. His gallantry in combat led to his 

appointment to West Point in 1864. After working on engineering projects in New York 

“No third man could 

be found who would 

come nearer meeting the 

requirements and demands 

made than an officer of the 

U.S. Army, who ought not 

to be burdened with politics; 

an officer detailed from the 

Engineer Corps than who 

I am free to say there is 

no set of men to be found 

in all the land who have 

maintained through war 

and peace an escutcheon 

more perfectly free from 

stain and blot.”

C h a p t e r 3

116
and Boston, at the age of thirty, his exceptional talents led to his appointment as the temporary 

municipal engineer. In 1878, the year he became Twining’s assistant, Hoxie married the 

sculptor Vinne Ream, to whom he had been introduced by Lieutenant General William T. 

Sherman. The Hoxies’ house on Farragut Square, the setting for Ream’s famous salon of 

artists and intellectuals, overlooked her statue of Admiral Farragut, one of her many notable 

monumental works of sculpture. Hoxie’s social standing in Washington matched his professional achievements; his erudition in hydraulics and astronomy was particularly notable and 

he retired in 1908 a brigadier general.102

B u i l d i n g C o d e s

The most pervasive influence the engineer commissioners had over the city’s architectural appearance was adding to, administering, and enforcing its building regulations. 

Washington’s 1790s building codes focused primarily on the city’s urban appearance, 

addressing materials, building heights and their position on lots, party walls, temporary 

structures (such as gateways), and projections into the public spaces beyond individual 

lot lines. The 1871 act that established the Board of Public Works gave it the authority 

to “make all necessary regulations respecting the construction of private buildings in 

the District of Columbia.” The commissioners inherited this authority. As published on 

August 19, 1872, the comprehensive Building Regulations addressed safety in terms of 

fire protection and structural stability. The regulations called for building permits for 

new buildings and substantial alterations, outlined several rules ranging from roofing 

contiguous buildings to fireplace flues for private buildings, and addressed safety in 

theaters and other public halls that included their seating capacity and ventilation.103

In 1875 the District of Columbia Commissioners appointed a committee to update 

the regulations to include more stringent safety measures and to address health issues 

such as requiring either a water closet or an outhouse for every structure in the city. In 

1877 the engineer commissioner required non-combustible materials, such as iron for 

cornices and eaves, on buildings erected to a height of sixty feet or more, and by 1887 fire 

escapes were required for buildings fifty feet in height. Bay windows had been allowed 

by the Territorial Government in 1871; the 1877 regulations allowed towers and projecting 

shop windows as well as bays, but all required building permits issued by the commissioner. By 1887 “oriel” (a bay window above the first floor) windows were allowed. For nine 

decades the engineer commissioners helped formulate and regulate the appearance of 

“All money for street 

improvements is virtually 

controlled by the engineers.”

“Washington is one of the 

best governed cities in the 

world. There is no political 

party to profit from the 

knavery of contractors or 

the finding of places for 

henchmen, no boss to whom 

universal tribute is paid.” 

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

117
Washington’s streetscapes and much of the character of its housing developments and individually designed homes erected in suburban neighborhoods.104

In 1870 neighborhood associations began forming to enable the collective voices 

of citizens to exert influence on the Board of Commissioners in the daily running of 

the city. The associations routinely wrote to the board to express their local concerns 

or banded together to influence decisions of citywide import. The House and Senate 

committees on the District of Columbia depended on reports and recommendations issued 

by the engineer commissioners and almost invariably acted as the engineer advised.105

P e r m a n e n t S y s t e m o f H i g h w a y s

Piecemeal suburban development in the county of Washington beginning in the late 

1860s threatened to ring L’Enfant’s organized city with a patchwork of individual and 

mismatching street plans. In 1879 assistant engineer commissioner Greene urged the 

formulation of a master street plan for the entire district, based on “a thorough geodetic 

and topographical survey” that he proposed be created under a collaboration between 

the city’s engineer department and the Coast and Geodetic Survey.106 Congress began 

funding this ten-year mapping project the next year, but took no action on controlling 

suburban growth until 1888. In August the District Commissioners received authority 

for the first time to approve the plats of new subdivisions, which were required to 

conform to the city’s “general plan.”107

Lacking an overall master plan on paper made it problematical to interpret whether 

street patterns of real estate developments in the county accorded with the city’s plan. 

The Highway Act of March 2, 1893, attempted to solve this problem. It directed the 

creation of a Highway Plan for the entire district be formulated and mapped in four 

sections beginning with the area outside Florida Avenue between North Capitol Street 

and Rock Creek Park that contained a majority of Washington’s nonconforming subdivisions. Each section of the plan was to be approved, after public comment, by the 

Board of Commissioners and finally by a special Highway Commission comprised of the 

Secretaries of War and Interior and the Chief of Engineers.108 Engineer Commissioner 

Captain Charles F. Powell named civil engineer William P. Richards the assistant engineer in charge of highway extensions, and he directed the extensive work of developing 

and implementing the Highway Plan until 1905.

The Highway Act called for extensive condemnations of rights-of-way through many of 

the district’s oldest and most developed suburban subdivisions. Legal challenges, 

C h a p t e r 3

118
“Map of the Permanent 

Highway System of the District 

of Columbia. Prepared in 

the Office of the Engineer 

Commissioner, 1914.” Sixteen 

years after the highway system 

became law, its implementation 

was still spotty east of Rock 

Creek Park.

 Image Archives of the Historical 

Map & Chart Collection/Office of Coast 

Survey/National Ocean Service/NOAA, 

MSSH (detail)

“Highway Extension Plan 

of the District of Columbia, 

First Section, 1898.” Shown is 

the Engineer Commissioner’s 

projection for extending a 

modified version of L’Enfant’s 

plan to the northwestern section 

of the city.

Image Archives of the Historical Map & 

Chart Collection/Office of Coast 

Survey/National Ocean Service/NOAA, 

MSPHS1C

119
condemnations, and a flawed system set up in the act for determining damages and 

benefits in condemnation cases held up implementation of the Highway Plan from mid1895 until mid-1898. An act of June 28, 1898, however, broke the stalemate by 

amending the Highway Act to exempt most pre-August 1888 subdivisions from revision 

under the Highway Plan. The fourth and final section of the plan, which covered all the 

land south of the Anacostia River, was completed in 1900, assuring that L’Enfant’s vision 

of a monumental city would be preserved, under the oversight of the Engineer commissioner, as the city grew into the twentieth century.109

P o t o m a c a n d A n a c o s t i a R i v e r B r i d g e s

The relation of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers to Washington is similar to that of the 

Thames to London with wide, deep, and swiftly flowing waters dividing rather than 

connecting disparate parts of each city. A succession of early nineteenth century wood 

bridges connected Washington to the Virginia shore and the Eleventh Street Bridge 

connected the Navy Yard to Anacostia. These bridges were rebuilt and additional ones 

erected across the Potomac River during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. 

Land east of the Anacostia was slow to develop and be incorporated into the city partially 

because of the paucity of bridges and partially because of the river’s wide flood plain. 

Throughout the last quarter of the century, engineers detailed to the Office of Public 

Buildings and Grounds and the Washington Engineer District updated the city’s river 

connections by overseeing the planning of six, and the installation of five, similar iron 

bridges over both rivers.

Chain Bridge undergoing 

repairs, 1928. One end of the 

wrought-iron bridge built by 

Babcock in 1874 was lifted 

to repair one of its piers.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC‐USZ62‐77637

C h a p t e r 3

120
“A substantial wrought-iron bridge, 1,352 feet long, was built over the Potomac at 

the site of ‘Chain Bridge,’” reported Babcock in an 1877 summary of his achievements 

as Officer in Charge of Public Buildings and Grounds.110 Six bridges had successively 

occupied a site below Little Falls since 1797, including three of the chain-suspension 

type. Flooding in 1870 destroyed the heavy timber superstructure of an 1850s span, 

leaving its stone piers in place. In August 1872 Babcock contracted with S. R. Dickson 

of New Haven, Connecticut, for a new wrought-iron bridge on the standing piers. He 

annulled the contract fourteen months later, when no work had been done, and made a 

new one with Clark, Reeves and Co. of the Phoenixville Bridge Works in Pennsylvania. 

They completed the bridge four months later, in March 1874. This iron bridge stood 

until replaced in 1939.111

The Office of Public Buildings and Grounds next replaced the Anacostia River 

Bridge east of the Navy Yard. The existing wooden structure on the site had been 

almost entirely rebuilt by the Army during the Civil War to cope with the heavy use 

it received. In 1868 Michler proposed that a new, permanent iron bridge either replace 

the old bridge or supplement it up the river where direct communication would be 

made with Virginia or Pennsylvania Avenues. No action was taken and the bridge 

continued to accommodate “an immense travel” and require “almost constant repairing.” 

In July 1873, “as a four-horse team belonging to the Government Insane Asylum was 

crossing the Navy Yard bridge, a span of the bridge broke, and let them through into 

the water. A patient from the hospital was seated with the driver, and narrowly escaped 

being drowned. Two of the horses were drowned.”112 More repairs followed, and the 

Plan and elevation drawings 

of the Aqueduct Bridge, 1887, 

showing its low landfall in 

Arlington, Virginia (on the left) 

and Georgetown, which was 

higher in elevation

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, 

ARCE 1887

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

121
next year Congress authorized a completely new wrought-iron truss bridge set on 

masonry piers. The Office of Public Buildings and Grounds under Babcock again 

contracted with Clark, Reeves and Co., which built the bridge to plans and specifications it had drawn up as part of the bid process. This structure lasted until 1908, when 

a heavy steel arch bridge designed by a civil engineer in the D.C. Bridge Division 

replaced it.113

During the Civil War, the Army converted the trough of the Aqueduct Bridge, which 

connected Georgetown to Virginia, into a wagon way. The bridge’s private owners turned 

it into a toll bridge in 1868. Engineers inspected the bridge several times in the following 

decades but did not condemn it as unsafe until 1886, when the private owners agreed to 

sell the bridge. The federal government set up an engineer board under the auspices of 

the Washington Engineer District, composed of Lieutenant Colonel William E. Merrill, 

Lieutenant Colonel Peter C. Hains, and Major W. R. King. This board was charged with 

Superstructure built in 1887, 

supervised by Hains, on the piers 

of the Aqueduct Bridge between 

Georgetown and Rossyln

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

122
planning the reconstruction of the bridge. It proposed erecting a new iron-truss superstructure with wood floor joists and planking on the existing 1830s piers. Limitations in 

the federal appropriation for construction prevented the building of a drawbridge that the 

board had strongly recommended, but construction proceeded and the bridge opened on 

June 30, 1888. Hains supervised the construction.

In May 1886 the long process to erect a Memorial Bridge linking the District of 

Columbia at Observatory Hill to Arlington National Cemetery began with a congressional 

resolution; Hains proposed an iron-truss bridge composed of four 300-foot spans. The 

job fell to Captain Thomas W. Symons who collaborated with architect Paul Pelz to design 

a monumental stone bridge with two towers masking a central bascule draw, their model 

being Tower Bridge in London. This bridge, conceived as the Grant Memorial Bridge, 

was never built both because of its perceived insult to Virginia and the South and 

because of congressional opposition to the Corps’ involvement with its design.114

While work on the Aqueduct Bridge progressed, District Engineer Hains took up 

another river-spanning project. Lobbying efforts by a local citizens’ association led 

Congress to authorize a bridge extending Pennsylvania Avenue over the Anacostia River 

in 1887. No bridge had occupied this site since the privately owned Middle Bridge had 

burned in 1845. A board of Army Engineers planned the structure at Congress’s request, 

and Hains contracted the work to the Groton Bridge and Manufacturing Co. A dispute over 

the placement of the west abutment arose with the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad, over 

whose tracks the bridge passed. Hains worked out an alteration to the plans that met the 

Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge 

across the Anacostia River, 

built between 1887 and 1890, 

was replaced by the John 

Philip Sousa Bridge in 1940. 

(Photographed October 1926)

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

Major General Peter C. Hains 

during World War I. Many longretired engineer officers returned 

to service during the war as district 

engineers throughout the United 

States so that active duty officers 

could serve in France. Hains’s most 

lasting contribution to Washington 

was dredging the flats of the 

Potomac and Anacostia Rivers 

to improve the healthfulness of 

the entire city.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, 

U.S. Army Signal Corps Photo (detail)

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

123
needs of the government, the railroad, and the contractors, and the bridge was completed 

in July 1890. This bridge was replaced by the John Philip Sousa Bridge in 1940.115

Benning’s Bridge, crossing the Eastern Branch in line with H Street, NE, was another 

of the city’s nineteenth-century wooden bridges, and it, like the others, was perpetually 

being repaired. It was strengthened by the Corps of Engineers to handle heavy guns 

during the Civil War, and it was later maintained by the Office of Public Buildings and 

Grounds, surviving until 1934.116 A second bridge constructed of iron was built in 1892 

under the authority of the Engineer Commissioner, whose highway department contracted 

its construction with the Keystone Bridge Co.117

District engineers made surveys and plans for two additional Anacostia bridges that 

were not built. Major Charles E. L. B. Davis considered placing one at the foot of First 

Street, SW, in 1895, and two years later Major Charles J. Allen planned one extending 

Massachusetts Avenue, SE, to connect the city’s divided southeast sector. Both Anacostia 

River bridges would have employed steel-truss systems on masonry piers.118

Construction of the inlet bridge 

for the Tidal Basin, 1909. 

The inlet and outlet bridges 

served as actual bridges at the 

same time their substructures 

were designed to flush out 

the Washington channel 

with each tide.

National Archives no. 77-H-3334-45

124
W a s h i n g t o n E n g i n e e r D i s t r i c t

Alongside the challenges of constructing the government’s major public buildings and its 

bridges, as well as running the district government, the Corps of Engineers brought its 

expertise in river control and land reclamation to bear in Washington at the end of the 

nineteenth century. In 1875 the Washington Engineer District came into existence when 

the Chief of Engineers chose civilian Sylvanus T. Abert (son of Colonel J. J. Abert, who 

had been Chief of Topographical Engineers during the middle of the century) to undertake 

the improvement of the Potomac River.

The Potomac flowed through the District of Columbia in two channels. The easternmost 

of these, the Washington Channel, was prone to filling as the Potomac emptied into its broad 

estuary and dropped its burden of silt. As settlement and deforestation increased upstream, 

the flats around the channel gradually became larger, forming a marsh that threatened navigation. A dam built by Virginia from Analostan Island to the shore and the causeway of Long 

Bridge accelerated the marsh’s growth. Submerged at high water, these shoals formed at low 

water a foul-smelling mud bank stretching from not far south of the White House to below the 

Long Bridge. Reeds and grasses covered the muck, and wastes from the Washington Canal—

later to be the B Street sewer—decayed in the sun. The flats were widely believed to be a 

breeding ground for malaria. “The Presidential mansion,” Hains once commented, “being 

distant only about half a mile, got the full benefit of the condition of affairs when the wind 

was from the south.”119 Repeated efforts at the end of the century to build a new White House 

elsewhere in the city were in part motivated by the existence of the flats.

Little was done about the situation until federal expenditures for rivers rose following 

the Civil War. Then engineers dredged channels and removed the rocks obstructing 

Georgetown harbor. They pointed to the condition of the canal and the flats and recommended that the causeway of Long Bridge be replaced with pilings. Dredging, suggested 

Michler in 1868, could provide spoil to reclaim the flats.120

In 1872 a board of survey that included Officer in Charge of Public Buildings and 

Grounds Babcock, vice president of the Board of Public Works Shepherd, and Chief 

of Engineers Humphreys, plus the governor of the District of Columbia and two officials 

from the Coast and Geodetic Survey, proposed a general plan for improving the river. 

Specially noting the “immense marshy flat,” the board wrote, “the reclamation of this 

flat is an absolute necessity for the preservation of the health of the city, and must be 

included in any plan...for the improvement of the water-front of Washington.” Their 

plan proposed building a new Southwest waterfront out in the river and filling the 

“[T]he reclamation of this 

flat is an absolute necessity 

for the preservation of the 

health of the city, and must 

be included in any plan... 

for the improvement of the 

water-front of Washington.”

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

125
area between its new docks and the old river’s edge with the 

dredged mud. The result would have added more than one thousand acres to the city and completely covered the Washington 

Channel and the flats.121 Seven years later Engineer 

Commissioner Twining proposed a similar solution, filling up 

the flats in front of the waterfront, but leaving the Washington 

Channel mostly intact as a tidal arm of the river. At the new 

upper limit of the channel, north of Long Bridge, he conceived 

the idea of providing four flushing ponds, or tidal reservoirs, 

on the reclaimed land. These lakes, fitted with inlet and outlet 

gates, were to assure a twice-daily flow of fresh water through the channel, thereby 

preventing stagnation and silting.122

With many elements of a comprehensive plan already worked out, Congress acted 

after the severe flood of 1881 inundated the Mall and Pennsylvania Avenue. The lawmakers first ordered a new survey, which was submitted by Sylvanus T. Abert, “U.S. Civil 

Engineer in charge of Washington and Georgetown Harbor Improvements,” in January 

1882.123 The next month a Corps of Engineers’ board comprised of Lieutenant Colonels 

Q. A. Gillmore, William P. Craighill, and C. B. Comstock assembled a plan combining 

elements of Twining’s and Abert’s proposals.124 This report laid the groundwork for an act 

of August 2, 1882, appropriating $400,000 to improve navigation and raise the flats.125

The greater part of the work that followed fell to Hains (1840–1921), head of the 

Washington Engineer District from 1882 until 1891. Dredging the channel, Hains first 

had the dredged material moved on scows to a receiving basin, from there to be piped 

into hopper cars and hauled by railroad to the dumping ground. There it was dumped 

and spread by methods similar to those of contemporary levee work. Hains found the 

Periodic flooding of the Mall 

and downtown Washington, 

as in 1889 when Pennsylvania 

Avenue was flooded, declined 

markedly after Hains built up 

the Potomac flats.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

Major Peter Hains’s initial plan 

for reclaiming the Potomac 

flats, “Potomac River in the 

Vicinity of Washington, D.C., 

Showing the Proposed 

Improvements in Front of the 

City.” Hains’s Potomac flats 

would be a picturesque park 

like Downing’s Mall.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, 

ARCE 1883

C h a p t e r 3

126
double dredging and repeated construction of railroad trestlework to be too expensive, 

and he subsequently switched the work to hydraulic dredges that could pump the spoil 

directly to its destination. For the twelve years prior to this monumental reclamation 

project, Hains had been on lighthouse duty as engineer for the 5th and 6th districts (the 

southern states on the Atlantic Ocean and Florida), where he gained invaluable experience in the varied conditions found in tidal rivers, marshes, and swamps. “In 1891, 

when he was called elsewhere, about three-quarters of the 12,000,000 cu. yd. estimated 

to be necessary had been placed on the flats. About 620 acres of malignant swamp had 

been transformed into healthful dry land.”126 Under Hains and his successors, Major 

Charles E. L. B. Davis and Lieutenant Colonel Charles J. Allen, the land that was to 

Progress in reclaiming Potomac 

flats to June 1890

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, 

ARCE 1890

Detail from map of the Potomac Flats 

Reclamation, June 30, 1884. A cross 

section of the early retaining walls 

and the hoppers that were initially 

used to move dredged material onto 

the flats to create landfill. The newly 

developed pipeline dredges allowed 

more efficient pumping of dredged 

material from the river bottom to 

areas to be filled.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, ARCE 1884

127
become Potomac Park rose from the waters of the estuary, while the river flowed through 

deeper and straighter channels.127

During the summer of 1889 Hains also oversaw the survey of three possible routes for 

a national road from the Virginia end of the Aqueduct Bridge to Mount Vernon. The “river 

route” followed the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal bed to Alexandria and then skirted swampland; the middle route went along Arlington Road and passed Alexandria north of Shuter’s 

Hill; while the western route was along a ridge of hills, the Virginia highlands. Hains saw 

the national road as having the “character of a monumental structure” because its purpose 

was neither commercial nor military, but commemorative of Washington’s virtues and to 

“satisfy the cravings of a patriotic sentiment that fills the heart of the American people” 

to visit Mount Vernon.128 Hains hired B. F. Mackall to carry out the actual survey and the 

proposed costs ranged from about $1.3 million to $1.8 million. The river route was the 

most expensive, the highland the least costly, and Hains recommended the latter both for 

economic reasons and because the views were superb.

Between 1866 and the early 1890s, Washington’s development as a city and as the 

national capital depended on the Corps’ multiple activities as engineers, administrators, 

Aerial view of the Potomac 

reclamation project almost 

complete in 1892. The point 

at the downstream end of the 

park was named for Peter 

Hains, Washington District 

Engineer, who worked on the 

project for nine years.

Washingtoniana Division, D.C. Public 

Library/National Park Service

C h a p t e r 3

128
and designers. The magnitude of projects with which Congress entrusted them during 

peacetime was unprecedented in the country. From the Corps, Congress could draw upon 

an enormous pool of talent and expertise already on the government’s payroll with an 

established administrative structure that was proving itself as efficient in peace as it had 

been in war. Casey was first in his class at West Point in 1852, Babcock third in his 

class in 1861, Michler fourth in his class in 1844, and Meigs fifth in his class in 1836. 

Successive chiefs of engineers chose for positions of authority from among their officers 

those whose training and experience best equipped them to succeed as construction engineers, hydraulic engineers, or whatever the current development needs of Washington 

required. Their responsibilities were often complementary and the engineers advised one 

another, consulted with national experts in the arts and sciences, and developed personal 

and institutional relationships with the country’s political leadership. If one studied in 

detail what was being built in Washington during any single year between 1865 and 1890, 

dozens of members of the Corps would be quietly directing most of the work.129

In 1889 Hains oversaw the survey of 

three possible routes for a memorial 

parkway to take tourists from 

Washington to Mount Vernon.

Library of Congress, Historic American 

Engineering Record, National Park Service, 

Robert Dawson and Ed Lupyak, 1994

T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 1 8 6 5 – 9 0

129

I n t r o d u c t i o n

On January 18, 1901, James McMillan of Michigan, chairman of the Senate Committee 

on the District of Columbia since 1892, opened the final stage of his campaign to devise 

a comprehensive plan for Washington’s future aesthetic development. His report summa‐

rized the recent accomplishments and future projects that would make Washington a 

“beautiful capital city.”

During the past decade Congress has provided the means for the artistic 

development of the District of Columbia in a manner befitting the capital 

city of the nation. The purchase of Rock Creek and the Zoological parks, the 

adoption of a permanent system of highways throughout the District, the 

improvement of the flats of the Potomac, and the creation of Potomac Park, 

and the extension of certain great thoroughfares of the city of Washington 

through the misfit subdivisions and thence to the District line all betoken the 

desire and intention of Congress to carry out the original idea of making 

Washington a beautiful capital city.

4 The Progressive City

1890–1915

Opposite page: Unveiling of

Grant Memorial, april 27, 1922

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
Moreover, legislation well begun, but not yet completed, shows that this 

purpose on the part of the National Legislature is continuous. The proposed 

speedy completion of the sewer system according to a carefully matured plan; 

the approaching completion of an increased water supply, and the installation of a filtration plant; the plans for elimination of all grade crossings on 

steam railroads within the city of Washington, and for the building of 

adequate railway terminals; the proposed reclamation of the Anacostia 

Flats; the approaching transfer to the District authorities of the control of the 

commercial water front of the city; these great projects that are even now in 

process of being worked out serve to show how comprehensive and varied is the 

movement now in progress for the development of Washington.1

McMillan was the catalyst who initiated many of these great public works and then 

worked with various levels of the city and federal governments to bring them about 

because he saw them as the necessary groundwork for the future beautification of 

Washington. McMillan did not mention that each of these complex endeavors had been 

or was being carried out under the direction of some member of the Corps of Engineers. 

They were aided by the emergence of citizen involvement in several local organizations, 

including the Board of Trade and numerous neighborhood associations. Members of 

the Senate and House Committees in the District of Columbia sought the advice of the 

Engineer Commissioners and they, in turn, worked with the citizens’ groups who lobbied 

them for city services.

T h e S e n a t e P a r k C o m m issi o n P l a n , 1 9 0 2

On March 19, 1901, McMillan chaired a Senate subcommittee meeting that was the 

formal beginning of the Senate Park Commission, also known as the McMillan 

Commission, to coordinate the projects proposed or already underway with newly 

proposed buildings to serve a variety of public functions—a municipal building, a public 

library, a judiciary building (that included rooms for the Supreme Court), a government 

printing office, an auditor’s office, a geological survey, and even a national university. 

McMillan wanted these buildings to be part of a coherent, comprehensive plan that would 

take into account the city’s growth for at least half a century. The Senate Park Commission 

he established was composed of two nationally prominent architects, Daniel Burnham and 

Charles Follen McKim; landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., whose father 

132

C h a p t e r 4
designed New York’s Central Park; and America’s most famous sculptor, Augustus 

Saint‐Gaudens. McMillan’s secretary, Charles Moore, acted as their guide through 

the Washington bureaucracy during their monthly meetings as they took seriously 

McMillan’s injunction to be visionary in their outlook.

The commission’s plan unveiled at the Corcoran Museum of Art on January 15, 

1902, revealed that its members focused their talents on totally redesigning 

Washington’s monumental core. Their Beaux-Arts scheme replaced the Mall’s exist‐

ing brick, brownstone, and terra-cotta-clad Victorian buildings with white marble 

neoclassical ones as an integral part of a new formal landscape placing the Washington 

Monument in the center of a vast, cruciform-shaped public garden incorporating the 

filled lands of East and West Potomac Parks. The plan not only called for dozens of new 

buildings, it required major alterations to the existing landscape, principally grading 

the Mall, which was considerably higher on its south side, building terraced overlooks 

around the Washington Monument, and re-positioning or creating major bodies of water 

in East and West Potomac Parks.

The Senate Park Commission plan was to have immense ramifications for the work of 

the Corps for the following quarter century. Its modern anti-Victorianism threatened to erase 

several post-Civil War buildings that Corps engineers had built on the Mall that would have 

to be rebuilt to modern designs; its vision transformed the Corps’ reclaimed Potomac River 

flats not only into varied and extensive parklands but into spectacular sites for major new 

133

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5

At the behest of Col. Theodore 

Bingham, New York landscape 

architect Samuel Parsons, Jr., 

made a formal design for the 

Mall in 1900. Bingham himself 

proposed two designs for the 

Mall that would have left much 

of its picturesque gardens intact.

Office of Public Buildings and Grounds
memorials; and its scope promised work that would increasingly involve the Corps in the 

revolutionary transformation of Washington into the capital of an emerging world power. The 

Senate Park Commission was dissolved after its design was made public, but its members 

were so committed to the plan’s implementation that they all continued to participate in the 

design and construction of Washington’s buildings and landscapes, either in advisory positions 

as members of future commissions or in securing some of the new projects for their own firms.2

T h e P r e si d e n t ’ s H o u s e

In 1889 First Lady Caroline Harrison asked a young friend, architect and engineer Frederick 

Dale Owen, to design additions to the White House. Since 1800 presidential families shared 

the mansion’s second floor with presidential offices (open to high government officials twentyfour hours a day) while its ground floor had served as the “official residence” often opened to 

the general public. Owen proposed adding enclosed circular colonnaded rooms (inspired by 

the open arcades at Mount Vernon) to function as pivots to connect two new wings to the 

1792 building—on the west the “official” wing and on the east the “public” wing. They, in 

On the eve of the Senate Park 

Commission plan, the Mall’s 

high south side was cluttered 

with monumental and 

utilitarian buildings. The 

Agriculture Department is in 

the center foreground with the 

Smithsonian Institution and 

National Museum to its east, 

the construction of the latter 

two involving Corps’ engineers.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-BH85-32

134
turn, were connected to a bank of low greenhouses on the south to form an enclosed 

rectangle; the new greenhouses were to replace a complex of glass houses that had 

gradually accumulated on the White House’s west side.3

 The drama of the White House’s 

fate was news and reported broadly in the popular and professional presses of the day:

Mrs. Harrison expressed her views to Col. John M. Wilson, U.S.A., engineer 

in charge of public buildings and grounds, whose daily routine is to visit the 

Executive Mansion and receiving the wishes of the presiding lady in reference 

to repairs or improvements, and suggested a proper recommendation on the 

subject of the present condition and requirements of the official residence of 

the President and family, in his annual report to the Secretary of the Interior 

for transmission to Congress.4

Throughout the 1890s Corps officers repeatedly urged some solution to the problems of 

overcrowding at the White House. “Col. John M. Wilson, United States Army, who, by 

reappointment of President Cleveland, has now charge of the White House and adjacent 

grounds, has made a strong report on the necessity of some change in the arrangements 

for the domestic life of the Chief Executive.” Wilson particularly urged that a presiden‐

tial office be found either in the Treasury Building or the State, War and Navy Building 

or that a separate office be erected on the White House grounds. One of his successors, 

Colonel Theodore Bingham, expressed the same concerns; the White House’s structure 

was adequate if it was used solely as a private residence but could not survive the wear 

and tear of heavy office usage and huge public receptions. At the New Year’s reception 

held January 1, 1897, 251 guests entered through the south entrance, while 7,849 entered 

from Pennsylvania Avenue. Colonel Bingham, Officer in Charge of Public Buildings and 

Grounds, told President McKinley “if more than two thousand persons were invited to 

a single White House reception, he—the President—must assume responsibility for any 

accident that might occur. Owing to the fact that the offices in the second story are mainly 

over the large East Room, they have no adequate partition support, and cannot be strength‐

ened by the putting in of underpinning.” Indicative of the stress being placed on the 

building, a contemporary account noted seventeen men and their desks had recently been 

moved into one of the office rooms above the East Room.5

Perhaps Bingham considered his dual degrees from Yale and West Point sufficient 

education to undertake redesigning proposed additions to the White House. On 

December 12, 1900, Bingham displayed in the Blue Room a white plaster model of 

Colonel Bingham...told 

President McKinley “if more 

than two thousand persons 

were invited to a single 

White House reception,... 

the President must assume 

responsibility for any 

accident that might occur.” 

135

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
his reduced interpretation of Owen’s proposal for extending the president’s house—enlarged 

versions of the two circular colonnaded rooms now serving as the mansion’s sole additions. 

Bingham placed a new state dining room on the west side, its upper floor a series of hippo‐

drome-shaped guest bedrooms. The new circular east wing was to contain two stories of 

executive offices. Bingham outlined his five guiding principles at the unveiling of his design:

1. The present Executive Mansion to remain absolutely unchanged, and, if possible, 

not an outer door or window to be closed up.

2. The additions to be of such a character as not to dwarf nor obscure the present 

mansion; rather, if possible, to accentuate it.

3. Architectural harmony to be absolutely preserved.

4. The additions to be such as to relieve the pressure upon the present building, for, 

say, twenty-five or thirty years, and permit of still further extension in the future 

as may be found necessary, while at the same time presenting the appearance of 

a finished building.

5. Reasonable expenditure.6

In 1900 Bingham also presented this plan at the annual meeting of the American 

Institute of Architects (AIA) being held in Washington, rousing the ire of the architectural 

profession. Architects found that the monumental scale of the two imposing domed rotundas 

detracted from the original building and considered the interior planning crude—Bingham 

simply ran straight corridors through the second floors, for example. Adverse opinions of 

White House east entrance and 

terrace under construction, 

September 1902

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, 

Restoration of the White House Report

New White House east 

entrance and terrace, 1903

National Archives no. 77-WH-13

136

C h a p t e r 4
Bingham’s additions appeared widely in newspapers and journals of the day. “Mustn’t Spoil 

the White House,” read the headline of one Philadelphia newspaper on December 31, 

1900, prompted by opposition expressed by the members of the T-Square Club of that city. 

“Devoid of Dignity, Lacking in Unity” was the opinion of New York’s Society of Beaux Arts 

Architects as reported in the New York Herald on January 23, 1901. Robert Gibson, a fellow 

of the AIA, was careful to clarify the institute’s position.

The institute had in mind only what it was proposed to do and carefully 

refrained from any criticism of the department having the matter in charge. 

Yet a too hasty press almost nullifies this courtesy by many misstatements.

The institute is not engaged in an effort to take this public building or the 

task of enlarging it out of the custody of the United States engineers, nor 

does it charge that the scheme proposed is lacking in reverential intent 

toward the historic monument in question.

It simply seeks to show the custodians de facto the need of professional advice 

of a high order when the design of a house for the Chief Magistrate is in 

question, whether that house be or be not an addition to an existing one. The 

institute believes and declares that the thing to be done is important to the 

whole Nation and is worthy of the best skill procurable.7

Under the leadership of Washingtonian Glenn Brown, secretary of the AIA, the 

architects succeeded in convincing President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902 to give the job 

of renovating the White House to the New York architectural firm of McKim, Mead & 

White. Brown used the same rhetoric that launched the 1902 Senate Park Commission 

plan—patriotic sentiment about George Washington’s role in founding the city and 

originally commissioning the president’s house.8

McKim’s principles for his restoration were:

To put the house in the condition originally planned but never fully carried out.

To make the changes in such manner that the house will never again have to 

be altered; that is to say, the work should represent the period to which 

the house belongs architecturally, and therefore be independent of 

changing fashion.

To modernize the house in so far as the living rooms are concerned and provide 

all those conveniences which are now lacking.9

“The institute had in 

mind only what it was 

proposed to do and 

carefully refrained 

from any criticism of 

the department having 

the matter in charge.”

(Top) 

White House east room under 

construction, July 1902

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, 

Restoration of the White House Report

(Bottom) 

New White House east room, 1903

National Archives no. 77-WH-21

137

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
The Architects and Builders Journal in June 1902 reported, “it is President Roosevelt’s 

idea to avoid gorgeousness in the decorations, which, wherever introduced or renewed, 

will be made rather simple, so as to harmonize with the rest of the mansion.”10

Adherents of both aesthetic points of view believed they were accomplishing the 

goal of preserving the historic White House. In fact, Bingham’s additions were respect‐

able but naïve within the context of the waning Victorian period; he looked to Thomas 

U. Walter’s 1850s additions to the Capitol, the exteriors of which both continued its 

regulating lines and details but multiplied its columns to achieve a richly three-dimen‐

sional screen effect. In his White House additions, Bingham did not employ a suitable 

hierarchy by diminishing the scale of the additions in relationship to the original, as 

well-trained Beaux Arts architects would have done. By 1900 Beaux Arts classicism—

erudite, subdued, and elegant—had replaced the sumptuousness of Victorian classicism 

whose tenets Bingham was still following.

Of all his duties as Engineer Officer in Charge of Public Buildings and Grounds, 

Bingham was most comfortable with the ceremonial ones associated with his position as 

Theodore Alfred Bingham (1858–1934), who made a determined effort to 

remedy the White House’s problems, was born in Andover, Connecticut, and 

was intensely proud of his Revolutionary-era ancestry. Before entering the U.S. 

Military Academy in 1875 (and graduating four years later third in his class), 

Bingham attended Yale College for three years, later receiving a master’s degree 

in 1896. Bingham’s social background and skills led to his appointment as the 

military attaché in the U.S. legations at Berlin and Rome between 1890 and 

1894. In 1897 Bingham was appointed Officer in Charge of Public Buildings 

and Grounds, a position that included serving as the president’s military aide in 

charge of official functions. In 1903, after Roosevelt relieved him of this position, 

Bingham was transferred to Buffalo at his own request. On July 10, 1904, he 

was promoted to brigadier general and the following day retired for disability 

having lost his left leg when a derrick fell as he observed it hoisting a launch. 

Eighteen months later Bingham was appointed New York’s Commissioner of Police in charge of a force of nine 

thousand policemen, a position he held until 1909 when he became the city’s chief engineer of highways and 

subsequently a consulting engineer with the city’s department of bridges.11

Colonel Theodore Alfred Bingham

Office of History, 

Corps of Engineers

138

C h a p t e r 4
Line outside the White House 

for a New Year’s reception 

(n.d.). The Officer in Charge of 

Public Buildings and Grounds 

was responsible for organizing 

the variety of events held at the 

White House.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-104065

Easter Monday egg rolling at 

the White House, 1900. Among 

the many duties large and small 

of the Engineer Officer in 

Charge of Public Buildings and 

Grounds was organizing this 

annual festivity for children.

National Archives no. 77-WH-9

139

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
the president’s military aide. He collected newspaper and magazine accounts relating to all 

the White House’s social functions that he organized, the invitations to ceremonies for the 

erection of monuments that he arranged, and the seating plans for the three annual state 

dinners over which he presided as major domo. His efforts on behalf of the White House 

dominated Bingham’s annual reports; the defeat of his plan to enlarge the White House was 

probably made more bitter because it was his duty to supervise construction of the McKim, 

Mead & White design. He and McKim had an unpleasant encounter that McKim reported to 

Secretary of War Elihu Root: “I have just had it ‘out’ with Col. Bingham in his office and 

explained to him very frankly the reasons which compelled me to oppose him. Thanks to 

you and the President, the air is clearer than it has been from the beginning—and the Col. 

is now full of expressions of readiness & willingness to assist us. He comes tomorrow to our 

office in New York with copies of [the] Contract.” In 1907 Charles Moore wrote McKim, “it 

seems not only desirable but absolutely necessary to secure the hearty, intelligent coopera‐

tion of the office of Public Buildings and Grounds, if real progress is to be made with the 

plans for the improvement of the District of Columbia. Almost all of the difficulties that 

have arisen in the past have come from misunderstandings with this office.”12

G o v e r n m e n t P r i n t i n g O f f i c e

The diversity of types of government buildings erected during this period required of 

Corps’ engineers not only an in-depth knowledge of the latest advances in building tech‐

nology, but a better understanding of the design, planning, and engineering abilities of 

large American architectural firms. Second Lieutenant John S. Sewell, who graduated 

second in West Point’s 1891 class, was one of the new generations of capable Corps engi‐

neers assigned to constructing these buildings. The Government Printing Office (GPO) 

began looking for a site for an additional building near its 1860s structure on North 

Capitol Street because it needed to be close to a rail line and the Capitol. Sewell was 

ordered to duty in Washington in July 1893, “in connection with the erection of public 

buildings,” and between 1894 and 1896 designed and carried out a series of additions 

and repairs to the original building that had been described in 1891 as “unsafe and in 

every respect an objectionable structure.”13

In 1899 the government acquired the block on North Capitol Street on the north side 

of H Street, NW; $2.4 million was appropriated for an additional building, and Sewell was 

assigned to design its interiors and erect the 408-foot by 175-foot structure. The original 

authorization specifically stated that the “selection and appointment of a competent architect 

140

C h a p t e r 4
to prepare the plans and specifications for the elevations of the building shall be made by 

the said Chief of Engineers and the Public Printer jointly.” They chose Washington architect 

James G. Hill, who designed a seven-story red brick block on the Chicago formula for massive 

industrial buildings, its numerous, large, and regularly spaced windows providing abundant 

interior light for four thousand employees to work amidst machinery that often dwarfed them.14

From the outset, Sewell worked closely with the Public Printer, former congress‐

man and Midwestern newspaperman Frank W. Palmer, who began lobbying for a new 

fireproof building soon after his appointment in 1889. Palmer wanted his mechanical 

staff, especially GPO’s chief engineer and electrician, to be actively involved in both the 

design and construction of the building. Sewell noted:

I found that these gentlemen had made a careful study of the needs of the 

office, and had already arrived at perfectly definite conclusions in regard to 

many of the points brought up for discussion. Under these circumstances, it 

was deemed best for them, if possible, to design and supervise the installation of the mechanical, as they were more conversant with the needs of the 

office than any outside expert could possibly be.15

Storage of paper in the basement required a dry environment, so Sewell ran conduits 

from each of the pits of the fifteen elevator shafts directly into the sewer line on North 

Capitol Street to lower the ground water by at least four feet. Because of the weight and 

vibration of the printing presses, the tremendous volume of paper printed daily and 

stored in the building, and the sandy construction site, Sewell devised concrete founda‐

tions “of truncated pyramids under interior columns and truncated wedges under the 

walls,” their sides sloping sixty degrees to support loads up to twenty tons per square 

foot. Sewell devised this kind of foundation because he wished “to avoid putting steel gril‐

lages beneath the basement floor” where they would be exposed to moisture that might 

eventually weaken them. A dramatic rise in the cost of steel at the outset of the project 

forced Sewell to refine his calculations for the steel frame to keep within the budget yet still 

erect exterior steel and brick walls uniformly two feet, seven inches thick.

Sewell noted that the most perplexing part of the design was the structural system 

for the floors because electricity was the only source of power to be used in the building and 

each machine had its own motor. Moreover, Palmer’s planned introduction of linotype and 

other hot metal printing technologies meant Sewell needed to plan for future holes in the 

floors and different configurations of machines. His solution was a sandwich of concrete 

Colonel John S. Sewell. Sewell made 

his mark on Washington from 1899 

to 1907 as head of two engineer 

offices for the construction of a 

new building for the Government 

Printing Office and the buildings 

for the Engineer School and the 

War College at Washington 

Barracks. In addition he supervised 

construction of the Department of 

Agriculture Building on the Mall.

National Archives no. 111-SC-159604

141

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
C o n s t r u c t i o n o f t h e n e w G o v e r n m e n t P r i n t i n g O f f i c e

Captain John S. Sewell worked closely with GPO to design and construct a fireproof building suit‐

able for the site and for the technical work of the Public Printer. The truncated pyramids used to 

spread the weight of the steel frame are visible in August 1900. Sewell used both contractors and 

laborers hired directly by his office in constructing the building, which had the “health and 

comfort of employees” as one of its objectives. The rapidly increasing price of steel and other 

construction materials was a problem during the project.

1884

August 7, 1900

October 30, 1900

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, ARCE 1901

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, ARCE 1901 
June 10, 1901

Post-1920

February 1886

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, ARCE 1901

Washingtoniana Division, D.C. Public Library
slab ceilings, a three-foot-tall crawl space to carry electrical cables and wires, and hollow 

clay tile floors, thus marrying structural solidity, access, and flexibility for each of the 

building’s horizontal levels. Because GPO’s engineers and electricians best understood how 

the complex electrical and mechanical systems needed to work, they directed the Corps’ 

draftsmen in these aspects of the design. Sewell also allowed for more spacious vertical 

shafts than were common in large buildings of the era to run ventilating and heating pipes 

as well as electrical cables. When it was nearing completion, the Washington Post calcu‐

lated that the GPO’s eight acres of floor space could accommodate the entire populations 

of Washington and Baltimore. It was the largest printing office in the world and, when it 

was nearly complete, Sewell went on to design and build the Government Printing Office 

in Manila using the structural techniques he formulated for its prototype in Washington.16

A r m y W a r C o l l e g e a n d A g r i c u l t u r e D e p a r t m e n t

B u i l d i n g

Sewell’s expertise in designing advanced structural systems also was used at the Army War 

College and the Agriculture Department Building, both erected during the first decade of the 

twentieth century. Secretary of War Elihu Root created the new Army War College in 1901 

for better integration of the Army’s various branches. L’Enfant identified the military instal‐

lation’s location on Greenleaf’s Point in 1791 and it has been in continuous use as one of 

Washington’s principal military reservations since 1797. Since the 1840s the Washington 

Arsenal was at Greenleaf’s Point, its buildings clustered at the south end of the peninsula and 

along its central roadway. Early in 1902 former Engineer Commissioner and Commandant of 

the Engineer School at Washington Barracks, Colonel William M. Black, carried a preliminary 

site plan for the War College to the Capitol where McKim, Root, and McMillan were lunching. 

McKim’s legendary response was that Black had the “heel of the stocking where the toe ought 

to be,” because the main buildings in the Army’s plan were near the north end of the penin‐

sula close to main transportation routes. Root immediately declared that McKim should design 

the complex in order to take advantage of the beautiful site and prevailing breezes. McKim 

and Sewell collaborated on the general plan that isolated the main War College building on 

the central axis at the south end of the point and ranged the officers’ quarters along its western 

shore. On July 21, 1902, Sewell traveled to New York and spent the day working with McKim. 

“We really made progress, and Capt. Sewell left us with expressions of satisfaction which I 

feel sure it will please you to know,” McKim reported to Root. “His readiness to meet us in 

every way was particularly gratifying and encouraging to us.”17

“We really made progress, 

and Capt. Sewell left us with 

expressions of satisfaction 

which I feel sure it will 

please you to know.”

144

C h a p t e r 4
Sewell’s great challenge in building the Army War College was the site conditions 

at the end of the peninsula. Preliminary plans had to be revised when trenching showed 

that the point had been filled with a mosaic of different fill materials and foundations of 

former buildings when the point had served as the arsenal. To support the buildings along 

“General’s Row,” Sewell turned to a new device—reinforced concrete pilings. Learning 

of the untried process, he negotiated a contract with the local licensee. Through weeks 

of trial and error, Sewell worked out the best method of using the pilings, then built the 

homes upon them. In 1906 Sewell received the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 

Norman Medal for his paper on innovative reinforced concrete design.18

Sewell was placed in charge of constructing the new Agriculture Department 

Building on May 2, 1903. He oversaw the construction of the Agriculture Department’s 

two laboratory wings (its connecting administration building was not erected until 

Map of Washington Arsenal, 

1875, and plan for the Army 

War College and Washington 

Barracks, 1908. In 1901 the 

U.S. Army Engineer School 

moved from Willets Point 

near New York City to 

Washington Barracks, 

former site of the Washington 

Arsenal. The newly-created 

Army War College was also 

located on the post, now 

called Fort McNair. Not all 

the buildings shown on the 

1908 plan were built.

Board of Arsenals; Monographs of 

the Works of McKim, Mead, and 

White, 1915-20 (photo illustration)

145

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
1927–30). Construction was delayed until the site was chosen and Sewell was involved 

in those negotiations. For more than two years congressional committees, the Secretary 

of Agriculture, and even President Roosevelt debated the relative merits of north and 

south Mall sites for the building. Sewell often acted as a go-between among the inter‐

ested parties. Once the site on the Mall’s higher south side was decided in February 

1905 at a conference held in the Philadelphia office of the building’s architects Rankin, 

Kellogg & Crane, the problem was how to situate it on its steeply graded block. McKim 

represented the Senate Park Commission’s view and Bernard Green and Sewell repre‐

sented the Corps because the siting and heights of the buildings under their charge 

would be materially affected. The decision was that the Agriculture Department Building 

should be built in a depression excavated ten feet below grade in order to conform to 

the Mall’s overall grade proposed by the Senate Park Commission in its 1902 plan. At 

the February meeting it was decided that Sewell should convince the Department of 

Agriculture to accept the change. Sewell and McKim were allies in establishing the 

parameters for the Mall’s present and future buildings.19

Sewell saw the laboratory wings of the Agriculture Department completed and was 

promoted to major on June 9, 1907. Six months later he resigned from the Army (on 

January 31, 1908) to become vice president (president in 1919) of the Alabama Marble 

Company. Sewell’s resignation in mid-career was unusual among the elite Corps of 

Engineers. Like many other former engineers, Sewell was called back to active service 

Officers quarters at Fort 

McNair, June 1905. Quarters 2 

and 3 are nearing completion 

and the remaining thirteen 

quarters on the west side of the 

post are complete. The Chiefs 

of Engineers have lived in 

Quarters 9 since the 1980s.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

Army War College under 

construction, July 1906. 

Designed by the architectural 

firm of McKim, Mead, and 

White, the Office of Public 

Buildings and Grounds built 

the war college building at the 

tip of Greenleaf’s Point on the 

site of an old arsenal.

Courtesy National War College

146

C h a p t e r 4
during World War I when he was named a Colonel of Engineers and after which he received 

the Distinguished Service Medal, and was named an officer in the French Legion of Honor 

and received the Belgium Order of Leopold. Sewell’s last major professional contribution 

was as director of exhibits at the Century of Progress Exposition, held in Chicago in 1931.20

T h e C o r ps a n d t h e A m e r i c a n I n s t i t u t e o f

A r c h i t e c t s

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Corps and members of the AIA (by no means 

the majority of Americans who worked as architects) increasingly collaborated on major 

projects in and near Washington. The AIA had established five percent of a project’s 

total costs as the minimum fee its members should charge and was trying to enforce this 

rate for government projects. The government argued in turn that Corps engineers actu‐

ally performed many of the services normally included in architects’ fees. The Agriculture 

Department Building’s architects, Lord & Hewlett, refused to sign the three and one-half 

percent contract proffered by the government and were replaced by Rankin, Kellogg & 

Crane of Philadelphia. While working together to ensure that the Mall’s first two buildings 

would follow the Senate Park Commission’s plan regarding building and grading lines, 

Construction of the 

Department of Agriculture 

Laboratory B on the Mall, 

July 1905. After lengthy 

discussions, the department’s 

laboratories were built on 

the higher south side of the 

Mall. In order to preserve the 

Senate Park Commission’s 

plan for the siting and scale 

of buildings, the engineers 

built the building in a ten-foot 

depression that can be seen in 

this photograph.

National Archives no. 16-C-2-18

147

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
Sewell, Green (who was superintending the construction of the Natural History Museum), 

and McKim discussed in detail the issue of architects’ fees.21

On April 18, 1904, McKim wrote Green, “our own agreement with the Government, 

in the work of the Army War College at Washington Barracks, has proved satisfactory 

both to the Government and to ourselves.” He noted the three requirements of his firm’s 

contract with the Army:

(1) ‘To be charged with all questions of plan, location, disposition and general 

arrangement of buildings and grounds.

(2) To prepare the preliminary studies, working drawings, details and specifications necessary for the construction of the building in accordance with 

the requirements of the War Department, and under the direction of the 

Chief of Engineers.

(3) We should further expect to furnish such supervision and periodical 

inspection of the work, in process of erection, as we should find necessary to ascertain whether it was being executed in conformity with the 

design and specifications, approved by the Chief of Engineers, and the 

Secretary of War.’ 22

McKim then compared “supervision” of a building’s construction with 

its “superintendence,” which he understood was to be done by the Corps. 

The superintendent was the purchasing agent in charge of engineering 

issues relating to drainage, heating, lighting, and plumbing, and inspected 

materials and workmanship, with some supervision allowed the architects.23

Surprising to everyone at the time, the twentieth century began with a 

sudden lessening of rancor between the architectural profession and the Corps 

of Engineers. Roosevelt’s involvement in the Senate Park Commission’s design 

and early implementation efforts included his Secretary of War, Elihu Root, 

also a cosmopolitan New Yorker and a member of the Century Club. There the 

country’s leading artists mixed freely with its political and business leaders. 

Roosevelt and Root met McKim and other architects, who increasingly were seeking govern‐

ment work, at the Century Club. Roosevelt and Root themselves may have asked that the 

relative responsibilities of architects and Corps engineers working together on government 

projects be clarified, or McKim may have taken the initiative.

In 1902 the AIA invited Colonel John Biddle, the Engineer Commissioner, and 

Sewell to address its annual meeting. Biddle welcomed the architects to Washington and 

National Museum (later the 

Smithsonian’s Museum of 

Natural History) under 

construction, March 1909. 

The dome and columns are 

partially completed and 

the stone slabs for the stairs 

encased in their wood shipping 

crates seen in the foreground.

Smithsonian Institution Archives, 

Record Unit 79, Box 9, Folder 5, 

image #2003-19551

148

C h a p t e r 4
outlined the nature of his professional concerns in the age of skyscrapers, building 

codes, and private interests versus public convenience. Sewell’s lengthy paper, on 

the contrary, addressed the issue that most concerned the AIA: “The Relation of the 

Architect and Engineer to the Design and Erection of Government Buildings.” McKim, 

as the AIA’s new president, introduced Sewell as “a master builder for the Government, 

a worthy successor of Casey and companion of Green, who aims to build for all time, as 

the Roman constructors impressed themselves on civilization.” Sewell advocated a 

simple system applicable to all departments of government because “there is much 

complaint on the score of artistic merit, or structural excellence, or economical execu‐

tion in many of the buildings erected under any of the existing [government] systems.” 

His system was one that echoed the opinions of many in the architectural profession: 

“The engineer should be a Government official, with authority to disburse funds and 

make contracts; the architect should be in private practice.”24

In 1903 McKim drafted a long memorandum titled, “An Architect’s Service and 

Remuneration,” in which he quoted several reports on the construction of government 

buildings. Sewell’s November 3, 1903, report for the Government Printing Office calcu‐

lated the Corps’ office expenses at six and six-tenths percent of the building’s total cost. 

“This is exclusive of the cost of experts in heating, ventilation, plumbing, electrical 

installation, and his own salary,” McKim noted. Bernard Green had argued with McKim 

that “compensation of architects must be very moderate under Government employment” 

because the government paid all of its skilled and professional employees less than what 

they could make in the private world. He felt that there was an “acknowledged honor 

and prestige obtained from government employment in professional fields” and that a 

law should fix architects’ fees at four percent for government work independent of the 

quality of the architect. McKim and other AIA members disagreed, partly because they 

used their own staffs for work that was then duplicated by members of the Corps. Green’s 

solution was a new “Office of Construction of Public Buildings, District of Columbia,” 

which would have the authority to select architects as well as have total supervision of 

all aspects of the construction of new buildings.25

G r a n t M e m o r i a l

The Grant Memorial Commission was established by Congress on February 23, 1901, and 

an unprecedented $2.5 million was appropriated for Grant’s Memorial in comparison to 

the $2 million appropriated later for the Lincoln Memorial. General Grenville M. Dodge, 

“The engineer should be 

a Government official, with 

authority to disburse funds 

and make contracts; the 

architect should be in 

private practice.”

149

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
president of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, chaired the commission, and its 

members were Rhode Island Senator George Peabody Wetmore and Secretary of War 

Elihu Root. From the outset, the commission planned “a statue or memorial,” but prior to 

deciding on a memorial design it proposed locations either immediately south of the State, 

War and Navy Building, or on the northern part of the Ellipse. The sudden proliferation of 

commissions charged with Washington’s development fostered conflicts. By June 3, 1901, 

three months after its initial meeting, the Senate Park Commission planned a huge 

triumphal arch dedicated to Grant to terminate the Mall’s west axis at the Potomac River’s 

edge. On June 7 Root convinced the Grant Memorial Commission to delay deciding on a 

site until all the design entries (anticipated to be sculptural in character) were received. 

The entries were not due for another ten months.26

About the same time, Root asked the Senate Park Commission to act as consultants 

to the Grant Memorial Commission, the two commissions having conflicting ideas about 

the location and character of the memorial to Grant. Daniel Burnham, chair of the Senate 

Park Commission, lobbied Root via a letter in late August, arguing that the Potomac 

Unveiling of Grant Memorial on 

April 27, 1922, Grant’s birthday, 

with U.S. Military Academy 

cadets in the foreground

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

150
Park site for the Grant Memorial was one of the plan’s “five great points.” McKim 

followed up with a meeting with Root six days later on August 28, and reported that 

the secretary was personally in favor of the Mall site for the Grant Memorial but would 

not oppose Dodge, unwilling to “over-ride a man so near the end of his career, whose 

public services entitled him to such consideration.” Moving the Grant Memorial to the 

Mall would have nullified the Grant Memorial Commission’s competition and undoubt‐

edly caused concern in Congress, which had appropriated a quarter of a million dollars 

for it. In late November 1901 McKim, the Mall’s principal designer, decided to move 

the Grant Memorial to the foot of Capitol Hill just a month before the Senate Park 

Commission’s plan was to be unveiled on January 1, 1902. This decision 

led to repositioning the Lincoln Memorial (also originally conceived as a 

triumphal arch), first located south of the White House on the far side of 

the Tidal Basin.27

On February 4, 1903, a design by the young team composed of sculptor 

Henry M. Shrady and architect Edward Pearce Casey was selected from 

among twenty-seven entrants in the Grant Memorial competition. In 1901 

Root suggested that statues of General Philip Sheridan and General 

William T. Sherman be added as pendants to the figure of Grant. Shrady, 

however, chose to represent Sheridan and Sherman via multi-figure groups 

of artillery and cavalry, adding two relief panels depicting infantry on the 

pedestal base of the equestrian figure of Grant, and four recumbent lions, 

all modeled in clay, initially cast in plaster, and finally cast in bronze.28

The competition was contested, the choice of the former Botanic Garden 

as the site was assailed, and Shrady’s relatively frail constitution led to 

repeated delays in meeting deadlines, all challenges that a succession of 

Corps officers successfully met, beginning with Theodore Bingham and ending with 

Clarence O. Sherrill. Bingham secured the Corcoran Gallery’s exhibition space to display 

the entries, made arrangements for a second, limited competition, and reported to Root 

that Shrady’s sense of personal and professional decorum was superior to that of Charles 

Henry Niehaus, the second-place contender. Shrady began working in February 1903, 

although the site had not yet been finalized. His 1903 contract had two financially 

burdensome stipulations—the posting of a $250,000 bond to ensure the project’s 

completion, and incremental payments based on completion of plaster casts of each 

section. In 1910, with the help of Colonel Cosby, Shrady had the latter requirement 

Designed by sculptor Henry M. 

Shrady, the central figure of 

the composition—the bronze 

equestrian statue of Grant— 

weighs 10,700 pounds and 

with its pedestal is forty feet 

high. The statue was hoisted 

atop its pedestal in 1919.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, Lot 12654-5

151

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
changed to the completion of the clay models. Casey’s architectural setting was erected 

in 1908 and the four lions and eight candelabrum were installed shortly thereafter; the 

artillery group (the largest and most complex bronze cast to that date in the United 

States) was not put in place until 1911.29

By 1914 the Grant Memorial Commission was questioning Shrady about repeated 

delays. Shrady wrote to the executive officer of that commission, Colonel William W. Harts: 

“I am afraid Gen. Dodge [chairman of the commission] does not quite appreciate the great 

task before me.” Colonel Harts, acting in his role as secretary of the Commission of Fine 

Arts, wrote its sculptor member, Daniel Chester French, asking him to visit Shrady’s studio 

and report on his progress. French’s reply to Harts echoed Shrady’s assertion. Harts then 

wrote Dodge that the monument could not be unveiled before the spring of 1916. But Dodge 

remained impatient and Harts was forced to continue pressuring Shrady. Early in 1916 the 

Cavalry Group was placed on its pedestal and Shrady’s family said Washington “officials” 

stopped “hounding” him. When the figure of Grant was raised on its tall pedestal in 1919, 

the central group was nearly forty feet high. “Shrady’s daughter recalled that her father’s 

government patrons had instructed him to make the Grant larger than the Victor Emanuel,...

but that he had decided to make it two inches shorter for two reasons; in deference to the 

Italian workmen he employed to assist him in his studio as he enlarged the model to full 

size, and because he wanted his work to be distinguished by its merits, rather than by its 

size.” The massive Victor Emmanuel II Monument on the north side of Rome’s Capitoline 

Hill, dedicated to the first king of the united Italy, had been constructed between 1885 

and 1911.

When the two relief panels depicting the infantry had not been added to the base of 

the Grant statue by June 1921, Colonel Clarence O. Sherrill, new Officer in Charge of 

Public Buildings and Grounds, wrote Shrady that if they were not finished by October, 

another sculptor would be hired to complete them. Sherrill reminded Charles Moore of 

the Commission of Fine Arts, who intervened on the sculptor’s behalf, that Shrady’s 

contract was extended ten times. Shrady hired a young sculptor, Edmund Amateis, to 

work on the relief panels, but he was unable to complete them. The monument was 

unveiled without them and the panels were not added until 1924. When the unfinished 

sculpture was unveiled on Grant’s birthday, April 27, 1922, Shrady was already in the 

hospital with a fatal illness. The physical and psychological stress of creating one of 

America’s greatest sculptural works, and the difficulties he encountered dealing with the 

Washington bureaucracy, are cited as the cause of his death at the age of forty-nine.30

Colonel William W. Harts (shown as 

Brig. Gen.). As Officer in Charge 

of Public Buildings and Grounds, 

Col. Harts played an important 

and delicate role in the design 

and construction of the 

Lincoln Memorial.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

152

C h a p t e r 4
L i n c o l n M e m o r i a l

In 1911 President William Howard Taft signed a bill establishing the Lincoln Memorial 

Commission, which he chaired. Its six other members were all congressmen, including 

Illinoisan Joseph Cannon, one of the bill’s sponsors. This commission was a departure from 

others instituted to bring about Washington buildings and sculpture because the 

Secretary of War was not included. The Corps’ particularly broad involvement in the Lincoln 

Memorial, however, was legislated in other ways. The major decision taken at the commis‐

sion’s first meeting on March 4, 1911, was to require the newly-formed Commission of 

Fine Arts (approved May 17, 1910) to advise on the “location, plan, and designs” of the 

Lincoln Memorial. The act establishing the Fine Arts Commission required that all federal 

commissions proposing buildings or sculpture in Washington consult the new commission.31

Three of the original seven congressionally appointed members of the Commission 

of Fine Arts had been instrumental in the formation and execution of the Senate Park 

Commission’s plan of 1902: architect Daniel H. Burnham, landscape architect Frederick 

Law Olmsted, Jr., and layman Charles Moore, McMillan’s trusted secretary. Its other 

members were respected American artists, and its secretary managed day-to-day opera‐

tions, advised its members about pending and current legislation, and communicated 

recommendations to pertinent government officials. From June 17, 1910, the secretary 

of the Commission of Fine Arts was ex officio the Corps Officer in Charge of Public 

Buildings and Grounds. The first four secretaries of the Commission, who served during 

the creation of the Lincoln Memorial from 1910 to 1922, were all Army Engineers.32

At its second meeting on July 25, 1911, the Lincoln Memorial Commission chose a 

secretary and appointed the ex officio Engineer Officer in Charge of Public Buildings 

and Grounds as its disbursing officer. Colonel Spencer Cosby (1867–1962) held both 

positions until October 1, 1913; at the August 8, 1911, meeting of the Lincoln Memorial 

Commission, the engineer officer’s responsibilities were increased to “executive and 

disbursing officer.” Thus, duties at both levels of responsibility for achieving the Lincoln 

Memorial—that of influencing and communicating decisions about its design and that 

of managerial and construction oversight—were given to Cosby and his successors.

Choosing a design for the Lincoln Memorial was tied directly to the selection of its 

site, a rancorous process because Cannon opposed the Senate Park Commission’s 

proposed site that was adopted by the Commission of Fine Arts. Cannon opposed the Park 

Commission from its founding because McMillan bypassed the House Appropriations 

Committee when Cannon was its chairman. Moreover, Cannon could not imagine that an 

153

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
September 1, 1914

March 1, 1915

ca. May 1916

National Archives no. 66-G-23P-47

National Archives RG 42. Office of Public Buildings and Public Parks 
C o n s t r u c t i o n o f t h e L i n c o l n M e m o r i a l

Because the memorial was located on fill material dredged from the Potomac, 

its foundations had to be driven about 100 feet to bedrock. The tops of some of 

the 122 steel and concrete cylinders that supported the memorial are visible in 

September 1914. By May 1916 the memorial’s columns were being assembled. 

As the war in Europe neared its end, the memorial was approaching completion. 

July 1, 1916

July 1, 1918

National Archives no. 77-DP-100A-3

National Archives no. 121-LM-21
area he first had known as a tidal marsh, and later as a desolate field of rubble after the 

Corps’ reclamation operations of the 1880s, could ever be made appropriately beautiful 

to commemorate Lincoln.

A public competition for the Lincoln Memorial was expected and would have been 

normal for such an important structure, but in August 1911 the Commission of Fine Arts 

decided to select the young architect Henry Bacon (1866–1924), well respected among 

architects but without a national reputation. At the August 22, 1911, meeting of the 

Lincoln Memorial Commission, Cannon had enough votes to pass a resolution allowing 

the Executive and Disbursing Officer, with the chairman’s approval, to contract with New 

York architect John Russell Pope to make designs for the Lincoln Memorial on two alter‐

nate sites. The resolution further authorized Pope to “make use of the office force of the 

Superintendent of the Capitol Building and Grounds.”33

Thus Cosby oversaw a limited quasi-competition for removing the Lincoln Memorial 

from its Mall site, a location favored by one commission for which he was the secretary 

and opposed by another for which he was the executive and disbursing officer. The engi‐

neer favored Bacon’s appointment as architect, and the Mall site, the position adopted by 

President Taft, one of the Senate Park Commission’s staunchest supporters when he was 

Secretary of War and the creator of the Commission of Fine Arts in 1910. As chair of the 

Lincoln Memorial Commission, Taft was required to carry out any majority resolution 

and Cosby was required to implement its injunctions. For the next several months, Cosby 

attended the meetings of both commissions and was privy to their conflicting points of 

views and strategies, drew upon Army Engineers to gather data about the alternate sites, 

and communicated this information, as well as some of the changing political scene, to 

the architects and the various commission members.34

Public and professional opinion was divided over the designs but when the Lincoln 

Memorial Commission met on January 22, 1912, it was to debate the site and not the 

relative merits of the designs. Cannon was joined by Speaker of the House, James 

Beauchamp Clark of Missouri, in supporting first one and then the other of the alternate 

sites. The meeting ended with the resolution that the Commission of Fine Arts be 

consulted about erecting an obelisk dedicated to Lincoln similar to the Washington 

Monument “on a suitable site in the District of Columbia” when the members could 

not agree on any of the three sites under consideration. The Commission of Fine Arts 

rejected the idea of an obelisk and voted to retain the Mall site, inviting both Bacon and 

Pope to refine their designs to fit in West Potomac Park. Speaker Clark’s response to his 

156

C h a p t e r 4
and Cannon’s defeat on the site was to revive the popular idea of the Lincoln Memorial 

Highway between Washington and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, one of the earliest ideas of 

how to memorialize Lincoln. The American Automobile Association was their ally in this 

protracted effort.35

In order to protect Bacon’s building on the Mall, Glenn Brown of the AIA informed 

Congress that the highway would cost $34 million to construct and $3 million annually 

to maintain in comparison to the $2 million appropriated for the Lincoln Memorial. The 

memorial road association countered that the construction cost would be $1.5 million. 

The authoritative voice that decided the issue to the satisfaction of Congress was that 

of Major William V. Judson (1865–1923), Washington’s Engineer Commissioner from 

1909 to 1913. From his experience building roads in Puerto Rico and knowledge of 

Hains’s survey for a memorial route to Mount Vernon, Judson informed Congress that 

the Gettysburg road would cost more than $20 million to build and “considerably over 

$1,000,000 for annual maintenance. The estimate of cost covers no ornamental features 

of any kind, not even trees.”36

Bacon and Pope presented their revised designs to the Commission of Fine Arts on 

March 22 and 23 and to the Lincoln Memorial Commission on March 28. The Commission 

of Fine Arts preferred Bacon’s design, but the Lincoln Memorial Commission could not 

agree then nor when they met again on April 10. Six days later, however, the vote was 

four‐to-two in favor of Bacon’s design. On December 4, 1912, with one dissenting vote, 

the Senate approved the resolution to build Bacon’s Lincoln Memorial at the west end of 

the Mall and on January 29, 1913, the resolution passed both houses of Congress. Cosby’s 

role then changed from intermediary and facilitator in this intensely political and cultural 

battle to supervisor of construction. Until he was relieved on September 10, Cosby 

reviewed foundation blueprints made by Bacon’s engineer, L. J. Lincoln, and changed the 

concrete aggregate formula in the specifications to agree with Lincoln’s calculations.37

On September 10, 1913, the day bids for the foundations were opened, Colonel 

William W. Harts replaced Cosby on the various commissions overseeing the Lincoln 

Memorial. He was immediately embroiled in a dispute about whether the Secretary of War 

or the president of the Lincoln Memorial Commission was authorized to award contracts. 

“It is understood that Mr. Taft is of the opinion that the commission has the power to 

award the contract, and that the Secretary’s [of War] duties were merely perfunctory.” The 

Attorney General ruled that the Secretary of War alone had the authority to award contracts 

while the Lincoln Memorial Commission had the power to select the design and oversee its 

157

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
construction. The Washington Evening Star viewed this as a business matter and urged that 

re‐advertising for bids not cause delay in the memorial’s construction. Bacon wrote Harts: 

“I feel as if I had been drawn through twenty knot holes, each one smaller than the previous 

one, and if the process had been kept up much longer, I should have been smaller mentally, 

morally and physically than the longest knitting needle in Christendom.”38

During his four years as Officer in Charge of Public Buildings and Grounds, Harts 

presided over the Lincoln Memorial’s construction from sub-foundations to carving the 

friezes. Lincoln Memorial scholar Christopher A. Thomas noted, “The Lincoln Memorial 

appears to be a peripheral temple standing on a hill, but this is a calculated deception, 

since the building is really more like the top story of a skyscraper that is buried for most 

of its height.” The sub-foundations contain 122 circular concrete piers surrounded by 

steel cylinders that were driven down to bedrock 100 feet below the surface and anchored 

to it by reinforcing bars; this method was suggested by one of the contractors who submit‐

ted bids. This construction method had been used to erect piers of bridges, but not for 

dry-land construction. The upper foundations are concrete columns—some hollow and 

some reinforced—whose arched tops provide the platform on which the memorial’s floor 

sits forty-five feet above the ground. The foundations were of great import because the 

memorial’s thirty-six columns representing the states in the Union—ignoring Southern 

secession when Lincoln was president—were composed of 456 drums, each weighing 

tons. The total weight of the marble superstructure was calculated at 11,400 tons. Harts 

approved the Colorado Yule marble, more expensive than eastern marble, for the Lincoln 

Memorial’s superstructure because it was the best material and the quarry was able to cut 

the large blocks Bacon wanted.39

The mutual respect of several urbane men—Moore, Harts, Bacon, and sculptor 

Daniel Chester French—made the Lincoln Memorial a masterpiece. Like Shrady, sculp‐

tor of the Grant Memorial, French personally spent more than he earned to produce the 

seated Lincoln because he made repeated sketch models in varying poses and increased 

the size until the figure fit perfectly into the space Bacon created for it. The original 

contract called for a ten-foot-tall bronze statue but French determined that a nineteenfoot-tall marble one was the only solution. When Harts did not reply immediately to 

his request to amend the contract, French wrote Moore that Harts “has a laudable ambi‐

tion to build the entire Monument within the appropriation.” Working with the Lincoln 

Memorial Commission, Harts wrote a supplemental contract for $43,000 to cover the 

additional cost of the marble carving company that turned French’s model into the final 

“I feel as if I had been drawn 

through twenty knot holes, 

each one smaller than the 

previous one, and if the 

process had been kept up 

much longer, I should have 

been smaller mentally, 

morally and physically than 

the longest knitting needle 

in Christendom.”

“The Lincoln Memorial 

appears to be a peripheral 

temple standing on a hill, but 

this is a calculated deception, 

since the building is really 

more like the top story of a 

skyscraper that is buried for 

most of its height.”

158

C h a p t e r 4
sculpture.40 Although construction continued during World War I, the memorial would 

not be finished until near its end.

In his memoirs, Harts noted his role in the creation of the Reflecting Pool between 

the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.

In one of the early laws it had been prohibited to build any lake or lagoon 

in Potomac Park simply because Speaker Cannon [elected Speaker during 

the 58th Congress in 1903]...did not like them and thought it would be 

unwarranted as an expense. But when I excavated for the soil [to fill in 

around the memorial’s raised foundations], water came in and made a 

lagoon anyway. One day, when Mr. Cannon was visiting the Memorial 

before it was quite finished as we stood on the steps looking toward the 

Washington Monument, I asked him why he objected to the lagoon which 

was an architectural feature already of much beauty....He chewed his cigar 

for a few moments and then said “The trouble with you fellows is that you 

start your kindergarten too late.” This was quite an admission for him to 

make of his earlier mistakes. Now the Lincoln Memorial in its majestic 

beauty justifies all the struggle to select this memorial instead of a highway 

to Gettysburg.41

Harts (1866–1961) was born in Springfield, Illinois, the son of a lawyer whose family 

had emigrated from Bavaria in 1709. He attended Princeton University from 1884 to 

1885 but left to finish his education at West Point. When Harts was selected as military 

aide to the president in 1913, and automatically placed in charge of public buildings 

and grounds in Washington, he already had an eventful and varied career of postings 

from the Atlantic to the Pacific coasts.42

In his annual report for 1916, Harts outlined the twenty-six duties assigned to the 

Officer in Charge of Public Buildings and Grounds, the ongoing care of existing government 

buildings and parks, and the supervision of newly-launched projects—a variety of 

monuments, bridges, and buildings. His vivid account of the duties of the president’s 

military aide, ranging from significant to menial, is an excellent record of how the city’s 

military, political, diplomatic, and civilian populations interacted socially. His duties at the 

White House were “often trying and annoying...[b]ut my position likewise gave me a great 

prestige. I had to arrange the great receptions, introduce guests to the President on almost 

all occasions, lead the march to the State dinners, select military and naval aides for White 

“‘The trouble with you 

fellows is that you start your 

kindergarten too late.’...Now 

the Lincoln Memorial in its 

majestic beauty justifies all 

the struggle to select this 

memorial instead of a 

highway to Gettysburg.”

159

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
House receptions, musicales and teas.” Conversely, Harts “was responsible for the machin‐

ery of the parking of private carriages, at coming functions, the heating and lighting of the 

building[,] interior decorations and flowers, maintenance of furniture, the cloak-rooms, 

the green-houses, the guarding and care of the grounds, the upkeep of the building itself, 

payment of servants and many other items of the drudgery class.” The simultaneous 

involvement of the Corps’ officers in the multiple layers of official Washington that Harts 

described helped them speak with authority in all their positions.

R o c k C r e e k P a r k

The Senate Park Commission’s proposed changes to Washington in 1902 were broad 

ranging in their extent because Senator McMillan intended the plan to coordinate the 

government’s ongoing projects relating to infrastructure as well as to the city’s future 

expansion. The Senate and House Committees on the District of Columbia, working with the 

Commissioners of the District of Columbia, were its de facto city government, a situation 

that McMillan balanced with his responsibilities as a member of Congress. Serious citizen 

involvement in Washington’s municipal affairs had begun with securing amenities that other 

municipalities were providing for their residents. In early July 1866 a group of Washington 

residents, including Montgomery Meigs, sent a petition to Congress, asking that “some 

public park within a convenient distance of their residences, to which they could resort after 

the labor of the day, and to which they could send their wives and children during the heat 

of the day, for relief from the heated and impure air of the city” be undertaken.

A Senate resolution of July 18, 1866, instructed the Secretary of War to “make 

preliminary surveys and maps of certain tracts of land adjoining or near this city for the 

purposes of a public park and also a suitable site for a Presidential mansion.” Major 

Nathaniel Michler was detailed by the Chief of Engineers to this task, and in his report he 

recommended separate sites to fit each of these purposes. He noted that the alternative of 

combining them would not be a problem, considering that “so many splendid situations 

present themselves from which to make a selection.” For the public park he recommended 

part of the valley of Rock Creek and its tributaries, setting aside from 1,800 to 2,540 acres 

at a cost to Congress of between $360,000 and $580,000. “With its charming drives and 

walks, its hills and dales, its pleasant valleys and deep ravines, its primeval forests and 

cultivated fields, its running waters, its rocks clothed with rich ferns and mosses, its repose 

and tranquility, its light and shade, its ever-varying shrubbery, its beautiful and extensive 

views, the locality is already possessed with all the features necessary for the object in 

“[M]y position likewise 

gave me a great prestige.”

“With its charming drives 

and walks, its hills and 

dales, its pleasant valleys 

and deep ravines, its 

primeval forests and 

cultivated fields, its running 

waters,...the locality is 

already possessed with all 

the features necessary for 

the object in view.”

160

C h a p t e r 4
view.” He suggested starting the construction of the public park “as soon as practicable. It 

is a grand and beautiful undertaking and should be prosecuted with the greatest energy.”43

Missouri senator Benjamin Brown, chairman of the Senate Committee on Public 

Buildings and Grounds, introduced a bill in the Senate in early 1867 that called for estab‐

lishment of a park within the boundaries suggested by Michler. The bill provided for the 

establishment of a commission to acquire the necessary land, and it named Michler and then 

Brevet Major General Meigs to investigate further. The bill was tabled and, as Brown left the 

Senate at the end of that term, not taken up again. In 1880 assistant engineer commissioner 

Captain Richard L. Hoxie proposed another plan for Rock Creek valley. To ensure a clean 

and plentiful supply of fresh water for the growing city of Washington, Hoxie recommended 

damming Rock Creek to make a 1,300-acre lake above Georgetown, its shores to be used as 

a park. Banker W. W. Corcoran, Supreme Court Justice William Strong, and Josiah Dent, 

representing the city’s businessmen, futilely urged creation of the park again in 1883. 

Additional legislative attempts to create the park failed in 1884, 1886, 1888, and 1889.44

On Thanksgiving Day 1888, the wealthy and well-connected Charles C. Glover, a 

partner in the banking firm of Riggs and Company, invited four influential friends on 

an outing into the area of the proposed park. After horseback riding through the country, 

these men agreed to work to get the park authorized. Glover’s guests were his business 

partners James M. Johnson and Thomas Hyde, lawyer Calderon Carlisle, and Assistant 

Engineer Commissioner Captain Thomas W. Symonds. Not long after this excursion, 

Johnson and Carlisle drafted new legislation under the direction of Glover. Glover had 

a friend and ally in Crosby S. Noyes, editor of the Evening Star. In a December 1888 

editorial Noyes wrote, “The project of converting the picturesque Rock Creek Valley 

into a public park has long been cherished by thoughtful citizens as the one thing 

needed to justify the claim of Washington to a rank among the most beautiful and 

attractive capital cities of the world.” The following January 11, a citizen’s meeting at 

the Atlantic Building elected an economically and politically well-connected executive 

committee to lobby Congress and organize public support for the park. The committee 

included Glover and Noyes.45

Extensive lobbying led to another attempt, in January 1889, to bring a park bill 

before the House. Its failure led to an effort to add the park to the then-pending National 

Zoological Park legislation. This had the effect of forcing the passage of the zoo bill, for 

park opponents agreed to authorize the zoo if park proponents agreed to kill the Rock 

Creek Park rider. The zoo was authorized on March 2, 1889, and with this partial victory 

Park watchman in uniform at 

the beginning of the twentieth 

century. The Office of Public 

Buildings and Grounds argued 

in its 1904 report that the 

watchmen had the duties and 

responsibilities of policemen 

and should be formally called 

policemen. The watchmen 

patrolled the public parks, and 

each year the office provided 

statistics on the number of 

people arrested and their 

alleged crimes.

National Archives no. 42-SPB-93

161

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
T h e O f f i c e o f P u b l i c

B u i l d i n gs a n d G r o u n d s ’ 

e f f o r t s t o i m p r o v e t h e

d is t r i c t ’ s p u b l i c r e s e r -

v a t i o n s o f t e n f o c u s e d o n

l e is u r e - t i m e a m e n i t i e s f o r

W a s h i n g t o n ’ s c i t i z e n s . T h e 1 9 1 0 

c o n c r e t e w a d i n g p o o l b u i l t i n

C a pi t o l H i l l ’ s G a r f i e l d P a r k a t

S o u t h C a r o l i n a A v e n u e a n d 3 r d

a n d E S t r e e t s , S E , d o u b l e d a s a

f o u n t a i n . N e ig h b o r h o o d a c t i v is t s

s e c u r e d G a r f i e l d P a r k , o n c e

s l a t e d t o c o n t a i n a r a i l r o a d

r o u n d h o u s e , a s a c h i l d - f r i e n d l y

p l a c e a s C o r ps e n gi n e e r s g r a d u -

a l l y m o v e d a n e x is t i n g

p l a y g r o u n d t o a s h a d i e r c o r n e r , 

i n s t a l l e d c e m e n t a n d g r a v e l

w a l k s , l a i d o u t a t e n n is c o u r t , 

a n d e r e c t e d t w e l v e g a s l a m ps .

I n M a r c h 1 9 1 4 t h e D is t r i c t

C o m m issi o n e r s c o n d e m n e d a n a l l e y

b e t w e e n 3 r d a n d 4 1⁄ 2 a n d B a n d

C S t r e e t s , S W , a n d t r a n s f e r r e d i t

t o t h e O f f i c e o f P u b l i c B u i l d i n gs

a n d G r o u n d s w h o c r e a t e d W i l l o w

T r e e P a r k . O v e r t h e n e x t s e v e r a l

y e a r s , C o r ps e n gi n e e r s p l a n t e d

t r e e s , b u i l t a w a d i n g p o o l , a n d

e r e c t e d a n e w l o d g e a n d “ p u b l i c

c o m f o r t s t a t i o n , ” a n d D is t r i c t

C o m m issi o n e r s e n c l o s e d i t w i t h i n

a n i r o n f e n c e . T h e si t e o f t h e

p a r k is n o w o c c u pi e d b y t h e U . S . 

D e p a r t m e n t o f H e a l t h a n d H u m a n

S e r v i c e s b u i l d i n g .

Willow Tree Park, 1918

Garfield Park, 1910

National Archives no. 42-SPB-5 

National Archives no. 42-SPB-111
C h i l d r e n l i v i n g n e a r D u p o n t

C i r c l e i n 1 9 1 5 e n j o y e d f o u r

n e w s a n d b o x e s , t w o o f w h i c h

w e r e r e p l a c e d t h e f o l l o w i n g

y e a r b y o n e s o f “ m o r e r e c e n t

d e sig n . ” A l l t h e n e ig h b o r s

b e n e f i t t e d f r o m t h e C o r ps ’ 

1 9 1 6 p l a n t i n g o f n e a r l y 2 , 0 0 0 

t r e e s , s h r u bs , a n d r o s e b u s h e s . 

I n 1 9 1 1 t h e O f f i c e o f P u b l i c

B u i l d i n gs a n d G r o u n d s i m p r o v e d

t h e p a r k a t R e s e r v a t i o n 1 2 6 . 

L o c a t e d a t t h e i n t e r s e c t i o n o f

V i r gi n i a a n d P o t o m a c A v e n u e s , 

S E , t h e w e s t e r n p a r t o f t h e

p a r k r e c e i v e d a n e w p u b l i c

p l a y g r o u n d . T h e P u b l i c

P l a y g r o u n d s A ss o c i a t i o n

p r o v i d e d m a n y o f t h e f a c i l i t i e s

i n c l u d i n g a w a d i n g p o o l , s a n d

b o x e s , a n d a c o m f o r t s t a t i o n . 

T h e o f f i c e b u i l t a r u n n i n g

t r a c k a n d p l a n t e d n u m e r o u s

t r e e s a n d o t h e r p l a n t s .

Dupont Circle, 1915

Reservation 126, 1911

National Archives no. 42-SPB-3 

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, ARCE 1911
Glover was able to convince powerful Ohio Senator John Sherman to 

support the full park. Sherman introduced new legislation in 1890. 

While his bill passed the Senate at the end of January, it got stuck 

in the House as objections were raised (not for the first time) that 

the park was simply a device to aid local land speculators, includ‐

ing Senator Sherman, who owned extensive tracts in the northwest 

suburbs. The bill narrowly failed a vote in April, but was brought 

up again in May and passed. A conference committee reconciled 

the Senate and House versions, the final bill passed both houses, 

and Benjamin Harrison signed it into law September 27, 1890.46

The authorizing legislation set aside an area along both banks 

of Rock Creek from Klingle Ford Bridge to the district line “as 

a public park or pleasure ground for the benefit and enjoyment of 

the people of the United States, to be known by the name of Rock 

Creek Park.”47 The park was not to exceed two thousand acres nor 

was its land to cost more than $1.2 million. Half of the land acquisi‐

tion cost and half of future maintenance and improvement costs for 

the park were to be paid by the District of Columbia. The legisla‐

tion established a park commission consisting of the Chief of Engineers, the Engineer 

Commissioner and three citizens, in this case reporter and Civil War veteran officer 

Henry V. N. Boynton, Smithsonian Institution secretary Samuel P. Langley, and attorney 

R. Ross Perry. Major General Thomas L. Casey and Colonel Henry M. Robert (perhaps 

best known as author of Robert’s Rules of Order) initially filled the first two roles. Captain 

William T. Rossell, assistant Engineer Commissioner, served as executive officer to 

the commission. Secretary Langley was a key figure in the creation of the zoo, and his 

knowledge of the Rock Creek valley recommended him to the commission charged with 

establishing the shape and size of the new park.48

The commission established a final map of the park by March 1891 and undertook 

the acquisition of land based on it. Most landowners did not accept the commission’s 

offers for their property, and legal condemnation proceedings were required to obtain the 

land, which reduced the parcels’ size to keep costs below the appropriation. All the land 

was purchased by mid-April 1892, the park containing just less than 1,606 acres. Rock 

Creek Park was placed under the joint jurisdiction of the District Commissioners and the 

Chief of Engineers. These men organized themselves into the Board of Control of Rock 

Timber footbridge over Rock 

Creek Park. This bowstring, or 

grapevine truss, bridge was 

located near Beach Drive 

and illustrates the rustic 

construction in the park.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-H823-B08-021

164

C h a p t e r 4
Creek Park and assumed control of the reservation on New Year’s Day, 1895. Captain 

Gustav Fieburger was the board’s first executive officer, and he had direct responsibility 

for administering and superintending the park.49

The established park was not improved quickly. Despite community petitions and 

resolutions to the District Commissioners and Congress, the first Congressional appro‐

priation for park maintenance came only in 1899. Through 1912 less than $225,000 had 

been appropriated in total for park development. What resources were available went 

primarily to the construction or improvement of roads, bridges, and bridle and footpaths. 

Existing country roads and trails served as the basis for the Corps of Engineers’ efforts to 

create public access to the park. Captain Lansing H. Beach was largely responsible for 

initiating the park’s road building program in 1897, despite the dearth of funds, and he 

lessened park labor costs through the use of convict labor. The central role played by 

Beach and his successor engineers in the creation of Rock Creek’s roads led to most of 

the roads being named after them. The Board of Control named the drive along Rock 

Creek, which Beach planned and superintended at the turn of the century, in his honor 

in 1901, while he was Engineer Commissioner.50

The Washington Evening Star reported on the progress of the park in 1901. “It may be 

interesting to know...that Rock Creek Park is twice as large as Central Park, upon which 

Greater New York plumes herself with so much pride, and that in natural beauties Rock Creek 

Grant Road Bridge across 

Broad Branch Creek in Rock 

Creek Park. Built around 1898, 

this granite and brick arch 

bridge twenty-one feet wide and 

with a ten foot span was one of 

the earliest bridges that the 

engineers built in the park.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, HAER, DC, 

WASH, 566-2

165

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
Park is a hundred times much superior to the much vaunted parallelogram on Manhattan 

Island.” The paper described Engineer Commissioner Captain Beach as “the guardian angel” 

of the park, “the moving spirit in the transformation now in progress, and his effective vicar 

in the good work has been and is Mr. W. B. Richards, of the District engineer office.”51

The Senate Park Commission’s 1901–02 proposals called for a comprehensive 

development plan for Rock Creek Park, to prevent piecemeal road and facility building 

from damaging the landscape. A proposal by the district surveyor in 1916 to create a 

“Municipal Play Grounds and Recreation Park” within the federal reservation led Chief 

of Engineers Major General William M. Black to request an assessment from Colonel 

William W. Harts. Harts, in charge of the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds, 

pointed out “the urgent need of having a carefully considered plan for the entire park 

prepared by a competent landscape architect.”52 Black therefore ordered Harts in early 

1917 to prepare an overall planning study for the park. Just prior, however, Engineer 

Commissioner Colonel Charles W. Kutz, Black’s colleague on the Board of Control, had 

contacted Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. to engage his park-planning services. A contract 

with Olmsted, although eventually signed, was delayed until May 1917 as the Engineer 

Commissioner and the Chief of Engineers came to an agreement over whether a civilian 

firm or a military office was best to plan the park.53

The Olmsted brothers’ December 1918 final plan began, “The dominant consider‐

ation, never to be subordinated to any other purpose in dealing with Rock Creek Park, is 

the permanent preservation of its wonderful natural beauty, and the making of that beauty 

acessible to people without spoiling the scenery in the process.” Departing from patterns 

set by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr.’s plans for Central Park in New York and Frederick 

Law Olmsted, Jr.’s for Washington’s Mall, the firm recommended division of the valley 

into “use areas” and “growth areas.” In the former, recreational features were discreetly 

introduced; in the latter, the natural forest was to be preserved except for necessary tend‐

ing to prevent fire and disease. A corridor of natural forms, changing with the seasons, 

would curve through the densely settled district—principles the park’s caretakers 

followed in developing Rock Creek Park. Before the Olmsted Brothers released their 

study, Congress acted to integrate the park into the District of Columbia’s park system, 

assigning administration of the park to the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds on 

July 1, 1918. Army Engineers superintended the construction and maintenance of the 

structures, roads, and landscape in the park until it was transferred, along with the rest of 

the city’s park system, to the National Park Service in 1933.54

Major General Lansing H. Beach. 

Captain Beach served as assistant 

to the Engineer Commissioner 

of the District of Columbia from 

1894 to 1898 and then as Engineer 

Commissioner from 1898 to 1901. 

He was a popular commissioner 

and called the “guardian angel” 

of Rock Creek Park, whose main 

thoroughfare was named in his 

honor. He completed his military 

career as Chief of Engineers 

from 1920 to 1924.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

“The dominant 

consideration, never to 

be subordinated to any 

other purpose in dealing 

with Rock Creek Park, is 

the permanent preservation 

of its wonderful natural 

beauty, and the making 

of that beauty acessible to 

people without spoiling the 

scenery in the process.”

166

C h a p t e r 4
The establishment of Rock Creek Park stimulated interest in protecting 

additional Rock Creek valley lands, particularly the stretch between the 

zoo and the Potomac River. For two decades beginning in 1889 there were 

two schools of thought about how to reclaim the lower valley. One, supported 

in large part by Georgetown business interests west of the creek, called for 

enclosing the stream and filling in the valley, using the new land for a wide 

ceremonial parkway. City of Washington interests proposed beautifying the 

existing valley and placing a scenic drive parallel to the streambed. In 1892 

Engineer Commissioner Captain William T. Rossell undertook a congres‐

sionally mandated study of the closed valley plan; he proposed constructing 

a five-foot-high arch over the creek, with landfill over and around it to create 

useable real estate in the valley. While this land might add to the district’s 

tax base, Rossell found the notion of enclosing the stream “wrong in prin‐

cipal and enormously expensive.” In 1901 Beach cited crime in the lower 

valley as his primary reason for supporting the closed valley plan.55

Washington’s powerful Board of Trade sponsored proposals in 1889 

and 1899 for a scenic parkway in the lower valley. In 1900 Congress again 

looked into the matter, appropriating funds to hire a professional land‐

scape architect to address the problem of linking West Potomac Park and 

the zoo. Colonel Theodore Bingham, head of the Office of Public Buildings 

and Grounds, hired New Yorker Samuel Parsons, Jr., (who had worked 

on Central Park and was a founder of the American Society of Landscape 

Architects) to investigate the parkway question, as well as propose plans 

for a park that would integrate newly reclaimed land south and west of 

the Washington Monument with the rest of the Mall. Parsons’s ambitious 

plan for connecting the zoo with the Mall, while endorsed by the Chief 

of Engineers and the Secretary of War, was practically and politically 

unrealistic because it cut broad swaths through densely populated 

Washington neighborhoods.56

Parsons’s parkway and Mall plans were designed to provide wide carriageways, 

either straight boulevards or along broad curves, because carriage drives were a major 

form of outdoor entertainment for Washington’s elite during the 1890s. In 1900 Bingham 

proposed two plans for the Mall, both designs opening a central, tree-lined roadway 

beginning at the foot of Capitol Hill and progressing to a rond point encircling the 

“Preliminary Design for the 

Treatment of Rock Creek and 

Potomac Parkway,” 1916, 

drawn by James G. Langdon, 

Office of Public Buildings and 

Grounds, who had been hired 

as the Senate Park Commission’s 

draftsman in 1901

Commission of Fine Arts

167

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
V 

T h e r e sp o n sibi l i t i e s o f t h e

O f f i c e o f P u b l i c B u i l d i n gs

a n d G r o u n d s e x t e n d e d t o

W a s h i n g t o n ’ s p u b l i c “ r e s e r v a -

t i o n s , ” i n c l u d i n g i t s m a n y

t r a f f i c c i r c l e s . R e p o r t s w r i t -

t e n b y C o r ps e n gi n e e r s i n t h e

n i n e t e e n t h a n d t w e n t i e t h

c e n t u r i e s d e t a i l g r a ss s e e d

s o w n , si d e w a l k s p o u r e d , w a t e r

m a i n s l a i d , a n d l ig h t i n g

i n s t a l l e d .

I n 1 9 1 1 t h e o f f i c e r e l a n d s c a p e d

T h o m a s C i r c l e a t t h e c r o ssi n g

o f M a ss a c h u s e t t s a n d V e r m o n t

A v e n u e s a n d 1 4 t h S t r e e t , NW . 

C o r ps e n gi n e e r s r a is e d t h e

g r a d e o f t h e c i r c l e , m o v e d

f o u r c a n d e l a b r a l ig h t p o s t s t o

i m p r o v e t h e m a i n v i e w s o f t h e

c e n t r a l s t a t u e , a n d r e c o n f ig -

u r e d f l o w e r b e d s . H o pi n g t o

a l l e v i a t e t r a f f i c c o n g e s t i o n , 

i n t h e 1 9 5 0 s t h e D is t r i c t ’ s

H ig h w a y D e p a r t m e n t t u n n e l e d

M a ss a c h u s e t t s A v e n u e b e n e a t h

T h o m a s C i r c l e a n d c u t 1 4 t h

S t r e e t t h r o u g h i t . I n J a n u a r y

2 0 0 5 d is t r i c t a n d f e d e r a l

a u t h o r i t i e s b e g a n r e s t o r i n g t h e

c i r c l e t o i t s o r igi n a l a pp e a r -

a n c e a n d p r o v i d i n g p e d e s t r i a n

a c c e ss t o i t .

Washingtoniana Division, D.C. Public Library
D u r i n g 1 9 1 6 t h e C o r ps ’ O f f i c e

o f P u b l i c B u i l d i n gs a n d G r o u n d s

f o c u s e d o n T r u x t o n C i r c l e , 

w h i c h h a d b e e n l o c a t e d n e a r t h e

i n t e r s e c t i o n o f F l o r i d a A v e n u e

a n d N o r t h C a pi t o l S t r e e t i n

1 8 9 1 a s p a r t o f t h e e x t e n si o n

o f L ’ E n f a n t ’ s p l a n i n t o

W a s h i n g t o n c o u n t y . I n 1 9 0 0 

C o l . B i n g h a m m o v e d a l a r g e

f o u n t a i n f r o m P e n n s y l v a n i a

A v e n u e a n d 2 6 t h S t r e e t t o

T r u x t o n C i r c l e . I n 1 9 1 6 t h e

C o r ps r e g r a d e d , r e l a n d s c a p e d , 

a n d i n s t a l l e d s e a t s a t t h e

c i r c l e ’ s e d g e . T h r e e d e c a d e s

l a t e r , t h e D . C . H ig h w a y

D e p a r t m e n t a r g u e d t h a t “ t h e

o bs t a c l e s w h i c h i t p r e s e n t s

t o t h e o r d e r l y a n d r a pi d f l o w

o f t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y t r a f f i c

h a s m a d e i t o n e o f t h e m o s t

i n c o n v e n i e n t a n d h a z a r d o u s

i n t e r s e c t i o n s i n t h e m e t r o -

p o l i t a n a r e a ” a n d T r u x t o n

C i r c l e w a s r a z e d i n 1 9 4 7 . I n

2 0 0 4 , w i t h t h e s u pp o r t o f t h e

B l o o m i n g d a l e N e ig h b o r h o o d

A ss o c i a t i o n , t h e c i t y ’ s

D e p a r t m e n t o f T r a n sp o r t a t i o n

b e g a n s t u d y i n g t h e f e a sibi l i t y

o f r e s t o r i n g t h e c i r c l e a s p a r t

o f t h e r e v i t a l i z a t i o n o f t h e

N o r t h C a pi t o l S t r e e t c o r r i d o r .

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, ARCE 1916
Washington Monument that connected to drives leading to Rock Creek. Bingham’s plans 

also included pleasure drives around the perimeter of Potomac Park, including Hains 

Point, a feature of both areas today. Early in 1900 Bingham also hired Chicago architect 

Henry Ives Cobb to execute a design for “suggestions for locating future Government 

Building in the District of Columbia” that centered on a diagonal avenue through the 

Mall from the foot of Capitol Hill to the foot of New York Avenue, the terminus of the 

proposed Memorial Bridge. In all three of these cases, the intimate nature of the Mall’s 

extensive picturesque garden would be preserved while providing drives through it; 

Bingham opposed the Senate Park Commission’s open treatment of the Mall because it 

destroyed its bucolic character. A pragmatist, either by nature or training, Bingham (like 

most Washingtonians at the time) thought of the Mall as a pedestrian precinct, a shaded 

refuge rather than a monumental setting for public buildings.57 None of these plans, 

however, would be executed until after World War I.

W a s h i n g t o n A q u e d u c t

Population expansion in the federal city during and after the Civil War led, in the 1870s, 

to numerous calls for increased capacity in the city’s water supply, the infrastructure need 

that the Corps had initially built and now needed to expand. Montgomery Meigs himself 

advocated the construction of a second distributing reservoir, reviving an unrealized 

component of his original 1853 plan. On July 15, 1882, Congress approved two solutions 

to the water problem. Following a recommendation first put forward by Lieutenant Colonel 

Thomas L. Casey in 1881, it permitted extension of the Great Falls Dam to the Virginia 

riverbank, and it authorized a second distributing reservoir and second tunnel from Great 

Falls. The dam spanned the Potomac by 1886, allowing the level of water above the intake 

to be controlled for the first time.58

Major Garrett J. Lydecker, engineer commissioner from May 1882 until May 1886, 

was given charge of the aqueduct in August 1882—one month after Congress authorized 

the new reservoir.59 To improve water flow to the eastern parts of the city he chose the 

site of Smith Spring near Howard University for the new storage facility, on high ground 

east of Rock Creek. Rather than build a covered conduit from the Potomac, as Meigs had 

done, Lydecker planned to bring water through a deep, twenty-one-thousand-foot-long 

tunnel under the Rock Creek valley. Expecting favorable conditions that would not require 

a lined tunnel, Lydecker wrote, “There is no reasonable doubt that this tunnel can be 

carried through solid rock in a direct line between the terminal points.”60

“[S]ubstantially the whole 

and every part of the lining 

of the tunnel is absolutely 

and enormously defective.”

170

C h a p t e r 4
Numerous difficulties plagued construction of the Washington City Tunnel. Incomplete 

testing of the rock conditions along the route failed to reveal the poor quality of the rock, 

and the engineers realized after work began that much of the tunnel would have to be lined, 

adding significantly to the cost. When a new civilian assistant engineer resurveyed the route 

in 1885, he discovered misalignments that could have kept the various sections of the tunnel 

construction from meeting. Shoddy workmanship in the lining of the tunnel and escalating 

costs led to a congressional investigation of the project beginning in October 1888. At this 

point, the reservoir was almost done and the mains connecting it to downtown already laid.61

A select congressional committee, advised by a “board of three highly qualified civil 

engineers” that included Joseph M. Wilson of Philadelphia, criticized the contracting prac‐

tices, management, and construction quality of the project. “It appears beyond all question,” 

the committee’s report declared, “that substantially the whole and every part of the lining of 

the tunnel is absolutely and enormously defective.” With evidence of the contractors bribing 

government inspectors, the committee found Lydecker and his assistants negligent in the 

Plan of the New Washington 

City Tunnel from the 

Distributing Reservoir (later 

renamed the Georgetown 

Reservoir) to the New Reservoir 

(later named the McMillan 

Reservoir in honor of Senator 

James McMillan who during 

the 1890s worked tirelessly to 

ensure a clean water supply for 

Washington), located east of 

Howard University, 1884

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, 

ARCE 1883

171

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
“Longitudinal Section of 

Tunnel Showing Monthly 

Progress to June 30th, 

1886.” This detailed 

drawing shows the 

ambitious plan to build 

a four-mile-long tunnel 

through the upland 

sections of the District of 

Columbia. Poor 

information on soil 

conditions and 

contractor problems led 

Congress to halt 

construction of the 

tunnel in 1888. The 

Corps resumed work in 

1898 and completed the 

tunnel in 1901.

Office of History, Corps of 

Engineers, ARCE 1886

172
project’s oversight and the tunnel was abandoned. Acknowledging the continued need for 

better water service to the eastern parts of the city, the board of engineers recommended the 

speedy installation of additional mains out of the original distributing reservoir. With money 

approved March 2, 1889, the new officer in charge of the Aqueduct, Lieutenant Colonel 

George H. Elliot, brought the new pipes into use just over a year later.62

The city water was frequently turbid, however, a condition long noted by the officers in 

charge of the Aqueduct. Although it remained healthier to use than water from the city’s 

numerous wells, its aesthetic qualities drove many citizens back to their wells. Public Health 

officials felt this preference left the city vulnerable to outbreaks of contagious disease, partic‐

ularly typhoid fever. The Senate ordered a study of water filtering at the beginning of 1886. 

Completed by engineer Captain Thomas W. Symons, the study recommended filtration; 

however Colonel Elliot, in charge of the Aqueduct, did not feel filtration was necessary. 

Elliot moved, nevertheless, to add sedimentation capacity to the system by bringing the 

idle receiving reservoir near the Little Falls Branch back into service in 1893–95.63

The Washington Star commented, “Our nectar of the Alleghenies will, it is asserted, 

be as bright and clean as liquid diamond. Every time a Washingtonian holds a glass of 

redeemed Potomac water to his lips, he will say, ‘Here’s to Colonel Elliott.’” But this 

173

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
Section of the Washington City 

Tunnel under construction 

in July 1899. The section of 

the tunnel under Rock Creek 

was lined with cast-iron 

when tunnel construction 

recommenced in 1898.

Washington Aqueduct Division, 

Baltimore Engineer District

Foundry Branch shaft leading 

to the tunnel connecting the 

distributing reservoir and 

the new reservoir, 1884. The 

engineers built three shafts at 

Foundry Branch, Rock Creek, 

and Champlain Avenue.

Washington Aqueduct Division, 

Baltimore Engineer District

174

C h a p t e r 4
effort had limited effect, and the Washington Star printed further comments a year later: 

“A person of cleanly habits, who knows he is not as dirty as the contents of his tub, hesi‐

tates long before he takes his dip....But when it comes to using the stuff as a beverage, 

the matter takes on even a worse aspect. It is as dark in color as a glass of bock beer, 

and not nearly as translucent, or anything like as tempting.”64

Thinking more sedimentation would help, on March 2, 1895, Congress ordered 

a detailed report on the feasibility of completing the second reservoir and its flawed 

tunnel. A board of four army and two civil engineers found in favor of the project, and in 

1896 the Chief of Engineers asked Congress for money to resume work. Within two years 

money was appropriated and work resumed at the end of 1898. The tunnel was finished 

in 1901, and the reservoir was brought into full operation at the beginning of 1902.65

The Senate again requested information on filtering the Potomac water in January 

1898, and the entire Congress ordered another filtering study in June. Lieutenant 

Built to conceal the sluice gates 

that directed water under 

Conduit Road (now MacArthur 

Boulevard) to the tunnel, the 

gatehouse completed in 1902 

was designed to resemble the 

Corps of Engineers’ castle 

insignia on all four of its facades.

Washington Aqueduct Division, 

Baltimore Engineer District

175
Workers at the McMillan plant 

shoveling sand into a movable 

ejector during the construction of 

the slow sand filter plant, 1904. 

When the plant was in operation, 

workers shoveled about two 

inches of dirty sand into movable 

ejectors, like the one shown here, 

for transfer to the sand washers. 

In the background are the round 

towers used to store clean sand. 

Now vine-covered, the towers 

became local landmarks west of 

North Capitol Street.

Washington Aqueduct Division, 

Baltimore Engineer District

McMillan Reservoir with fountain 

in the foreground. In 1913 the 

citizens of Michigan paid for a 

fountain designed by Herbert 

Adams to honor their former 

senator. The federal government 

paid for the base and landscaping 

designed by Charles Adams Platt 

who also designed the Freer 

Gallery

on the Mall.

Washington Aqueduct Division, 

Baltimore Engineer District

Slow sand filter at the McMillan 

Slow Sand Filter Plant, ca. 1910. 

Twenty-nine slow sand filters, 

each one acre in size, filtered 

water through more than two feet 

of sand. The piles of clean sand 

shown here were dumped into the 

filters through manholes in the 

roof and distributed evenly over 

the sand already in place.

Washington Aqueduct Division, 

Baltimore Engineer District

176
Colonel Alexander M. Miller reported on March 28, 1900, recommending construction 

of mechanical (or rapid-sand) filters at the new Howard University Reservoir. Local 

professional and citizen’s organizations objected to the chemicals used in this filtration 

process, and the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia chaired by James 

McMillan (who had been very involved in public works in Detroit before being elected 

to Congress in 1889) held hearings on the issue. A subsequent Senate-appointed 

committee of civilian experts recommended chemical-free slow-sand filtration, and 

Congress approved construction of such filters on March 1, 1901. This effective filtering 

system, substantially designed by Miller, was built between the spring of 1903 and the 

end of 1905. The following year, Secretary of War William Howard Taft ordered the 

reservoir and new filters named after the late Senator McMillan, who died in 1902.66

P o t o m a c R i v e r F l a t s R e c l a m a t i o n

In 1897 Washington banker Charles C. Glover, a longtime advocate for the reclamation 

of the Potomac flats, persuaded Congress to order the 628 acres of land reclaimed by the 

engineers since the 1880s “forever held and used as a park for the recreation and plea‐

sure of the people.”67 Though land building continued until 1913, the Washington District 

gradually transferred the reclaimed area to the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds, 

Potomac Park looking northeast 

to Washington Monument with 

drive along the Tidal Basin, 1906

National Archives no. 77-H-3334F-27

177

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
(Top)

Potomac Park, the Tidal Basin, 

the Outlet Gate, and Washington 

Channel from the Washington 

Monument, 1899. The propagating 

gardens are in the foreground and 

the reclaimed land along the Tidal 

Basin and in East Potomac Park 

is largely unlandscaped.

National Archives no. 77-H-3048-11

(Bottom)

Potomac Park, the Tidal Basin, 

the Outlet Gate, and Washington 

Channel from the Washington 

Monument, 1910. By 1910 

the propagating gardens had 

expanded and new buildings 

began to appear on the borders of 

West Potomac Park. Landscaping 

along the Tidal Basin improved 

significantly but East Potomac 

Park remained less improved. The 

new railroad (1904) and highway 

(1906) bridges appear in the 

upper right with the future site of 

National Airport in the distance.

National Archives no. 66-DC-19

178
beginning in 1901 with the land between the east side of the Tidal Basin and the monu‐

ment grounds. Although some improvements had already been done on this land—the 

District Commissioners built a bathing beach after 1890—construction of a major park 

in place of the foul marsh had become possible.68

Theodore Bingham, Officer in Charge of Public Buildings and Grounds from 1897 to 

1903, was an enthusiast convinced that parks improved the health and happiness of the 

“toiling masses crowded together in cities,” and he planned drives, Japanese gardens, 

nurseries, polo grounds, athletic and military parade fields, and an electric fountain for 

the Tidal Basin in his grand scheme for the area. In the comparatively small first parcel 

transferred to his care, Bingham in 1902–03 raised the revetment wall along the Tidal 

Basin and completed it where the district bathing beach had been. He cleared and graded 

the area and built a 50‐foot-wide macadam drive along the east side of the Basin. (This 

road opened in October 1903. The Annual Report for 1904 mentioned, “Saturday after‐

noons between 4 and 6 o’clock, have, by authority of the Chief of Engineers, been set 

aside for speeding purposes.”) Through his efforts, the old two-story house that canal lock 

keepers had used as a gatehouse was deeded by the company’s trustees to the Chief of 

Engineers for use by the public. Repaired and refurbished, the building became a watch‐

man’s lodge. Around it, workmen swept away sheds and mounds of rubbish, built a drive, 

planted trees, and seeded lawns.69

Under Bingham’s successors, the Potomac Park area grew in size as district Engineers 

finished dredge-and-fill operations and transferred newly-made land to the office of buildings 

and grounds. In November 1903 the engineers added the land between the Tidal Basin and 

railroad causeway at the end of Long Bridge to the park, and by 1908, when Congress autho‐

rized the extension of B Street to the Potomac and the creation of a riverside drive, the rest of 

(Above left) Colonel Spencer Cosby 

(center) with President Woodrow 

Wilson on the White House north 

portico prior to Wilson’s inauguration, 

March 4, 1913. Officers in Charge of 

Public Buildings and Grounds had 

many duties including leading roles 

at inaugurations.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, Cosby 

Personal Papers

(Above right) Reviewing stand for 

the inaugural parade, March 4, 1913. 

From left to right, Col. Spencer Cosby, 

Mrs. Wilson, Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood 

(Chief of Staff of the Army), and 

President Wilson. Cosby had a long 

association with Washington, serving 

as Washington District Engineer from 

1905 to 1908, briefly in 1908–09 as 

Engineer Commissioner, and then as 

Officer in Charge of Public Buildings 

and Grounds and Military Aide to 

the President from 1909 to 1913. His 

thirty-seven year career in the Army 

ended with his retirement in 1928, 

and he died in Washington in 1962 

at the age of ninety-four.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, Cosby 

Personal Papers

179

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
West Potomac Park was under Engineer care. “Construction of drive‐

ways, bridle paths, walks, grading and sowing lawn areas, laying water 

and drain pipe and planting trees and shrubs” continued throughout this 

time and into the 1910s. The end result was an orderly and scenic park 

with ample roads and paths, bathing facilities, a boathouse and dock, a 

nursery, extended propagating gardens, and an athletic field. In 1914, 

the year Congress officially made Potomac Park part of the D.C. park 

system and reaffirmed the Chief of Engineers’ jurisdiction over it, the 

engineers improved earlier equestrian facilities and laid out a small golf 

course. Such recreational amenities have survived into the twenty-first 

century. Less extensive improvements to East Potomac Park, southeast of Long Bridge, began 

in 1912, although a comprehensive plan sent to Congress in 1916 proposed substantial facili‐

ties for making the park a “public recreation ground.” Most of these were never built.70

In March 1912 final work began on one of the best-known Potomac Park improvements, 

as three thousand flowering cherry trees, a gift from the municipality of Tokyo, arrived to 

replace an earlier shipment that had proven to be diseased. First Lady Helen Herron Taft 

planted the first one on March 27, and by the end of April the engineers had overseen plant‐

ing of the remainder around the Tidal Basin, where eleven years of care had created a perfect 

setting. In 1909 Colonel Spencer Cosby, Engineer Officer in Charge of Public Buildings and 

Grounds, had suggested that the cherry trees be planted around the Tidal Basin. After the 

second shipment of healthy trees was thriving, Cosby wrote Tokyo’s mayor, predicting they 

would become a great American tourist attraction.71

A n a c o s t i a R i v e r F l a t s R e c l a m a t i o n

Annual freshets, runoff from upriver agricultural land clearing, and extensive sewage 

dumping had narrowed the Anacostia River and created extensive tidal flats along both 

its banks. In 1891 Hains, in his last months with the Washington Engineer District, 

reported to the Chief of Engineers on the survey he had been assigned of that portion of 

the Anacostia in the District of Columbia. Hains proposed dredging a channel from the 

river’s mouth to the Navy Yard. Just as he had done in the Potomac during the 1880s, 

the spoils from the Anacostia dredging would be used to reclaim the river’s marshes. 

This effort would solve the problems of the approach to the Navy Yard being “narrow 

and crooked” and prevent the growth of unhealthy tidal flats. The Washington Engineer 

District oversaw limited dredging and reclamation below the Navy Yard in 1892.72

Potomac Drive lined with statues 

from the St. Louis World’s Fair, 

August 1905. As the Washington 

Engineer District created land in 

Potomac Park, it turned the new 

land over to the Office of Public 

Buildings and Grounds, which built 

roads and provided landscaping 

and other attractions.

National Archives no. 77-H-3334F-23

180

C h a p t e r 4
As the outline of the riverbank began to change, the District Commissioners asked 

the Secretary of War to fix harbor lines for the river. He created a board of engineer offi‐

cers in 1892 that drew bulkhead and wharf lines for the section of the Anacostia River 

below the Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge. These development plans were a necessary 

guide for future reclamation work. In 1898 Congress again ordered an Anacostia survey 

and Lieutenant Colonel Charles J. Allen recommended further work to complete Hains’s 

initial proposals. Dredging and land reclamation would provide for improved “access to 

the navy-yard,” “increased facilities for commerce and navigation,” and “removal of 

unsanitary conditions.” No money was made available. In 1902 Allen was required to 

survey the land owned by the government within the Anacostia River flats, so as to 

assure proper title, and four years later Congress asked the District Commissioners to 

“report upon the improvement of the so-called flats...with recommendation and esti‐

mates of cost.” The Commissioners repeated Allen’s 1898 estimates.73

Increased development along the river’s tributaries in the late nineteenth and early 

twentieth centuries increased the amount and rate of runoff and floods became more 

frequent and severe. Finally in 1911 money was appropriated for completing the recla‐

mation of the Anacostia flats and an engineer board, comprised of the Officer in Charge 

of Public Buildings and Grounds, the Engineer Commissioner, and a District Engineer 

developed plans. Anacostia Park was developed during the 1920s and in 1927 Congress 

designated an area above the park as a “tree farm,” the beginnings of the National 

Arboretum and Botanic Garden. Influenced by the 1902 McMillan commission recom‐

mendations, the engineer board recommended the construction of a dam and lock 

across the Anacostia River aligned with Massachusetts Avenue, SE, to protect the upper 

Anacostia River from Potomac River freshets and to create an aquatic park near their 

confluence for recreation. The Anacostia’s dam would have functioned similarly to the 

Potomac Tidal Basin, with “influent gates at the upper end and effluent gates at the 

lower end.” By 1915 additional engineer studies showed this dam would have detri‐

mental effects, and the engineer board eliminated it in favor of a modified “aquatic 

park separated from the [Anacostia] river channel by a continuous bank.” Kenilworth 

Gardens, a private water garden begun in the 1880s, in 1938 became part of the 

Anacostia’s extensive waterfront park. As with the development of East and West 

Potomac Parks, Olmsted “was appointed [in 1915] by the Commission of Fine Arts a 

committee of one to consult with the board on the proposed modifications” that led to 

abandoning the bridge in favor of extensive parklands.74

181

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
Co r ps e n gi n e e r s h a v e t r a ditio n a l l y s u ppo r t e d

a est h e tic e l e m e n ts asso cia t e d wit h Washi n g t o n ’ s

p u b l ic b u i l di n gs a n d spa c es , pa r tic u l a r l y o v e r -

se ei n g t h e d esig n a n d i n st a l l a tio n o f t h e cit y’ s

sc u lpt u r a l w o r ks s u c h as t h ose o n b r idg es .

Ro l a n d Hi n t o n Pe r r y’ s pai r o f 1908 c astc o n c r e t e l io n s g r e e t t r a v e l e r s app r o a c hi n g t h e

Ta f t Me m o r ia l Br idg e t h a t c a r r ies Co n n e c tic u t

Av e n u e a c r oss Ro c k C r e e k Va l l e y. E r n est C. 

Bai r st o w d esig n e d t h e b r idg e’ s o r n a m e n t a l c asti r o n l a m p posts , e a c h f e a t u r i n g a n e a g l e a t op a

st a n d a r d w h ose b ase is d e c o r a t e d wit h c l assic a l

g a r l a n ds , a c a n t h u s l e a v es , a n d sc r o l l s .

P r o c t o r a l s o d esig n e d t h e s e v e n -

f o o t-t a l l b r o n z e A m e r i c a n bis o n

o n t h e c u r v e d Q S t r e e t Br i d g e, 

p o p u l a r l y k n o w n a s t h e “Bu f f a l o

Br i d g e,” t h a t c o n n e c ts Ge o r g e t o w n

t o t h e S h e r i d a n Ci r c l e a r e a. 

The 16th Street Bridge crossing Piney

Branch Valley, erected between 1907 

and 1910, is the first parabolic arch

built in the U.S. Alexander Phimister

Proctor’s four bronze tigers flank

the bridge. 

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, HAER, DC, WASH, 560-15 

Wasingtoniana Division, D.C. Public Library 

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, HAER, DC, WASH, 598-4 

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USF34-060448-D
Three of Leon Hermant’s 1935 Art Deco

relief sculptures decorating the abutments of the Calvert Street Bridge

depict transportation by water, air, and

highway. The bridge’s architect, Paul

Cret, described the fourth figure, 

representing rail transport, as “a male

figure, typical of the powerful modern

steam engine, flying over the network

of tracks covering the country.”

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, HAER, DC, WASH, 578-9
P o t o m a c R i v e r B r i d g e s

The Washington District Engineers saw one major bridge to completion during the 

Progressive Era, repaired another, and planned a third. At the time of the Civil War, the 

mile-long Long Bridge that ran from the foot of 14th Street to Arlington, Virginia, was twothirds rock causeway with pile sections and a draw at either end. Its wooden superstructure 

and draws were rebuilt by the Quartermaster’s Department during the fall of 1861. In 1864 

a parallel bridge set on piles was constructed as a railroad connection. After a few years 

of maintenance by the Corps, the bridge was transferred to the Baltimore and Potomac 

Railroad in 1870. Shortly thereafter, the whole length of the structure, including roadway, 

crib-work, piling, railing, and causeway, was damaged and required reconstruction.75

By the 1890s it was becoming increasingly impractical to repair and rebuild the bridge 

continually. By this time the railroad bridge was underlaid with a substantial amount of rock 

shoring dumped under its spans over the years to improve stability, and the structure blocked 

the free flow of the Potomac, contributing to flooding on the Mall during icy conditions. A 

flood in 1889 prompted the Senate to order a report on the reconstruction of the bridge, but 

Railroad and highway 

bridges constructed across the 

Potomac in the early years of 

the twentieth century. This 

1930 photograph shows 

the two bridges and the 

popular Arlington beach and 

amusement park along the 

Potomac where the highway 

curves north along the 

riverfront. Washington’s 

earliest airports and the 

Pentagon were built in the 

large fields at the bottom 

of the photograph.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

184

C h a p t e r 4
Colonel Hains’s resulting plans were not acted upon. The general provisions of the railway 

act of 1901—the same one that eliminated grade crossings and threatened the Mall with 

a viaduct—directed the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad (a division of the Pennsylvania 

Railroad) to construct a new railroad bridge. This legislation also charged the Secretary of 

War (i.e., the Corps of Engineers) with creating a new highway bridge just up the river.76

The steel plate-truss railroad bridge opened in August 1904. Just up river, the 

Pennsylvania Bridge Company constructed the matching highway bridge beginning in 

October 1903. A board comprising Lieutenant Colonel Charles J. Allen, the Washington 

District Engineer, and three other officers chose its design—eleven steel-plate-truss 

spans with a central swing span. The 2,234-foot bridge, costing $1,189,702, opened to 

traffic in December 1906. Together the bridges reduced hazards to Alexandria traffic 

while ending floods caused by the old Long Bridge.77

The Washington District also helped write a new chapter in the continuing Memorial 

Bridge story. In response to congressional requests, the engineers carried out surveys in 

1886 and 1890 for a potential bridge connecting the Naval Observatory grounds to the 

Arlington estate property. In 1899 Lieutenant Colonel Charles J. Allen joined Stanford 

White, Major T. W. Symons, Captain David D. Gaillard, and local architect James G. Hill 

on a jury that secured plans from prominent American bridge designers. Those invited to 

submit plans were William H. Burr, William R. Hutton, L.L. Buck, and George S. Morison. 

The jury chose Burr’s $3.7 million masonry arch design, which included a steel draw span. 

The Secretary of War submitted the results of the competition to Congress in April 1900, 

but no appropriations were made to undertake construction.78

Along with construction of the highway bridge and the potential Memorial Bridge, the 

engineers undertook additional river-crossing work at the turn of the century. Between 1897 

and 1907 they rebuilt three piers of the Aqueduct Bridge, and recommended a new bridge 

to connect Georgetown with Rosslyn. Congressional action on this matter did not follow for 

a decade. In 1897 Captain Gaillard submitted both steel and stone-arch bridge designs to 

carry Massachusetts Avenue across Rock Creek. Congress did not fund this engineer project 

either, leading the city to erect a simple culvert for the avenue in 1901.79

M is c e l l a n e o u s D is t r i c t P r o j e c t s

The Corps participated in several significant mapping projects around the time of 

World War I. In 1914 the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds compiled a map of all 

District of Columbia public lands held under federal jurisdiction. Largely the work of 

185

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5
District surveyor Melvin C. Hazen and civil engineer Frederick D. Owen of the Office 

of Public Buildings and Grounds, it was prepared under Harts’s supervision to assist the 

work of the Commission to Investigate the Title of the United States to Lands in the 

District of Columbia.80

In response to a need to relieve overcrowding in government offices, Congress 

authorized a commission in 1916 to “ascertain what public buildings are needed to 

provide permanent quarters for all the government activities in the District of Columbia.” 

Its members were drawn from Congress, plus the Superintendent of the Capitol Building 

and Grounds, the acting Supervising Architect of the Treasury, and the Officer in Charge 

of Public Buildings and Grounds. Harts, followed by Colonel C. S. Ridley, served on the 

Commission, which reported its findings in 1917. It found, for example, that the War 

Department’s 2,220 employees occupied 834,643 square feet of owned and rented 

building space, 330,442 of which was office space. It cost the government $757,448 

each year to hold and operate this space.81

The Corps’ engineers also exerted considerable influence on the design of some of 

Washington’s civic buildings by serving on juries to select their architects. One appropri‐

ate example was the Municipal Building, now more commonly called the District Building. 

In August 1902, for example, the congressional commission to supervise the erection of the 

Municipal Building chose a jury composed of the three active members of the Senate Park 

Commission and, ex officio, the Supervising Architect of the Treasury and the District of 

Columbia Engineer Commissioner, then Colonel John Biddle. The offices of the Engineer 

Commissioners moved to the District Building when it was completed in 1908.

The remarkable coordination among presidents, cabinet officers, congressmen, artists, 

businessmen, contractors, and artisans in order to complete these interconnected projects 

required much more than the military organizational skills of the Corps officers involved. 

Astuteness, intelligence, tact, and diplomacy were required on a daily basis. Harts 

recalled: “When I reported to President Wilson he was very gracious, complimented me 

on my Princeton degree [an honorary A.M. degree conferred in 1913] and said we should 

be all the better able to get along on account of that.” (Wilson was a former president of 

Princeton University.) In 1918–19, during Wilson’s European visit, Harts often accompa‐

nied the president on official visits as one of his aides-de-camp, a position for which his 

tenure in Washington as the president’s military aide had adequately prepared him. Harts 

noted that the Commission of Fine Arts meetings were always held in his office “and were 

a liberal education to me in artistic matters.” He characterized his job in the Office of 

“On the whole, my four years 

in Washington gave me more 

scope in originating new 

things to add to the beauty 

of the city than I had ever 

dreamed of and I look back 

with much pleasure and 

satisfaction at the success 

which has followed the 

lead then begun.”

186

C h a p t e r 4
Public Buildings and Grounds overseeing the Lincoln Memorial, the Amphitheater at 

Arlington Cemetery, and the Red Cross Building: “I was the engineer, the contractor 

for the U.S., the head inspector and paid all bills. I may have been too harsh at times in 

accepting work but no breath of suspicion of any missing of funds was ever raised. These 

buildings were all built by contract and under the eyes of the architects as well.” Harts 

summed up his Washington years in a way that probably rang true to many of the Corps’ 

officers who served in his position.

On the whole, my four years in Washington gave me more scope in originating new things to add to the beauty of the city than I had ever dreamed of 

and I look back with much pleasure and satisfaction at the success which has 

followed the lead then begun.82

District Building completed 

in 1908. The Engineer 

Commissioner served on the 

jury that chose the building’s 

design and the District 

Commissioners’ offices 

occupied the building.

National Archives no. 66-DC-16

187

T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5

E n g i n ee r C o m m i s s i o n e r s

On January 26, 1915, Louis Brownlow—newsman, Woodrow Wilson’s protégé, and future 

leader in American city management—walked with Engineer Commissioner Major Charles W. 

Kutz to the boardroom of the District Building. There Brownlow was sworn in as a commissioner. Already a friend of Kutz’s—the two were members of a group of reporters and public 

servants dubbed the “Doughnut Cabinet” who met daily for lunch at the Willard Hotel’s 

grillroom—Brownlow began to learn the art of government in the months that followed.

At the same time I was learning a great deal about administration from a 

master of the art, Majr. Kutz. He didn’t lecture me. He didn’t tell me directly 

that I had put my decisions and recommendations on too narrow a base. 

He didn’t reprove me for my impetuosity.... He didn’t tell me directly that 

there were some things I ought to look into more carefully and think about 

longer before I reached my final conclusions. He didn’t tell me any of these 

things, but in every board meeting he gave me a lesson by example. For 

every recommendation he brought in, he was careful to explain the reasons 

for his determination....When I was too hasty, and I frequently was, Kutz 

5 The Expanding City

1915–50

Opposite page: Arlington Memorial

Bridge Construction

Photo credit: Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-H824-T-321 
sometimes would ask a question, always phrased in tentative form and 

always asked quietly.

As the months went on, it became more and more my habit, when issues were 

complex, to walk into the engineer commissioner’s office and ask Kutz what 

he thought we should do.

Thus it happened that during the first months and the first two years of my 

actual experience as a public administrator, I found a teacher and a mentor, 

wise, kindly, and sympathetic, in the person of a then major of the Corps of 

Engineers of the United States Army, a graduate of West Point, a military 

man with a military mind, who still never permitted for an instant the rigidity 

of his training to overcome the flexibility of his mind and heart.1

Major Kutz became Engineer Commissioner in 1914, but was sent to wartime service 

when the United States entered World War I. Brigadier General John G. D. Knight 

came out of retirement to take his place. The commissioners faced a chaotic scene in 

Washington during the war. The city’s population soared 50 percent. General Knight was 

competing with the war for men and materials to keep the city running. Normal construction was halted, a shutdown of sewerage and garbage service had been narrowly averted, 

C h a p t e r 5

Charles Willauer Kutz (1870–1951) graduated from West Point in 1893, his 

first assignments working on fortification and river and harbor work in 

Baltimore, Maryland, and Portland, Maine, which became his particular 

area of expertise. Between 1903 and 1906 Kutz served as an assistant to the 

Chief of Engineers in Washington before spending two years as an instructor 

at West Point. In 1906 he was assigned to fortification and river and harbor 

work in Seattle subsequent to being named chief engineer officer of the 

Department of the Philippines in 1911. Beginning in 1914 Kutz served almost 

ten years in three separate terms as Washington’s Engineer Commissioner, 

longer than any other incumbent, the first term broken by overseas service 

during World War I. Colonel Charles Willauer Kutz

Office of History, Corps of Engineers 

U.S. Army Signal Corps photo

190
and Potomac River pollution was on the increase. Thousands of new mouths drank city 

water, and Knight refused to estimate per capita consumption, since nobody knew any 

longer how many people were in Washington.2

Embroiled in a struggle to force rate schedules upon district utilities, Brownlow 

persuaded Secretary of War Newton D. Baker to secure Kutz’s appointment to a second 

term as a District Commissioner when the war was over. “I shall never forget,” said 

Brownlow, recalling a day in 1918, “the concerned, puzzled, and frustrated look on the 

face of one of the presidents of the utilities when he came into my office later that after 

noon and I told him that Kutz would be back.” Together Brownlow and Kutz forced 

exceptionally low rates on the utilities. Brownlow (a Democrat), whose father-in-law 

Representative Thetus W. Sims had been a member of the House Committee on the 

District of Columbia, was himself intensely interested in politics. Kutz, he recalled, “had 

not shared the partisan political approach to affairs toward which so many of us...were 

inclined. I was astonished when he disclosed to me that he had some misgivings about 

my attitude, that he was somewhat alarmed that I would violate the integrity of the 

District service by going too far in my partisan activities.”3

The most significant achievement during Kutz’s second term as Engineer 

Commissioner was a comprehensive zoning plan for Washington that passed Congress 

in 1920. Washington was the second American city to institute such an integrated plan. 

Working with St. Louis planner Harland Bartholomew (1889–1989), the commissioners 

prepared three basic maps that showed the location of every building in the city. “One 

[was] for the control of property uses, another to control the height of buildings, and the 

third to limit the area of the lot on which buildings could be built.” Using these maps 

Bartholomew and the commissioners studied land-use data and recommended the separation of residential, commercial, and industrial uses, each with its specific regulation for 

height, use, and area of buildings to be erected.4

Controls on use seemed a startling violation of property rights, and Kutz and Brownlow 

decided to “do everything possible to take the community fully into our confidence and to 

enlist the help of the citizens generally.” The maps were produced by the hundreds, and 

maps in hand, “General Kutz spent two hours each morning traversing every street in the 

areas that we were supposed to take up the next day.” Before they made their recommendations, the commissioners had walked every street and roadway in the district to determine 

the appropriate use for every square and neighborhood, addressed citizens’ meetings, 

and met with their staff after 11:00 p.m. In his final report, Bartholomew recommended 

191

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0

“I found a teacher and a 

mentor, wise, kindly, and 

sympathetic, in the person of 

a then major of the Corps of 

Engineers of the United States 

Army, a graduate of West 

Point, a military man with a 

 military mind, who still never 

permitted for an instant the 

rigidity of his training to 

overcome the flexibility of 

his mind and heart.”

“[H]e was somewhat 

alarmed that I would violate 

the integrity of the District 

service by going too far in 

my partisan activities.”
a commission be created to coordinate zoning with the city’s future growth; in 1926 such 

a commission was established with the Engineer Commissioner at its head.5

Under Kutz’s chairmanship of the District Zoning Commission, and with advice 

from the Board of Trade, a city-wide plan took form. Pressure from developers to zone 

for apartment buildings in the residential area west of Rock Creek Park came to nothing 

when surveys showed that ample multiple-unit buildings existed elsewhere in the city. 

When final regulations were adopted on August 30, 1920, Kutz noted that the law marked 

“a far-reaching step in the advancement of the National Capital...[for]...its symmetrical 

and beautiful development.” Brownlow saw the process as responsive to district citizens 

who did not choose their local government. “I doubt very much whether any city in the 

country where the normal electoral processes go on and where the heads of the city 

government are elected by the people ever undertook such an intensive program for 

inducing citizen participation or such careful consideration of citizen suggestions.”6

Although regulating costs of utilities and accomplishing Washington’s zoning plan 

were major achievements during the first quarter of the twentieth century, the District 

192

C h a p t e r 5

Sketch of standard street 

lamp posts for Washington, 

1934, compiled by Engineer 

Commissioner Bell; the tallest 

and most elaborate was designed 

by Henry Bacon, architect of 

the Lincoln Memorial.

Office of the Engineer Commissioner
Commissioners still continued annually to carry out the city’s important municipal services. 

Extending, paving, and naming streets were a highly visible part of their work as widely 

dispersed subdivisions increased in upper northwest and far northeast. Lighting these streets 

also was a major undertaking. In 1910 the Commission of Fine Arts approved for city streets 

an enclosed arc light with a sectional globe on standard ten- to twelve-foot-tall pillars designed 

by architect Daniel Burnham for Union Station, although only a limited number were erected 

and only on downtown streets. In 1923 Engineer Commissioner Major Franklin Bell 

appointed a Committee on Lighting Needs to prepare a comprehensive street lighting plan. 

They recommended using gas light exclusively throughout the city with standards sixteen to 

twenty-one feet tall, the tallest having double globes designed by architect Henry Bacon. In 

1967 writer John Dos Passos recalled the romantic atmosphere these lights imparted.7

We walked out southeast toward the Navy Yard. This was still the 

Washington I remembered: The shadowy streets choked with trees where 

all the life seemed to be going into vegetation, the street lights shaded and 

muffled in green leaves,...old women panting in rockers under low-hanging 

branches, light filtering through the green leaves, the shadows of branches 

thrown on brick walls....We had come out into the open spaces of trees and 

grass and shrubbery in front of the Library of Congress before we noticed 

there was a moon.8

In 1927 now Lieutenant Colonel Bell, who had been appointed Engineer 

Commissioner in 1923, wrote about his experiences playing such an important role in 

193

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0

(Below left)

Among their many municipal 

duties, the Engineer Commissioners 

oversaw paving and maintenance 

of the district’s streets from 

1874 until 1967.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-116217

(Below right)

Cleaning Washington’s streets 

and alleys of refuse and winter 

snow was supervised by the 

Engineer Commissioners, the 

most active of the district’s three 

appointed commissioners who 

ran Washington’s municipal 

government for nearly a century. 

In the 1930s trucks spraying 

water were supplemented by 

uniformed “white wings” who 

removed debris daily.

Washington Society of Engineers
Washington’s municipal life. He cogently explained the complex governance of the city 

by many different federal agencies but particularly emphasized the professional and 

personal difficulties he faced while serving as the Engineer Commissioner. For example, 

he recounts that he was named in sixty-six lawsuits brought by disgruntled citizens who 

were unhappy with the decisions made by the commissioners. He became wary of social 

intercourse with many citizens because some people he met expected preferential treatment. Generally, however, Bell was positive about the experience and urged engineers 

to elect their colleagues to positions in municipal administration because such jobs fully 

utilized their training and expertise.9

O f f i ce o f P u b l i c B u i l d i n g s a n d G r o u n d s

While the District Commissioners grappled with a changing city, the Office of Public 

Buildings and Grounds completed the monumental projects left unfinished at the 

outbreak of war. In 1913 Congress established a commission to erect a Memorial to 

Women of the Civil War and appropriated $400,000 for a building to be used as the 

headquarters of the American Red Cross, provided $300,000 in private funds were 

raised. The International Red Cross was organized in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1863, 

as a result of Florence Nightingale’s work as a nurse during the Crimean War, but the 

American Red Cross was not founded until 1881 by Civil War nurse Clara Barton. The 

Red Cross building, designed by Philadelphia architects Trowbridge & Livingston, was 

one of three major marble buildings for which Colonel Harts supervised construction; its 

cornerstone was laid on March 27, 1915, by President Woodrow Wilson who also dedicated it on May 12, 1917, before the “first mobilization of uniformed women war workers 

ever held in the United States.” Between 1927 and 1930 a second memorial building, 

also designed by Trowbridge & Livingston, but supervised by Lieutenant Colonel U. S. 

Grant III, was added to the complex. It commemorated the services of American women 

in World War I. The Red Cross’s third office building, designed by Trowbridge & 

Livingston and supervised by Grant, was built between March 1931 and July 1932.10

In 1917 in response to a July 1, 1916, congressional act, Colonel Harts and his 

successor Clarence S. Ridley compiled a map showing all the buildings in Washington’s 

central area owned, rented, or erected as temporary structures to house World War I 

workers. Their map particularly noted twenty-nine buildings occupied by different divisions of the War Department. In 1917 the office built three temporary office buildings, 

194

C h a p t e r 5
the infamous “temps,” on the Mall, followed in 1922–23 by the Navy and Munitions 

Office, a long range of demountable structures in West Potomac Park that faced 

Constitution Avenue between 17th and 23rd Streets.11

By October 1918 the colonnade of the Lincoln Memorial was completed under the 

direction of Lieutenant Colonel Ridley. When work began on the Reflecting Pool in 

November 1919, the presence of the temps forced the elimination of the short northsouth arm from the cross-shaped pool planned by the Senate Park Commission in 1902. 

Constructing the pool’s drainage system was the major challenge faced by the Corps’ engineers with Ridley in charge at the project’s outset. Even with the simpler design without 

the cross arm, Ridley and his assistant, civil engineer Charles A. Peters, Jr., faced 

construction problems resembling those that confronted builders of the Lincoln Memorial. 

An initial plan to build a single concrete conduit to drain into the Tidal Basin 600 feet 

to the southeast proved impossible because of ground water flooding. (The difference in 

elevation of the pool’s bottom and the river’s average high tide was only 3.5 feet.) The 

engineers then devised an extensive drainage system along the pool’s axis with multiple 

connections to the main conduit. They designed a three-ply surface of reinforced concrete, 

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0

Cornerstone laying ceremony 

for the Red Cross Building, 

March 27, 1915. President 

Woodrow Wilson and 

Mrs. Wilson (second and 

third from left, on stand) 

and Col. William W. Harts, 

Engineer Officer in Charge of 

Public Buildings and Grounds 

(fifth from left), watch as 

former President William H. 

Taft lays the cornerstone for 

the building initially intended 

as a Memorial to Women in 

the Civil War.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, Lot 12281

195
membrane, and tile to maximize the pool’s mirroring effect and prevent seepage, 

while remaining flexible enough to adjust to continuous land settlement. A concrete apron 

and hinged joint connected the pliable bottom of the pool to the rigid coping, which rested 

on piles driven to bedrock. As the land settled, the pool maintained its fixed relation to the 

lines of the memorial. Completed in 1923 under Lieutenant Colonel Sherrill, the Reflecting 

Pool is 2,027 feet long and 160 feet wide; the transverse Rainbow Pool at its east end (also 

planned by the Senate Park Commission) measures 291 feet long and 160 feet wide. In 

1998 the Reflecting Pool’s east end was selected as the site of the World War II Memorial, 

its architect Friedrich St. Florian making the Rainbow Pool the focus of the memorial’s 

commemoration of those lost in that war.12

In 1920 Ridley arranged impressive ceremonies to dedicate the Arlington Memorial 

Amphitheater, which had been built under his supervision. Although first suggested in 

1908, the amphitheater’s commission was not established by Congress until 1913; the 

Secretary of War was named its chairman. Ground was broken in 1915 for a one-and-onehalf-acre oval amphitheatre to hold ceremonies, such as those held on Memorial Day, that 

honored all of the nation’s war dead. The portico of its reception building provided the 

backdrop for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The completion of two other major projects soon added additional memorial sites that 

commemorated the Civil War. By 1920 sculptor Daniel Chester French finished his statue 

196

C h a p t e r 5

Red Cross Building under 

construction in 1916. 

Colonel Harts superintended 

the construction of three 

major marble buildings in 

Washington, including the 

first of three buildings 

for the Red Cross built 

between 1915 and 1932.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, 

ARCE 1916

“Henry Mervin Shrady has 

with years of labor and 

infinite pains here produced 

one of the great monuments 

of the world.”
of Lincoln for the memorial leaving only the terrace wall, landscaping, and access roads 

to be completed. On May 30, 1922, Memorial Day, a crowd of tens of thousands and 3,500 

invited dignitaries attended the dedication. Robert T. Lincoln, eldest son of President 

Lincoln, and Secretary of War under Presidents Garfield and Arthur, was introduced by 

Chief Justice William Howard Taft, the presiding officer. A month earlier, on April 28, 

Vice President Calvin Coolidge watched the unveiling of the Grant Memorial. Sherrill, 

who again made all the arrangements for the ceremony and invited its numerous speakers, 

briefly spoke as the executive officer of the Grant Memorial Commission.13

Henry Mervin Shrady has with years of labor and infinite pains here 

produced one of the great monuments of the world. As an adornment to the 

city of Washington, this memorial ranks with the greatest works of the sculptor’s art, and will forever adorn the imposing approach to the Capitol that 

will result from the completion of the Mall and Union Square in accordance 

with the plan of George Washington and L’Enfant.14

Posterity has verified Sherrill’s assessment. Mindful of the importance of the history of 

the design and construction of the Lincoln and Grant memorials, Sherrill and his successor 

197

Dedication of the Arlington 

Memorial Amphitheater, 

May 15, 1920. Capable of 

seating five thousand people, 

the amphitheater was begun in 

1915 but delayed by scarcity of 

materials during World War I 

and bad winter weather.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-H813-A05-022
Ulysses S. Grant III were responsible for the publication of books that were compilations 

of documents and essays as well as the record of these important ceremonial occasions for 

each memorial.15

A r l i n g t o n M e m o r i a l B r i d g e

Postwar projects were in general more practical, less purely monumental that those of 

prewar days. One project, however, combined both characteristics—the Memorial Bridge 

to Arlington Cemetery. Congress long debated whether to construct the bridge, engineers 

urged it, and the Senate Park Commission made the bridge an essential part of its plan. 

A new Washington menace—automobile traffic—helped bring the structure at last into 

being. In November 1921 a spectacular jam occurred as dignitaries and visitors to the 

dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier attempted to cross the Potomac River 

on the highway bridge.

Arriving at the west bank two hours or more late, the crowds found themselves 

entering the cemetery on a road that led past “a little race track, ...marshes lately used 

as the city dump, and...the Agriculture Department barns, so designed and constructed 

as to thrust their ugliness upon one’s attention with all the insistence of a spoiled child 

at table.” Dedication of the Lincoln Memorial the following year revealed a great rond 

point situated at the edge of the river with no outlet, while across the Potomac River, 

Arlington Cemetery with its new amphitheater lay almost inaccessible. Less than two 

weeks after the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial, Congress voted $25,000 to begin 

work on the bridge.16

In 1916 the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission, moribund since 1913, was 

revived with Sherrill named its executive officer. In 1922 both Major Tyler of the 

Engineer Commissioner’s office and now General Beach concurred with Sherrill that 

the bridge’s landfall in Washington should be at New York Avenue near Observatory 

Hill rather than at the Lincoln Memorial as the Senate Park Commission had planned. 

They argued that such an alignment would not require a draw (because of its height), 

would bring users into the heart of the city, and would not interfere with the Lincoln 

Memorial. The view of the Commission of Fine Arts, led by its secretary Charles Moore, 

who had been Senator McMillan’s secretary, was that a low, arched bridge between 

Arlington and the Lincoln Memorial would be more in harmony with the Mall’s 

development. Moore released to the public his ten-page report to the Arlington 

Memorial Bridge Commission which angered President Warren G. Harding, the bridge 

198

C h a p t e r 5
commission’s chairman. Yet visits to Arlington and the district sites on December 18, 

1922, convinced Harding that the Lincoln Memorial landfall was preferable, partly 

because it was anticipated that the bridge’s main users would be tourists traveling 

between the two sites. The memorial’s landfall would also maintain the horizontal vista of 

the city from Arlington.

In January 1923 Sherrill, who opposed a draw in a low-arched bridge, conducted 

public hearings about the necessity for a draw. Georgetown business interests convinced 

him that a draw was vital to local commerce and Sherrill relented. Plans went forward 

based on a bascule draw in the center arch. Once the large engineering concerns were 

settled, Sherrill conferred with the Commission of Fine Arts about choosing a suitable 

architect rather than holding another competition. They chose the New York architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, a firm whose founding principals, now deceased, 

were once deeply involved in Washington’s revitalization. In January 1926 Sherrill was 

replaced by Grant, who worked with both John L. Nagle, the bridge commission’s own 

engineer, and the engineers on the architectural firm’s staff. The low, Roman aqueductinspired bridge designed by William M. Kendall with the McKim, Mead & White office, 

was based on the bridge depicted on the Senate Park Commission’s drawings proposed 

by its chairman Daniel Burnham in 1901. With broad, graceful arches and pylons at 

each end topped by symbolic statuary, the bridge was intended to be as unobtrusive as 

possible, its Roman character a fitting link between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington 

House (Robert E. Lee’s house at the outbreak of the Civil War) built a century earlier. 

Memorial Bridge was both a metaphorical and physical link between the North and 

South, the symbolic linkage between Lincoln and Lee meant to heal the still raw wounds 

in the aftermath of the war. Moreover, the bridge’s superstructure was built using Roman 

architectural principles: “[T]he visible arches are being built as true granite arches, 

each stone deep enough to play its part as a voussoir of a real masonry arch and to bear 

its share of the weight of the bridge deck,” Grant reported to President Calvin Coolidge 

in 1928.17

Amid a squabble with Associated General Contractors over the hiring of day labor, 

work began in 1925 under Sherrill and continued under Grant. Central to the problem 

of building the bridge was the need to make a practical structure conform to the Senate 

Park Commission’s low-slung, simple design. The bridge had to bear the weight of 

granite facing and statues, and the bascule draw in the central arch had to be as inconspicuous as possible. Machinery needed to be packed away out of sight beneath the 

199

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0

“[T]he visible arches are 

being built as true granite 

arches, each stone deep 

enough to play its part 

as a voussoir of a real 

masonry arch and to bear 

its share of the weight of 

the bridge deck.”
May 1929

n.d.

Copyright Washington Post; reprinted by permission of the D.C. Public Library

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-H824-T-3527-x

C o n s t r u c t i o n o f t h e A r l i n g t o n M e m o r i a l B r i d g e

First proposed in 1886, the Arlington Memorial Bridge, begun in 1925 and completed in 

1932, serves as both the physical bridge and symbolic link between the Lincoln Memorial 

and the Custis-Lee house, Robert E. Lee’s home in Arlington Cemetery. To accommodate the 

bridge’s low Roman aqueduct profile, but allow for a draw span, powerful machinery was 

concealed in the piers to lift the two particularly broad sections of the draw.
n.d.

September 1930

n.d.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-H824-T-321

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-92531

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-H824-T-3529-x
roadway. The draw itself, though neither the longest nor the widest in the world, had 

one of the largest areas to be raised; and the concrete deck and ornaments made it one 

of the heaviest and most costly ever built. While Grant, Nagle, and Strauss Engineering 

Corporation—designers of the draw span—struggled with these difficulties, the Engineer 

District diverted the channel of the river beneath the draw, widened approaches, and cut 

and filled Columbia Island. Completed in 1932, the bridge successfully met both architectural and practical needs while bringing the Senate Park Commission plan a step 

nearer completion.18

B r i d g e s , W a t e r S u pp l y , a n d A n a c o s t i a R ec l a m a t i o n

Corps engineers directed the construction of three additional Washington bridges during the 

1920s and 30s: the Francis Scott Key Bridge that linked Georgetown with Rosslyn, Virginia, 

across the Potomac River; a new Chain Bridge that spanned the wide and rocky Potomac 

River near Little Falls; and the John Philip Sousa Bridge that carried Pennsylvania 

Avenue, SE, across the Anacostia River.

The Washington Engineer District built a new, modern bridge across the Potomac 

near the site of the old, often modified Aqueduct Bridge. The five high reinforced 

concrete arches (two additional arches were added in 1939) of Key Bridge, designed 

by Washington architect Nathan C. Wyeth in 1916, paralleled the Aqueduct Bridge that 

was taken down after the Key Bridge opened in 1923. Wyeth’s open spandrel design 

was constructed entirely in reinforced concrete under the supervision of Colonel 

Walter L. Fisk and his successor Major Max C. Tyler. The engineers began work in 

August 1917. Coming out of retirement to head the wartime Engineer District, Fisk 

encountered the usual problems of the time: Wyeth left the project to take a commission 

in the Army; labor and materials were hard to come by; and the staff of the District 

Engineer’s office was depleted by military demands. One step the engineers took was to 

dispense with private contractors and employ day laborers on the project. Their method 

of pouring the massive amounts of concrete that covered the arches’ steel ribs was placing one stationary concrete mixing plant on shore and ferrying containers of concrete 

to necessary points via a cableway while another mixing plant on a barge was anchored 

to the river bottom. The bridge was 1,791 feet long and unusually wide for the time, 

the roadway being fifty feet in width and each of the sidewalks eight feet wide.19 The 

completed bridge, equipped for streetcar, automobile, and foot traffic, opened in January 

1923. The engineers turned it over to the municipal government for administration, and 

202

C h a p t e r 5
it was named in honor of former Georgetown resident Francis Scott Key because its 

landfall was near his house.20

In 1925 the ninety-year-old Aqueduct Bridge was closed to traffic, having been opened 

as a public thoroughfare in 1868; the Washington and Old Dominion Railway removed its 

track; the commissioners salvaged railings, floors, and stringers; and the district removed 

some of the masonry for use in the new Anacostia floodwalls. Four of the salvaged steel 

trusses went into a bridge over Rock Creek on the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, just 

south of the Connecticut Avenue Bridge, in 1926.

The Engineer Commissioners of the District of Columbia also worked to improve river 

crossings in the city. They replaced two older bridges on the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. 

The present Chain Bridge is the eighth on the site, replacing the 1874 bridge erected 

by the Corps and using its piers. The 1,341-foot-long bridge was designed by Modjeski, 

Masters & Chase of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and built by the Fuller Construction 

Company of New Jersey in 1938–39. The Sousa Bridge—for which designs were considered in 1936, construction begun in 1938, and completion occurred in 1940—also 

203

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0

The arches of Key Bridge 

under construction (n.d.). 

The old Aqueduct Bridge is 

just north of the arches 

with Georgetown University 

visible in the upper right.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
replaced a nineteenth-century iron bridge erected by the Corps. Engineer Commissioner 

Lieutenant Colonel David McCoach, Jr., built the 1,666-foot-long bridge, designed with 

nine stone-faced reinforced concrete piers set 154 feet apart carrying low arches rising 

thirty feet above high tide. The New York architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White 

designed the Sousa Bridge along with the New York engineering firm of Parson, Klapp, 

Brinkerhoff and Douglas.21

During the previous decade of the 1920s, the Washington Engineer District’s aqueduct 

division had completed a major expansion of the water supply system. During World War I, 

when the city’s population had greatly expanded, the system reached its limits. In 1921 

Congress approved the most comprehensive expansion of the Washington Aqueduct in its 

history, doubling its capacity. The engineers built a new intake structure on the Potomac at 

Great Falls and a new ten-foot concrete tunnel under Conduit Road (renamed MacArthur 

Boulevard during World War II) and next to Meigs’ original conduit. The project proceeded 

without mishap except for a washout in 1924 that damaged the old conduit and interrupted 

204

Aqueduct and Key Bridges 

intersecting near the Rossyln 

shore, December 1929. The 

Aqueduct Bridge was largely 

dismantled several years after 

Key Bridge was opened for 

traffic in 1923.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
water distribution in the system for two days, almost exhausting the reserve supply in the 

city’s three reservoirs.

To treat the large new intake of raw water, the aqueduct built a major new treatment 

plant near the old receiving reservoir on the site of the former Dalecarlia farm named for 

a province in Sweden. The new facilities at Dalecarlia included several basins for chemical treatment and sedimentation, twenty new rapid sand filters, a storage reservoir, and 

buildings to support these operations. In addition, the aqueduct built a new pumping 

station with nine new pumps to move water through the distribution system, including 

several new reservoirs located on high spots in the district. The increased capacity of the 

aqueduct assured reliable water supply to the city and to a new customer, Arlington 

County, added in 1927.22

In 1916 the Washington Engineer District began work on reclamation of the Anacostia 

River flats, along the lines originally proposed in the 1902 Senate Park Commission report, 

and continued for many years, guided by the size of Congressional appropriations. When 

205

New Washington Aqueduct 

conduit under construction, 

May 1923. Steel forms that 

moved on tracks were used 

in building the concrete 

walls of the new conduit.

Washington Aqueduct Division, 

Baltimore Engineer District
Congress in 1923 asked the engineer board to consider scaling back the project, eliminating reclamation and the development of parkland above Benning Road, the board reported:

Already much benefit has resulted from the filling in of the marshes below 

Benning Road. Malaria, which was formerly a common disease at the navy 

yard, Government Hospital for the Insane, Washington Barracks, and the 

District Jail, institutions adjoining these marshes, has now almost disappeared. As the section of Anacostia Park above Benning Road is the only 

remaining mosquito-breeding marsh in the District of Columbia, the reclamation work should be continued.23

In 1918 Congress made the reclaimed land along the Anacostia River part of the 

District of Columbia’s park system, naming it Anacostia Park. By mid-1920 the project was 

nearing the halfway mark. Sanitary conditions improved, and deep-draft vessels could use 

the river as far north as Pennsylvania Avenue. In 1925 part of the reclaimed land was 

transferred to the Director of Public Buildings and Public Parks for improvement, and 

another portion set aside as a site for the Agriculture Department’s planned U.S. National 

Arboretum and Botanic Garden.24

206

C h a p t e r 5

Filter plant superstructures 

under construction, ca. 1926. 

The 1926 Dalecarlia filter 

plant, one of the most 

prominent structures on 

Conduit Road, was designed 

in the Colonial Revival style 

to blend with its residential 

neighbors and was part of the 

extensive expansion of 

Washington Aqueduct 

facilities during the 1920s.

Washington Aqueduct Division, 

Baltimore Engineer District
207

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0

The Corps of Engineers’ dredge 

Dalecarlia at work on Anacostia 

River reclamation (n.d.). Like 

the reclamation of the Potomac 

flats, the Anacostia work 

required extensive dredge and 

fill operations to drain and 

reclaim its extensive marshland.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

Anacostia Reclamation 

Project, July 1929. This aerial 

photograph shows the work 

on Section G of the project.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
W a s h i n g t o n P a r k s

Land acquisition by the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds for Rock Creek Park 

continued slowly after Congress appropriated the first funds in 1916, and then released 

only a limited amount of money each year. A congressional fight in 1925 led to the 

approval of the first funds for improving the nascent reservation. Grant, who became 

head of the reorganized Office of Public Buildings and Public Parks in 1926, oversaw 

much of the final design of the parkway, working with the landscape architectural firm 

of Olmsted Brothers to modify the general outline developed by Morrow and Markham in 

1908, Harts in 1916, and Sherrill’s office in 1924. The engineers and civilian landscape 

architects of his office did all the drafting for the construction: landscape architect 

James G. Langdon, formerly an employee of Olmsted Brothers who had worked for the 

Senate Park Commission, drew the 1916 map of the parkway. Aside from some preliminary brush and rubbish clearing, construction began with a bridle path in 1923. Further 

landscape adjusting and road building occurred in phases all along the path of the road, 

until by 1933 and the transfer of control over the capital’s parks to the National Park 

Service, only the extensive restoration of the valley between P Street and Pennsylvania 

Avenue and one major bridge remained to be undertaken.25

In 1906 Mary Foote Henderson, wife of Senator John B. Henderson, proposed to 

Congress that the government build a formal urban park on the hilly twelve-acre site east of 

16th Street, NW, on Meridian Hill a mile and a half north of the White House. In 1910 the 

property was transferred to the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds and a succession of 

major American landscape architects proposed designs for the site. In 1925 the Office of 

208

Washington Engineer District 

map showing the progress 

of the Corps’ dredging and 

reclamation work and seawall 

construction on the Anacostia 

River as of June 30, 1924. The 

unshaded area on the far right 

of the map is Section G.

Office of History, Corps of 

Engineers, ARCE 1924
Public Buildings and Public Parks was organized into divisions with the Design and 

Construction Division having four sections that included Engineering Design, Landscape 

Design, and Surveying. Engineer Major M. C. Mehaffey was appointed the division’s first 

chief and construction of Meridian Hill Park was the major landscape project the division 

undertook before its responsibilities were transferred to the National Park Service in 1933. 

New York landscape architect Ferruccio Vitale (beginning in 1919) and Washington architect Horace Peaslee (beginning in 1915) were the designers of the park that evolved into 

a major architectural work in reinforced concrete in imitation of an Italian Renaissance 

garden. The concrete and mosaic work was executed by Washington’s architectural sculptor, 

John J. Earley, in concrete and overall construction was supervised by Colonel Grant.26

O f f i ce o f P u b l i c B u i l d i n g s a n d P u b l i c P a r k s

Meanwhile, in the heart of the district a new era of major construction opened in 1926 

when Congress passed the Public Buildings Act that established the Public Buildings 

Commission in the Department of the Treasury to develop the Federal Triangle. Under the 

209

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0

Construction of the wall 

along the Potomac, June 1930. 

The completed wall and the 

fill behind it became the 

foundation for the Rock Creek 

and Potomac Parkway when it 

was built later in the 1930s.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
210

C h a p t e r 5

(Top)

“The Plan of Meridian Hill Park, 

Washington, DC, Designed in the Office of 

Public Buildings and Grounds,” ca. 1920. 

Architect Horace W. Peaslee’s and landscape 

architect Ferruccio Vitale’s plan for the new 

park located at 16th and W Streets, NW, 

was based on Italian Renaissance gardens 

to complement nearby European-inspired 

Beaux Arts mansions.

National Archives no. 66-DC-19

(Bottom)

Meridian Hill’s upper terrace—as well as 

the site’s outer retaining walls and other 

architectural features—was constructed of 

reinforced concrete whose surfaces were 

covered with small stones. Because of the 

Depression and scarce funding, the park was 

not completed until 1936 after it had become 

the responsibility of the National Park Service.

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, 

HABS, DC, WASH, 486-50
direction of Secretary of Treasury Andrew Mellon and the Supervising Architect of the 

Treasury, massive government buildings began to rise in the angle between Pennsylvania 

and Constitution Avenues, on the site suggested by interested Washingtonians in the late 

1880s and given official sanction by Bingham in 1899 and the Senate Park Commission in 

1902. Grant was the executive and disbursing officer of the Public Buildings Commission, 

a position that strengthened his role as an influential administrator in the shaping of 

Washington. Under the general architectural direction of Chicagoan Edward H. Bennett, 

seven massive and complex Beaux Arts buildings were designed by the country’s leading 

firms. Under Grant’s administration, they were all erected in just over a decade—the entire 

complex larger than the Louvre in Paris or the Vatican in Rome. In 1929 Grant was elected 

an honorary member of the American Institute of Architects for his outstanding work with 

the Public Building Commission.27

The increased responsibilities of the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds, in 

both scope and number, led to the Corps’ gradual separation from oversight by the War 

Department in matters relating to public buildings. In many ways it functioned as an 

independent agency. Though the officer in charge was nominally subject to the Chief of 

Engineers—and to a supervisory commission in the case of his care of the State, War 

and Navy Building—the control was largely a formality. As a military aide to the president, the head of buildings and grounds had direct access to the chief executive, and 

was “effectually subject to the President’s direct control.” Queried by Congress, the 

211

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0

The future site of the Federal 

Triangle, seen here in a ca. 1900 

photograph, was known as 

“Murder Bay” when the 1902 

Senate Park Commission 

proposed it for public buildings. 

All but the Old Post Office 

(middle left) were replaced by 

massive executive department 

buildings for which Col. Grant 

was the disbursing officer 

during the 1920s and 1930s. The 

once commercially important 

Center Market (upper right) fell 

victim to the redevelopment.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-BH85-34
Secretary of War raised no objection to a proposal to place the office formally under 

the president alone. On February 26, 1925, the office was reorganized as the Office 

of Public Buildings and Public Parks, and in 1926 Grant was named its head. He 

initially oversaw almost 3,428 acres of parkland in 562 reservations, and added almost 

100 more reservations before the federal lands were transferred to the National Park 

Service in 1933.28

Grant used his innate judgment about the importance of adequate recreational areas 

in and near urban areas and hard statistics to foster the increase of recreational areas in 

Washington’s suburbs.

The officers in charge of public buildings and grounds, successors to Colonel 

Bingham, have also naturally followed the plan of 1901 as far as practicable and have given their support to those of its projects which have been 

adopted. Gratifying as the progress was, it was very inadequate. The method 

212

C h a p t e r 5

It was through the Office of Public Buildings and Public Parks that Grant rose 

to prominence in Washington. The grandson of the eighteenth president soon 

established himself as a hard worker, a demanding supervisor, and a press 

agent’s dream. Born in 1881, the son of an Army officer and diplomat, Grant 

graduated from West Point in 1903, sixth in his class, and four years later 

married Edith Root, daughter of Elihu Root, who had been Secretary of War, 

but was Secretary of State in 1907. Stories about him grew into a personal 

legend, fed by his skill at publicity and a rich supply of quirks and personal 

oddities. Impatient with fools and visiting firemen, he wore heavy underwear 

to work in winter so that he could turn off the office heat; unwelcome visitors 

then fled to warmer regions. In 1928 he got the Washington parks into the 

newspapers by declaring a “war on neckers.” Park users were asked to abide by 

a pledge that encouraged fire prevention and forbade littering, flower 

picking, and—the item that caught newsmen’s eyes—any “display of amorousness” that might “set a bad 

example for children” in the puritanical Washington woods. Meantime, black citizens came to know a 

harsher side of Grant, as he sanctioned a Ku Klux Klan rally on government property, tried to segregate 

picnic places in Rock Creek Park, and barred blacks from the bathing beach at the Tidal Basin.29

Colonel U. S. Grant III

Photograph by Bachrach
of seeking legislation for one project at a time, thereby lining up against it 

the backers of other projects as well as the enemies of the particular one 

under consideration, had by 1925, for instance, provided only an addition 

of 24 per cent to the total park area of 1901, while the population had 

increased 70 per cent.30

Grant fought effectively for public recreation and an extended park system. “I think,” 

said a civilian planner who worked under him for many years, “he had the highest standard of public service of anybody I’ve ever known.” As head of public buildings and 

parks, Grant removed as many tempos as he could and cleared and developed the Mall. 

As a planner he later took a leading role in buying land for Rock Creek and Potomac 

Parkway and worked with the firm of Olmsted Brothers on the parkway design. When 

necessary, Grant stood up to his fellow officers. He successfully opposed Washington 

District Engineer Major Brehon B. Somervell and the Chief of Engineers to preserve a 

stretch of Potomac shore for parks rather than a power plant. Public tributes to Grant by 

213

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0

Construction of the Post Office 

Department Building at 13th 

and D Streets, NW, within the 

Federal Triangle, 1930s. It was 

to overlook a landscaped Great 

Plaza which became a parking 

lot until replaced by the Reagan 

Building in the 1990s.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, LC-H823-1699
Office of History, Corps of Engineers, ARCE 1919 

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-55111
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-116307

M a n y e n g i n ee r p r o j ec t s

a s s o c i a t e d w i t h W a s h i n g t o n ’ s

m o d e r n i z a t i o n o f f e r e d a n c i l l a r y

b e n e f i t s t o r e s i d e n t s a n d

v i s i t o r s a l i k e . A b a t h i n g b e a c h

o n t h e T i d a l B a s i n w a s f i r s t

s u g g e s t e d b y t h e W a s h i n g t o n

B e a c h A s s o c i a t i o n i n 1 8 8 9 a n d

p r o m o t e d a s a m a j o r f e a t u r e o f

t h e 1 9 0 2 S e n a t e P a r k C o m m i s s i o n

P l a n . A v a r i e t y o f f a c i l i t i e s

we r e p r o v i d e d b y t h e O f f i ce o f

P u b l i c B u i l d i n g s a n d G r o u n d s

a n d t h e D i s t r i c t C o m m i s s i o n e r s

i n s e v e r a l l o c a t i o n s o n t h e

r ec l a i m e d l a n d c r e a t e d b y t h e

C o r p s , w i t h t h e n o r t h s i d e o f

t h e i n n e r b a s i n p r e f e r r e d b ec a u s e

o f t h e w a t e r ’ s p u r i t y . H o we v e r , 

i t s d ep t h l e d t o m a n y d r o w n i n g s . 

I n 1 9 1 4 C o l . H a r t s b e g a n

p l a n n i n g f o r a n ew l o c a t i o n o n

t h e s o u t h e a s t s i d e o f t h e T i d a l

B a s i n s h a d e d b y t h e c h e r r y t r ee s

p l a n t e d u n d e r t h e d i r ec t i o n o f

C o l . S pe n ce r C o s b y , O f f i ce r

i n C h a r g e o f P u b l i c B u i l d i n g s

a n d G r o u n d s , i n 1 9 1 2 . F u r t h e r

n o r t h , t h e R e f l ec t i n g P o o l s o o n

b ec a m e a c h o i ce l o c a t i o n t o

s a i l t o y b o a t s i n t h e s u m m e r o r , 

we a t h e r pe r m i t t i n g , i ce s k a t e

i n t h e w i n t e r — a t r a d i t i o n , s ee n

h e r e i n t h e 1 9 4 0 s , t h a t b e g a n

w i t h a n e x cep t i o n a l l y c o l d

J a n u a r y i n 1 9 2 5 .
those who worked for him attested to not only his integrity, but his personal charm. “He 

could even handle a commission on which there were both members of Congress and 

executive officers of the Government, a most difficult job. His many assignments in 

Washington were in that touchy, nervous area where the Federal and local governments 

meet, but his diplomacy was adequate.”31

Grant also carried out a large-scale reconstruction of the White House, which Sherrill 

had begun. After investigations in April 1923 showed the mansion’s roof near collapse, 

President Warren G. Harding instructed Sherrill to begin repairs during his own absence 

on an Alaskan trip (from which he did not return alive). After examination showed that 

“the trusses carrying the roof are no longer acting as trusses, but are now merely a series 

of beams and struts,” Grant warned the new president, Calvin Coolidge, that the whole 

roof should be replaced at a cost of $500,000. But the Vermonter refused to pay the cost 

no matter what the danger. “If it is as bad as you say it is,”—an engineer later summed 

up the president’s attitude—“why doesn’t it fall down?” Consequently, Grant and the 

Supervising Architect of the Treasury carried out a less drastic renovation that included 

rebuilding the roof and third story, fireproofing the interior, and painting. With advice 

from consulting architects, William Adams Delano and Charles Adams Platt, and experts 

on American decorative arts, the work was successfully completed in 1927.32

Grant also became a key figure in the development of the National Capital Park 

and Planning Commission (NCPPC). Systematic land acquisition had long been 

suggested by Harts and other park enthusiasts to ensure the system’s growth in the face 

of rising land prices. Urged on by powerful advocates, including the Chief of Engineers 

and Washington’s city-wide citizens’ group, the Committee of 100 headed by district 

resident Frederic A. Delano, Congress on June 6, 1924, set up a National Capital Park 

Commission consisting of three officers of the Corps of Engineers, two members of 

Congress, and two civil servants. Money was to be provided by a yearly appropriation 

equal to one penny for every inhabitant of the continental United States, and the 

commission was empowered to acquire land by purchase or condemnation. But first 

appropriations were less than promised.

Under continued pressure from park advocates, Congress, in April 1926, enlarged the 

commission by providing for appointment of four leading district citizens, renamed it the 

National Capital Park and Planning Commission, and gave it authority to plan for the city’s 

growth. The commission was to plan Washington’s street system as well, taking over duties 

that the highway commission had carried out since 1890. Its third responsibility was the 

216

C h a p t e r 5

“I think he had the highest 

standard of public service of 

anybody I’ve ever known....”

“If it is as bad as you say it 

is, why doesn’t it fall down?”
purchase of land for parks, parkways, and playgrounds. Frederic Delano chaired the 

commission and Charles Eliot II was the city planner. Grant was secretary and executive 

officer. His relationship with Presidents Coolidge and Hoover was sufficiently close that 

Eliot credited him with “managing the White House” in regard to commission projects. 

Soon the commission took the first steps toward area-wide planning, working with a similar 

suburban planning commission set up in 1927 by the state of Maryland.33

W a s h i n g t o n C h a n n e l I m p r o v e m e n t s

The Depression brought a new Washington District project to improve the Washington 

Channel. Sheltered by the peninsula of East Potomac Park and flushed by the Tidal 

Basin, the channel had become an informal recreation spot, with wharves for oyster and 

melon boats, and landings for river steamers that made trips to Baltimore and Norfolk. 

But buildings had slipped into decay, and only the federally owned wharves were in good 

condition. In the 1920s Colonel Bell devised the master plan for the development of the 

Washington Channel that included commercial and recreational wharfs along the 

Southwest waterfront and replaced the original Water Street with Maine Avenue. After 

217

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0

Washington Channel 

Waterfront, Yacht Basin 

No. 1, July 1939. In the 1930s 

the Washington Engineer 

District began a program 

to improve the Washington 

Channel waterfront, but 

sporadic funding during the 

Depression meant that the 

district completed only parts 

of the project by the end of 

the decade.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
R e b i r t h o f t h e M a s s a c h u s e t t s A v e n u e B r i d g e

The 1901 viaduct-and-culvert bridge that carried Massachusetts Avenue across Rock Creek was built 

to serve new suburbs immediately north of the park. In 1925 a roadway was built through the culvert, 

but frequent floods caused traffic bottlenecks. Construction of the Rock Creek & Potomac Parkway, 

completed in 1936, required a higher bridge with substantial clearance beneath it. The current 

Massachusetts Avenue Bridge was designed by Washington’s leading modernist architect Louis 

Justement and engineers Harrington and Cortelyou as a simple, 150-foot-long single reinforced 

concrete arch faced with stone. During construction, supervised by Captain Herbert C. Whitehurst of 

the D.C. Highway Division, traffic continued across Massachusetts Avenue on a temporary three-lane 

bridge as well as on the parkway through the culvert. In April 1941 the south side of the new bridge 

opened to traffic and in August the old culvert was dynamited to make room for new parkway lanes 

under the direction of the National Capital Park and Planning Commission.

Copyright Washington Post; reprinted by permission of the D.C. Public Library

Copyright Washington Post; reprinted by permission of the D.C. Public Library

March 1940

April 1941
Washingtoniana Division, D.C. Public Library

Washingtoniana Division, D.C. Public Library

Copyright Washington Post; reprinted by permission 

of the D.C. Public Library

August 1941

August 1941

July 1941
220

(Top)

Dredging and filling for the 

Mount Vernon Memorial 

Highway near Gravelly 

Point and Roaches Run, 

July 1930. The Corps’ first 

choice for the highway’s 

route was along high 

ground; creating the 

roadbed through Potomac 

River marshes used some 

ofthe Corps’ most 

fundamental skills. The 

Corps’ dredge boats Talcott

(seen here) and

Waletka

did

much ofthework.

Office of History, Corps of 

Engineers

(Bottom)

This Historic American 

Engineering Record 

drawing shows the 

techniques for constructing 

the roadway and describes 

the dredging and filling 

operations performed by 

the Washington Engineer 

District to create land for 

parts of the road. Similar 

but more extensive dredging 

would provide the land for 

most of National Airport.

Library of Congress, Historic 

American Engineering Record, 

National Park Service, 

Tim Mackey, 1994
long urging by the engineers, Congress authorized an examination and survey of the area. 

In 1930 the Washington Engineer District proposed a $3.7 million plan to refurbish the 

waterfront while preserving local landmarks such as the Capital Yacht Club and the fish 

market. The new wharves and marinas were only partially complete when the outbreak 

of war ended work.34

M o u n t V e r n o n M e m o r i a l H i g h w a y

The Corps contributed to the creation of what one historian called “the first modern 

motorway built by the federal government,” the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway, now 

a part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. This scenic road almost fifteen 

miles in length was constructed between 1929 and 1932 to connect Arlington Memorial 

Bridge with George Washington’s famous estate.35 Congress ordered the Corps of 

Engineers to study the possibility of connecting Aqueduct Bridge to Mount Vernon 

with a formal road in 1889. District Engineer Colonel Peter C. Hains proposed three 

routes and provided his report with landscape plans and bridge designs.36 The McMillan 

Commission in its 1902 park system report endorsed one of Hains’s routes.37 Increased 

motor tourism in the 1920s and the approach of the 1932 bicentennial of Washington’s 

birth led Congress to authorize the highway’s construction in 1928. It was designed by 

the Bureau of Public Roads to run along the Potomac, passing through and following 

the river.38 Sections of the road were built on landfill and two-and-one-half miles of artificial causeway. Numerous bridges were required over creeks that fed into the Potomac. 

The Corps of Engineers undertook the necessary and extensive hydraulic fill work, first 

under District Engineer Major Brehon B. Somervell and then under District Engineer 

Major Joseph D. Arthur.39

W a s h i n g t o n N a t i o n a l A i r p o r t

In 1938 at President Roosevelt’s urging, the Civil Aeronautics Authority chose a site 

for a major new Washington airport. The tiny Washington-Hoover Airport emerged from 

the combination and expansion in 1930 of Hoover Field (1926) and Washington Airport 

(1927), built across the road from one another near the Virginia end of the Highway 

Bridge. Increasing airmail and passenger traffic quickly surpassed its capacity. In 1937 

Roosevelt vetoed a bill that would have permitted expansion of Washington-Hoover, 

believing that a new airport a mile south at Gravelly Point, and only 3.5 miles from 

downtown Washington, would better serve the capital and national defense needs. 

221

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0

“[T]he first modern 

motorway built by the 

federal government.”
The 1938 passage of the Civil Aeronautics Act, creating the Civil Aeronautics Authority, 

gave Roosevelt the power to authorize the planning and construction of the new airport.

America’s first federally-owned commercial airport resulted from the close cooperation of five federal agencies and was largely funded through New Deal initiatives with 

3,500 men from the Works Progress Administration providing much of the labor. The 

Corps’ responsibilities were the survey, design, and preparation of the site that included 

building a levee around the airport’s land reclaimed from the Potomac River. Gravelly 

Point was a low-lying area on the Potomac’s west bank, already being enlarged by Corps 

of Engineers dredging before the 1938 official approval of the site. It 

required extensive additional filling before construction could begin. 

The airport’s original 729 acres included 500 that were landfill, brought 

up from the bottom of the Potomac by Corps of Engineers’ dredges. 

This hydraulic fill construction was a complex problem involving 

settlement of the river bottom’s highly compressible mud, the choice 

of suitable materials for the runways, and planning for drainage in 

case of floods. When the airport opened to traffic on June 16, 1941, it 

was state-of-the-art, with lighted runways to accommodate the heaviest 

222

C h a p t e r 5

Dredging and filling at the site 

of National Airport, January 

1939. This aerial view looking 

southeast down the Potomac 

River shows the outline of the 

airport beginning to appear. 

A section of the Mount Vernon 

Highway that had to be 

relocated curves though the 

center of the photograph.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

The Corps’ dredge Talcott

moving dredged material from 

the Potomac River bottom 

through pipes to the fill area 

behind the dike built by 

the Corps, May 1939. Five 

hundred of the airport’s 729 

acres were landfill for which 

Corps engineers moved twenty 

million cubic yards of material.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
projected aircraft and the latest flight control and weather forecasting equipment. The 

airport project also required two miles of the new Mount Vernon Memorial Highway 

to be realigned.40

On September 28, 1940, President Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for the terminal 

building, designed by Howard L. Cheney of the Treasury Department’s Procurement 

Division in its Office of Public Buildings (the successor to the Supervising Architect of 

the Treasury Department). Work crews under the superintendence of District Engineer 

Colonel Robert S. Thomas pumped 20 million cubic yards of fill behind dikes, and 

graded, landscaped, and paved the field, brought in water and sewage lines, and built 

hangars and administration buildings.41

F o r t D r i v e

Fort Drive had been included in the 1902 Senate Park Commission’s report as part of 

Washington’s park system, a parkway connecting the Civil War forts encircling the city 

to serve as a scenic, recreational drive. In 1919 Colonel Ridley submitted a report to 

Congress calling for Fort Drive and five years later Congress authorized a survey and 

study. In 1926 under Colonel Grant, a Fort Drive of about 23 miles in extent was one 

223

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0

By March 1940 dredging 

operations were almost 

completed under the 

direction of District Engineer 

Col. Thomas. The Corps 

paved the four runways seen 

in this upriver view, 

landscaped the site, and 

built hangars and 

administration buildings.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
224

C h a p t e r 5

The shaded areas on the Engineer Commissioner’s 1933 

Map of the District’s Permanent System of Highways 

indicate Fort Drive proposed by the National Capital 

Park and Planning Commission, a ring road that 

connected the Civil War forts along a scenic parkway.

Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, 

G3852.F56 G45 1993.U5
of the new National Capital Park and Planning Commission’s major proposed projects. 

During the next two years the Engineer Commissioner approved the plan and in the early 

1930s rights of way were acquired and the plan’s design was refined. The Depression 

halted the project because funding was not available. In 1940 engineer Jay Downer 

proposed changing Fort Drive from a parkway to a freeway, the precursor of Washington’s 

beltway. Although 98.9 percent of the rights of way were in hand by 1953, the freeway 

was not built because the new chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission 

had different priorities among many published in the agency’s 1953 Comprehensive Plan. 

Engineer Commissioner Bernard L. Robinson calculated that the freeway was needed 

because of the volume of traffic at mid-century: 152,000 trips per day were made to the 

central business district, “while 122,500 trips with other destinations pass through the 

central area daily.” Fort Drive as a “circumferential highway” would route traffic not 

destined for downtown Washington around the heart of the city.42

225

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0

Wartime Temporary Buildings 

on the Mall, 1943. From 1922 

to 1940 the Corps of Engineers 

headquarters was located in 

the Munitions Building, the 

westernmost section of the 

World War I “temps” closest to 

the Lincoln Memorial. These 

buildings prevented completion 

of the Reflecting Pool’s central 

cross arm. Temporary office 

buildings erected during World 

War II were located on the 

south side of the Reflecting 

Pool. The last of the “temps” 

was removed in 1967.

National Capital Planning Commission
P e n t a g o n

For many years the U.S. Army had been looking for a location to construct a new central 

headquarters. It had considered sites around the city—near Walter Reed Hospital and adjacent to the Army War College—before developing a site in Foggy Bottom in 1938. By the 

middle of 1941 when this 500,000-square-foot building opened, the War Department 

employed 24,000 people, and they were scattered among seventeen buildings in the district 

and Virginia. The new headquarters was not even the department’s largest building: the 

779,000-square-foot Munitions Building, a World War I temporary structure on Constitution 

Avenue, had that honor. A 25 percent increase in War Department personnel was anticipated 

by the beginning of 1942, placing an incredible strain on already short supplies of office and 

storage space available to the department.43

In November 1940 the U.S. Army acquired a portion of the Agriculture Department’s 

Government Experimental Farm between Arlington Cemetery and the Potomac, and when 

Congress appropriated funds for the War Department to construct additional temporary 

buildings in Washington, Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall preferred the 

more spacious and convenient site at the end of the Memorial Bridge. When planning on the 

Pentagon began, military construction was under the Quartermaster Corps. On December 1, 

1941, President Roosevelt approved an order moving the construction function from the 

Quartermaster Corps to the Corps of Engineers. Thus, the engineers who began work on 

the Pentagon were detailed to the Quartermaster Corps until the end of 1941.44

The Quartermaster Corps’ construction division chief, Brigadier General Brehon B. 

Somervell, thought a permanent building solution was needed. In the summer of 1941 

Somervell, who was an engineer officer, proposed constructing a single permanent building 

housing forty thousand people to centralize the War Department’s operations. Somervell 

charged Engineer Lieutenant Colonel Hugh J. Casey, chief of the Quartermaster Design 

Section, and architect George E. Bergstrom, president of the American Institute of 

Architects and chief consulting architect to the War Department, with designing such a 

structure. In one hectic weekend, they and their assistants sketched plans for a threestoried, five-sided structure capable of housing forty thousand workers. They sited it on 

the Arlington Farms land, the bordering roads of which dictated a five-sided design.

The House passed an appropriation to fund the 5.1 million square foot structure one 

week after Bergstrom and Casey first presented their design. Objections to the building’s 

size, location, and cost delayed Senate approval by a month, but in the end the bill passed 

with no strings on the structure’s site, size, or design.45

226

C h a p t e r 5
The Arlington Farms site formed a portion of the original Arlington estate, and it 

bordered Memorial Drive on the main approach to Arlington Cemetery. Among others, 

the prominent Frederic A. Delano, chairman of National Capital Park and Planning 

Commission, and Gilmore D. Clark, chairman of the Fine Arts Commission, objected 

that the massive new building would dominate the view to and from the cemetery, seriously compromising the dignity of the place. President Roosevelt first approved the site, 

and then rejected it based in large part on these two men’s arguments. Over Somervell’s 

strong objections, he ordered the War Department building built at an alternate site 

further south, partially on land purchased in July 1941 from the disused WashingtonHoover Airport. Roosevelt also ordered the building be scaled down to accommodate 

twenty thousand workers.46

Redesigned to about four-fifths its original size, the structure’s pentagon shape 

was retained for the new site. John McShain, Doyle & Russell, and Wise Contracting 

Co., were hired as builders, and extensive work was performed by more than two dozen 

subcontractors. George Bergstrom served as chief architect until his resignation in April 

1942, when his assistant David J. Witmer replaced him. Both were California architects. 

Witmer served between 1934 and 1938 as chief architectural supervisor for the Federal 

Housing Administration in southern California. Bergstrom worked in Los Angeles in the 

1920s. His firm, Allied Architects, designed the Hollywood Bowl and the Los Angeles 

County Museum of Science, History, and Art.47 Their design staff at the Pentagon numbered, 

at its peak, 110 architects, 54 structural engineers, and 43 mechanical engineers, plus 

more than one hundred supervisory field architects and inspectors. First under the chief 

architect, the field workers were later placed under the direction of Arlington District 

Engineer Major Clarence Renshaw when responsibility for military construction in the War 

Department passed from the Quartermaster Corps to the Corps of Engineers. Renshaw also 

directed the contractors, mediating between McShain, the principal contractor, and the 

architects. General Somervell had final say on all aspects of the project, but gave Colonel 

Leslie R. Groves (later head of the Manhattan Engineer District) direct oversight.

Groundbreaking was September 11, 1941. The final design placed five concentric 

rings of offices, broken by light courts, around a central courtyard. Ten crossing wings 

connected the concentric rings, easing circulation through the building. With five floors, 

it was built of reinforced concrete mixed on site from sand and gravel dredged out of the 

Potomac. Its outside perimeter walls were faced in limestone. Efforts to reduce the use of 

steel in the building led to extensive use of wood, fiber, and concrete in partitions, ducts, 

227

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-99119

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

September 1941

R a p i d R i s e o f

t h e P e n t a g o n

From conception after 

July 17, 1941, to completion on January 15, 1943, 

the Pentagon was a 

remarkable design and 

construction feat. Built 

to conserve scarce 

wartime materials and 

with little superfluous 

ornamentation, it was a 

utilitarian office building 

bigger than any other in 

the United States at the 

time. The period from 

groundbreaking on 

September 11, 1941, to 

the arrival of the first 

occupants on April 29, 

1942, was an incredible 

seven months. The 

Pentagon greatly 

reduced, although did 

not eliminate, the War 

and Navy Departments’ 

demand for office space 

in Washington, although 

it seemed then far from 

downtown. It was 

constructed sturdily 

enough for records storage after the war in case 

its services would no 

longer be required.

January 1942
July 1942

n.d.

July 1947

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
and drains, plus the addition of pedestrian ramps between floors to reduce the number 

of elevators. Provision was made in the Pentagon design for efficient bus, truck, and fire 

equipment access. Sections of the building were occupied as they were completed, and 

construction focused on a fifth of the building at a time. The first 300 employees moved 

in at the end of April 1942, and by the end of May, one million square feet of office space 

was ready. Twenty-two thousand people worked at the Pentagon by the end of December. 

Construction finished January 15, 1943, two months after the original completion goal.

The Pentagon construction required architects to lay out more than thirty miles of 

access roads, greatly accelerating long-term National Capital Park and Planning 

Commission plans for improving the approaches to Memorial Bridge and the Highway 

Bridge. They built two giant parking lots, seeded twenty acres of lawn, and landscaped 

much of the remaining 530 acres that originally surrounded the building. The building 

required a dedicated heating and cooling plant and a sewage treatment facility that also 

handled waste from other government buildings in the area.

The creation of the Pentagon, figuring out its many details, and time and material 

savings ideas, resulted from a dynamic process continuously negotiated between the 

builders; Renshaw, with the review of his superiors; and the architects. An assessment 

written in 1942 directly credited now Lieutenant Colonel Renshaw “for the early completion of the building. He alone could represent the War Department, make decisions in the 

interest of speeding the work and direct the design office, the builder and the inspection 

force to the end that the work should be accomplished as speedily as possible. The shortness of time from commencement of the building to completion is quite as much due to 

his driving force and his determination to remove causes of hindrance as [to] the cooperation and efforts of all parties engaged in the work.”48

But unceasing demands for speed helped create a high on-the-job accident rate, while 

cost overruns drew criticism from the press and congressional investigators. The sheer size 

of the Pentagon and the notion that the military was feathering a plush nest for itself at 

taxpayers’ expense drew frequent barbs. Washington wags laughed at the remoteness of the 

structure, separated by the Potomac from the shopping and dining facilities of downtown.49

W o r l d W a r II i n W a s h i n g t o n

On December 1, 1941, the engineers took over the construction responsibilities of the 

Quartermaster Corps, including Bolling Field, now a 600-acre base. Until the end of the 

war Colonels William J. Barden (who returned to active duty from retirement), Clarence 

230

“The shortness of time 

from commencement of 

the building to completion 

is quite as much due to 

his driving force and his 

determination to remove 

causes of hindrance as 

[to] the cooperation and 

efforts of all parties 

engaged in the work.”

C h a p t e r 5
Renshaw, and John M. Johnson of the Washington Engineer District directed the building 

of runways and mess halls, laboratories and boiler plants, a broadcasting studio, electrical 

and sewage systems, and family housing and recreational facilities. Under district supervision the Public Works Administration built an eight-mile highway, now Suitland Parkway, 

to connect Bolling to Camp Springs Army Air Field (later Andrews Air Force Base). The 

district also worked to keep ground transport moving, building between 1942 and 1946 an 

emergency railroad bridge across the Potomac and four temporary highway bridges—one at 

14th Street, two at Roosevelt Island, and one across the Anacostia near the Navy Yard. In 

1942 the district also took over construction work at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 

where it built laboratories, wards, a gymnasium, and a pool.50

In 1944 General Grant proposed a “National Capital Stadium” located on East Capitol 

Street where it joins the Anacostia River to serve as a “useful memorial” to honor the 

nation’s military heroes as well as to function as an impressive gateway to the city from the 

231

The Washington Engineer 

District supervised construction 

of what became known as the 

Suitland Parkway to allow rapid 

travel between Bolling Army 

Airfield and the Camp Springs 

Army Airfield (later Andrews 

Air Force Base). The district 

completed the parkway, seen 

here in 1949, in late 1944.

Copyright Washington Post; reprinted by 

permission of the D.C. Public Library

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0
232

(Bottom)

The Washington Engineer District also 

built four lighter emergency highway 

bridges, three across the Potomac River 

and one spanning the Anacostia River. 

This one connecting Constitution Avenue 

near the Lincoln Memorial to Roosevelt 

Island was photographed in August 1942.

National Archives no. 77-RH-141-B-7

(Top)

Emergency Railroad Bridge, August 1942. 

The Washington Engineer District built this 

additional, temporary crossing over the 

Potomac River from Shepherds Landing, 

D.C., to Alexandria, Virginia, to transport 

goods and troops in a national emergency. 

Authorities worried that the bridge 

immediately to the north was the only rail 

crossing of the southern Potomac River.

National Archives no. 77-RH-141B-1

C h a p t e r 5
east. Working with city planner John Nolan, Grant proposed a hippodrome-shaped stadium 

on the north side of East Capitol Street and a monumental parade ground overlooked by a 

grandstand on axis with the street. As was his practice, Grant invited all concerned citizens to attend a mass meeting about a project that he fostered for a decade. Grant’s many 

civic contributions to Washington included frequent lectures before neighborhood associations and historical organizations. He served as president of the Columbia Historical 

Society from 1952 to 1968. It was through his efforts from 1954 to 1957 that the Christian 

Heurich mansion was secured as the society’s headquarters.51

T r u m a n W h i t e H o u s e

During the first three years of his presidency, Harry S Truman and his family were 

frequently bothered by creaking noises, drafts, cracking plaster, and unusual floor movements in the White House. Studies in 1948 determined that years of use and modification 

had seriously weakened the White House’s structure, making it unsafe for the number of 

visitors it often contained. Deciding to save what he could, Truman asked Congress for 

$5.4 million to completely rebuild the White House within its original walls.52

In April 1949 Congress created the presidentially appointed Commission on the 

Renovation of the Executive Mansion. It worked with the Public Buildings Service, the 

General Services Administration, and architect Lorenzo Winslow. Consulting on the project were architect William Adams Delano and civil engineers Ernest Howard and Emil H. 

Praeger. In the middle of it all was the commission’s executive director, retired engineer 

officer Major General Glen E. Edgerton, and his assistant, Colonel Douglas H. Gillette of 

the Corps of Engineers.

The Commissioner of Public Buildings handled the contracting, but the Commission 

on the Renovation acted as the controlling body guiding the entire project. Throughout, 

Truman exerted direct influence over the commission and the architects. After the president’s household moved across the street to Blair House in 1948, it took a year of planning 

before demolition began. In 1950 the original interior was dismantled to allow for the 

excavation of new foundations and sub-basements and the erection of a steel structure 

and concrete floors. Installing modern utilities and duplicating the interiors took until 

March 1952. This renovation of the White House was at the vanguard of the new profession of historic preservation and the entire team formulated principles of how to conserve 

historic properties as they faced the challenges of a major construction project that had to 

be invisible when completed. The public expected the White House to be aesthetically and 

233

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0
April 1950

May 1950

Photo by Abbie Rowe, Courtesy National Park Service, no. 1200-9Y

Photo by Abbie Rowe, Courtesy National Park Service, no. 1200-12N

W h i t e H o u s e R e n o v a t i o n

President Harry Truman sponsored the most 

extensive “renovation” of the White House 

between 1948 and 1952 since its original 

construction in the 1790s. In reality, only the 

original exterior walls and some paneling from 

Theodore Roosevelt’s 1902 renovation survived. 

Yet, conserving both the original plan with its 

famous East Room, Blue Room, and State 

Dining Room and the exterior appearance 

approved by George Washington was critical 

to the preservation strategy. Truman worked 

closely with Maj. Gen.(Ret.) Glen Edgerton 

to retain the White House’s national symbolic 

meaning yet create a functional, up-to-date 

residence.
Copyright Washington Post; reprinted by permission of the D.C. Public Library

Photo by Abbie Rowe, Courtesy National Park Service, no. 1200-26U

Photo by Abbie Rowe, Courtesy National Park Service, no. 1200-33A

July 1950

June 1951

November 1951
symbolically the same but the Executive Branch required a safe home for the president 

with sufficiently modern service facilities for large-scale entertaining and adequate office 

space for a large staff. These multiple needs were met by underpinning the original walls 

and excavating beneath the original footprint as well as along its perimeter to construct 

multiple basement levels and tunnels connected to the executive office buildings. Steel 

frames were inserted in original exterior walls while an entirely new steel structural system 

was built to receive the original interior walls that were saved. Because the underground 

construction proved to be more time-consuming than anticipated, the interiors had to be 

hastily built and they were erected with new materials.53

During the course of the work, a detailed diary of the renovation was maintained 

at the direction of General Edgerton. It recorded all daily activities on site from October 

28, 1949, to March 27, 1952, including this entry for March 3, 1952: “Capital Parks 

grading and tearing down shacks. Plasterer patching in misc. locations. make inspection 

of cabinets in pantries and kitchen and tell Jamestown man what to do in way of corrections. Meeting in General Edgerton’s office. Matter of ice cream maker comes up and Mr. 

Crim says it must be installed. Matter of oiling soapstone in fireplaces discussed.” Truly, 

the daily duties of Corps engineers were a constant round of trivial details and momentous decisions.54

The Truman renovation preserved the original exterior stone walls designed by Hoban, 

but tons of wood, brick, and plaster became landfill at Fort Myer, Virginia. Although the 

architects made detailed plans to reuse original woodwork and ornamental plaster, little 

was reused because of damage, time pressures, and cost cutting. The State Dining Room 

dating from Theodore Roosevelt’s 1902 White House renovation, its oak paneling painted 

light green, was the only room substantially reinstalled with pre-renovation materials.

After the excitement of building structures associated with the great era of monumental Washington was over about 1920, Corps members spent much of the first half of the 

twentieth century devising and implementing modern civic infrastructures as important as 

the engineering and architectural ones that occupied their predecessors. They brought 

to this essentially political and bureaucratic work the same creative energies that others 

expended on building bridges and raising complex and impressive monuments. Moreover, 

the commitment of many Corps members went far beyond completing their assigned jobs 

expeditiously but extended to their life as Washington citizens. Kutz, who graduated 

second in West Point’s 1893 class, served his third term as Engineer Commissioner from 

1941 to 1945 as a retired general called back to public service. Grant was away from 

236

C h a p t e r 5

“Meeting in General 

Edgerton’s office. Matter of 

ice cream maker comes up 

and Mr. Crim says it must 

be installed.”
Washington from 1933, the year the responsibilities of the Office of Public Buildings and 

Grounds were transferred to the National Park Service, until 1942. When he returned, 

Grant took over the chairmanship of the National Capital Park and Planning Commission 

and expanded his civic service to membership on several public and private commissions 

for the preservation of Washington’s and the nation’s historic heritage. He was one of the 

first ten trustees of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, created by Congress in 

1949, for example. The allegiance of such men to their profession was matched by their 

commitment to the nation’s capital.55

237

T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 1 9 1 5 – 5 0
T h e C o n n ec t i c u t

A v e n u e B r i d g e

( 1 8 9 7 — 1 9 0 7 ) s p a n n i n g

t h e R o c k C r ee k V a l l e y

w a s d e s i g n e d b y

G e o r g e S . M o r i s o n a n d

E d w a r d P. C a s e y u n d e r

t h e s u pe r v i s i o n o f

e n g i n ee r W a l t e r J . 

D o u g l a s o f t h e B r i d g e D i v i s i o n i n t h e o f f i ce o f t h e D i s t r i c t

C o m m i s s i o n e r s . E a c h o f i t s s e v e n a r c h e s i s b u i l t o f p r e - c a s t a n d

p o u r e d c o n c r e t e , o n e o f t h e e a r l i e s t a n d l a r g e s t c o n c r e t e b r i d g e s i n

t h e w o r l d t h a t d o e s n o t d epe n d o n m e t a l r e i n f o r ce m e n t ; r a t h e r , t h e

s p a n d r e l s o f e a c h a r c h a r e c o m p o s e d o f a s e r i e s o f a r c h e s . O r i g i n a l l y

c a l l e d t h e M i l l i o n D o l l a r B r i d g e ( a c t u a l e s t i m a t e d c o s t $ 8 4 6 , 3 3 1 ) , i t

w a s r e n a m e d t h e W i l l i a m H . T a f t M e m o r i a l B r i d g e i n 1 9 3 1 . T h e 1 8 9 1 

s t ee l t r u s s C a l v e r t S t r ee t B r i d g e t h a t c r o s s e s t h e n o r t h l a n d f a l l o f

t h e T a f t B r i d g e w a s r ep l a ce d i n 1 9 3 5 b y o n e d e s i g n e d b y P a u l C r e t , 

r e n a m e d t h e D u k e E l l i n g t o n M e m o r i a l B r i d g e i n 1 9 7 4 .

T h e f o o t o f 1 1 t h S t r ee t , 

S E , h a s b ee n t h e l a n d f a l l

o f s e v e r a l A n a c o s t i a R i v e r

b r i d g e s b u i l t t o s e r v e

t h e N a v y Y a r d . E n g i n ee r

D o u g l a s r ep l a ce d a n 1 8 7 5 

i r o n b r i d g e w i t h t h e s t ee l

a r c h 1 1 t h S t r ee t B r i d g e

( 1 9 0 5 – 0 7 ) t h a t i n c o r p o r a t e d

a c o u n t e r we i g h t e d d o u b l e b a s c u l e s p a n a n d c a r r i e d d o u b l e s t r ee t c a r

t r a c k s a s we l l a s i t s r o a d w a y a n d s i d ew a l k s . B y 1 9 7 0 t w i n p a r a l l e l

s t ee l g i r d e r b r i d g e s s p a n n i n g t h e A n a c o s t i a we r e l i n k e d m o r e t o t h e

a r e a ’ s r e g i o n a l h i g h w a y s y s t e m t h a n t o W a s h i n g t o n ’ s s t r ee t s .

National Archives no. 66-DC-1 

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
E n g i n ee r s M o d j e s k i a n d M a s t e r s a n d c o n s u l t i n g a r c h i t ec t P a u l

C r e t w o n t h e l i m i t e d d e s i g n c o m pe t i t i o n f o r t h e p r e s e n t S o u t h

C a p i t o l S t r ee t B r i d g e i n 1 9 4 2 , b u t W o r l d W a r II d e l a y e d i t s

c o n s t r u c t i o n u n t i l 1 9 4 9 . T h e r i v e r ’ s a n g l e a n d t h e p o s i t i o n

o f t h e A n a c o s t i a s h o r e l i n e r e q u i r e d t h a t t h e b r i d g e d e v i a t e

f r o m t h e t r u e n o r t h - s o u t h a x i s o f S o u t h C a p i t o l S t r ee t . 

B ec a u s e i t s ep a r a t e d t w o i n d u s t r i a l p a r t s o f t h e c i t y , t h e

b r i d g e n ee d e d a 3 8 6 - f o o t - l o n g s w i n g s p a n t o a l l o w a f o r t y -

f i v e - f o o t v e r t i c a l c l e a r a n ce f o r l a r g e s h i p s t o p a s s u p r i v e r . 

I n 1 9 6 5 t h e S o u t h C a p i t o l S t r ee t B r i d g e w a s d e d i c a t e d t o

F r e d e r i c k D o u g l a s s , w h o s e C e d a r H i l l h o m e i s l o c a t e d n e a r

t h e b r i d g e ’ s A n a c o s t i a l a n d f a l l .

Copyright Washington Post; reprinted by permission of the D.C. Public Library

I n t r o d u c t i o n

The Corps of Engineers, through its key position on the District of Columbia Board of 

Commissioners until 1971, confronted the same issues faced by other cities nationwide 

in the middle of the twentieth century: the emergence of “inner cities,” racial tensions, 

uncontrolled suburban growth, increased traffic congestion, and pollution of both air and 

water. The commissioners, however, also worked under the close scrutiny of a population 

that fervently desired a new form of government that allowed for full enfranchisement of 

Washington’s citizens. Unlike the governments of other cities, that of the district was 

constrained by federal authority. Congress retained line-by-line control over the city 

budget—a budget whose federal contribution continued to dwindle.

In the decade ending in 1960 the percentage of Washington metropolitan area 

inhabitants living in the district dwindled from 53 percent to 37 percent, turning Washington 

into an inner city surrounded by burgeoning suburbs. As middle-class white households 

moved to the suburbs, the African-American population remained in the city, augmented 

by migrations from the rural south. By the late 1960s the percentage of African-American 

6 Metropolis

1950–2004

Opposite page: Southwest

neighborhoods, 1939

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs 

Division, LC‐USF34-15931‐D 
students in the city’s public school system exceeded 90 percent. By the 1980s Washington 

was again vital, thriving, and diverse with many widespread revitalized centers because of 

the collaboration of federal and district agencies and the commitment of residents.1

One day in 1960 Engineer Commissioner Brigadier General Frederick J. Clarke and 

his wife were speaking with Elizabeth Kutz, widow of Charles W. Kutz who served three 

terms as the Engineer Commissioner, his last term ending in 1945. She asked Clarke, 

“Tell me, dear, are the Eisenhowers treating you properly?” Clarke replied that he 

supposed so. He and his wife had been invited to the White House “for one of those big 

mass affairs,” and had shaken hands with the president. Elizabeth Kutz remembered a 

different Washington. She said, “You know, when Papa [General Kutz] and I were there, 

we went to the White House at least every two weeks for lunch with the President. We 

were the city fathers. And we were always being asked to the White House for things, to 

represent the city.” By the time of Clarke’s tenure as commissioner, he and his fellow 

commissioners never had an audience with the president on the city’s problems.2 

President John F. Kennedy did, however, appoint a Special Assistant for District Affairs 

who served as an intermediary between the White House and the District Building.3

Although numerous congressionally mandated planning and executive agencies or 

commissions also played roles in running the city, D.C. commissioners continued to serve 

on these bodies as their predecessors had done for the better coordination of all aspects 

of the city’s affairs. For example, Clarke served on, and sometimes chaired, at least eighteen 

such agencies during his term as Engineer Commissioner. They included the National 

Capital Planning Commission, the Council of Governments, the Public Utilities Commission, 

and commissions on zoning, mass transit, regional sanitation, and traffic safety.4

When he assumed his post in 1967, Engineer Commissioner Brigadier General 

Robert E. Mathe knew he would be the last engineer officer to have a direct hand in the 

District of Columbia government.5

 Public sentiment in the city had long favored a new 

form of government. In August 1967 President Johnson’s Reorganization Order No. 3 took 

effect, replacing the three-person Board of Commissioners with a presidentially-appointed 

chief executive, deputy, and a nine-person appointed council. Mathe and one of the civilian commissioners agreed to stay in their posts long enough to assist in the transition 

to a new government. The terms of the reorganization provided for the Corps to assign up 

to three engineer officers to assist the new city government, but General Clarke—then 

Deputy Chief of Engineers—and the new mayor’s staff agreed not to assign any officers, 

opting instead for a clean break with the past.6

242

C h a p t e r 6

“You know, when Papa 

[General Kutz] and 

I were there, we went to 

the White House at least 

every two weeks for 

lunch with the President. 

We were the city fathers.”
U r b a n R e d e v e l o p m e n t

The Engineer Commissioners, as they always had, dealt primarily with public works, 

although they voted on all aspects of city government. They received no policy direction 

from their superiors in the Corps, and they freely exercised their own judgment on all 

issues—save one—that arose in the governance of the city. The Chief of Engineers did 

instruct the engineer officers serving in the city government to remain silent about 

proposals for government reorganization. In the 1960s a government official described 

city government this way: “It’s divided into sixths—four-sixths for the engineer commissioner and one-sixth for each of the others. He makes the big decisions—on urban 

renewal, streets, freeways, and so on. He can do anything he wants.”7

Urban renewal was one of the most pressing issues facing Washington at midcentury. Brigadier General U. S. Grant III, serving as chairman of the National Capital 

Park and Planning Commission, wrote in 1952, “It is generally recognized that the 

blighted and slum areas [of Washington], now so expensive to the city as the breeders of 

disease and crime, can be redeemed only by complete and well planned redevelopment 

into balanced and healthy communities.” Congress established the District of Columbia 

Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA) in 1945 to facilitate the “redevelopment of slums 

and blighted areas in the city of Washington.” The RLA was run by a five-member 

board, with two presidentially-appointed members and three chosen by the district 

243

M e t r o p o l i s , 1 9 5 0 – 2 0 0 4

Washington’s city planners 

blamed alley dwellings and 

“slums” for crime and disease 

and launched large-scale 

efforts using the District of 

Columbia’s Redevelopment 

Land Agency to turn huge 

tracts of the district from 

“blighted areas” into 

“healthy communities.”

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, 

LC‐USF34‐T01‐246‐D

“It’s divided into sixths—

four-sixths for the engineer 

commissioner and one-sixth 

for each of the others. He 

makes the big decisions.”
commissioners. After receiving funding to begin operations in 1950 from the Housing 

and Home Finance Agency, the RLA worked with the Board of Commissioners and the 

National Capital Park and Planning Commission (on which the Engineer Commissioner 

also sat) to plan the redevelopment of three areas in the city.8

Large areas of Washington’s Southwest quadrant received immediate attention because 

it was perceived that while the residential and commercial blocks of older buildings were 

decaying, they housed a close-knit community. A study commissioned by the RLA and the 

NCPPC found buildings in Southwest in poor repair, frequently lacking central heating and 

indoor plumbing. Many residents lived in tiny alley dwellings, which planners regarded as 

particularly unhealthy physically as well as socially. In reality, the majority of Southwest’s 

residents were poor or working class African Americans and the crime rate was high. The 

housing stock was similar to that of Capitol Hill; its historic buildings began to be renovated little more than a decade after most of Southwest was leveled.

Two plans for the redevelopment of Southwest were considered. The first, proposed 

by city planner Elbert Peets, called for rehabilitation of buildings and some new construction, with little long-term displacement of current residents and businesses. The second, 

by two of Washington’s leading modernist architects Chloethiel Woodard Smith and Louis 

Justement, called for demolishing the old neighborhood completely in favor of creating 

As late as 1939 Southwest 

retained its small town 

atmosphere with rowhouses 

and a few single family 

homes widely scattered 

along tree-lined streets. 

Many poor residents were 

unable to modernize their 

homes’ nineteenth-century 

sanitary systems. The 

decaying buildings of 

Southwest were the first 

target of the Redevelopment 

Land Agency’s plan 

to revitalize the city 

through redevelopment.

Library of Congress, Prints and 

Photographs Division, 

LC‐USF34‐15931‐D

244

C h a p t e r 6
a modernist Utopia following the most avant-garde socially responsible architectural ideas 

and ideals. Rebuilding in a variety of architectural typologies from high-rise apartment 

buildings to row houses, all in extensive landscape settings would, they argued, provide 

better conditions for some of the former residents, but primarily would attract higherincome professionals back from the suburbs. In the end, the RLA, with the approval of 

the District of Columbia Commissioners and the newly-reorganized National Capital 

Planning Commission, favored a plan based on the Smith-Justement model. Decried by 

many for decades as socially irresponsible because the neighborhood’s cohesion was 

broken and historically important buildings were lost, Southwest’s extensive Modernist 

landscape was again appreciated at the beginning of the twenty-first century as its open 

spaces were threatened by new buildings.9

Between 1954 and 1958 the RLA acquired and demolished most of the buildings 

in Southwest—churches, homes, and businesses—and dispersed more than twenty 

thousand residents to other parts of the city. The RLA then leased the land to private 

The Redevelopment Land Agency 

favored the Smith‐Justement 

proposal to completely demolish 

Southwest and start over. By 

October 1959 most of Southwest’s 

buildings had been razed, 

making room for a new freeway 

(shown under construction) and 

the first of the high-rise and 

garden apartment complexes.

Copyright Washington Post; reprinted 

by permission of the D.C. Public Library

245
developers who, with federal subsidies, rebuilt the area over the next decade with 

high-rise apartment buildings, townhouses, office buildings, churches, and a shopping 

center. The federal government used RLA land adjacent to the Mall for office buildings 

of its own.10 The Southwest redevelopment had considerable racial overtones. The old 

Southwest was a majority African-American neighborhood, and, forced to move, its 

relocated residents frequently encountered difficulty finding non-discriminatory and 

affordable housing elsewhere in the city, or they moved into public housing. When new 

housing was ready in the new Southwest, its high rents effectively excluded many of the 

former, low-income inhabitants. Disturbed by the injustice and extensive physical and 

community destruction that came with the Southwest redevelopment, citizens in other 

parts of the city organized. In such neighborhoods as Shaw and Adams-Morgan, they 

were effective in influencing further RLA planning to avoid the clean-slate approach 

adopted in Southwest. In retrospect, relocation subsidies provided some former 

Southwest residents with the means to educate themselves and their children, thus 

breaking the poverty cycle.11

The elegant 1965 Tiber Island 

complex, designed by the 

Washington architectural firm 

of Keyes, Lethbridge & Condon, 

exemplified Modernism’s urban 

renewal ideal of multiple 

middle‐class housing types 

arranged amidst extensive 

public parks. It consisted of 

low‐rise townhouses and four 

high-rise apartment buildings 

surrounding a central plaza.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, 

Layton Personal Papers

246

C h a p t e r 6
H i g h w a y P l a n n i n g

Intimately related to urban redevelopment was highway planning. In 1946 

Engineer Commissioner Brigadier General Gordon R. Young released for 

public comment a six-year plan for the Capital. In it he warned of the 

dangers that population dispersion posed for the central city, promoting 

the idea of beltline and lateral freeways to keep the spreading suburbs in 

close contact with the traditional downtown. In the 1950 study Washington 

Present and Future, the National Capital Park and Planning Commission 

posited that traffic congestion could be moderated by locating places of 

employment away from the central city, but only if freeways existed to 

serve as a circulatory system for the whole metropolis. The commission 

proposed connecting the district and its suburbs with radial freeways and 

easing movement around and into the city with a system of three circumferential freeways, two in the district and one around it.12

The design for the Inner Loop Freeway was announced in 1955. 

Almost eighteen miles in length with an estimated cost of $273 million, its 

construction threatened sixty-five thousand buildings, a quarter of the city’s total. Plans 

for the Southeast-Southwest Freeway, a portion of the full Inner Loop, proceeded quickly, 

as the Southwest’s redevelopment had already freed up most of the required land. Southwest 

had long been physically isolated from the rest of the city—in the nineteenth century by 

the Washington City Canal and in the twentieth by the Pennsylvania Railroad’s tracks. 

When the freeway set up a new barrier, the RLA welcomed it as a natural buffer between 

the federal offices to its north and the new residential communities on its south. But this 

attitude was rejected in neighborhoods that felt threatened. During the early 1960s citizens 

in the Southeast sector objected to demolition of houses in impoverished areas. The racial 

situation worked further to discredit the freeway program. “White men’s roads through black 

men’s homes” became a rallying cry for freeway opponents.13

Protests from one citizens’ group after another forced the commissioners to abandon 

plans for any freeways to the north. The Southeast freeway, which was intended to loop 

past the new stadium at the east end of Capitol Hill and continue around the center 

part of the city, remained truncated in midair. The inner loop controversy also marked 

one of the rare occasions when the two civilian commissioners voted counter to the 

Engineer Commissioner—General Clarke favored completing the freeway system—on 

a public works issue.14

“White men’s roads through 

black men’s homes...”

Activists in near Northwest 

and Northeast in 1968 

protested the destruction 

of their neighborhoods that 

would be required to extend 

the Inner Loop Freeway (I-95) 

through the heart of the city. 

Protestors and neighborhood 

opposition played a large part 

in the eventual abandonment 

of the plans for the Inner 

Loop Freeway.

National Capital Planning Commission

247

M e t r o p o l i s , 1 9 5 0 – 2 0 0 4
Although the last Engineer Commissioners generally favored highway construction, 

they also embraced the new emphasis on improved public transportation including a 

subway system. In 1966 the commissioners became members of the new congressionally 

established Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (Metro) that hired a retired 

engineer officer, Major General Jackson Graham, to be the first general manager of Metro. 

Graham brought in other retired engineers, including Brigadier General Roy T. Dodge, to 

help run the massive project. Hired in 1967, Graham saw construction begin in 1969 and 

he resigned in 1976 just a few months before the first Metro trains began regular service. 

In spite of the problems and criticism he encountered, according to The Washington Post,

Graham “owes no apology for his service to this community. On the contrary, he proved to 

The construction of 

Rochambeau Bridge, the first 

of three mid-twentieth century 

14th Street bridges, was well 

under way by July 1949. 

The Highway Bridge, heir to 

Long Bridge, at left, would 

give way in 1962 and 1971 to 

two new lower-level spans 

connecting Southwest D.C. 

with Arlington, Virginia.

Washingtoniana Division, 

D.C. Public Library

“On the contrary, he proved 

to be the right man at the 

right time for a monumental 

undertaking....There have 

been no scandals in the 

construction of the nation’s 

largest public works project.”

248

C h a p t e r 6
be the right man at the right time for a monumental undertaking.” Two years later Dodge 

announced his retirement as the design and construction chief of Metro. The Washington 

Post commented that he had “forged a remarkable reputation for integrity.... There have 

been no scandals in the construction of the nation’s largest public works project.”15

Bridge construction went more smoothly in postwar Washington than highway construction, although bridge designs came under the jurisdiction of the Commission of Fine Arts 

and National Capital Planning Commission. Congress approved two new four-lane bridges 

from Southwest Washington across East Potomac Park with the Virginia landfall north of 

National Airport to replace the Highway Bridge in 1947. The first, Rochambeau Bridge 

(now Arland D. Williams, Jr., Bridge), opened in 1950, the work supervised by Engineer 

Commissioner General Young. The second, George Mason Bridge, opened in 1962. A third 

bridge was authorized in 1966 while there was still an engineer commissioner but not 

completed until 1971; collectively the three bridges that divide East Potomac Park comprise 

the present Fourteenth Street Bridge. The Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, also partially 

supported by a landmass in the Potomac River—Theodore Roosevelt Island—was built by 

the District of Columbia Highway Department. Both the Commission of Fine Arts and the 

National Capital Planning Commission—as well as numerous citizens’ groups—opposed the 

Roosevelt bridge both because of its industrial appearance and because it intruded on the 

nature sanctuary and memorial dedicated to the conservation-minded president.16

By August 1965 the Roosevelt 

Bridge spanned the Potomac 

River and reached Theodore 

Roosevelt Island but was not 

yet connected to the Virginia 

shore. The Roosevelt 

Memorial Association bought 

Analostan Island in 1931 and 

gave it to the government the 

following year as a nature 

sanctuary when it was 

renamed.

Washingtoniana Division, 

D.C. Public Library

Senator Robert C. Byrd (left) 

of West Virginia and Brig. 

Gen. Frederick J. Clarke at 

the construction site of the 

Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, 

1961. Clarke, who went on to 

become the Chief of Engineers 

(1969–73), was the Engineer 

Commissioner from 1960 to 

1963, with only two successors.

©1961, Washington Post. Photo by David 

Chevalier. Reprinted with permission.

249

M e t r o p o l i s , 1 9 5 0 – 2 0 0 4
M a i n t a i n i n g a n d E x p a n d i n g G o v e r n m e n t F a c i l i t i e s

The U.S. Soldiers’ Home (renamed the Soldiers’ and Airmen’s home in 1972) required 

renovation and expansion in the late 1940s and early 1950s to meet the coming influx 

of veterans from both world wars. In 1947 Chief of Engineers Lieutenant General 

Raymond A. Wheeler, president of the Soldiers’ Home Board of Commissioners, oversaw 

the preparation of a master plan by Washington architects Porter & Lockie for expansion 

from 1,500 occupants to 3,500, and began work on air conditioning and fire protection of 

existing buildings. The plan featured a new 850-bed residence hall and a 200-bed hospital, plus needed modernization of the heating and electrical systems.17

The hospital plan had been expanded to 500 beds by 1949, and the design of the 

modern limestone buildings had been approved by the Commission of Fine Arts. A waiting list of 400 veterans precluded the option of tearing down the oldest buildings from 

the 1870s, generally viewed as “firetraps.”18 In 1950 the Soldiers’ Home ceded 148 of its 

500 acres to the General Services Administration in exchange for funding for an approximately $14 million expansion program. The home retained the historic Anderson Cottage 

(1843), where Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation while the cottage 

was still the country home of Washington banker George W. Riggs. The new residence 

The 850-bed residence hall 

under construction at the 

U.S. Soldiers’ Home, 1952, 

was named for Winfield 

Scott, who was instrumental 

in the establishment of the 

Soldiers’ Home in 1851.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

250

C h a p t e r 6
hall, completed in 1953, was named for General Winfield Scott, who played the leading 

role in establishing the home in the mid-nineteenth century. In response to a declining 

population, between 1988 and 1990, the Corps renovated the Scott Building’s interiors, 

which included creating private rooms and revamping the cafeteria. Between 1990 and 

1992 Baltimore District Project Engineer David Hand oversaw the largest building to be 

erected at the home in four decades, the $29 million LaGarde Building, a 200-bed home 

health care facility that incorporated a “town center,” an internal group of services as 

diverse as barber and beauty shops and a post office. Designed by the Detroit architects 

Smith, Hinchman and Grylls Associates, the LaGarde building brought modern concepts 

of assisted health care to the home’s diverse group of retired service personnel.19

The Cold War years brought the Washington Engineer District a project designed to withstand nuclear attack, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology at Walter Reed Army Medical 

Center. Completed in 1954, the $6 million windowless building of reinforced concrete rose 

eight stories, including three underground. It had blast-resistant twelve- to sixteen-inch walls, 

of which the thickest faced downtown Washington, that provided protection to an emergency 

power plant, laboratories, records and specimens, and medical education facilities and was 

the first deliberately planned atomic-bomb-resistant building in Washington.20

The Corps oversaw restoration of Arlington Cemetery’s amphitheater in 1957 to 

accommodate increasingly larger numbers of visitors who came to view the ceremonies 

held at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Two lateral cracks in the forty-eight-ton marble 

tomb progressed to the stage that repairs were carried out between 1987 and 1989 by 

Oehrlein and Associates, a difficult job that combined historic preservation and artistic 

conservation because of the tomb’s delicate sculpture and famous inscription: “Here rests 

in honored glory an American Soldier known 

only to God.” In 1996 large parts of the 

amphitheater’s deteriorating marble were 

replaced or cleaned, a new sound system was 

installed, and the lighting was improved.

The creation of the John F. Kennedy 

gravesite on the central axis between Arlington 

House and Memorial Bridge led Corps planners 

by the mid 1960s to consider new projects relating to education, crowd control, and expanded 

facilities. The cemetery’s 1977 master plan, 

The Corps of Engineers’ 

involvement with Arlington 

National Cemetery also 

included renovation work 

on the Tomb of the Unknown 

Soldier, 1974–75.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

251

M e t r o p o l i s , 1 9 5 0 – 2 0 0 4
developed in conjunction with the NCPPC, focused on public and private transportation to 

and within the cemetery for thousands of daily visitors. Their plan included a new permanent visitors’ center, featuring an exhibit on the history of the site. Designed by David 

Volkert and Associates, the new center was dedicated in December 1988. Expanded parking, including an underground structure and tour bus facilities, was built adjacent to the 

visitors’ center. Annexation of adjacent Army-owned land for 9,500 gravesites and columbaria for interment of cremated remains ensured adequate burial sites for America’s future 

heroes. In a departure from its usual engineering studies, the Baltimore District conducted 

a sociological study on the columbarium concept and determined that the public would 

accept it. In March 1997 ground was broken for the sixth of nine columbaria to contain 

sixty thousand niches.21

During the 1990s the Corps was involved in renovation projects for two complex 

Washington buildings whose diverse functions were intended to continue while construction was underway. In 1992 the General Accounting Office (GAO) asked the Corps to 

evaluate the possibility of modernizing its massive 1951 headquarters building. The 

Corps began its planning based on the GAO’s stacking plan that identified the movement 

and interactions of its employees laterally and vertically between seven floors. In 2000 

Corps of Engineers’ headquarters moved from the leased space at the Pulaski Building 

on the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and North Capitol Streets, NW, to part of the 

newly-renovated Government Accounting Office building.

The new visitors’ center at 

Arlington National Cemetery, 

built under the supervision of 

the Baltimore Engineer District 

and dedicated in 1988, won 

the Department of Defense’s 

Excellence in Design Award.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

252

C h a p t e r 6
O n N o v e m b e r 2 3 , 1 9 6 3 , 

w hi l e t h e n a t i o n w a s

s t i l l i n s h o c k o v e r

t h e a s s a s s i n a t i o n o f

P r e s i d e n t J o h n F. 

K e n n e d y t h e d a y b e f o r e , 

t h e C o r p s o f E n g i n e e r s

w a s s u r v e y i n g A r l i n g t o n

N a t i o n a l C e m e t e r y i n

o r d e r t o r e c o m m e n d a

l o c a t i o n f o r a g r a v e s i t e . 

T h e n e x t d a y , t h e n

C hi e f o f E n g i n e e r s L t . 

G e n . W a l t e r K . W i l s o n , 

J r . , l e a r n e d o f M r s . K e n n e d y ’ s d e s i r e f o r a n e t e r n a l

f l a m e a t t h e b u r i a l s i t e a n d w a s t a s k e d t o p r o v i d e i t . 

H e a s s i g n e d t h e m i s s i o n t o M a j . G e n . W i l l i a m F. C a s s i d y , 

c o m m a n d a n t o f t h e E n g i n e e r S c h o o l . O v e r t h e n e x t t hi r t y

h o u r s t h e e n g i n e e r s w o r k e d t o p r o d u c e a f u n c t i o n i n g

f l a m e i n t i m e f o r t h e b u r i a l t h e n e x t m o r n i n g , N o v e m b e r

2 5 . S t a r t i n g f r o m s c r a t c h , t h e y b u i l t t h e d e v i c e o u t o f

w e l d e d m e t a l s t r i p s , a “ l u a u l a m p , ” a n d s e v e r a l s m a l l

p r o p a n e t a n k s . O n c e t h e f l a m e w a s i n p l a c e , W i l s o n t e s t e d

i t o n l y o n c e . W h e n M r s . K e n n e d y l i t t h e f l a m e d u r i n g t h e

b u r i a l c e r e m o n y , i t i g n i t e d , a n d r e m a i n e d l i t . T h e C o r p s ’ 

m a k e s hif t c r e a t i o n r e m a i n e d i n p l a c e f o r m o r e t h a n a

y e a r . I n 1 9 6 7 P r e s i d e n t K e n n e d y w a s q u i e t l y r e i n t e r r e d

i n t h e c u r r e n t p e r m a n e n t g r a v e s i t e .

AP/Wide World Photos
In the mid-1990s Corps engineers began working on the team to renovate the John F. 

Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Although the Kennedy Center was only twentyfive years old, its more than 2,800 annual performances and related activities led to a 

proposed fifteen-year comprehensive plan to improve its safety, security, and accessibility; 

renovate its four theaters and halls; and extend and landscape its site. The Corps’ major 

work was to renovate the Concert Hall, which required rebuilding the stage area, updating 

its acoustical environment, and refurbishing its interiors.22

On September 27, 1991, President George H.W. Bush dedicated Marshall Hall, the 

new $27 million academic operations center at the National Defense University, at Fort 

Lesley J. McNair, the nation’s oldest operating Army post. Designed by the Minneapolis 

architects and engineers Ellerbe-Becket, the award-winning three-story concrete and 

brick structure consciously paid homage to the Army War College’s historic Colonial 

Revival and Beaux Arts buildings initiated by President Theodore Roosevelt and overseen 

by his Secretary of War, Elihu Root. The Corps’ construction oversight team consisting of 

project engineer Robert Wilson, Major Dale Schweinsberg, and Joe Reynolds were particularly proud of their joint achievement, which Reynolds referred to as “the Taj Mahal of 

military construction.” The operation center’s avant-garde design “is one of the most 

“[T]he Taj Mahal of 

military construction...”

“[O]ne of the most striking 

pieces of architecture 

I’ve ever seen on any 

military post.”

In addition to the 1997 

renovation work performed 

on the interior of the Kennedy 

Center, the Corps of Engineers 

also rehabilitated its terraces.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

254
striking pieces of architecture I’ve ever seen on any military post,” commented former 

Corps officer John Bandera. Renovations of existing academic buildings in the National 

Defense University complex were also undertaken during the 1990s, most notably 

Theodore Roosevelt Hall, a National Historic Landmark designed by McKim, Mead & 

White and built between 1903 and 1907. The Corps’ oversight of its $7 million renovation 

by Ellerbe-Becket was praised by the District of Columbia Preservation Office as a model 

of cooperation between review agencies, the Military District of Washington, and the 

architects and consultants.23

W a s hi n g t o n A q u e d u c t

Water projects formed much of the Washington Engineer District’s peacetime post-World 

War II work. Along with improvement and expansion of the Aqueduct, the engineers 

devoted considerable effort to studying and planning the development of the Potomac 

River water supply. Population growth and an expanded service area created greater 

demands on the Washington Aqueduct. Congress authorized the Aqueduct to supply water 

to Arlington County, Virginia, in 1926, and to Falls Church, Virginia, in 1947. World 

War I, the Depression, World War II, peacetime prosperity, and the Cold War all increased 

the population of the national capital region. In 1930 the Washington metropolitan area 

held six hundred seventy thousand people; by 1960 more than two million; by 1970 almost 

three million. Consequently, the Washington area demanded 103 million gallons of water 

Marshall Hall, on the grounds 

of Fort Lesley J. McNair in 

Southwest Washington, was 

designed by the architect-engineer 

firm of Ellerbe-Becket; its 

construction was supervised by 

the Baltimore Engineer District. 

President George H. W. Bush 

attended its dedication ceremony 

in September 1991. Marshall Hall 

won the Military Programs Merit 

Award in the 1992 Chief of 

Engineers Design and 

Environmental Awards Program 

for its success in “resolv[ing] the 

demands of a large and complex 

function on an historic installation, 

while reinforcing the original 1903 

master plan and respecting the 

character of the existing 

architecture.”

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

255

M e t r o p o l i s , 1 9 5 0 – 2 0 0 4
per day in 1940, and 126 million gallons in 1950. Demand steadily climbed until the 

metropolitan area average topped 400 million gallons a day in the mid-1970s.24

To address the pressure on the Aqueduct, Congress, for the fourth time in thirty-five 

years, requested that the Corps of Engineers study the future of the district water supply 

in 1940 and 1941. The resulting report, submitted to Congress in February 1946, outlined 

a broad program for expanding and improving the collection, purification, pumping, storage, and distribution facilities of the water system to meet projected population needs for 

the next half century.25

The Washington Aqueduct Division began the next year to improve its reservoirs, filters, 

mains, and pumping stations, while the District of Columbia upgraded some of the pipelines 

and pumping stations in its water distribution system. Significant among these improvements 

was the completion in 1959 of a 450 million-gallon-per-day raw water pumping station at 

Little Falls. Complete with a new diversion dam at the falls and a tunnel to the receiving 

reservoir at Dalecarlia, this project represented a major addition to the 200 million gallons 

of capacity available at the Great Falls intake works. Equally important, it provided a 

backup conduit in the event of repairs or damage to the two existing conduits.26

Washington’s waste water treatment plant at Blue Plains, which in 1950 allowed 

80 percent of the pollutant load to enter the Potomac, was expanded from a capacity of 

130 to 240 million gallons a day during the next decade. In 1960 Engineer Commissioner 

Brigadier General Alvin C. Welling reported in a newspaper editorial that neighboring 

jurisdictions had constructed sewers and mains to carry their wastewater to the expanded 

Blue Plains facility, resulting in an almost two-thirds reduction of organic pollution loads 

discharged into the river.27

Also of note, Washington became one of the first cities in the nation to fluoridate 

its water supply, beginning in June 1951. Engineer Commissioner Brigadier General 

Bernard L. Robinson decided in favor of fluoridation based on the Surgeon General’s 

endorsement of its safety.28

Between 1960 and 1964 the Corps built new filter and chemical buildings at the 

Dalecarlia Reservoir that increased its filtration and treatment capacity. From 1967 to 

1970 the engineers constructed a single unobtrusive replacement intake structure for both 

conduits at Great Falls. Aqueduct personnel could monitor the new intake structure from 

the control room at the Dalecarlia Pumping Station and thus reduce 24-hour surveillance.29

The Aqueduct Division, responding to concerns in the late 1960s that drought conditions might result in insufficient water flowing to the Great Falls and Little Falls intakes, 

256

C h a p t e r 6
designed the Emergency Estuary Pumping Station on the 

Potomac just above Chain Bridge. As the station was located 

within the C&O Canal National Park, public and National 

Park Service pressure led the engineers to create a low-lying 

design surrounded by local stone that blended into the landscape. The station was completed 1979 and never used. It 

was abandoned in 1985 when other water supply solutions 

made it unnecessary.

Broad environmental concerns in the 1990s led to the 

Corps’ participation in a task force of federal agencies that 

undertook a feasibility study of creating a fishway at Little 

Falls to repopulate the Potomac River with many species of 

fish. This project was part of the Washington Aqueduct’s wider 

efforts to clean up hazardous wastes and debris in the river 

and along its shoreline. The Aqueduct’s recently completed, 

underway, or proposed projects totaling $75 million in 2000 

focused on updating physical plants, improving water quality, 

and following EPA guidelines to reduce the quantity of disinfection by-products.30

In 1991 the 1913 fountain dedicated to Senator James McMillan (who had proposed 

the reservoir) was returned to the McMillan Reservoir grounds near its original hilltop 

setting, which had been obliterated during the site’s expansion and the fountain’s removal 

in 1941. Improvements to the filtration plant at the reservoir, first suggested in 1946, 

began in 1982. The deteriorating slow sand filters from 1905 were abandoned upon 

completion three years later of a new filter and chemical building containing twelve new 

rapid-sand filters. During the 1990s water quality concerns continued to plague the 

Aqueduct and its reservoirs. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) called for an 

independent study in 1993 after bacterial contamination was found during routine testing 

of the district government’s water distribution system. Two years later Virginia activists 

urged lawmakers to turn control of the entire system over to the Fairfax County Water 

Authority, a suggestion that was seconded by Assistant Secretary of the Army John 

Zirschky in 1996. Some officials suggested that a new federal agency run the Aqueduct. 

In 2001 Virginia Senators John Warner and George Allen urged congressional hearings on 

the discharge of sediment into the Potomac River from the Dalecarlia Reservoir, wishing 

to prohibit it during the spawning season. In December 2002 the EPA was pushing to 

Beginning in 1982 the construction 

of new rapid sand filters at the 

McMillan reservoir, just east of 

Howard University, obviated the 

need for the slow sand filters built 

in 1905. The sand storage “silos” 

(extreme lower left) remained 

standing in 2004 as remnants 

of the earlier technology.

Washington Aqueduct Division, Baltimore 

Engineer District

257

M e t r o p o l i s , 1 9 5 0 – 2 0 0 4
reduce the concentration of sediment unleashed into the river by 90 percent. Although 

the Aqueduct experienced continuing pressure to improve its services, it remained in 

2004 under the aegis of the Baltimore District of the Corps of Engineers.31

P o t o m a c a n d A n a c o s t i a R i v e r B a s i n P l a n n i n g a n d

M a i n t e n a n c e

The Aqueduct report of 1946 did not address the development of future water resources 

on the Potomac. The Corps began studying this thorny topic—which involved questions 

of water supply and quality, flood control, pollution control, and recreation—at the 

request of Congress in 1956, releasing its report in February 1963. During this long 

preparation time, the Baltimore Engineer District in 1961 assumed the duties of the 

Washington District, which was abolished, including its responsibility for studying the 

Potomac. An adequate supply of water to the Washington vicinity and clean water were 

the two main issues faced by the Corps’ engineers. Although the Potomac’s average flow 

was in the billions of gallons, it could and did fall during summer months to less than 

half a billion gallons a day. (On September 10, 1966, the flow fell to a record low of 

388 million gallons.) In 1957 the U.S. Public Health Service declared the river unsafe 

for swimming. Consequently, the engineers’ report made certain recommendations 

concerning land management and conservation, and it suggested wastewater treatment 

goals that extended to the year 2010. At its core was a proposed massive system of 

impoundments throughout the Potomac River basin, including sixteen major reservoirs 

and 418 smaller headwater reservoirs, estimated to cost $500 million.32

The storage capacity gained by this system would have assured an adequate supply 

of water even in times of severe drought. Furthermore, it was designed to provide a 

sufficient flow of water beyond the Washington Aqueduct’s intakes in order to flush 

pollutants downstream and into the Chesapeake Bay. The report sought immediate 

authorization to build eight of the major proposed projects. As early as 1957, when 

aspects of its general approach became known, the Corps’ proposal was widely criticized. 

Residents of four states and the District of Columbia objected to the condemnation of 

large amounts of upriver real estate to serve the needs of downriver Washington and 

to the flooding of sizable areas of the basin. Responses to the plan also noted that it 

did not seek to prevent “present or future pollution from being dumped into the 

waterways of the Potomac...on the thesis that this is unpreventable and will become 

progressively worse.”33

258

C h a p t e r 6
The Seneca Project, a dam and reservoir slated for the main stem of the Potomac, was 

one of the most controversial parts of the proposal. Had the largest of the potential impoundments been built, its creation would have displaced about 460 families and flooded out 

twenty-nine miles of the C & O canal—16 percent of the canal’s length—including the 

Monocacy Aqueduct. In his 1965 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson 

declared: “We hope to make the Potomac a model of beauty here in the Capital.” To this 

end, he sent the Corps’ report to the Secretary of the Interior for review. A specially created 

Federal Interdepartmental Task Force on the Potomac worked with Chief of Engineers 

Lieutenant General William F. Cassidy to scale back the Corps’ plan for the Potomac to six 

major reservoirs. None of these were funded and the Corps built only one major impoundment as part of this long effort. The Bloomington Lake Project, authorized by the Flood 

Control Act of 1962, went into service in 1981. Severe flooding in 1985 cost twenty lives and 

$300 million in damages in Virginia and West Virginia, but the Bloomington Dam “absorbed 

Construction of the concrete 

abutments for the tainter 

gates at the spillway of the 

Bloomington Dam on the 

Maryland-West Virginia border, 

(n.d.). The resulting reservoir 

was later renamed William 

Jennings Randolph Lake.

Baltimore Engineer District

“We hope to make the 

Potomac a model of beauty 

here in the Capital.”

259

M e t r o p o l i s , 1 9 5 0 – 2 0 0 4
the flood and protected the residents along the North Branch. Bloomington was the right dam 

at the right place. It prevented approximately $113 million in flood damages.”34

One outgrowth of the contested planning for Potomac water development was a provision in the 1974 Water Resources Development Act. Congress mandated the construction 

of what became the Experimental Estuary Water Treatment Plant, the result of the Corps’ 

study into the feasibility of treating water from the Potomac estuary in cooperation with 

the Environmental Protection Agency. Constructed at Blue Plains by the Corps’ Aqueduct 

Division in 1980, the $10 million facility tested a variety of chemical and mechanical 

processes. The 1983 final report from the studies conducted at the plant concluded that 

the estuary water could be made potable, but at an unreasonable cost. But pollution was 

reduced at Blue Plains by the construction of eight new settling tanks in the 1980s that 

employed nitrification to process waste water, making Blue Plains one of the nation’s few 

state-of-the-art facilities and the largest such plant in the world. The EPA’s resident engineer Arthur H. Smit was able to say in 1988: “The Potomac River is much cleaner now 

than it was 10 to 15 years ago because of this plant.”35

After delays caused by the 

Depression and World War II, 

in 1948 the Corps resumed 

work on improvements to the 

Washington Channel, including 

construction of Pier No. 4, 

seen here in May 1950, before 

turning over responsibility for 

the channel to the district 

government in 1951.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

260

C h a p t e r 6
Despite valid pollution concerns and the Corps’ mitigation efforts, the Potomac is 

certainly not a lifeless river. Water chestnut (trapa natans) spread wildly on a forty-eightmile stretch of the Potomac after first being detected in 1919, interfering with commercial 

navigation and recreational boating. The year 1939 marked the Corps’ first effort to 

remove aquatic weeds from the Potomac with mechanical cutters. Annual cuttings continued through 1977, when the vegetation subsided. It was at that time that the National 

Park Service mistakenly introduced hydrilla verticillata into the Reflecting Pool as part 

of an experiment to reduce green algae. Hydrilla’s escape and spread first came to public 

notice in 1982, after it had already choked waterways in California and Florida. Naturalists, 

however, viewed the return of vegetation to the Potomac as an “indicator of the health” 

of the river.36

In 1942 the Corps used mechanical 

cutters on boats, developed and 

constructed by the Washington 

Engineer District, to attempt to rid 

the Potomac and its tributaries of 

their infestation of water chestnuts.

National Archives no. 77-RH-141A-3

261

M e t r o p o l i s , 1 9 5 0 – 2 0 0 4
T h e C o r p s o f E n g i n e e r s ’ r i v e r c r e w b a s e d a t a s m a l l b o a t d o c k

u n d e r t h e 1 1 t h S t r e e t B r i d g e o n t h e A n a c o s t i a R i v e r n o r m a l l y

s p e n t i t s d a y s c l e a r i n g d e b r i s a n d o t h e r n a v i g a t i o n h a z a r d s f r o m

t h e a r e a ’ s r i v e r s . T h e i r r o u t i n e c h a n g e d o n J a n u a r y 1 3 , 1 9 8 2 , 

w h e n A i r F l o r i d a F l i g h t 9 0 c r a s h e d a f t e r t a k e o ff f r o m N a t i o n a l

A i r p o r t , s t r u c k t h e 1 4 t h S t r e e t B r i d g e , a n d p l u n g e d i n t o t h e

P o t o m a c . A l t h o u g h t h e f r o z e n r i v e r p r e v e n t e d t h e C o r p s ’ b o a t s

f r o m i m m e d i a t e l y r e a c hi n g t h e s c e n e t o a i d i n r e s c u e o p e r a t i o n s , 

o n c e t h e i c e h a d b e e n b r o k e n t h e c r e w s p e n t t hi r t e e n d a y s

r e t r i e v i n g w r e c k a g e a n d b o d i e s f r o m t h e r i v e r . T h e c r a s h k i l l e d

s e v e n t y - f o u r a i r l i n e p a s s e n g e r s a n d c r e w a n d f o u r m o t o r i s t s o n

t h e b r i d g e .

Office of History, Corps of Engineers
In 1982 hydrilla covered ten acres of the Potomac but within four years had expanded 

to a three- to four-thousand-acre range, which it maintained through 1989. In 1984 

Maryland and Virginia asked the Corps to study the infestation and recommend a solution. 

The Baltimore District focused its investigation on the herbicide Diquat and mechanical 

harvesting, both of which had effectively controlled hydrilla on other waters. They eliminated Diquat because both states objected on environmental grounds, and because the 

herbicide was no more cost effective than the mechanical alternative. In early 1986 the 

Baltimore District decided mechanical harvesting was preferable to keep channels to 

marinas open. Boating interests urged complete elimination of hydrilla, but limited control 

made the most economic and environmental sense.37

Congressional approval for resumption of reclamation and development work on 

key parts of the Anacostia River’s 158-square-mile basin came in 1955, when Congress 

authorized a Corps study. The unfinished work on 900 acres of water and land included 

dredging Kingman Lake and East Lake, dredging the river channel to Bladensburg, 

building seawalls, filling in low-lying areas with dredged material, and installing tidal 

gates. The Washington Engineer District noted that additional silting and deterioration 

of partially completed work would add to the original cost. Flood control work on the 

Anacostia, including channel improvements, levees, conduits, pumping stations, and a 

boat basin, was completed in 1959 and turned over to the Washington Suburban Sanitary 

Commission for operation. The engineer district retained responsibility for maintenance 

dredging. Years of piecemeal and sporadic improvement efforts did little to counteract the 

lower Anacostia’s severe pollution.38

The Baltimore District of the Corps released its Anacostia River Basin Reconnaissance 

Study at the end of 1990, a study that was stimulated in part by citizen activism. It set 

forth a basin-wide plan to restore 600 acres of fish and wildlife habitat lost in previous 

Corps flood control works. The plan included wetland restoration, planting of trees and 

shrubs, removal of barriers to seasonal fish movements, and channel modifications to 

create riffles and pools for fish. The reconnaissance study concluded that the federal 

government had an interest in pursuing a detailed feasibility study leading to a federal 

project costing an estimated $46 million.39

Restoring the Anacostia got underway in 1991, an effort requiring multiple local 

government agencies, and for the Corps, environmental engineering, a relatively new 

area of expertise. The Corps and Coast Guard used skimming techniques and vacuum 

suction to clean up a mile-long oil spill near the Navy Yard in 1992 that ran from shore 

263

M e t r o p o l i s , 1 9 5 0 – 2 0 0 4
to shore. This accident hampered work on restoring 

the Kenilworth marsh, a key component in restoring 

the lower Anacostia’s viability as a river. Corps 

engineers built up the marsh using material 

dredged from the main channel, which was 

contained by straw bales. The $2 million project 

restored thirty-two acres of wetlands destined to 

become a natural habitat for waterfowl and a feeding ground for fish. Stream-bank planting of trees 

and protection by placing riprap along muddy 

banks of the Anacostia and its tributaries followed 

in the mid 1990s. In 1996 President Bill Clinton 

designated the Anacostia one of the ten ecosystems 

nationwide to receive priority attention; in 1995 

the National Capital Planning Commission’s Legacy 

Plan earmarked both sides of the Anacostia’s shores 

from its mouth to the National Arboretum as one of 

Washington’s major future recreation areas. In the 

twenty-first century the Corps had joined local 

governments and private organizations in rallying 

citizen commitment to restoring the Anacostia as 

The 4th Battalion of the 20th Engineers (Forestry) posed for the camera in December 

1917 at Camp American University. Beginning in 1917 the Army used land near the 

post as a weapons range, a training ground for defense against toxic gas attacks, 

and a testing area for its own military gases. The land is now part of the upscale 

residential neighborhood of Spring Valley in northwest Washington.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

In the 1990s, in part stimulated by citizen activism, the Corps began restoring 

wetlands and wildlife habitats on Kingman Lake in the Anacostia River that were 

lost due to earlier twentieth-century reclamation efforts by the Corps.

Baltimore Engineer District

264

C h a p t e r 6
the key to the revitalization of its adjacent neighborhoods. By 2002 the Corps had thirteen 

environmental restoration projects along the Anacostia River’s watershed. A major strategy was to repopulate the wetlands with native plants. During the summer of 2002 the 

Corps collaborated with the National Park Service on Lake Kingman, which abuts the east 

end of Capitol Hill.40

M u n i t i o n s C l e a n u p a t S p r i n g V a l l e y a n d C a m p S i m m s

In the last decades of the twentieth century several problems with government and city 

sites, as well as structures particularly associated with the military, involved the Corps 

and its Baltimore District once again in a diverse mixture of building projects. In 1993 

the routine laying of sewer pipes uncovered buried chemical munitions containers dating 

from World War I in Northwest Washington’s Spring Valley neighborhood located between 

the American University campus and the Dalecarlia Reservoir. Between 1917 and 1920 

the American University Experiment Station, a chemical warfare research center and 

experiment station located at American University, used 661 acres of the sparsely settled 

neighborhood for testing ranges. The soldiers dug trenches modeled from those on the 

Western Front—where allied forces from 1915 on were subject to attacks by toxic chlorine (and later thirty other types of gas)—to replicate chemical weapons attacks and test 

protective clothing and equipment. More importantly, the Army began developing many 

kinds of noxious gases on the site and carried out many experiments, including chemical 

munitions explosions, in conditions now known to be unsafe. Such work was halted on 

265

M e t r o p o l i s , 1 9 5 0 – 2 0 0 4
December 31, 1918, but significant amounts of 

high explosives and containers of chemicals were 

left behind and buried.41

In 1993 Operation Safe Removal, the collaboration of the District’s Office of Emergency 

Preparedness, the Army’s Service Response Force, 

the EPA, and the Corps, began investigating the 

initial area. Test trenches and electromagnetic surveys 

on 492 properties revealed two possible burial pits. 

During the ensuing years, evidence of contamination 

over a broader area has surfaced raising particular 

concerns about high illness and death rates among 

the neighborhood’s population and arsenic that had 

leached into the soil at a day care center. These serious concerns led to 1,602 properties being slated for 

soil sample or subsurface investigation by 2003. The 

area’s difficult rolling landscape, coupled with the 

amount of land covered by structures, contributed to 

the complex problem facing the Corps, which took the 

lead in the investigations. During the early 2000s 

removal of actual artifacts was accompanied by soil 

removal and replacement. In 2003–04 a local newspaper, the Northwest Current, coordinated a survey of 

the health of Spring Valley’s residents, reporting its 

findings in a twelve-page supplement to the November 10, 2004 issue. The Current compiled 

a map of Spring Valley that outlined the Army’s 1918 central testing area within the entire 

original defense site boundary. The survey identified lots where the Corps found high concentrations of arsenic and households “where significant diseases were reported to the Current in 

a yearlong health survey.”42

In 1994 while the Metro was doing preliminary work on its Green Line subway in 

Southeast, six mortar rounds were discovered on what had been part of Camp Simms, 

a 169-acre fort used by the District of Columbia National Guard for a small arms target 

range. Between 1995 and 1997 the Corps detonated or safely removed forty-seven 

ordnance items from the site before testing the soil and ground water for lead and other 

(Top)

The Baltimore Engineer District was 

hampered in its efforts to remediate 

arsenic-contaminated soil in Spring 

Valley by the large number of homes in 

the neighborhood. Arsenic is a breakdown product of a chemical warfare 

agent tested there during World War I.

Baltimore Engineer District

(Bottom)

In September 1994 the Corps of 

Engineers erected a vapor containment 

structure over a large metal anomaly 

detected in the ground. Excavation 

revealed the anomaly to be 

a buried metal gate.

Baltimore Engineer District

266

C h a p t e r 6
heavy metals. During 2000 and 2002 the Corps’ ordnance specialists investigated another 

site slated for commercial and residential development that also had been part of Camp 

Simms and removed various magnetic and construction elements although no hazardous 

materials were found.43

D i s t r i c t o f C o l u m b i a P u b l i c S c h o o l s

In April 1998 the Corps offered its services to the District of Columbia government 

to renovate and modernize 147 public schools. Structural repairs as extensive as new 

roofs (33 in 1998), removal of asbestos, and extensive window replacement were begun 

immediately with $76 million of the school system’s funds. Removal of approximately 

200 underground storage tanks was a preliminary step to replacing antiquated heating 

systems with natural gas furnaces and air conditioning systems. Much of the major work 

had to be carried out while the schools were not in session and beginning in 1998 the 

Corps repeatedly met their goal of opening the schools on time each September. Federal 

standards of construction and procurement resulted in dramatically improved facilities 

throughout the city. By the fall of 2000 some improvements had been carried out in 

every school. Once the safety and security of the 68,000 students attending the existing 

schools was accomplished, the Corps began oversight of the design and construction of 

eight new schools, with construction of Key Elementary School beginning in 2000 and 

completed in 2002. In November 2001 the Corps broke ground for Miner Elementary 

Chief of Engineers Lt. Gen. 

Joe N. Ballard and the District 

of Columbia Superintendent of 

Schools, Dr. Arlene Ackerman, 

discussed the Corps’ role in the 

rehabilitation of Washington’s 

schools, October 1998.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

267

M e t r o p o l i s , 1 9 5 0 – 2 0 0 4
The Corps has made 

extensive repairs and built 

additions to the Thomson 

Elementary School in 

downtown Washington at 

12th and L Streets, NW, 

which was scheduled 

to reopen for the 

2005–06 school year.

Photograph by Darren Santos

Following completion of a 

new building for Barnard 

Elementary School on 

4th Street, NW, between 

Crittenden and Decatur 

Streets, the 1926 structure 

was demolished to make 

room for playgrounds.

Baltimore Engineer District

268

C h a p t e r 6
School designed by Grimm and Parker, Architects, of Alexandria, Virginia. By 2003 

the Corps managed more than $300 million in the projected $1 billion capital improvements related to the district’s schools. The D.C. Board of Education hoped to renovate 

or replace all the city’s schools by 2015.44

K o r e a n W a r M e m o r i a l

The Korean War Veterans Memorial was authorized in October 1986 to honor those 

Americans who had joined the armed forces and civilian personnel from twenty-two 

countries that served under the United Nations’ mandate from 1950 to 1953. In 1989 

four faculty members at Pennsylvania State University won the design competition that 

featured thirty-eight realistic statues of marching soldiers; veterans in interviews repeatedly had recalled memories of walking all over South Korea. “The number 38 was 

selected because it was the basic battle unit of the war, about the size of a single 

platoon. The war lasted 38 months. It took 38 years for our country to commemorate the 

war from its beginning in 1950 to the memorial’s conception. The 38th parallel now 

divides the two Koreas, who signed an armistice there July 27, 1953, at the village of 

Panmunjom.” The memorial was located on a seven and one-half-acre site at the west end 

of the Mall on the south side of the Reflecting Pool, opposite the Vietnam Veterans 

Memorial. Moreover, the architects of record of both memorials, Washington’s Cooper 

Lecky Architects, modified the winning design of the Korean War Memorial by adopting 

a polished black granite wall as one of its major elements, the idea borrowed from the 

Vietnam Veterans Memorial.45

Working for the American Battle Monuments Commission, the Baltimore Engineer 

District managed construction of the Korean War Memorial, consisting of the 164-foot 

The Corps of Engineers managed 

the construction of the Korean 

War Veterans Memorial for the 

American Battle Monuments 

Commission. By April 1995 most 

of Frank Gaylord’s stainless steel 

statues were in place and the 

memorial was dedicated only 

three months later.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

269

M e t r o p o l i s , 1 9 5 0 – 2 0 0 4
mural wall etched with nearly 2,400 digitized photographs of actual participants in the war’s 

broad-ranging efforts, nineteen stainless steel statues (the number reduced during the review 

process by federal planning agencies) by Frank Gaylord, walkways with curbs inscribed 

with the names of the participating countries, and a memorial pool of remembrance. 

Construction for the $16.5 million memorial began in 1993, its dedication taking place on 

July 27, 1995, the forty-second anniversary of the armistice. Two years later the pool had to 

be rebuilt and part of a memorial grove of trees replanted, the work done under the Corps’ 

aegis and completed in 1999; the National Park Service claimed poor original construction 

by the Corps’ contractors and the Corps claimed poor maintenance by the Park Service.46

T h e P e n t a g o n

In 1989 the Baltimore District began an anticipated ten-year, $600 million project to 

renovate the Pentagon and the following year Anthony Leketa was named as the program 

manager. In August 1991 Leketa described his team’s task as creating a modern work environment by replacing the entire heating and refrigerating plant as well as all mechanical 

and electrical systems; consolidating all the building’s light industrial functions; replacing 

all windows for better environmental control; and renovating the entire interior by opening 

up and connecting offices for ease of communication. This massive undertaking would be 

done in stages, with each of the five sides vacated and the work completed before moving 

on to an adjacent side, a logistical problem for a building occupied by 25,000 members 

Beginning in December 1941 the 

Corps assumed responsibility 

for construction at the Walter 

Reed Army Medical Center in 

northwest Washington. In 

August 1994 Daria Hasselman, 

Project Engineer, and Debbi 

LoCicero, of the Medical 

Facilities Office of the 

Baltimore Engineer District, 

visited the site of a clinic 

under construction.

Office of History, Corps of Engineers

270

C h a p t e r 6
and employees of the five armed services. By 1991 the price tag for 

the Pentagon’s rehabilitation had escalated to $1.4 billion and would 

continue to grow as was often the case with large and complex renovation projects. Even after work moved inside in 1995, the daily 

operations of the Pentagon’s workforce continued uninterrupted.

In the summer of 2000 the Defense Department transferred 

management of the Pentagon renovation project to the Washington 

Headquarters Services (WHS), a Defense Department agency responsible for operating the building among other things. By that time, the 

Baltimore District had constructed a new Heating and Refrigeration 

Plant south of the building, begun an extensive renovation of the basement, started two 

new pedestrian bridges to improve access to the building and a Remote Delivery Facility 

where trucks would unload and their cargo allowing them to be processed away from the 

main building, and made substantial progress on renovation of the first of five segments or 

“wedges.” In the process of the renovation, the Corps recommended increased protection 

against blast for not only the exterior windows but for the walls as well. This increased 

blast resistance proved its worth on September 11, 2001, when terrorists crashed American 

Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon near the intersection of renovated and old segments of 

the building. The WHS director of the renovation commented that without the increased 

blast resistance, “this could have been much, much worse.”47

In November 2001 the Corps was charged with selecting the site and conducting the 

design competition for the Pentagon Memorial to commemorate those who lost their lives 

when terrorists attacked the building. From the outset, the families of the 184 victims 

(fifty-nine of whom were in the plane) played a key role on a team that included several 

federal agencies in choosing both the site and the design. Carol Anderson-Austra acted 

as the Corps project manager. The Corps established eleven criteria to evaluate ten sites 

in close proximity to the Pentagon with family acceptability, nearness to the impact area, 

and public accessibility leading the list. In April 2002 the team’s choice of a 1.93-acre site 

165 feet west of the Pentagon’s west face under the plane’s flight path was approved. The 

open, two-stage design competition was conducted between May 2002 and March 2003, 

six finalists chosen from 1,126 entries. The winning design by New York architects Julie 

Beckman and Keith Kaseman, announced on March 3, 2003, called for 184 cantilevered 

benches lit internally and arranged in a landscaped park, each personalized according to 

the age of the victim and whether they were on the plane or in the Pentagon itself.48

Immediately following the terrorist 

attacks on September 11, 2001, the 

Corps of Engineers responded by 

deploying personnel to New York 

City and to the Pentagon to perform 

rescue operations, debris removal, 

structural integrity analyses, and 

structural stabilization. The 

Engineer Company of the Military 

District of Washington, a unit based 

at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and 

specially trained in search and 

rescue missions, arrived at the 

Pentagon within hours of the attack 

and later displayed the Corps flag 

at the site. In the months to follow 

the Corps would also select the site 

for a Pentagon Memorial and 

coordinate its design competition.

Corps of Engineers

“[T]his could have been 

much, much worse.”

271

M e t r o p o l i s , 1 9 5 0 – 2 0 0 4
The successful completion of the competition ended the Corps’ involvement but 

during the two-year process the Baltimore District’s Pentagon Memorial team won two 

awards. The first was the 2002 Baltimore District Team Honors Award for “outstanding 

teamwork in the areas of communication, customer care, flexibility, innovation, and 

responsiveness,” the second the 2003 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Project Delivery

Team Honor Award for “an extraordinary job well done” on a project that was “unique in 

the emotion, teamwork, commitment, and coordination required.” The Corps’ continuing 

contributions to Washington’s development builds on nearly two centuries of an honorable 

commitment to public service.49

S u m m a t i o n

It is more than two centuries since Army Engineer Peter Charles L’Enfant designed the 

federal city, yet Corps of Engineers officers continue to contribute their expertise to the 

betterment of Washington. The length of their commitment is matched by the diversity 

of the Corps’ involvement. Design and construction of Washington’s fortifications and 

bridges and management of its rivers’ navigation repeated the Corps’ traditional roles 

being carried on simultaneously in other parts of the country. Washington’s unique 

position as the federal capital involved the Corps in two major aspects of the city’s 

development for a century beginning in the 1860s: construction oversight of the nation’s 

most important monuments, memorials, and public buildings as Officers in Charge of 

the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds and management of its municipal affairs 

as Engineer Commissioners. This crucial century saw Washington evolve from a loose 

conglomeration of widely dispersed neighborhoods to a coherent national capital, center 

of international power, and genuine community; the Corps of Engineers played no little 

role in this transformation.

“...outstanding teamwork in 

the areas of communication, 

customer care, flexibility, 

innovation, and 

responsiveness.”

272

C h a p t e r 6
William J. Twining 1878–82

Garret J. Lydecker 1882–86

William Ludlow 1886–88

Charles W. Raymond 1888–90

Henry M. Robert 1890–91

William T. Rossell 1892–93

Charles F. Powell 1893–97

William M. Black 1898–1901

Lansing H. Beach 1898–1901

John Biddle 1901–07

Jay J. Morrow 1907–08

William V. Judson 1909–13

Chester Harding 1913–14

Charles W. Kutz 1914–18

John G.D. Knight 1917–18

Charles W. Kutz 1918–21

Charles Keller 1921–23

J. Franklin Bell 1923–27

William B. Ladue 1927–30

John C. Gotwals 1930–33

Daniel I. Sultan 1934–37

David McCoach, Jr. 1938–41

Charles W. Kutz 1941–45

Gordon R. Young 1945–51

Bernard L. Robinson 1951–52

Louis W. Prentiss 1953–54

Thomas A. Lane 1955–58

Alvin C. Welling 1958–60

Frederick J. Clarke 1960–63

Charles M. Duke 1963–67

Robert E. Mathe 1967

En g i neer Co m m i s s i o ner s o f t he Di s t r ict o f Co l u m b i a

Appendix

Of f icer s i n Ch a r ge o f t he Wa s h i n g t o n Aq ueduct

Montgomery C. Meigs 1852–62

Henry W. Benham 1860

James St. C. Morton 1860–61

Nathaniel Michler 1867–70

George H. Elliot 1870–71

Orville E. Babcock 1871–77

Thomas Lincoln Casey 1878–82

Garret J. Lydecker 1882–89

John M. Wilson 1889

George H. Elliot 1889–95

John G.D. Knight 1895

Charles E.L.B. Davis 1895

David D. Gaillard 1895–98

Charles J. Allen 1896

Edward Burr 1898

Theodore A. Bingham 1898

Alexander M. Miller 1898–1904

Di s t r ict En g i neer s , Wa s h i n g t o n Di s t r ict

Sylvanus T. Abert 1875–82 

(Civil Engineer)

Peter C. Hains 1882–91

Lewis C. Overman 1891

Thomas Turtle 1891–92

Charles E.L.B. Davis 1892–96

Charles J. Allen 1896–1904

Alexander M. Miller 1904

William P. Wooten 1904

Smith S. Leach 1904–05

Richard L. Hoxie 1905

Spencer Cosby 1905–08

Elliott J. Dent 1908

Jay J. Morrow 1908–10

Warren T. Hannum 1910

William C. Langfitt 1910–14

Henry C. Newcomer 1914–15

Charles W. Kutz 1915

Harry F. Hodges 1915

Clement A.F. Flafler 1915–17

Walter L. Fisk 1917–19

Max C. Tyler 1919–23

J.A. O’Connor 1923–26

Brehon B. Somervell 1926–30

Joseph D. Arthur, Jr. 1930–34

Leland H. Hewitt 1934

John C.H. Lee 1934

Frank O. Bowman 1934

Robert W. Crawford 1934–35

William J. Matteson 1935–37

Robert G. Guyer 1935

Walter D. Luplow 1937–38

Robert S. Thomas 1938–40

William J. Barden 1940–42

Donald A. Phelan 1942

Clarence Renshaw 1942–44

John M. Johnson 1944–45

Donald G. White 1945–48

John W. Califf (Acting) 1948

Henry C. Wolfe 1948–50

Harry R. Davis (Acting) 1950

Alan J. McCutchen 1950–53

Ray Adams 1953–56

George B. Sumner 1956–60

J.U. Allen 1960–61

Of f icer s i n Ch a r ge o f Pu b l ic Bu i ldi n g s a nd Gr o u nds (a f ter 1925 t he Of f ice o f Pu b l ic Bu i ldi n g s a nd

Pu b l ic Pa r k s o f t he Nat i o n a l Capi ta l )

Nathaniel Michler 1867–71

Orville E. Babcock 1871–77

Thomas Lincoln Casey 1877–81

Almon F. Rockwell 1881–85 

(Quartermaster Corps)

John M. Wilson 1885–89

Oswald H. Ernst 1889–93

John M. Wilson 1893–97

Theodore A. Bingham 1897–1903

Thomas W. Symons 1903–04

Charles S. Bromwell 1904–09

Spencer Cosby 1909–13

William W. Harts 1913–17

Clarence S. Ridley 1917–21

Clarence O. Sherrill 1921–26

Ulysses S. Grant, III 1926–33

James A. Woodruff 1933

C h a p t e r 1 : T h e G r a n d D e s i g n , 

1 7 9 0 – 1 8 0 0

1 “Essay on the City of Washington,” Washington Gazette,

November 19, 1796. Pamela Scott, “L’Enfant’s Washington 

Described: The City in the Public Press, 1791–1795,” Washington 

History, vol. 3, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1991), pp. 96–111.

2 J. J. Jusserand, With Americans of Past and Present Days (New 

York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916). Elizabeth S. Kite, L’Enfant 

and Washington, 1791–1792 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1929). H. Paul Caemmerer, The Life of Pierre Charles 

L’Enfant (Washington: National Republic Publishing Co., 1950). 

Joseph R. Riling, Baron von Steuben and his Regulations

(Philadelphia: Ray Riling Arms Book Co., 1966). Daniel D. Reiff, 

Washington Architecture, 1791–1861 (Washington: Commission of 

Fine Arts, 1971). 

3 Letter, P. Ch. L’Enfant to the President of Congress [Richard 

Henry Lee], December 15, 1784, National Archives and Records 

Administration (hereafter NARA), Record Group 360 (hereafter 

RG), Papers of the Continental Congress. John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., 

Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789 (Washington: 

GPO, 1933), vol. 28, pp. 16–7.

4 Paul K. Walker, Engineers of Independence: A Documentary 

History of the Army Engineers in the American Revolution, 

1775–1783 (Washington: GPO, 1981), p. 358.

5 Fitzpatrick, Journals of the Continental Congress, vol. 28, pp. 16, 

37, footnote 2.

6 P. Ch. L’Enfant, [Memorial to Congress], January 30, 1824. NARA, 

RG 233, Record of the House of Representatives. Letter, L’Enfant 

to the Marquis de Lafayette, November 2, 1785. Henry Knox 

Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. For a general discussion 

of the alternate site for the federal city, see Kenneth R. Bowling, 

The Creation of Washington, D.C.: The Idea and Location of the 

American Capital (Fairfax, Virginia: George Mason University 

Press, 1991). 

7 Letter, L’Enfant to Washington, September 11, 1789, Library 

of Congress (hereafter LOC), Manuscript Division, George 

Washington Papers, series 7, reel 120.

8 Edgar Erskine Hume, “The Diplomas of the Society of 

Cincinnati,” Americana, vol. 29, no. 1 (January 1935), pp. 5–45.

9 Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., “The Federal Processions of 1788,” New 

York Historical Society Quarterly, vol. 46 (1962), pp. 29–38.

10 Louis Torres, “Federal Hall Revisited,” Journal of the Society 

of Architectural Historians (hereafter JSAH), vol. 29, no. 4 

(December 1970), pp. 327–28.

11 Letter, Jefferson to Johnson, January 29, 1891, NARA, Papers of 

the Continental Congress. Letter, Washington and Jefferson to 

Deakins and Stoddert, March 2, 1791, LOC, Manuscript Division, 

District of Columbia Letters and Papers.

Notes
12 Letter, Jefferson to L’Enfant, March 2, 1791, Digges-L’EnfantMorgan Papers, LOC.

13 Silvio A. Bedini, “Andrew Ellicott,” John A. Garraty and Mark C. 

Carnes, eds., American National Biography (hereafter ANB) (New 

York: Oxford University Press), vol. 7 (1999), pp. 414–5. See also: 

Catharine VanCortlandt Mathews, Andrew Ellicott, His Life and 

Letters (New York: Grafton Press, 1908).

14 Report from P. Ch. L’Enfant to Washington, n.d., LOC, Manuscript 

Division, Papers of Pierre Charles L’Enfant, Covering sheet in 

clerk’s hand: No. 1. (P B & G 1791), L’Enfant, Peter Charles, Major, 

“Reporting to President Washington the suitability of the location of 

the City for the Capital of a mighty Empire, the sites of houses of 

Congress & Presidents Palace.—The above was personally handed 

to the Executive on his arrival at Georgetown at that time. 5-a.” 

15 Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds., The Diaries of George 

Washington (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979), 

vol. 6, p. 103.

16 John C. Fitzpatrick, The Writings of George Washington

(Washington: GPO, 1931), vol. 31, pp. 256–7.

17 Letter, L’Enfant to Hamilton, April 8, 1891, LOC, Manuscript 

Division, Alexander Hamilton Papers. Letter, Washington to 

L’Enfant, April 4, 1791, LOC, Manuscript Division, DiggesL’Enfant-Morgan Papers.

18 Letter, L’Enfant to Jefferson, April 4, 1791, Jefferson Papers, LOC.

19 Letter, Jefferson to L’Enfant, April 10, 1791, Digges-L’EnfantMorgan Papers, LOC.

20 Ibid.

21 Letter, L’Enfant to Washington, June 22, 1791, L’Enfant Papers, 

LOC. A copy of this report, with some omissions, in Isaac 

Roberdeau’s hand, is in the Digges-L’Enfant-Morgan Papers, LOC. 

Washington’s diary entry, June 29, 1791, Jackson and Twohig, 

Washington Diaries, vol. 6, p. 165.

22 Ibid.

23 “L’Enfant’s Reports to President Washington, March 26, June 22, 

and August 19, 1791,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society

(hereafter RCHS), vol. 2 (1899), pp. 38–48. Letter, Tobias Lear to 

L’Enfant, August 27, 1791, Digges-L’Enfant-Morgan Papers, LOC. 

Letter, Jefferson to the Commissioners of the District of Columbia, 

August 28, 1791, in Charles T. Cullen, et al., ed., The Papers of 

Thomas Jefferson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 

vol. 22, pp. 88–9.

24 NARA, RG 42, Records of the Office of Public Buildings and 

Public Parks of the National Capital, Entry 21, Proceedings, 

September 24, 1791 and October 6, 1791. Cullen, Jefferson Papers

(1990), vol. 23, p. 237. William Seale, The President’s House: 

A History (Washington: White House Historical Association, 

1986), p. 18.

25 Letter, Commissioners to Jefferson, April 11, 1792. Cullen, 

Jefferson Papers, vol. 23, pp. 396–7.

26 Quoted in [H. W. Crew], Centennial History of the City of 

Washington, D.C. (Dayton, Ohio: United Brethren Publishing 

House, 1892), p. 184.

27 Letter, Washington to the Commissioners, December 18, 1791, 

Fitzpatrick, Washington’s Writings, vol. 21, p. 446.

28 Pamela Scott, “Stephen Hallet’s Designs for the United States 

Capitol,” Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 27, no. 2–3 (1992), 

pp. 145–70. Bob Arnebeck, Through a Fiery Trial: Building 

Washington 1790–1800 (Lanham, Maryland: Madison Books, 

1991), p. 314.

29 Georgetown Weekly Ledger, July 2, 1791. Centinel of Liberty,

September 9, 1800.

30 L’Enfant’s “Observations...” were published on the front page 

of Dunlap’s American Daily Advertiser, December 26, 1791. See 

Scott, “L’Enfant’s Washington...,” pp. 102–3. In his June 22, 

1791, report to Washington, L’Enfant claimed that he first chose 

the locations for squares, then overlaid the grid, inserting the 

diagonal avenues later.

31 Letter, Commissioners to L’Enfant, September 9, 1791, Saul K. 

Padover, ed., Jefferson and the National Capital (Washington: GPO, 

1946), pp. 74–5. Letter, Ellicott to L’Enfant, September 12, 1791, 

Kite, L’Enfant and Washington, pp. 73–4.

32 Pamela Scott, “‘This Vast Empire’: The Iconography of the Mall, 

1791–1848,” in Richard Longstreth, ed., The Mall in Washington, 

1791–1991 (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1991), pp. 41–5.

33 Cullen, Jefferson Papers, vol. 23, pp. 141, 150–9, 161.

34 Russell I. Fries, “European vs. American Engineering: Pierre 

Charles L’Enfant and the Water Power System of Paterson, N.J.,” 

Northeast Historical Archaeology, vol. 4, nos. 1 and 2 (Spring 

1975), pp. 68–96. John W. Jackson, Fort Mifflin, Valiant Defender 

of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Old Fort Mifflin Historical Society, 

1986). William Dunlap, A History of the Rise and Progress of the 

Arts of Design in the United States (Boston: C. E. Goodspeed & 

Co., 1918 reprint of 1834 edition), vol. 2, p. 12.

C h a p t e r 2 : T h e A n t e b e l l u m C i t y , 

1 8 5 0 – 6 5

1 Pamela Scott, “Moving to the Seat of Government,” Washington 

History, vol. 12, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2000), pp. 70–3. “Extract 

from an Address [reprint of Oliver Wolcott’s 1802 report to Congress 

on the expense of moving the government to Washington],” RCHS, 

vol. 9 (1906), pp. 219–41. Elaine Everly and Howard H. Wehmann, 

“The War Office Fire of 1800,” Prologue, vol. 31–1 (Spring 1999), 

pp. 22–35.

2 Scott, “Moving,” p. 72.

3 Ibid., p. 71.

4 Edward C. Boynton, History of West Point and the United States 

Military Academy (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1863), p. 176.

N o t e s t o P a g e s 7 – 2 3

276
5 Gary D. Ryan, “War Department Topographical Bureau, 1831–

1863: An Administrative History,” Ph.D. diss., American 

University, 1968, p. 103. The technical system of educating West 

Point engineers on the French system was established early in its 

history. Peter Michael Molloy, “Technical Education and the 

Young Republic: West Point as America’s Ecole Polytechnique, 

1802–1833,” Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1975. Theodore 

Crackel, West Point: A Bicentennial History (Lawrence, Kansas: 

University Press of Kansas, 2002), pp. 39, 50–62.

6 Crackel, West Point, pp. 194–5.

7 Ibid., p. 194. John C. Fredriksen, “Jonathan Williams,” ANB,

vol. 23, pp. 483–5. 

8 John K. Mahon, “George Bomford,” ANB, vol. 3, pp. 151–3.

9 Letter, Knox to John Vermonnet, May 12, 1794, American State 

Papers, vol. 16, p. 93.

10 Anthony S. Pitch, The Burning of Washington: The British 

Invasion of 1814 (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 

1998), p. 153.

11 Quoted in Amy Cheny Clinton, “Historic Fort Washington,” 

Maryland Historical Magazine, vol. 32 (September 1931), p. 237.

12 Pitch, Burning, p. 154.

13 Pitch, Burning, pp. 156–7. James Dudley Morgan, “Historic Fort 

Washington on the Potomac,” RCHS, vol. 7 (1904), p. 15. David L. 

Salay, “‘Very picturesque, but regarded as nearly useless’: Fort 

Washington, Maryland, 1816–1872,” Maryland Historical 

Magazine, vol. 81 (1986), p. 67. Two maps show the relationships 

between Fort Warburton and Fort Washington. NARA, RG 79, 

NCP 117.8-3 and NCP 117.8-4.

14 Jeffrey A. Cohen and Charles E. Brownell, The Architectural 

Drawings of Benjamin Henry Latrobe (New Haven: Yale 

University Press, 1994), vol. 2, pp. 587–9.

15 Ibid.

16 Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army (New York: 

The MacMillan Company, 1967), pp. 134–5. Joseph G. Swift, The 

Memoirs of Gen. Joseph Gardner Swift (Privately printed, 1890), 

pp. 168, 173. Michael A. Burke, “Joseph Gardner Swift,” ANB,

vol. 21, pp. 208–9. Frank N. Schubert, ed., The Nation Builders: 

A Sesquicentennial History of the Corps of Topographical Engineers

(Fort Belvoir, Virginia: Office of History, U.S. Army Corps of 

Engineers, 1988), pp. 4–6.

17 Roberdeau Buchanan, Genealogy of the Roberdeau Family

(Washington: Joseph L. Pearson, 1876), p. 117. Richard Rathbun, 

“The Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences,” 

United States National Museum and Bulletin (Washington: GPO, 

1917), vol. 101, p. 9. William Dzombak, “Roberdeau’s Treatise on 

Canals,” American Canals, no. 76 (February 1991), pp. 8–9. 

Pamela Scott, “Isaac Roberdeau,” ANB, vol. 20, pp. 590–2. The 

History of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Alexandria, Virginia: 

Office of History, Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 

1998), p. 142.

18 The Metropolitan and Georgetown Commercial Gazette, October 19, 

1824. Buchanan, Genealogy, pp. 115, 120. 

19 Henry Ways, The Washington Aqueduct, 1852–1992 (Washington: 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, n.d.), 1–2. To Improve Pennsylvania 

Avenue in Washington City, 22nd Cong., 1st sess., H. Rpt. 291 

(1832) reprints and repeats the recommendations of 21st Cong., 

1st sess., H. Rpt. 184 (1830); 22nd Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. 11 

(1832).

20 Report on the Potomac Bridge, 22nd Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. 22 

(1832).

21 Contract for Construction of Bridge Over Potomac River, 23rd 

Cong., 1st sess., H. Rpt. 264 (1834); 24th Cong., 1st sess., 

H. Doc. 53 (1836).

22 Report from the Secretary of War on the Employment of the 

Topographical Engineers, 24th Cong., 1st sess., S. Doc. 419 

(1836), p. 9.

23 Potomac Aqueduct, 25th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. 459 (1838) 

[reprinting 24th Cong., 1st sess., H. Doc. 261 (1836)], pp. 19, 24. 

Walter S. Sanderlin, The Great National Project: A History of the 

Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University 

Press, 1946), pp. 59–60. Constance McLaughlin Green, 

Washington: Village and Capital, 1800–1878 (Princeton: 

Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 114–6. Letter, Abert to 

Turnbull, August 29, 1832, NARA, RG 77, Records of 

the Topographical Bureau, Letters Sent. Donald Beekman Myer, 

Bridges and the City of Washington (Washington: Commission of 

Fine Arts, 1974), p. 11. Sackett L. Duryee, The Corps of Engineers 

in the Nation’s Capital, 1852–1952 (Washington: U.S. Army 

Engineer District, 1952), p. 53.

24 NARA, RG 77, Monthly Returns of the Corps of Topographical 

Engineers, March 1842–December 1843; June–July 1843; April 

1845–August 1846; March–October 1847; August 1848–July 

1849. 25th Cong., 2nd sess., S. Doc. 346 (1838). 26th Cong., 2nd 

sess., S. Doc. 51 (1841). NARA, RG 77, Register of Letters 

Received by the Topographical Bureau, 1849; Report, Mills to 

Secretary of War, December 20, 1841, and Letter, Strickland 

to Abert, December 6, 1843, in Letters Received by the 

Topographical Bureau. Schubert, Nation Builders, pp. 20–1.

25 Pamela Scott, ed., The Papers of Robert Mills, 1781–1855

(Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1990), 

pp. 98, 122.

26 Ryan, “War Department Topographical Bureau,” pp. 73–110. 

Schubert, Nation Builders.

27 B. Brown Goode, “The Genesis of the National Museum,” Annual 

Report of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington: Smithsonian 

Institution, 1891), pp. 273–335.

28 Kenneth Hafertepe, America’s Castle: The Evolution of the 

Smithsonian Building and Its Institution, 1840–1878 (Washington: 

Smithsonian Press, 1984), p. 27.

N o t e s t o P a g e s 2 4 – 3 7

277
29 Ibid., pp. 71, 106. Sara E. Wermiel, Army Engineers’ Contributions 

to the Development of Iron Construction in the Nineteenth Century

(Kansas City, Missouri: Public Works Historical Society, 2002), 

pp. 31–3.

30 [Crew], Centennial History, p. 650.

31 Ibid., p. 124.

32 Ibid., pp. 126, 135–7. Alexander continued to experiment with 

wrought iron and in 1855, when the government’s great construction program of courthouses and custom houses was just getting 

underway, his knowledge was crucial. “Letter to the Secretary of 

the Treasury,” 33rd Cong., 2d Sess., S. Exdoc. 54 (1855).

33 James B. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers 

of the Presidents, 1789–1908 (Washington: GPO, Bureau of 

National Literature and Art, 1908), vol. 6, p. 2628. Statutes vol. 9, 

p. 523. 32nd Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. 33 (1853).

34 NARA, RG 77, Letters Sent. Totten to W. W. Corcoran, 

August 12, 1852; H. H. Steward, August 14, 1852; Totten to 

Fillmore, September 1852; Totten to Smith, September 15, 1852. 

On background and selection of Meigs, see Russell F. Weigley, 

Quartermaster General of the Union Army: A Biography of M. C. 

Meigs (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 13–30, 

49, 52, 59; Ways, Aqueduct, pp. 3–7, and David W. Miller, 

Second Only to Grant: Quartermaster General Montgomery C. 

Meigs (Shippenburg, Pennsylvania: White Mane Books, 2000), 

pp. 18–24.

35 Meigs’ report was published as 32nd Cong., 2nd sess., S. Exdoc. 

48 (1853); quote from Weigley, Quartermaster General, p. 61. 

Warren T. Hannum, “Water Supply of the District of Columbia,” 

Professional Memoirs, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, vol. 4 (1912), 

p. 226. Edwin A. Schmitt and Philip O. Macqueen, “Washington 

Aqueduct,” The Military Engineer, vol. 61 (1949), p. 205.

36 Quote from letter, Meigs to Davis, April 18, 1853, NARA, RG 

77. See also: letter, Meigs to Davis, February 22, 1855. Weigley, 

Quartermaster General, p. 62.

37 Ways, Aqueduct, p. 11.

38 William T. S. Curtis, “Cabin John Bridge,” RCHS, vol. 2 (1899), 

pp. 295–6; Harold K. Skramsted, “The Engineer as Architect in 

Washington: The Contribution of Montgomery Meigs,” RCHS,

vols. 69–70 (1969–70), p. 268; Philip O. Macqueen, “Cabin John 

Bridge,” The Military Engineer, vol. 24 (1932), pp. 566–8 and 

“Rock Creek Bridge,” The Military Engineer, vol. 28 (1936), 

pp. 111–3.

39 Harry C. Ways, “Montgomery C. Meigs and the Washington 

Aqueduct,” in William C. Dickinson, et al., Montgomery C. Meigs 

and the Building of the Nation’s Capital (Athens: Ohio University 

Press, 2001), p. 27. Annual Report of the Secretary of War, 1857,

35th Cong., 1st sess., S. Exdoc. 11 (1857), pt. III, p. 26.

40 35th Cong., 1st sess., S. Exdoc. 34 (1858), p. 5.

41 James M. Goode, “Architecture and Politics: Thomas Ustick 

Walter and the Enlargement of the United States Capitol, 

1850–1865,” Ph.D. diss., The George Washington University, 

1995. William C. Allen, History of the United States Capitol

(Washington: GPO, 2001), pp. 140–4.

42 Estimates and Plans for Alteration of Capitol, 28th Cong., 1st 

sess., H. Doc. 51 (1843–44). Pamela Scott, “Robert Mills and the 

United States Capitol,” AIA symposium American Architectural 

Practice: The Formative Years (1989), pp. 16–7. 

43 Allen, History of the Capitol, pp. 203–4. Susan Brizzolara 

Wojcik, “Thomas U. Walter and Iron in the United States Capitol: 

An Alliance of Architecture, Engineering, and Industry,” Ph.D. 

diss., University of Delaware, 1998, pp. 258–65. 

44 Daily Union, April 5, 1854; see also April 8, 11, and 15. 

Washington Sentinel, April 8 and 9, 1854; see also, April 5, 25, 

and 28.

45 Dean A. Herrin, “The Eclectic Engineer: Montgomery C. Meigs 

and His Engineering Projects,” in Dickinson, et al., Meigs,

pp. 3–20.

46 Allen, History of the Capitol, pp. 218, 303–4. In April, 1860, 

Captain William B. Franklin, Meigs’s replacement, responding to 

a Senate resolution to move its chamber to an outside wall, noted 

that such a move would require major demolition and rebuilding 

of half the north wing’s interiors at a cost of about $365,000 and 

two years of work. The alterations were not undertaken.

47 Ibid., p. 218.

48 Ibid., pp. 245–6. Charles E. Fairman, Art and Artists of the Capitol 

of the United States of America (Washington: GPO, 1927), p. 143.

49 Wendy Wolff, Capitol Builder: The Shorthand Journals of 

Montgomery C. Meigs, 1853–1859, 1861 (Washington: GPO, 

2001), passim.

50 Allen, History of the Capitol, pp. 221–3. 

51 Ibid., p. 224.

52 Wolff, Capitol Builder, p. 178.

53 Ibid., p. 183. August Schoenborn was Walter’s chief draftsman 

employed by him at the Capitol beginning in 1851.

54 Allen, History of the Capitol, pp. 229–36.

55 Pamela Scott, Temple of Liberty: Building the Capitol for a New 

Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 100. Allen, 

History of the Capitol, pp. 253–5. Wolff, Capitol Builder, p. 358.

56 Allen, History of the Capitol, pp. 234–42.

57 Ibid., pp. 247, 250. Barbara Wolanin, Contantino Brumidi, Artist 

of the Capitol (Washington: GPO, 1998).

58 [Crew], Centennial History, p. 667.

59 Allen, History of the Capitol, pp. 268–9.

60 Ibid., p. 270.

61 Wolff, Capitol Builder, p. 653.

N o t e s t o P a g e s 3 7 – 6 2

278
62 Ibid., pp. xxvii, 300.

63 History of the Civil War defenses summarized from Benjamin 

Franklin Cooling III and Walton H. Owen II, Mr. Lincoln’s Forts: 

A Guide to the Civil War Defenses of Washington (Shippensburg, 

Pennsylvania: White Mane Publishing Co., Inc., 1988).

64 J. G. Barnard, quoted in Cooling and Owen, Mr. Lincoln’s Forts,

p. 28.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid., p. 26.

C h a p t e r 3 : T h e V i c t o r i a n C i t y , 

1 8 6 5 – 9 0

1 William Stull Holt, The Office of the Chief of Engineers of the 

Army: Its Non-Military History (Washington: Brookings Institute, 

1923), pp. 50–5. Between 1871 and 1874, Washington was governed by a territorial governor and Board of Public Works charged 

with repairing damage done to the city during the Civil War and 

instituting modern public works.

2 Monthly Returns of the Corps of Engineers, May 1867, NARA, 

RG 77.

3 William Tindall, Standard History of the City of Washington from 

a Study of the Original Sources, (Knoxville, Tennessee: H. W. 

Crew and Co., 1914), p. 472. Statutes, vol. 14, p. 466. The 

Aqueduct had been controlled by the Secretary of the Interior 

since mid-1862 (Statutes, vol. 12, p. 620).

4 John Reps, Washington on View (Chapel Hill: University of North 

Carolina Press, 1991), p. 151.

5 U.S. Congress, House. Report of the Secretary of War (hereafter 

Rpt. Sec. War). Report of Brevet Brigadier General N. Michler,

40th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Exdoc. 1 (1867), p. 522.

6 Ibid. p. 531. William Seale, The White House: The History of 

an American Idea (Washington: American Institute of Architects 

Press, 1992), pp. 116–21.

7 Letter, R. D. Mussey to Thaddeus Stevens, June 12, 1866, NARA, 

RG 233, Records of the House of Representatives, 

H.R. 39A–F2.4.

8 “Communication of N. Michler, Major of Engineers,” 39th Cong., 

2d Sess., Sen. Misc. Doc. 21 (February 13, 1867), p. 1.

9 Ibid., p. 2.

10 New York Times, July 19, 1881.

11 “Communication...Michler,” op. cit., p. 3.

12 Ibid., pp. 4–5.

13 Survey of the Potomac River, 40th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Exdoc. 292 

(1868).

14 U.S. Congress, House. Rpt. Sec. War. Report of the Chief of 

Engineers (hereafter cited as Rpt. Ch. Eng.), 42nd Cong., 2nd 

sess., H. Exdoc. 1 (1871), p. 969.

15 U.S. Congress, House. Rpt. Ch. Eng., 58th Cong., 3rd sess., 

H. Doc. 2 (1904), p. 3917, and Rpt. Ch. Eng., 56th Cong., 1st 

sess., H. Doc. 2 (1899), p. 3822.

16 Statutes, vol. 30, p. 570.

17 Rpt. Ch. Eng., 1904, pp. 3912–8.

18 Rpt. Ch. Eng., 1871, p. 976.

19 U.S. Congress, House. Rpt. Sec. War. Improvement and Care of 

Public Buildings and Grounds in the District of Columbia, 56th 

Cong., 1st sess., H. Exdoc. 2 (1899), p. 3823.

20 U.S. Congress. House. Rpt. Ch. Eng., 59th Cong., 1st sess., 

H. Doc 2 (1905), pp. 2653–4.

21 Rpt. Ch. Eng., 1871, p. 969.

22 U.S. Congress, House. Rpt. Ch. Eng., 44th Cong., 2nd sess., 

H. Exdoc. 1 (1876), pp. 683–4, and 45th Cong., 2nd sess., 

H. Exdoc. 1 (1877), p. 1065.

23 Rpt. Ch. Eng., 1877, p. 1065.

24 U.S. Congress, House. Report of the Board of Public Works of the 

District of Columbia from its Organization until November 1, 1872,

42nd Cong., 3rd sess., H. Exdoc. 1 (1872), pt. VI, p. 6.

25 The activities of the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds are 

detailed in the Annual Reports of the Chief of Engineers from 1871 

until the office ceased to exist in 1925, except for 1868–70, when 

Michler made no reports. Mary Clemmer Ames, Ten Years in 

Washington (Hartford: A.D. Worthington & Co., 1874), p. 73.

26 Mary-Jane M. Dowd, comp., Records of the Office of Public 

Buildings and Public Parks of the National Capital (Washington: 

NARA, 1992), pp. 58–9. James M. Goode, The Outdoor Sculpture 

of Washington, D.C. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 

1974), p. 281.

27 “Interview with Professor Baird,” Forest and Stream, vol. 10 

(1878), p. 214. U.S. Congress, House. Rpt. Ch. Eng., “Annual 

Report of Colonel O. E. Babcock,” 43d Cong., 2d Sess., 

H. Exdoc. 1 (1874), pp. 385–6.

28 George Alfred Townsend, New Washington, or the Renovated City

(Washington: Chronicle Publishing Company, 1874), pp. 17–8.

29 Rpt. Sec. War, 1872, p. 1017.

30 Rpt. Ch. Eng., 1904, p. 3939.

31 Alan Lessoff, The Nation and Its City: Politics, “Corruption,” and 

Progress in Washington, D.C., 1861–1902 (Baltimore: Johns 

Hopkins University Press, 1994), p. 56. No record of their meetings (if any) has been found.

32 Ibid., p. 63.

N o t e s t o P a g e s 6 2 – 8 1

279
33 Brooks D. Simpson, “Orville Elias Babcock,” ANB, vol.1 (1998), 

pp. 813.

34 Ben Perley Poore, Perley’s Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the 

National Metropolis (Philadelphia: Hubbard Brothers, 1886), 

vol. 2, pp. 313–4.

35 Quoted in “Babcock,” ANB, p. 813.

36 Pamela Scott, “Robert Mills and American Monuments,” in John 

Bryan, ed. Robert Mills, Architect (Washington: AIA Press, 1991), 

pp. 143–72.

37 Letter, J. C. Ives to Thomas Carbery, August 10, 1859, RG 42, 

Papers of the Washington National Monument Society (hereafter 

WNMS), Secretary’s Correspondence, Box 10. Mills described 

both the foundations and the preparations for laying them in a 

report published in the National Intelligencer on September 15, 

1848, just as they were nearly level with the ground. The only 

known Mills drawing showing the foundations (in plan and section) survives in Thomas Lincoln Casey’s papers at the Society for 

the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

38 Louis Torres, “To the immortal name and memory of George 

Washington”: The United States Army Corps of Engineers and the 

Construction of the Washington Monument (Washington: Office of 

the Chief of Engineers, n.d.), p. 33.

39 Frederick L. Harvey, History of the Washington National 

Monument and Washington National Monument Society

(Washington: GPO, 1903), p. 80.

40 Quoted in Torres, “immortal name,” p. 34.

41 Letter, J. G. Barnard, Z. B. Tower, and H. G. Wright to A. A. 

Humphreys, August 7, 1874, RG 42, Papers WNMS, Secretary’s 

Correspondence, Box 10.

42 Henry R. Searle, Washington Monument Monograph (Washington: 

Gibson Brothers Printers, [1877]) p. 8. Several designs and their 

sources are published in Bates Lowry, The Architecture of 

Washington, D.C. (Washington: The Dunlap Society, 1976), 

Chapter V, microfiche 2.

43 Torres, “immortal name,” pp. 34–7. Samuel Willard Crompton, 

“Joseph Christmas Ives,” ANB, vol. 21, pp. 722–3.

44 Torres, “immortal name,” pp. 47–8.

45 Ibid., p. 54.

46 Ibid., pp. 55–7, 59–80.

47 George J. Binczewshi, “The Point of the Monument: A History of 

the Aluminum Cap of the Washington Monument,” Journal of the 

Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, vol. 47, no. 11 (1995), pp. 

20–5.

48 See Pamela Scott, “Montgomery C. Meigs and Victorian 

Architectural Traditions,” in Dickinson, et al., Meigs, pp. 73–9.

49 NARA, RG 233, Records of the House of Representatives, 

HR39A–F2.16, Committee on Appropriations, Department of 

War. Scott, Meigs, p. 79.

50 Quoted in Jennifer Laurie Ossman, “Reconstructing a National 

Image: The State, War and Navy Building and the Politics of 

Federal Design, 1866–90,” Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 

1996, p. 48.

51 The Executive Office of the President, The Old Executive Office 

Building: A Victorian Masterpiece (Washington: GPO, 1984), 

pp. [17–8] (unpaginated).

52 Ossman, “Reconstructing,” pp. 180–5. U.S. Congress, House. 

State, War and Navy Building: Letter from the Secretary of War,

50th Cong., 1st sess., H. Exdoc. 337 (1888), p. 3. Donald Lehman, 

Executive Office Building (Washington: General Services 

Administration, 1964), p. 47.

53 “A Notable Career: The Retirement of General Casey by 

Operation of Law,” Washington Star, May 4, 1895. State, War and 

Navy, pp. 4–5. 

54 Lehman, Executive, pp. 47–8.

55 Elsa M. Santoyo, ed., Creating an American Masterpiece 

(Washington: American Institute of Architects Press, 1988), p. 69.

56 Ossman, “Reconstructing,” State, War and Navy, pp. 200–1.

57 Executive Office, Old Executive..., footnote 47.

58 Report of the U.S. National Museum...for the year ending June 30, 

1903 (Washington: GPO, 1905), p. 240.

59 H. Rpt. 244, 45th Cong., 1st sess. (1878), quoted in Report of the 

U.S. National Museum, p. 243.

60 Report of the U.S. National Museum, p. 244.

61 Ibid., p. 247.

62 “Fire-Proof Building for the Army Medical Department,” 47th 

Cong., 2d sess., H. Rpt. 1995 (1883).

63 Robert S. Henry, The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology: Its 

First Century, 1862–1962 (Washington: Department of the Army, 

1964), pp. 73–83. Tanya Beauchamp, “Adolph Cluss and the 

Building of the U.S. National Museum: An Architecture of Perfect 

Adaptability,” M.A. thesis, University of Virginia, 1972, 

pp. 56–60.

64 Linda Brody Lyons, A Handbook to the Pension Building: Home of 

the National Building Museum (Washington: National Building 

Museum, 1993).

65 “Fireproof Buildings,” unidentified newspaper clipping dated 

February 4, 1882, and signed M. C. Meigs, Montgomery C. Meigs 

Papers, Manuscript Division, LOC.

66 Joyce L. McDaniel, “Caspar Buberl: The Pension Building Civil 

War Frieze and Other Washington, D.C., Sculpture,” RCHS, 

vol. 50 (1980), p. 335.

N o t e s t o P a g e s 8 1 – 1 0 1

280
N o t e s t o P a g e s 1 0 2 – 1 1 6

67 Linda B. Lyons, “The Pension Building: Function and Form,” 

in Dickinson, et al., Meigs, p. 106.

68 Beth Sullebarger, Historic Structures Report, U.S. Pension Building

(Washington: Privately printed, 1984), pp. 3.2.1 to 3.3.19.

69 Ibid., p. 3.3.10.

70 Robert Dale Owen, Hints on Public Architecture (New York: 

Da Capo Press, 1979 reprint of 1849 edition), p. 98. American 

Architect and Building News, vol. 12 (November 18, 1882), 

p. 1106.

71 Frances Mary Brousseau, “The Library of Congress, 1873–1897: 

The Building, Its Architects, and the Politics of Nineteenth-Century 

Architectural Practice,” Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1998. 

John Y. Cole, “Struggle for a Structure: Ainsworth Rand Spofford 

and a New Building for the Library of Congress,” in John Y. Cole 

and Henry Hope Reed, The Library of Congress: The Art and 

Architecture of the Thomas Jefferson Building (New York: W. W. 

Norton & Company, 1997), pp. 31–63.

72 Cole, “Struggle,” p. 50–51. Washington Evening Star,

September 24, 1889. Green’s Diary is in the Manuscript Division, 

LOC.

73 Brousseau, “Library,” p. 392.

74 Charles H. Baumann, The Influence of Angus Snead Macdonald 

and the Snead Bookstack on Library Architecture (Methchen, New 

Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1972), pp. 65–75.

75 Cole, “Struggle,” p. 51.

76 [John L. Smithmeyer,] History of the Construction of the Library of 

Congress, Washington, D.C. (Washington: Beresford, printer, 

1906), p. 65.

77 U.S. Congress, House. Report of Thomas Lincoln Casey, Brigadier 

General United States Army, in Charge of Construction of New 

Library of Congress, 54th Cong., 1st sess., S. Doc. 5 (1895) and 

Building for the Library of Congress, 54th Cong., 2nd sess., 

H. Doc. 20 (1896). 

78 Thomas P. Somma, “The Sculptural Program for the Library of 

Congress,” in Cole and Reed, Library of Congress, p. 320.

79 Charles Moore, The Life and Times of Charles Follen McKim

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1929), pp. 70–1.

80 Richard Murray, “Painted Words: Murals in the Library of 

Congress,” in Cole and Reed, Library of Congress, pp. 200, 308, 

footnote 10.

81 Quoted in Cole, “Struggle,” p. 51. 

82 Murray, “Painted Words,” p. 199. Somma, “Sculptural Program,” 

p. 230.

83 Cole, “Struggle,” pp. 51, 56–7. Smithmeyer, History, p. 20. 

84 Brousseau, “Library,” p. 413.

85 Smithmeyer, History, p. 60.

86 Communication from the Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army, 

Transmitting a Report on the Construction of the Building for the 

Library of Congress, 51st Cong., 1st sess., S. Misc. Doc. 8, 

December 4, 1889, pp. 1–2.

87 Brousseau, “Library,” pp. 430, 435–7. Cole, “Struggle,” pp. 51, 

306. Green’s defense of his and Casey’s work appears in U.S. 

Congress, Joint Committee on the Library, “Condition of the 

Library of Congress,” March 3, 1897, 54th Cong., 2d sess., S. Rpt. 

1573 (1897), p. 5. “Protest Against Placing Name of General 

Casey’s Son on Table of Library Building,” 54th Cong., 2d sess., 

S. Doc. 88 (1897).

88 Green’s two-volume diary is among his papers in the Manuscript 

Division, LOC. Bernard R. Green, “The Building for the Library 

of Congress,” Smithsonian Institution Annual Report, 1897, p. 627.

89 James E. Miller, Jr., Walt Whitman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 

1959), p. 82.

90 Tindall, Standard History, pp. 254–5. Green, Washington, Village 

and Capital, p. 302. Franklin T. Howe, “The Board of Public 

Works,” RCHS, vol. 3 (1900), pp. 257–78. William M. Maury, 

Alexander “Boss” Shepherd and the Board of Public Works, GW 

Washington Studies, no 3 (Washington: George Washington 

University, 1975).

91 Evening Star Index, Washingtoniana Division, Martin Luther 

King, Jr. Library. 

92 C. H. Forbes-Lindsay, Washington: The City and the Seat of 

Government (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Co., 1908), pp. 224–5.

93 Phillip Ogilvie, “Chronology of Events in the History of the 

District of Columbia,” 1988 typescript, Historical Society of 

Washington, D.C. William Tindall, Origin and Government of the 

District of Columbia (Washington: GPO, 1908), pp. 116–7.

94 Tindall, Standard History, pp. 249–50. Green, Washington, Village 

and Capital, pp. 357–8. Statutes, vol. 16, p. 419. Rpt. Sec. War, 

1867, pp. 523–30.

95 Tindall, Standard History, p. 269. Green, Washington, Village and 

Capital, p. 360.

96 Tindall, Origin and Government, p. 116.

97 “The New Washington,” Century Magazine (March 1884), reprinted 

in Terry Oppel and Tony Meisel, Washington, D.C.: A Turn-of-theCentury Treasury (Secaucus, New Jersey: Castle, 1987), pp. 117–36.

98 Report of Lt. F.V. Greene on the work of filling up the old canal 

in Washington City, 47th Cong., 1st sess., S. Misc. Doc. 28 

(1882), p. 1.

99 Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington: Capital City, 

1879–1950 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 36.

100 Quoted in Roland M. Brennan, “Brigadier General Richard L. 

Hoxie, United States Army, 1861–1930,” RCHS, vols. 57–59 

(1961), p. 91.

281
101 Rufus Rockwell Wilson, Washington: The Capital City and Its 

Part in the History of the Nation (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott 

Company, 1902), vol. 2, pp. 379–80.

102 Brennan, “Hoxie,” pp. 87–95.

103 Alison K. Hoagland, “Nineteenth-Century Building Regulations 

in Washington, D.C.,” RCHS, vol. 52 (1989), pp. 57–77. In 1860, 

New York enacted America’s first building regulations (based on 

those of London instituted in 1855), but it was the destruction by 

fire of all or large sections of several American cities that led to 

their issuance beginning in the early 1870s. 

104 Ibid.

105 Ed Hatcher, “Washington’s Nineteenth-Century Citizens’ 

Associations and the Senate Park Commission Plan,” Washington 

History, vol. 14, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2002), pp. 70–95.

106 Michael R. Harrison, “The Evil of the Misfit Subdivisions: Creating 

the Permanent System of Highways of the District of Columbia,” 

Washington History, vol. 14, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2002), 

pp. 26–55; Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners of the 

District of Columbia for 1879, p. 386–7; 1880, p. 218; 1881, 

p. 226.

107 Statutes at Large 25 (1888), p. 451, Annual Report of the Board of 

Commissioners of the District of Columbia for 1888, pp. 257–8.

108 Statutes at Large 27 (1893), pp. 532–7. Senate Report 207, 

“Highways in the District of Columbia,” 52nd Cong., 1st Sess. 

(February 10, 1892).

109 Statutes at Large 30 (1898), pp. 519–20.

110 U.S. Congress, House. Improvement and Care of Public Buildings 

and Grounds in the District of Columbia, 45th Cong., 2nd sess., 

H. Exdoc. 1 (1877), p. 1070.

111 U.S. Congress, House. Rpt. Ch. Eng., Annual Report of Colonel 

O. E. Babcock, Corps of Engineers, 43rd Cong., 2nd sess., 

H. Exdoc. 1 (1874), p. 392. Myer, Bridges, pp. 3–5. U.S. 

Congress, House. Rpt. Sec. War. Rpt Ch. Eng. 43rd Cong., 1st 

sess., H. Exdoc. 1 (1873), p. 1159.

112 Annual Report, 1874, p. 394.

113 Myer, Bridges, p. 45. U.S. Congress, House. Rpt. Ch. Eng., Annual 

Report of O. E. Babcock, Corps of Engineers, 44th Cong., 1st sess., 

H. Exdoc. 1 (1875), pp. 806–7. U.S. Congress, House. Rpt. Ch. 

Eng., Annual Report of O. E. Babcock, Corps of Engineers, 44th 

Cong., 2nd sess., H. Exdoc. 1 (1876), p. 687. “Letter of the 

Secretary of War Relative to the Report and Survey of the 

Commissioner of Public Buildings and Grounds on a New Navy 

Yard Bridge across the Anacostia River,” 41st Cong., 1st sess., 

S. Exdoc. 10 (1869).

114 J. G. Barnard, A Report on the Defenses of Washington, to the Chief 

of Engineers, U.S. Army, professional paper 20, Corps of Engineers, 

Washington (1871), quoted in Cooling, Mr. Lincoln’s Forts, p. 27; 

Myer, Bridges, p. 12. Statutes, vol. 21, p. 329; Duryee, Corps of 

Engineers, p. 54–5; U.S. Congress, House. Rpt. Ch. Eng., The 

Aqueduct Bridge, 49th Cong., 2nd sess., H. Exdoc., 128 (1887), pp. 

3, 6; Joanna Schneider Zangrando, “Monumental Bridge Design in 

Washington, D.C., as a Reflection of American Culture, 

1886–1932,” Ph.D. diss., The George Washington University, 1974.

115 Myer, Bridges, p. 47; U.S. Congress, House. Rpt. Ch. Eng., 

Bridge across the Eastern Branch of the Potomac River at the 

Foot of Pennsylvania Avenue East, 50th Cong., 2nd sess., H. R. 

1807 (1888). U.S. Congress, Senate. Letter from the Acting 

Secretary of War transmitting...a report...concerning the bridge 

over the Eastern Branch..., 51st Cong., 1st sess., S. Exdoc. 218 

(1890).

116 Barnard, Report on the Defenses of Washington, op. cit.

117 Myer, Bridges, pp. 50–1; U.S. Congress, House. Survey for Bridge 

across Anacostia River, 54th Cong., 1st sess., H. Doc. 163 (1896), 

p. 8.

118 Ibid.

119 Peter C. Hains, “Reclamation of the Potomac Flats at Washington, 

D.C.,” Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers,

vol. 36 (January 1894), p. 57.

120 U. S. Congress, House. Rpt. Ch. Eng. River Channel Improvements,

40th Cong., 3rd sess., H. Exdoc. 1 (1868), pp. 889–90.

121 U.S. Congress, Senate. Rpt. Ch. Eng., Report of the Board on the 

Improvements of the Harbors of Washington and Georgetown, 42nd 

Cong., 3rd sess., S. Misc. Doc. 15 (1872), p. 2.

122 U.S. Congress, Senate. Rpt. Sec. War, Letter of the Secretary of 

War relative to the improvement of the sanitary condition of 

Washington, and for deepening the channel of the Potomac River,

45th Cong., 3rd sess., S. Exdoc. 32 (1879). Lt. Col. Thomas L. 

Casey also wrote a Potomac Flats report in 1878, see, 45th Cong., 

3rd sess., H. Exdoc. 70 (1878).

123 U.S. Congress, Senate. Letter...Transmitting a Report of S. T. 

Abert, Relative to the Survey of the Potomac River in the Vicinity 

of Washington, 47th Cong., 1st sess., S. Exdoc. 126 (1882).

124 Testimony before the Select Committee...on the Condition of the 

Potomac River Front of Washington, 47th Cong., 1st sess., 

S. Misc. Doc. 133 (1882).

125 Statutes, vol. 22, p. 198. 

126 “Memoir of Peter Conover Hains,” Transactions of the American 

Society of Civil Engineers, vol. 85 (1922), pp. 1682–3.

127 Hains, “Reclamation,” pp. 55–80.

128 U.S. Congress, House. Rpt. Sec. War, National Road From the 

Aqueduct Bridge to Mount Vernon, Va., 51st Cong., 1st Sess., 

H. Exdoc. 106 (1890), p. 3.

129 The technical system of educating West Point engineers had been 

established early in the century. Molloy, “Technical Education.”

N o t e s t o P a g e s 1 1 6 – 1 2 9

282
C h a p t e r 4 : T h e P r o g r e s s i v e C i t y , 

1 8 9 0 – 1 9 1 5

1 “Commission to Consider Certain Improvements in the District of 

Columbia,” 56th Cong., 2d Sess., S. Rpt. 1919 (Jan. 18, 1901), 

p. 1.

2 John W. Reps, Monumental Washington (Princeton: Princeton 

University Press, 1967), pp. 96–140.

3 “The New Executive Mansion,” Washington Evening Star,

January 10, 1891. Seale, White House, pp. 154–9.

4 Architecture and Building, vol. 13, no. 23 (Dec. 6, 1890), p. 317.

5 “The White House Too Small,” New York Times, July 11, 1893. 

“Journal of Joseph Dentz, Georgetown cabinet maker,” Curator’s 

Office, The White House. George Kennan, “The White House: 

The Plans for Its Reconstruction,” The Outlook, February 1, 1902, 

p. 321.

6 William V. Cox, Celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary 

of the Establishment of the Seat of Government in the District of 

Columbia (Washington: GPO, 1901), pp. 61–4.

7 “The A.I.A. and the White House,” New York Times,

December 18, 1900.

8 Seale, White House, pp. 160–1. William Seale, President’s House, 

pp. 637–8.

9 Esther Singleton, The Story of the White House (New York: 

The McClure Company, 1907), vol. 2, p. 287.

10 “Transforming the White House into a Magnificent Dwelling,” 

The Architect and Builders Journal, vol. 3 (June 1902), p. 17.

11 Biographical files, Office of History, Headquarters, U.S. Army 

Corps of Engineers, Alexandria, Virginia. “Col. Bingham Leaves,” 

Washington Post, February 12, 1903, and “Col. Bingham Badly 

Hurt,” Washington Post, March 20, 1904.

12 Autograph, undated note, McKim to Root, Elihu Root Papers, 

LOC. Letter, Moore to McKim, January 31, 1907, McKim, Mead & 

White Papers, NYHS. Dozens of newspapers mentioning Bingham 

are found among his papers in the Manuscript Division, Library of 

Congress.

13 Annual Report of the Chief of Engineers (hereafter ARCE), 1895, 

p. 4136. Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the 

U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, Supplement, vol. 7, 

1920–30. Seventy Second Annual Report of the Association of 

Graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point, 

New York, June 10, 1941, pp. 198–203. “The Printing Office 

Site,” Washington Evening Star, September 26, 1890.

14 “The Government Printing Office,” Washington Evening Star,

February 26, 1891. “Erection of New Building for GPO,” ARCE, 

1901, pp. 3801–22.

15 Annual Reports of the War Department, ARCE, part 5, GPO, 

1901, Appendix HHH, “Erection of New Building for 

Government Printing Office,” p. 3803.

16 Annual Reports of the War Department, ARCE, part 5, GPO, 

1901, pp. 3802–11 and 1904, pp. 3819–60. Washington Post,

January 1, 1902.

17 William R. Roberts, “Reform and Revitalization, 1890–1903,” 

in Kenneth J. Hagen and William R. Roberts, eds., Against All 

Enemies: Interpretations of American Military History from 

Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Greenwood Press, 

1986). Benjamin Franklin Cooling, “To Preserve the Peace,” 

Washington History, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1989), pp. 71–86. 

Leland M. Roth, McKim, Mead & White Architects (New York: 

Harper & Row, 1983), pp. 280–2. Letters, McKim to Root, 

July 21, 1902, and September 19, 1902, McKim Papers, LOC.

18 ARCE, 1904, IV, pp. 3866–70. ARCE, 1906, II, pp. 2259–68. 

Seventy-Second...Graduates...West Point, op. cit. Andrea Kim 

Foster, “The Conflict Between the Engineers and Architects over 

Control of Washington Barracks, 1902,” paper dated July 2, 1986, 

American Studies Department, George Washington University. 

NARA, RG 42, Entry 193, “Copies of Correspondence Relating to 

the Design of the Army War College, June–July 1902.”

19 Dana G. Dalrymple, “Agriculture, Architects, and the Mall, 

1901–1905: The Plan is Tested,” Sue Kohler and Pamela 

Scott, eds., Designing the Nation’s Capital: The 1901 Plan for 

Washington, D.C. (Washington: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 

2006), pp. 207–43. David J. Murphy, “Architects, Engineers, and 

the New Agriculture Department Buildings: A Reinterpretation of 

the Fight Over Implementing the McMillan Plan,” unpublished 

paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Society for American 

City and Regional Planning, Richmond, Virginia, November 1991.

20 Seventy-Second Report...West Point, p. 314.

21 Cynthia R. Field and Jeffrey T. Tilman, “Creating a Model for the 

National Mall: The Design of the National Museum of Natural 

History,” JSAH, vol. 63, no. 1 (March 2004), pp. 52–73.

22 Letter by Charles F. McKim to Bernard R. Green, April 18, 1904, 

p. 7, McKim, Mead & White Papers, Library of Congress.

23 Ibid., pp. 7–8.

24 Glenn Brown, ed., “Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Annual 

Convention of the American Institute of Architects,” Journal of 

Proceedings AIA (Washington: Gibson Bros., 1903), pp. 8–9. 

[John S. Sewell], “The Relation of the Architect and Engineer to 

the Design and Erection of Government Buildings,” in Brown, 

Proceedings, op. cit., p. 80. Antoinette J. Lee, Architects to the 

Nation: The Rise and Decline of the Supervising Architect’s Office

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 163–88.

25 Roth, McKim, pp. 363–8. Brown, Proceedings, pp. 7–8. Letter, 

McKim to Green, April 18, 1904, and Letter, Green to McKim, 

April 23, 1904, McKim, Mead & White Papers, NYHS. 

N o t e s t o P a g e s 1 3 2 – 1 4 9

283
26 “

Programme of Competition for the Grant Statue or Memorial, 

Washington, D.C.,” pamphlet dated April 10, 1901, copy in the 

McKim, Mead & White Papers, NYHS. Pamela Scott, “‘A City as 

a Work of Art’: The Emergence of the Senate Park Commission’s 

Monumental Core,” in Senate Park Commission Plan.

27 Scott, “City as a Work of Art.”

28 Clarence O. Sherrill, The Grant Memorial in Washington, ed. 

James William Bryan (Washington: GPO, 1924). Kathryn Allamong 

Jacob, Testament to Union: Civil War Monuments in Washington, 

D.C. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). NARA, 

RG 42, Records of the Grant Memorial Commission, 1901–28.

29 Dennis Robert Montagna, “Henry Merwin Shrady’s Ulysses S. 

Grant Memorial in Washington, D.C.: A Study in Iconography, 

Content, and Patronage,” Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 

1987, pp. 12, 24–5, 38, 46–7.

30 Ibid., pp. 48–59.

31 Christopher A. Thomas, “The Lincoln Memorial and Its Architect, 

Henry Bacon (1866–1924),” Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1990, 

pp. 327–419. Edward F. Conklin, The Lincoln Memorial in 

Washington (Washington: GPO, 1927), pp. 16–7.

32 Sue A. Kohler, The Commission of Fine Arts: A Brief History, 1910–

1995 (Washington: Commission of Fine Arts, c. 1996), pp. 1–6.

33 Thomas, “Lincoln Memorial,” pp. 444–72.

34 Thomas, “Lincoln Memorial,” pp. 445–528. Concklin, Lincoln 

Memorial, op. cit., pp. 15–21.

35 Thomas, “Lincoln Memorial,” pp. 528–41.

36 Thomas, “Lincoln Memorial,” p. 538. “Statement of Maj. W. V. 

Judson, Engineer Commissioner of the District of Columbia,” 

Hearings Before the Committee on the Library, H.R. 13045, March 

5–6, 1912. (Washington: GPO, 1912), pp. 60–4. “Memoir of 

William Voorhees Judson, M. Am. Soc. C. E.,” Transactions of the 

American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. 88 (1925), pp. 1405–8.

37 Thomas, “Lincoln Memorial,” pp. 541–77.

38 “Lincoln Memorial Award in Dispute,” Washington Herald,

October 18, 1913. “Lincoln Memorial Delay Held Likely,” 

Washington Evening Star, December 4, 1913, and “The Lincoln 

Memorial Contract,” Washington Evening Star, December 5, 1913. 

Letter, Henry Bacon to William W. Harts, January 27, 1914. 

NARA, RG 42, Records of the Office of Public Buildings and 

Public Parks of the National Capital (hereafter RG 42).

39 Thomas, “Lincoln Memorial,” pp. 579–82. Douglas L. Weart, “The 

Foundations of the Lincoln Memorial,” in Concklin, Lincoln 

Memorial, pp. 55–61. Col. W. W. Harts, “Cylinder-Pier 

Foundations for Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.,” Engineering 

News, vol. 71 (May 7, 1914), p. 1019. Christopher A. Thomas, 

“The Marble of the Lincoln Memorial: Whitest, Prettiest, 

and...Best,” Washington History, vol. 2 (Fall/Winter 1993–94), 

pp. 43–63. Christopher A. Thomas, The Lincoln Memorial and 

American Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 

p. 115.

40 Michael Richman, Daniel Chester French, An American Sculptor

(Washington: National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1976), p. 180.

41 William Wright Harts, His Story, written in Rome 1934 (Privately 

published, c. 2001), p. 47.

42 Ibid., passim.

43 “Petition for Public Park,” July 10, 1866. NARA, RG 233, Records 

of the House of Representatives (hereafter RG 233) HR 39A–H20.2. 

Quote from Michler report, reprinted in William V. Cox, “Notes on 

the Establishment of a National Park in the District of Columbia...” 

Senate Committee on the District of Columbia Park Improvement 

Papers No. 7, 1901, p. 16. ARCE, 1867, p. 567. 

44 S. Rpt. 549 quoted in Cox, “Notes,” pp. 22–3. William Bushong, 

Historic Resources Study of Rock Creek Park, District of Columbia

(Denver: National Park Service Denver Service Center, 1990), 

pp. 65–6, 68–9. Report of the Secretary, Board of Control of Rock 

Creek Park, District of Columbia, Operations from the 

Establishment of the Park September 27th, 1890, to May 1, 1907,

p. 5.

45 Bushong, Rock Creek, pp. 69–70; Cornelius W. Heine, “The 

Contributions of Charles Carroll Glover and Other Citizens to the 

Development of the National Capital,” RCHS, vols. 53–56 

(1953–56), pp. 232–8. Washington Evening Star, December 29, 

1888.

46 Bushong, Rock Creek, p. 71. William Cox writes, “for when it was 

proposed to attach the Rock Creek Park bill as an amendment [to 

the zoo bill,] the Zoological Park, with a smaller appropriation, 

was accepted as a compromise and became law.” Cox, “Notes,” 

p. 4.

47 Public Law No. 297, Statutes at Large 1889–91, vol. 26, 

pp. 492–5.

48 Bushong, Rock Creek, pp. 73–4. The records of the Rock Creek 

Park Commission and the Board of Control of Rock Creek Park 

are in NARA, RG 42.

49 Bushong, Rock Creek, pp. 1, 77–8. Today Rock Creek Park comprises 1,754.62 acres.

50 Ibid., pp. 96, 104. Bushong notes that the creation of Rock Creek 

Park’s central road system “required considerable grading and 

innovative construction and represents the most conspicuous contribution of the Army Corps of Engineers to the park’s designed 

character,” p. 103. Berry Mackintosh, Rock Creek Park: An 

Administrative History (Washington: National Park Service History 

Division, 1985), p. 19.

51 Washington Evening Star, September 1, 1900, quoted in Cox, 

“Notes,” op. cit., p. 15.

52 Bushong, Rock Creek, op. cit., p. 97.

N o t e s t o P a g e s 1 5 0 – 1 6 6

284
53 Ibid., pp. 97–8; Timothy Davis, “Beyond the Mall: The Senate 

Park Commission’s Plan for Washington’s Park System,” in Senate 

Park Commission. Annual Report of the Commissioners of the 

District of Columbia, 1917, vol. 2, p. 181.

54 “Rock Creek Park, a report by Olmsted Brothers, December 

1918,” quoted in Bushong, Rock Creek, p. 99. ARCE, 1918, 

p. 1937 and ARCE, 1919, p. 2044. Statutes, vol. 40, p. 650 made 

Rock Creek Park a part of the D.C. park system as defined in legislation of July 1, 1898. Annual Report of the Commissioners of the 

District of Columbia, 1918, vol. 2, p. 17.

55 Rossell quoted in Timothy Davis, “Rock Creek and Potomac 

Parkway, Washington, DC: The Evolution of a Contested Urban 

Landscape,” Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed 

Landscapes, vol. 19, no. 2 (April–June 1999), p. 152. Rossell’s 

report is 52nd Cong., 2nd sess., S. Misc. Doc. 21 (1893). F. L. 

Olmsted, Jr., “Report of interview on Rock Creek Parkway with 

Capt. Beach, Engineer Commissioner,” September 25, 1901, Job 

2820, Olmsted Associates Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of 

Congress.

56 Davis, “Rock Creek,” pp. 154–5. Reps, Monumental Washington,

pp. 78–80.

57 Reps, Monumental Washington, pp. 74–8. Jon A. Peterson, 

“The Hidden Origins of the McMillan Plan for Washington, 

D.C., 1900–1902,” in Historical Perspectives on Urban Design: 

Washington, D.C. 1890–1910, edited by Antoinette J. Lee, 

Conference Proceedings, October 7, 1983, Center for Washington 

Area Studies, Occasional Paper No. 1, pp. 4–6. 

58 ARCE, 1883, p. 2080 and ARCE, 1887, p. 2536; Ways, Aqueduct,

pp. 71, 76; Frederick Gutheim, Worthy of the Nation: The History 

of Planning for the National Capital (Washington: Smithsonian 

Institution Press, 1977), p. 91. In March 1895 additional funds 

were appropriated to raise the overall height of the dam two and a 

half feet, work that occupied the engineers until November 1896.

59 Aqueduct extension authorized by act of July 15, 1882, Statutes

vol. 22, p. 168.

60 ARCE, 1883, pp. 2081–2.

61 Ways, Aqueduct, pp. 81–4.

62 Lydecker was subjected to a court-martial that fined him and sent 

him to a posting far from Washington. The two civil engineers who 

conducted the investigation were Henry Flad of St. Louis and 

Frederick Graff of Philadelphia. Washington Aqueduct Tunnel,

50th Cong., 2nd sess., S. Rpt. 2686 (1889), pp. 2, 12, 73.

63 Ibid., p. 77. 49th Cong., 2nd, sess., H. Exdoc. 1 (1886), 

pp. 2021–43.

64 Washington Evening Star, November 9, 1894 and January 10, 1896.

65 Ways, Aqueduct, p. 76.

66 Ibid., pp. 92–3, 95, 97.

67 Quote from Statutes, vol. 29, p. 624; Glover’s involvement 

described in Heine, “The Contributions of Charles Carroll Glover 

and Other Citizens,” pp. 240–2.

68 ARCE, 1896, part II, p. 1023; ARCE, 1899, part II, p. 1415.

69 ARCE, 1904, p. 3940. Quote from Report, Bingham to Chief of 

Engineers, July 19, 1899, Reports of the Office of Buildings and 

Grounds, p. 384, NARA, RG 42. ARCE, 1901, part V, p. 3718 ff; 

ARCE, 1902, part IV, p. 2739; ARCE, 1903, p. 2552–5; ARCE, 

1915, part I, pp. 1669–70.

70 ARCE, 1905, p. 2621. Quote from ARCE, 1917, p. 1891. ARCE, 

1908, p. 2399. Quote from ARCE, 1914, p. 3355. See ARCE, 

1917, p. 1891 for legislative history of the park. ARCE, 1913, 

p. 3225. ARCE, 1917, p. 1892.

71 “Col. Cosby, 94, Dies; Placed Cherry Trees,” Washington Star,

March 27, 1962. “Do You Know? The Corps’ Connection to the 

Washington, D.C., Tidal Basin and its Beloved Cherry Trees?” 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Office of History, Vignette No. 48. 

www.hq.usace.army.mil/history. 

72 ARCE, 1892, part II, pp. 1064–9. Hains’s report also was printed 

as 52nd Cong., 1st sess., H. Exdoc. 30 (1891). Duryee, Corps of 

Engineers, p. 77. Survey of the Anacostia River, 55th Cong., 3rd 

sess., H. Doc. 87 (1898), pp. 4, 6.

73 Ibid., p. 7; ARCE, 1892, pp. 1080–3. Survey of the Anacostia 

River, p. 9. Anacostia River Flats, 59th Cong., 1st sess., H. Doc. 

194 (1905). Improvement of the Anacostia Flats, 59th Cong., 1st 

sess., H. Doc. 903 (1909).

74 Anacostia River and Flats, D.C., 64th Cong., 1st sess., H. Doc. 

1357 (1916), pp. 2, 5. National Building Museum, “D.C. Builds. 

The Anacostia Waterfront,” exhibition text, 2004.

75 Myer, Bridges, p. 29, and ARCE, 1870, p. 519, and ARCE, 1871, 

p. 974.

76 Barnard, Report on the Defenses of Washington, quoted in Cooling, 

Mr. Lincoln’s Forts, p. 26. ARCE, 1871, p. 974. Myer, Bridges,

p. 31. Statutes, vol. 31, p. 772–3.

77 “Principal Local Events During 1904,” RCHS, vol. 8 (1904), 

p. 203. Bridge Across the Potomac River, H. Doc. 138, 57th Cong., 

1st sess. (1901). Myer, Bridges, p. 32; “Principal Local Events in 

the Year 1906,” RCHS, vol. 10 (1906), p. 255.

78 Report of the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission (Washington: 

GPO, 1924), pp. 21–8.

79 Myer, Bridges, pp. 65–9.

80 Title of the United States to Lands in the District of Columbia, H. 

Doc. 1055, 64th Cong., 1st sess. (1916); Map of the Public Lands 

under Federal Jurisdiction in the District of Columbia (Washington: 

War Department, Corps of Engineers, 1915).

81 Public Buildings in the District of Columbia, 65th Cong., 2nd 

sess., S. Rpt. 155 (1917), pp. 146–7.

82 Harts, His Story, pp. 43, 46, 49.

N o t e s t o P a g e s 1 6 6 – 1 8 7

285
C h a p t e r 5 : T h e E x p a n d i n g C i t y , 

1 9 1 5 – 5 0

1 Louis Brownlow, A Passion for Anonymity: The Autobiography of 

Louis Brownlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 

pp. 4–5, 22–3.

2 Green, Washington, Capitol City, pp. 237, 246–249. ARCE, 1918, 

part III, p. 3782. ARCE, 1919, part I, p. 2041. Annual Report 

of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia, 65th Cong., 3d 

sess., H. Doc. 1431 (1918), Part II, pp. 6, 21–2.

3 Brownlow, Autobiography, pp. 4–5. Gutheim, Worthy of the Nation, 

pp. 160–1. “General Kutz, Ex-Engineer Commissioner, Dies,” 

Washington Evening Star, January 25, 1951.

4 Quoted in Brownlow, Autobiography, p. 97. See also, Gutheim, 

Worthy of the Nation, p. 160–1, and Eldridge Lovelace, Harland 

Bartholomew: His Contributions to American Urban Planning

(Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois, 1993).

5 Brownlow, Autobiography, p. 97.

6 Annual Report of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia,

1921 (Washington: 1921), p. 10. Brownlow, Autobiography, p. 98.

7 Lt. Col. J. Franklin Bell, “Street Lighting Versus Street Trees,” 

American City (October 1928), p. 122–3. Sarah Pressey Noreen, 

Public Street Illumination in Washington, D.C.: An Illustrated 

History, GW Washington Studies, no. 2 (Washington: George 

Washington University, May 1975).

8 John Dos Passos, “Washington Evening,” in Bill Adler, ed., 

Washington: A Reader (New York: Meredith Press, 1967), pp. 174, 

178.

9 J. Franklin Bell, “City Engineering in Washington,” The Military 

Engineer, vol. 19, no. 107 (September–October 1927), pp. 359–62.

10 ARCE, 1914, part 3, pp. 3372–3. “Wilson to Lay Stone,” 

Washington Post, March 27, 1915, and “Wilson to Review Women 

Marchers at Dedication of Red Cross Building,” May 5, 1917. 

Quote from “Red Cross Home Dedication May 12,” Washington 

Post, April 16, 1917. Dowd, Office of Public Buildings, pp. 95–6. 

http://www.redcross.org/museum/history/square.asp.

11 Colonel W. W. Harts and Colonel C. S. Ridley, “Washington. The 

Mall and Vicinity. Buildings and Occupancy by Various Government 

Activities,” 1917, NARA, Cartographic Division, RG 42 (oversize).

12 Conklin, Lincoln Memorial, p. 64. Charles A. Peters, Jr., “The 

Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool,” The Military Engineer, vol. 15 

(1923), pp. 209–13. ARCE, 1918, part III, p. 3801. ARCE, 1920, 

part I, p. 2028.

13 Conklin, Lincoln Memorial, pp. 73–91. Dowd, Office of Public 

Buildings, op. cit., pp. 83–4. C. O. Sherrill, “The Arlington 

Memorial Amphitheater,” The Military Engineer, vol. 17, no. 92 

(April 1925), pp. 152–3.

14 Bryan, Grant Memorial, p. 58.

15 Sherrill, Grant Memorial, and Conklin, Lincoln Memorial.

16 Quote from Fine Arts Commission Report, in Green, Washington, 

Capitol City, p. 282. Statutes, vol. 43, p. 983.

17 Myer, Bridges, pp. 17–25. Report of the Arlington Memorial Bridge 

Commission. Zangrando, “Monumental Bridge Design,” op. cit.,

chapters 8 and 9, quote p. 407.

18 Constructor, vol. 7 (June 1925), p. 20; (December 1925), pp. 27–8, 

47, 49. John L. Nagle, “The Arlington Memorial Bridge,” The 

Military Engineer, vol. 20 (1928), pp. 154–60. George A. Follett, 

“The Constriction of a Cofferdam,” The Military Engineer, vol. 20 

(1928), pp. 29–31. The Corps often hired contractors but sometimes acted as contractors, hiring day laborers directly.

19 H. Paul Caemmerer, “The Corps of Engineers and the Capital 

City,” The Military Engineer, vol. 45, no. 305 (May–June 1953), 

p. 209. Myer, Bridges, p. 13.

20 Myer, Bridges, p. 13; Statutes at Large, vol. 43, p. 1338.

21 Caemmerer, Corps..., p. 208. Myers, Bridges, p. 47.

22 ARCE, 1918, part I, pp. 1912–3; ARCE, 1925, part I, 

pp. 1913–7. Zack Spratt, “Rock Creek’s Bridges,” RCHS, vols. 

53–56 (1953–56), pp. 101–5, 123. Ways, Aqueduct, pp. 101–5.

23 Anacostia River and Flats, 68th Cong., 1st sess., S. Doc. 37 

(1924), p. 2.

24 ARCE, 1918, part I, p. 512; ARCE, 1923, part I, pp. 1990–3; 

ARCE, 1919, part II, p. 2390; ARCE, 1920, part I, pp. 2005–6; 

ARCE, 1925, part I, pp. 1907–8; ARCE, 1924, part I, p. 1994.

25 Davis, “Rock Creek,” pp. 167, 178. The development of large 

public parks within Washington’s outlying suburbs were a major 

concern of the reorganized agency in 1926. Parks adjacent to 

public schools are one result. 

26 J. C. Pearson and J. J. Earley, “Successful Building in Stucco,” 

American Architect, vol. 117, no. 2309 (March 24, 1920), 

pp. 386–92. Sue A. Kohler and Jeffrey R. Carson, Sixteenth Street 

Architecture (Washington: Commission of Fine Arts, 1978), vol. 1, 

pp. 323–35. HABS No. DC-532, “Meridian Hill Park,” 1985. 

Dowd, Office of Public Buildings, pp. 79–80.

27 “An Architect’s Views,” Washington Evening Star, April 17, 

1886. 69th Cong., 2nd sess., S. Doc. 240 (1926), p. 6. Sally Kress 

Tompkins, A Quest for Grandeur: Charles Moore and the Federal 

Triangle (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).

28 Quote from To Consolidate the Office of Public Buildings and 

Grounds and the Office of the Superintendent of State, War, and 

Navy Department Buildings, H. Rpt. 1363, 68th Cong., 2nd sess. 

(1925), p. 2; Statutes at Large, vol. 43, p. 983; Executive Order 

6166, June 10, 1933, in Executive Orders: President Hoover and 

President Roosevelt (Washington, 1933), not paginated. Elizabeth 

Barthold, “The Predicament of the ‘Parklets’: Understanding 

Washington’s Smaller Parks,” Washington History, vol. 5, no. 1 

(Spring/Summer 1993), pp. 28–39. 

29 Charles W. Eliot II, “U. S. Grant, 3rd: A Word of Personal 

Reminiscence,” RCHS, vols. 66–68 (1966–68), p. 364; Annual 

N o t e s t o P a g e s 1 9 0 – 2 1 2

286
Report of the Director of Public Buildings and Public Parks,

1926 (Washington, 1926), pp. 6–7; Washington Post, August 10, 

1928; Washington Star, August 10, 1928; Washington Evening 

News, August 10, 1928; Green, Washington: Capital City,

pp. 328–9, 383.

30 U. S. Grant, III, “The L’Enfant Plan and Its Evolution,” RCHS,

vols. 32–33 (1932), p. 16.

31 Interview with John Nolan, Jr., Washington, D.C., February 1, 

1974. U. S. Grant III, “The National Capital: Reminiscences of 

Sixty-Five Years,” RCHS, vols. 57–59 (1957–59), pp. 10–1; Letter, 

Grant to Harlan Bartholomew, October 21, 1953, U. S. Grant III 

Collection, Historical Society of Washington, D.C.; Eliot, “U. S. 

Grant, 3rd,” p. 364. Albert W. Atwood, “General Grant, The Man,” 

RCHS, vols. 66–68 (1966–68), p. 360.

32 See letters of W.C. Lyon to Superintendent Architect of the 

Treasury, April 23, 1923; George B. Christian, Jr. to Sherrill, 

June 18, 1923; Delano to Grant, October 24, 1927, and Grant to 

Delano, November 4, 1927. Report, Charles A. Peters, Jr. to 

Grant, August 12, 1925. Specifications, November 19, 1926, 

pp. 6–7, RG 42, Office of Public Buildings and Grounds, NARA, 

White House Correspondence. For Coolidge paraphrase, see D.H. 

Gillette, “Reconstruction of the White House,” The Military 

Engineer, vol. 45 (January-February 1953), p. 8. Seale, President’s 

House, vol. 2, p. 864.

33 Statutes at Large, vol. 43, p. 463; Eliot quote from Gutheim, 

Worthy of the Nation, p. 187; Green, Washington: Capital City,

pp. 284–7; U. S. Grant III, “Planning the National Capital: 

Objectives and Problems of Attainment,” Transactions of the 

American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. 117 (1952), p. 122. Work 

of the National Capital Park and Planning Commission

(Washington: GPO, 1928).

34 Potomac River, North Side of Washington Channel, D.C., 71st Cong., 

2nd sess., H. Doc. 127 (1929); ARCE, 1930, part I. pp. 497, 530; 

ARCE, 1935, part I, pp. 361–2; ARCE, 1940, part I, pp. 474–8; 

Statutes, vol. 44, p. 1031. J. E. Wood, “Improvement of Washington 

Channel,” in vol. 15, no. 83 (September–October 1923), pp. 435–7. 

Caemmerer, “Corps of Engineers,” pp. 208–9.

35 Timothy Davis, “George Washington Memorial Parkway,” pamphlet in the National Park Service series “Highways in Harmony,” 

n.d., n.p.

36 National Road from the Aqueduct Bridge to Mount Vernon, Va.,

51st Cong., 1st sess., S. Exdoc. 106 (1889).

37 Charles Moore, ed., The Improvement of the Park System of the 

District of Columbia, 57th Cong., 1st sess., S. Rpt. 106 (1902), 

pp. 121–2. 

38 Davis, “Memorial Parkway” pamphlet. Duryee, Corps in 

Washington, pp. 93–5.

39 Duryee, Corps in Washington, pp. 93–5. R. E. Royall, “The Mount 

Vernon Memorial Highway,” The Military Engineer, vol. 24, 

no. 135 (May–June 1932), pp. 238–42.

40 R. C. Tripp, “Washington National Airport,” The Military 

Engineer, vol. 31, no. 179 (September–October 1939), pp. 

319–25. Nancy N. Knickerbocker, “Aircraft Noise and Property 

Values,” Ph.D. diss., 1991, University of Maryland, pp. 51–2.

41 Duryee, Corps in Washington, pp. 94–5, 119–20; Howard 

Lovewell Cheney, “Inspection of the Washington National 

Airport,” The Military Engineer, vol. 33, no. 190 (July–August 

1941), pp. 283–6. Howard Lovewell Cheney, “Washington 

National Airport,” Architectural Record, vol. 90, no. 4 (October 

1941), pp. 49–57. James M. Goode, “Flying High: The Origin 

and Design of Washington National Airport,” Washington History,

vol. 1, no. 2 (Fall 1989), pp. 4–25.

42 Work of the National Capitol Park, pp. 23–9. “The Story of the 

Fort Memorial Freeway, 1894–1953,” Geography & Map Division, 

LC, G3852 .F56G45 1953 .R6. Gutheim, Worthy of the Nation,

pp. 242–3.

43 Pentagon history largely summarized from Alfred Goldberg, 

The Pentagon: The First Fifty Years (Washington: Department 

of Defense, 1992). See also: Lenore Fine and Jesse A. Remington, 

The Corps of Engineers: Construction in the United States

(Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, U.S. Army, 

1972), pp. 434–7.

44 Goldberg, Pentagon, p. 14.

45 Ibid., pp. 24–5.

46 Ibid., pp. 14, 24–8.

47 Diane Tepfer, Washingtoniana II, Documentation on Washington 

Architectural Drawings, LOC Prints and Photographs Division.

48 “Planning the Pentagon Building” quoted in Goldberg, Pentagon,

p. 86. Carl M. Brauer, The Man Who Built Washington: A Life 

of John McShain (Wilmington, Delaware: Hagley Museum and 

Library, 1996) pp. 80–8. 

49 Fine and Remington, The Corps, pp. 438, 514–5; Life

(December 21, 1942), pp. 83–4.

50 Ibid., pp. 471–6; Duryee, Corps in Washington, 109, 119–20.

51 “City Unites in Drive for Memorial Stadium,” Washington Post,

November 12, 1944. “General Grant and the Christian Heurich 

Memorial Mansion,” RCHS, vols. 66–68 (1966–68), pp. 365–8.

52 Report of the Commission on the Renovation of the Executive 

Mansion (Washington: GPO, 1952); William P. O’Brien, “Reality 

and Illusion: The White House and Harry S. Truman,” White 

House History, vol. 5 (Spring 1999), pp. 4–12.

53 Gillette, “Reconstruction,” pp. 8–13.

54 Diary of Progress on the Renovation and Remodeling of the 

Executive Mansion for General Glen E. Edgerton, Executive 

Director of the Commission (Alexandria, Virginia: Office of History, 

Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), p. 144.

55 Milton Rubincam, “Major General U. S. Grant, 3rd, 1881–1968,” 

RCHS, vols. 66–68 (1966–68), pp. 369–408.

N o t e s t o P a g e s 2 1 3 – 2 3 7

287
C h a p t e r 6 : M e t r o p o l i s , 1 9 4 5 – 2 0 0 4

1 Green, Washington: Capital City, p. 505. “Interview with Brig. Gen. 

Robert E. Mathe, USA (Ret.)” (hereafterr Mathe Interview), by 

Albert E. Cowdrey, February 12, 1974, Oral History Files, Office of 

History, U.S. Corps of Engineers, Washington, D.C., pp. 21–4.

2 Ibid.

3 Green, Washington: Capital City, p. 435. Engineer Memoirs: 

Lieutenant General Frederick J. Clarke (hereafter Clarke Memoirs) 

(Washington: Office of the Chief of Engineers, 1979), pp. 275–8, 

285–6.

4

 Clarke Memoirs, pp. 80, 143, 254. In 1952, Congress established 

the National Capital Planning Commission as successor to the 

National Capital Park and Planning Commission. The same year, 

the National Capital Regional Planning Council was established. 

That body was turned over in 1966 to the Metropolitan Council of 

Governments, which had been established in 1957.

5 Mathe interview, p. 6.

6 Philip W. Ogilvie, “Chronology of some events in the history of the 

District of Columbia,” D.C. Office of Public Records, 1989. Clarke 

Memoirs, p. 279.

7 Telephone interview with Robert E. Mathe, Washington, D.C., 

May 30, 1991. Mathe interview, p. 3. Steven J. Diner and Anita 

Henderson, A History of the District of Columbia, Unit II: The 

Center of a Metropolis, Washington since 1954 (Washington: 

Associates for Renewal in Education, Inc., 1980), p. 34.

8 Ulysses S. Grant, III, “Planning the Nation’s Capital,” RCHS,

vol. 50 (1980), p. 56. “D.C. Redevelopment Land Agency Annual 

Report,” 1951, p. 1.

9 Detailed demographic data and an assessment of two proposed 

redevelopment plans appeared in Harland Bartholonew & 

Associates, Redevelopment Plans for the Southwest Survey Area in 

the District of Columbia, May 1952. Howard Gillette, Jr., Between 

Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban 

Policy in Washington, D.C. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University 

Press, 1995), p. 156; D.C. Redevelopment Land Agency Annual 

Report 1958, p. 4.

10 The progress of the redevelopment is readily seen in the annual 

reports of the D.C. Redevelopment Land Agency between 1951 

and 1971.

11 Gillette, Between Justice, pp. 163–4, 173–6.

12 Brig. Gen. Gordon R. Young, A Preliminary Six-year Plan for 

Postwar Washington (Washington, 1946). Washington Present and 

Future: A General Summary of the Comprehensive Plan for the 

National Capital and its Environs (Washington: National Capital 

Park and Planning Commission, 1950).

13 De Leuw, Cather & Company, Report on Inner Loop Freeway 

System, District of Columbia (Chicago: De Leuw, Cather & 

Company, 1955), pp. 1–3; Gillette, Between Justice, p. 165. Quote 

from Keith Melder, City of Magnificent Intentions: A History of 

Washington, District of Columbia (Washington: Intac, Inc., 1997), 

p. 530. Bob Levey and Jane Freundel Levey, “Lost Highways: 

The Plan to Pave Washington and the People Who Stopped It,” 

Washington Post Magazine, November 26, 2000.

14 Clarke Memoirs, pp. 145–6, 255–6.

15 “Jackson Graham’s Resignation,” Washington Post, December 

13, 1975. “Jackson Graham, General Manager, Washington 

Metropolitan Area Transit Authority,” Biographical Files, Office of 

History. Douglas B. Feaver, “Building Supervisor for Metro Reveals 

Plans to Retire May 1,” Washington Post, February 3, 1978.

16 Myer, Bridges, pp. 16, 32–3.

17 “Soldiers’ Home Plans $10,000,000 Building Program in 2 Years,” 

Washington Star, October 5, 1947. “Soldiers’ Home Plans 

10­Million Apartments for 900,” Washington Post, October 5, 

1947.

18 William P. Moseley, “Soldiers’ Home Still Presses Building 

Plans,” Washington Times Herald, December 7, 1949.

19 Wes Barthelmes, “Soldiers’ Home Now Boasts 2 New Buildings,” 

Washington Post, December 7, 1953. Fran Feldman, “Gabel 

Builds over and in the Water and Sometimes on Dry Land,” 

Constellation, vol. 14, no. 8 (August 1988), pp. 4–5. Fran 

Feldman, “Veterans Enjoy Modern Living in Renovated Soldiers’ 

and Airmen’s Home,” Constellation, vol. 16, no. 5 (June 1990), 

pp. 4–5. “Secretary of Army Dedicates $29 Million Health Care 

Residence,” Constellation, vol. 18, no. 6 (June 1992), p. 4.

20 Duryee, Corps in Washington, pp.117–8.

21 “Arlington Amphitheater Renovation Completed,” Washington 

Star, September 6, 1957. “District Repairs Tomb of Unknown 

Soldier,” Constellation, vol. 15, no. 11 (November 1989), p. 3. Debi 

Horne, “Memorial Amphitheater Gets Facelift,” Constellation, vol. 

22, no. 8 (August 1996), p. 11. “Visitors Center Dedicated at 

Arlington,” Constellation, vol. 15, no. 1 (January 1989), p. 2. 

“Arlington Visitors Center Wins Award,” Constellation, vol. 17, nos. 

5–6 (May–June 1991), p. 3. Interview with Joseph G. Kemper and 

Donald Lynne, Baltimore, Maryland, May 16, 1991. Jim Maxwell, 

“Sixth Columbarium Construction under Way,” Constellation,

vol. 23, no. 8 (August 1997), pp. 10–1.

22 “Tackling the GAO,” Constellation, vol. 20, no. 11 (November 

1994), pp. 4–5. Bernard Tate, “Headquarters Moves to New 

Home,” Engineer Update (September 2000), accessed on 

8/11/2005 at www.hq.usace.army.mil/cepa/pubs/sep00/story4.htm. 

Denise Tann, “A New Face for the Kennedy Center,” 

Constellation, vol. 23, no. 1 (January 1997), pp. 4–5.

23 Robert Cook, “President Attends NDU Dedication,” Constellation,

vol. 17, no. 9 (September 1991), pp. 1, 4–5. “Support to Fort 

McNair,” Constellation, vol. 24, no. 10 (October 1997), pp. 8–9. 

Ted Henry, “Preparing for the Military’s Future within the Walls of 

History,” Constellation, vol. 25, no. 8 (August 1999), p. 3. 

“National War College Completes Historic Renovation, 4/18/2000,” 

www.ellerbebecket.com.

N o t e s t o P a g e s 2 4 2 – 2 5 5

288
24 Ways, Aqueduct, pp. 129–30. Interstate Commission on the 

Potomac River Basin, Healing a River: The Potomac, 1940–1990,

p. 11. Water for the Future of the Nation’s Capital Area

(Washington: National Academy Press, 1980), pp. 1, 3.

25 Adequate Future Water Supply for District of Columbia, 79th 

Cong., 2nd sess., H. Doc. 480 (1946), pp. 1–13.

26 Adequate Future Water Supply, p. 8. Pages 2–3 of the same document summarize the previous Potomac River study reports. 

“Little Falls Water Shaft Nearly Done,” Washington Post, August 

27, 1957; Ways, Aqueduct, p. 120. Robert Cook, “WAD Quenches 

D.C.’s Thirst,” Constellation (January 1991), pp. 4–5.

27 Healing a River, pp. 6, 9. Alvin C. Welling, “Pollution in the 

Potomac River,” Medical Annals of the District of Columbia (May 

1960), pp. 289–90.

28 Bernard L. Robinson interview, November 8, 1978, Oral History 

files, Office of History, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 

Washington, D.C., pp. 6–7.

29 ARCE, 1964, vol. 2, p. 306. Ways, Aqueduct, p. 122.

30 Ibid., pp. 138–9. Patty Gamby and Erika Hieber, “Litte Falls Fish 

Passage Project,” Constellation (April 1996), p. 5. “Washington 

Aqueduct’s Environmental Mission,” Constellation (April 1996), 

p. 9. Mary Beth Thompson, “Capital Projects Move Forward at 

WA,” Constellation, vol. 26, no. 7 (July 2000), pp. 1–2.

31 Harry Ways, “Fountain Returns Home to WAD,” Constellation,

vol. 17, no. 2 (February 1991), p. 1. Thomas P. Somma, “The 

McMillan Memorial Fountain: A Short History of a Lost 

Monument,” Washington History, vol. 14, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 

2002), pp. 96–107. Joseph L. Arnold, The Baltimore Engineers 

and the Chesapeake Bay, 1961–1987 (Baltimore: U.S Army Corps 

of Engineers, 1988), p. 124. “EPA Wants Independent Study of 

D.C. Water Purification,” Washington Post, October 5, 1993. 

“Fairfax Seeks Control of Reservoirs,” Washington Post,

December 7, 1995. “Clean Water for the District,” Washington 

Post, March 3, 1996. “New Agency May Run Aqueduct,” 

Washington Post, August 21, 1997. “Hearings Urged on 

Discharge from Dalecarlia Plant,” Washington Post, August 24, 

2001. “EPA Is Proposing Tougher Rules for Water Plant in D.C.,” 

Washington Post, December 18, 2002.

32 Charles D. Pierce, “D.C. to Get Bill for Dam Share,” Washington 

Star, April 26, 1961. Ways, Aqueduct, p. 134. Healing a River,

pp. 6, 10. U.S. Army Engineer District, Baltimore, Potomac River 

Basin Report, February 1963, part I, syllabus. “Why Washington 

Has Enough Water,” Potomac Basin Reporter, vol. 43, no. 9 

(October 1987), pp. 1–3. Arnold, Baltimore Engineers and the 

Chesapeake Bay, pp. 67–76.

33 Public Hearing on the Potomac River Basin Report, Board of 

Engineers for Rivers and Harbors, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, 

Sept. 4, 1963. Coordinating Committee on the Potomac River 

Valley, Potomac Prospect: A study and report with recommendations for action concerning...the Potomac River Basin, 1961, p. 65.

34 Potomac River Basin Report, part II, p. 100. Annual Message to 

the Congress, January 4, 1965. The Secretary of the Interior’s 

report was titled The Nation’s River, and it was submitted to the 

President on Oct. 1, 1968. Potomac River Basin Report, 1970, is 

the revised report sent to Congress. Ways, Aqueduct, p. 133. Quote 

from Fran Feldman, “Corps Studies Potomac Flood Control,” 

Constellation, vol. 13, no. 3 (March 1987), p. 1.

35 Ibid., pp. 139–40. Katharine L. Vaughn, “Smit Swears He Can’t 

Smell It Any More,” Constellation, vol. 14, no. 9 (September 

1988), pp. 4–5. “Happy Anniversary, Blue Plains,” Potomac Basin 

Reporter, vol. 44, no. 10 (November–December 1988), pp. 1–3.

36 Duryee, Corps of Engineers, pp. 105–8. ARCE on Civil Works 

Activities, 1977, vol. 2, pp. 4–11. Rupert Welch, “Green Monster 

Vine Spreading in Potomac,” Washington Times, June 6, 1984. 

Paul Hodge, “Hydrilla in Potomac Found Well-Rooted,” 

Washington Post, September 11, 1984.

37 Arnold, Baltimore Engineers and the Chesapeake Bay, pp. 75–6. 

Charlie Walker, “District Recommends Mechanical Harvester to 

Control Hydrilla,” Constellation (January 1986). “Potomac 

Mowing Underway,” Potomac Basin Reporter, vol. 42, no. 8 

(August–September 1986), pp. 1–3. Harold K. Clingerman, 

“Hydrilla Control Program Begins,” Constellation, vol. 13, no. 7 

(July 1987), pp. 3–4. “Hydrilla Falls, Rises,” Potomac Basin 

Reporter, vol. 47, no. 7 (July 1991), p. 1

39 ARCE, 1956, vol. 2, pp. 315–9. John W. Stepp, “Reclamation 

Plan Revived for Anacostia Swamps,” Washington Star,

September 11, 1955. ARCE, 1964, vol. 2, p. 270.

39 “A River Unfulfilled,” Potomac Basin Reporter, vol. 43, no. 3 

(March 1987), pp. 1–4.

40 Robert Cook, “Anacostia River Cleanup Gets Corps Help,” 

Constellation, vol. 17, no. 11 (November–December 1991), 

pp. 3, 7. “Anacostia Oil Spill Gets Help from Baltimore District,” 

Constellation, vol. 18, no. 3 (May 1992), pp. 6–7. “Kenilworth 

Key to Future Success,” Constellation, vol. 19, no. 2 (February 

1993), p. 4. “District Celebrates Rebirth of Kenilworth Marsh,” 

Constellation, vol. 19, no. 10 (October 1993), pp. 6–7. “New 

Project Promotes Team Baltimore Concept,” Constellation,

vol. 22, no. 2 (February 1996), p. 11. James Johnson, “Anacostia 

River Gets Priority Attention,” Constellation, vol. 22 special edition (April 1996), p. 14. Doug Garman, “Kingman Lake Focus of 

Earth Day Celebration,” Constellation, vol. 26, no. 5 (May 2000), 

p. 1. Mary Beth Thompson, “Corps Helps Polluted Anacostia 

Watershed Recover,” Constellation, vol. 28, no. 8 (August 2002), 

pp. 1–6. National Building Museum, “D.C. Builds. The Anacostia 

Waterfront,” exhibition text, 2004. 

41 Martin K. Gordon, Barry R. Sude, and Ruth Ann Overbeck, 

“Chemical Testing in the Great War: The American University 

Experiment Station,” Washington History, vol. 6, no. 1 

(Spring/Summer 1994), pp. 28–45. Harold Clingerman, 

“Excavations Begin in Spring Valley Area,” Constellation,

vol. 19, no. 11 (November 1993), p. 1. 

N o t e s t o P a g e s 2 5 6 – 2 6 6

289
42 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District, “Spring Valley, 

Washington, D.C. Project Overview,” 2003, 

www.nab.usace.army.mil. “District Meets Spring Valley Challenge,” 

Constellation, vol. 19, no. 2 (February 1993), pp. 6–7. “District 

Makes Home in Spring Valley,” Constellation, vol. 19, no. 3 (March 

1993), pp. 1, 6–7. “Spring Valley Is at It Again,” Constellation,

vol. 20, no. 4 (April 1994), p. 7. “Spring Valley Bunker Work 

Completed,” Constellation, vol. 20, no. 2 (February 1995), p. 14. 

“Spring Valley Investigation of WWI Munitions Complete,” 

Constellation, vol. 21, no. 7 (July 1995), p. 3. “Excavation for WWI 

Remnants Complete at Spring Valley,” Constellation, vol. 26, no. 5 

(May 2000), p. 3. “Excavation by Military Forces Some AU 

Closings,” Washington Post, January 8, 2001. “Arsenic Illnesses 

Worry D.C.,” Washington Post, January 27, 2001. “More Arsenic 

Tests to Come,” Washington Post, February 1, 2001. “Some D.C. 

Sites Need More Arsenic Tests,” Washington Post, August 22, 

2001. The Northwest Current, vol. 37, no. 45 (November 10, 2004), 

pp. B6–7.

43 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District, “Camp 

Simms, Former Defense Site, Washington, D.C.,” 2003, 

www.nab.usace.army.mil. “Munition Discovery Leads to On-Site 

Detonation,” Constellation (April 1995), p. 3. “Discovered 

Munitions Change Project Work Plans,” Constellation (December 

1995), p. 4. “Digging Begins Again at Camp Simms Project,” 

Constellation (July 1996).

44 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District, “District of 

Columbia Public Schools Capital Improvements Program Project 

Brief,” 2003, www.nab.usace.army.mil. Ted Henry, “Improvements 

Continue in the Nation’s Capital,” Constellation, vol. 25, no. 6 

(June 1999), p. 4. Doug Garman, “D.C. Schools Open on Time,” 

Constellation, vol. 26, no. 10 (October 2000), pp. 1, 3. Mary Beth 

Thompson, “Corps People: Improving Schools for the Children,” 

Constellation, vol. 27, no. 5 (May 2001), pp. 6–7. “Corps Struggles 

With Role in D.C. Schools,” Washington Post, July 2, 2000. 

“Despite Sinking Enrollment, Proposal Calls for Rebuilding,” 

Washington Post, December 7, 2000. “District and D.C. Schools 

Break Ground for New Elementary School,” Constellation, vol. 28, 

no. 1 (January 2002), p. 10. Doug Garman, “Work Progresses on 

New D.C. Elementary Schools,” Constellation, vol. 28, no. 5 (May 

2002), p. 4.

45 “Architects to Oversee 2nd Memorial,” Washington Times, May 4, 

1990. “Architects Sue Over Redesign of Memorial,” Washington 

Post, December 19, 1990. “The Korean Controversy,” Washington 

Post, February 2, 1991. Quote from Robert Cook, “District to 

Build Memorial,” Constellation, vol. 16, no. 11 (November 1990), 

p. 6.

46 Robert Martin, ed., Korean War Veterans Memorial: A Tribute to 

Those Who Served (Paducah, Kentucky: Turner Publishing, 1995). 

“Statues Arrive for Korean War Memorial,” Constellation (May 

1995), p. 3. Derek Walker, “District Leads Project of Completion,” 

Constellation (August 1995), pp. 1, 8–9. “A Shadow Has Fallen on 

Korean Memorial,” Washington Post, May 10, 1997. “Corps to 

Receive Funds to Finish Korean War Memorial Modification,” 

Constellation (December 1998), p. 3

47 “District Will Renovate Pentagon,” Constellation, vol. 15, no. 5 

(May 1989), p. 1. “Pentagon Renovation Office Approved,” 

Constellation, vol. 15, no. 8/9 (August/September 1989). Fran 

Feldman, “Leketa Heads Pentagon Renovation,” Constellation,

vol. 16, no. 4 (May 1990), pp. 4–5. “Pentagon Office Is Gearing 

Up,” Constellation, vol. 17, no. 8 (August 1991), pp. 1, 4–5. 

Robert Cook, “Pentagon’s Heating/Refrigeration Plant Begins to 

Take Shape,” Constellation, vol. 20, no. 3 (March 1994), pp. 6–7. 

“Moving Indoors at the Pentagon,” Constellation, vol. 21, no. 1 

(January 1995), pp. 4–5. “Many Jobs at PenRen, Much 

Experience,” Constellation, vol. 22, no. 8 (August 1996), p. 10. 

“Pentagon Renovation Projects Move to Construction,” 

Constellation, vol. 23, no. 8 (August 1997), pp. 1, 8–9. Tom 

Fontana, “Pentagon Renovation Moves Ahead,” Engineer Update

(October 1997); Tom Fontana, “Pentagon Renovation,” Engineer 

Update (February 2000); and Bernard Tate, “Corps Designed 

Pentagon Protection, Managing Memorial Contest,” Engineer 

Update (September 2003), all accessed on 8/10/2005 at 

www.hq.usace.army.mil/cepa/pubs/oldpubs.htm.

48 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District, 

“The Pentagon Memorial Project,” 2004, 

http://pentagonmemorial.nab.usace.army.mil/, includes 

“Pentagon Memorial Site Evaluation Summary,” March 2, 2002, 

and three issues of the Pentagon Memorial News, “Competition 

Entries Stream in at Deadline” (September 2002), “Competition 

Jury Selects Six Finalists” (November 2002), “Memorial Design 

Chosen: Light Benches” (March 2003). “Six Wide-Open Visions 

Vie for a Pentagon Memorial,” Washington Post, October 18, 

2002.

49 “The Pentagon Memorial Project Overview,” homepage, 

http://pentagonmemorial.nab.usace.army.mil/.

N o t e s t o P a g e s 2 6 6 – 2 7 2

290
S e c o n d a r y S o u r c e s

Adler, Bill, ed., Washington: A Reader (New York: Meredith Press, 

1967).

Allen, William C., A History of the United States Capitol

(Washington: GPO, 2001).

American National Biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 

1999).

Arnebeck, Bob, Through a Fiery Trial: Building Washington 

1790–1800 (Lanham, Maryland: Madison Books, 1991).

Arnold, James R., “The United States Army Corps of Engineers and 

the Lincoln Memorial,” n.d., unpublished paper, Humphreys 

Engineer Center.

Arnold, Joseph L., The Baltimore Engineers and the Chesapeake Bay, 

1961–1987 (Baltimore: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1988).

Atwood, Albert W., “General Grant: The Man,” Records of the 

Columbia Historical Society, vols. 66–68 (1966–68), pp. 358–62.

Barthold, Elizabeth, “The Predicament of the ‘Parklets’: 

Understanding Washington’s Smaller Parks,” Washington History,

vol. 5, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1993), pp. 28–45.

Baumann, Charles H., The Influence of Angus Snead Macdonald and 

the Snead Bookstack on Library Architecture (Metuchen, New 

Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1972).

Beauchamp, Tanya, “Adolph Cluss and the Building of the U.S. 

National Museum: An Architecture of Perfect Adaptability,” 

M.A. thesis, University of Virginia, 1972.

Bell, Lt. Col. J. Franklin, “City Engineering in Washington,” The 

Military Engineer, vol. 19, no. 107 (September–October 1927), 

pp. 359–62.

_____, “Street Lighting Versus Street Trees,” American City (October 

1928), pp. 122–3.

Binczewshi, George J., “The Point of the Monument: A History of 

the Aluminum Cap at the Washington Monument,” Journal of the 

Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, vol. 47 (1995), pp. 20–5.

Bowling, Kenneth R., The Creation of Washington, D.C.: The Idea 

and Location of the American Capital (Fairfax, Virginia: George 

Mason University Press, 1991).

Boynton, Edward C., History of West Point and the United States 

Military Academy (New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1863).

Brauer, Carl M., The Man Who Built Washington: A Life of John 

McShain (Wilmington, Delaware: Hagley Museum and Library, 

1996).

Brennan, Roland M., “Brigadier General Richard L. Hoxie, United 

States Army, 1861–1930,” Records of the Columbia Historical 

Society. vols. 57–59 (1961), pp. 87–95.

Brousseau, Frances, “The Library of Congress,” Ph.D. diss., 

University of Delaware, 1998.

Brown, Glenn, ed., “Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Annual 

Convention of the American Institute of Architects,” Journal of 

the Proceedings of the AIA (Washington: Gibson Bros., 1903).

Bibliography
Brownlow, Louis, A Passion for Anonymity: The Autobiography of 

Louis Brownlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).

Bryan, James William, ed., The Grant Memorial in Washington

(Washington: GPO, 1924).

Buchanan, Roberdeau, Genealogy of the Roberdeau Family

(Washington: Jospeh L. Pearson, 1876).

Bushong, William B., “Glenn Brown, the American Institute of 

Architects, and the Development of the Civic Core of Washington, 

D.C.,” Ph.D. diss., The George Washington University, 1988.

_____, Historic Resources Study of Rock Creek Park, District of 

Columbia (Denver: National Park Service Denver Service Center, 

1990).

Caemmerer, H. Paul, “The Corps of Engineers and the Capital City,” 

The Military Engineer, vol. 45, no. 305 (May–June 1953), p. 209.

_____, The Life of Pierre Charles L’Enfant (Washington: National 

Republic Publishing Co., 1950).

Centennial History of the City of Washington (Dayton, Ohio: United 

Brethren Publishing House, 1892).

Cheney, Howard Lovewell, “Washington National Airport,” 

Architectural Record, vol. 90, no. 4 (October 1941), pp. 49–57.

Clinton, Amy Cheny “Historic Fort Washington,” Maryland 

Historical Magazine, vol. 32 (September 1931), p. 237.

Cohen, Jeffrey A. and Charles E. Brownell, The Architectural 

Drawings of Benjamin Henry Latrobe (New Haven: Yale University 

Press, 1994).

Cole, John Y. and Henry Hope Reed, eds., The Library of Congress: 

The Art and Architecture of the Thomas Jefferson Building (New 

York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997).

Colket, Meredith B., Jr., “General Grant and the Christian Heurich 

Memorial Mansion,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society,

vols. 66–68 (1966–68), pp. 365–8.

Conklin, Edward F., The Lincoln Memorial, Washington (Washington: 

GPO, 1927).

Cooling, Benjamin Franklin III and Walton H. Owen, Mr. Lincoln’s 

Forts: A Guide to the Civil War Defenses of Washington

(Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: White Mane Publishing Co., 1988).

_____, “To Preserve the Peace,” Washington History, vol. 1, no. 1 

(Spring 1989), pp. 71–86.

Coordinating Committee on the Potomac River Valley, Potomac 

Prospect: A Study and Report with Recommendations for Action 

Concerning the Potomac River Basin, 1961.

Cowdrey, Albert E., A City for the Nation (Washington: GPO, 1978).

Cox, William V., Celebration of the One-Hundredth Anniversary of the 

Establishment of the Seat of Government in the District of Columbia

(Washington: GPO, 1901).

Cullen, Charles T. et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

Cullum, George W., Biographical Register of Officers and Graduates 

of the U.S. Military Academy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Co.).

“Current News and Comment, The Lincoln Memorial Site,” American 

Architect, vol. 100, no. 1866 (September 27, 1911), p. 5.

Curtis, William T. S., “Cabin John Bridge,” Records of the Columbia 

Historical Society, vol. 2 (1899), pp. 293–307.

Davis, Timothy, “George Washington Memorial Parkway,” pamphlet 

(Washington: National Park Service, n.d.).

_____, “Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, Washington D.C.: The 

Evolution of a Contested Urban Landscape,” Studies in the History 

of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, vol. 19, no. 2 (April–June 

1999), pp. 123–237.

DeLeuw, Cather & Company, Report on Inner Loop Freeway System, 

District of Columbia (Chicago: Privately printed, 1955).

[Diaz, Jean R.], “Do You Know the Corps’ Connection to the 

Washington, D.C., Tidal Basin and its Beloved Cherry Trees?” 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Office of History, Vignette No. 48. 

www.hq.usace.army.mil/history.

Dickinson, William C. et al., eds., Montgomery C. Meigs and the 

Building of the Nation’s Capital (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University 

Press, 2001).

Diner, Steven J. and Anita Henderson. A History of the District of 

Columbia, Unit II: The Center of a Metropolis, Washington Since 

1954 (Washington: Associates for Renewal in Education, Inc., 

1980).

District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency Annual Report,

Washington, 1951.

Dowd, Mary Jane, Records of the Public Buildings and Public Parks 

of the National Capital (Washington: National Archives, 1992).

Dunlap, William, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of 

Design in the United States (Boston: C. E. Goodspeed & Co., 

1918).

Duryee, Sackett L., The Corps of Engineers in the Nation’s Capital, 

1852–1952 (1952).

Dzombak, William, “Roberdeau’s Treatise on Canals,” American 

Canals, vol. 76 (February 1991), pp. 8–9.

Eliot, Charles W., II, “U.S. Grant, 3rd: A Word of Personal 

Reminiscence,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society,

vols. 66–68 (1966–68), pp. 363–4.

Everly, Elaine and Howard H. Wehmann, “The War Office Fire 

of 1800,” Prologue, vol. 31, no. 1 (Spring 1999), pp. 22–35.

Executive Office of the President, The Old Executive Office 

Building: A Victorian Masterpiece (Washington: GPO, 1984).

Fairman, Charles E., Art and Artists of the Capitol of the United 

States of America (Washington: GPO, 1927).

Field, Cynthia R. and Jeffrey T. Tilman, “Creating a Model for the 

National Mall: The Design of the National Museum of Natural 

History,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians,

vol. 63, no. 1 (March 2004), pp. 52–73.

Fine, Lenore and Jesse A. Remington, The Corps of Engineers: 

Construction in the United States (Washington: GPO, 1972).

Fitzpatrick, John C., ed., Journal of the Continental Congress, 

1774–1789 (Washington: GPO, 1933).

292

B i b l i o g r a p h y
_____, The Writings of George Washington (Washington: GPO, 1931).

Follett, George A., “The Construction of a Cofferdam,” The Military 

Engineer, vol. 10 (1928), pp. 29–31.

Forbes–Lindsay, C. H., Washington: The City and the Seat of 

Government (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Co., 1908).

Foster, Andrea Kim, “The Conflict Between the Engineers and 

Architects Over Control of the Washington Barracks, 1902,” class 

paper dated 1986, American Studies Department, The George 

Washington University.

Fries, Russell I., “European vs. American Engineering: Pierre 

Charles L’Enfant and the Water Power System of Paterson, N.J.,” 

Northeast Historical Archaeology, vol. 4, nos. 1–2 (Spring 1975), 

pp. 68–96.

“General Grant and the Christian Heurich Memorial Mansion,” 

Records of the Columbia Historical Society, vols. 66–68 (1966–68), 

pp. 365–8.

Gillette, D. H., “Reconstruction of the White House,” The Military 

Engineer, vol. 45 (1953), p. 8.

Gillette, Howard, Jr., Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, 

and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Baltimore: 

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

_____, Washington: The City and the Seat of Government (Baltimore: 

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).

Goldberg, Alfred, The Pentagon: The First Fifty Years (Washington: 

Department of Defense, 1992).

Goode, B. Brown, “The Genesis of the National Museum,” Annual 

Report of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington: Smithsonian 

Institution, 1891), pp. 273–335.

Goode, James M., “Architecture, Politics, and Conflict: Thomas 

Ustick Walter and the Enlargement of the United States Capitol, 

1850–1865,” Ph.D. diss., The George Washington University, 

1995.

_____, The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington, D.C. (Washington: 

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1974).

_____ “Flying High: The Origin and Design of Washington National 

Airport,” Washington History, vols. 1–2 (Fall 1989), pp. 4–25.

Gordon, Martin K., Barry R. Sude, and Ruth Ann Overbeck, 

“Chemical Testing in the Great War, The American University 

Experiment Station,” Washington History, vol. 6, no. 1 

(Spring/Summer 1994), pp. 28–45.

Grant, U. S., III, “Planning the National Capital: Objectives and 

Problems of Attainment,” Transactions, American Society of Civil 

Engineers, vol. 117 (1952), p. 122.

_____, “The L’Enfant Plan and Its Evolution,” Records of the 

Columbia Historical Society, vols. 33–34 (1932), pp. 1–23.

_____, “The National Capital: Reminiscences of Sixty-Five Years,” 

Records of the Columbia Historical Society, vols. 57–59 (1957–59), 

pp. 1–15.

Green, Bernard R., “The Building of the Library of Congress,” 

Smithsonian Institution Annual Report (Washington: Smithsonian 

Institution, 1897).

Green, Constance McLaughlin, Washington: Capital City, 1879–1950

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963).

_____, Washington: Village and Capital, 1800–1878 (Princeton: 

Princeton University Press, 1962).

Gutheim, Frederick, Worthy of the Nation: The History of Planning 

for the National Capital (Washington: Smithsonian Institution 

Press, 1977).

Hafertepe, Kenneth, America’s Castle: The Evolution of the 

Smithsonian Building and Its Institution (Washington: 

Smithsonian Institution Press, 1984).

Hagen, Kenneth J. and William R. Roberts, eds., Against All 

Enemies: Interpretations of American Military History from 

Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986).

Hains, Peter C., “Reclamation of the Potomac Flats at Washington, 

D.C.,” Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers,

vol. 36 (January 1894), pp. 55–80.

Hannum, Warren T., “Water Supply of the District of Columbia,” 

Professional Memoirs, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, vol. 4 

(1912), p. 226.

Harland Bartholomew & Associates, Redevelopment Plans for the 

Southwest Survey Area in the District of Columbia, May 1952.

Harrison, Michael R., “The Evil of the Misfit Subdivisions: Creating 

the Permanent System of Highways of the District of Columbia,” 

Washington History, vol. 14, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2002), 

pp. 26–55.

Harts, Col. William W., “Cylinder-Pier Foundations for Lincoln 

Memorial, Washington, D.C.,” Engineering News, vol. 71 (May 7, 

1914), p. 1019.

_____William Wright Harts, His Story (Privately printed, c. 2001).

Harvey, Frederick L., History of the Washington National Monument 

and the Washington National Monument Society (Washington: 

GPO, 1903).

Hatcher, Ed, “Washington’s Nineteenth-Century Citizens’ 

Associations and the Senate Park Commission Plan,” Washington 

History, vol. 14, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2002), pp. 70–95.

Heine, Cornelius W., “The Contributions of Charles Carroll Glover 

and other Citizens to the Development of the National Capital,” 

Records of the Columbia Historical Society, vols. 53–55 (1959), 

pp. 229–48.

Henry, Robert S., The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology: Its First 

Century, 1862–1962 (Washington: Department of the Army, 1964).

Hoagland, Alison K., “Nineteenth-Century Building Regulations in 

Washington, D.C.,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society,

vol. 52 (1989), pp. 57–77.

Holt, William Stull, The Office of the Chief of Engineers of the Army: 

Its Non-Military History (Washington: Brookings Institute, 1923).

Howe, Franklin T., “The Board of Public Works,” Records of the 

Columbia Historical Society, vol. 3 (1900), pp. 257–78.

Hume, Edgar Erskine, “The Diplomas of the Society of Cincinnati,” 

Americana, vol. 29, no. 1 (January 1935), pp. 5–45.

B i b l i o g r a p h y

293
Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, Healing a River: 

The Potomac, 1940–1990 (Washington: GPO, 1991).

“Interview with Professor Baird,” Forest and Stream, vol. 10 (1878), 

p. 214.

Jackson, Donald and Dorothy Twohig, eds., The Diaries of George 

Washington (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1979).

Jackson, John W., Fort Mifflin, Valiant Defender of the Delaware

(Philadelphia: Old Fort Mifflin Historical Society, 1986).

Jacob, Kathryn Allamong, Testament to Union: Civil War Monuments 

in Washington, D.C. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 

1998).

Jusserand, J. J., With Americans of Past and Present Days (New York: 

Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916).

Kennan, George, “The White House: The Plans for Its 

Reconstruction,” The Outlook (February 1, 1902), p. 321.

Kite, Elisabeth S., L’Enfant and Washington, 1791–1792 (Baltimore: 

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1929).

Knickerbocker, Nancy N., “Aircraft Noise and Property Values,” 

Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1991.

Kohler, Sue A., The Commission of Fine Arts: A Brief History, 

1910–1995 (Washington: Commission of Fine Arts, [1996]).

_____ and Jeffrey Carson, Sixteenth Street Architecture, vol. 1 

(Washington: Commission of Fine Arts, 1878).

_______ and Pamela Scott, eds., Designing the Nation’s Capital: The 

1901 Plan for Washington, D.C. (Washington: U.S. Commission of 

Fine Arts, 2006).

[Kousoulis, Mary], “D.C. Builds: The Anacostia Waterfront,” National 

Building Museum, 2004.

Lee, Antoinette J., Architects to the Nation: The Rise and Decline of 

the Supervising Architect’s Office (New York: Oxford University 

Press, 2000).

_____, ed., Historical Perspectives on Urban Design: Washington, 

D.C., 1890–1910, Conference Proceedings, October 7, 1983. 

Center for Washington Area Studies Occasional Papers No. 1.

Lehman, Donald, Executive Office Building (Washington: General 

Services Administration, 1964).

“L’Enfant’s Reports to President Washington, March 26, June 22 

and August 19, 1791,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society,

vol. 2 (1899), pp. 38–48.

Lessof, Allan, The Nation and Its City: Politics, “Corruption,” and 

Progress in Washington, D.C., 1861–1902 (Baltimore: Johns 

Hopkins University Press, 1994).

Longstreth, Richard, ed., The Mall in Washington, 1791–1991

(Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1991).

Lovelace, Eldridge, Harland Bartholomew: His Contributions to 

American Urban Planning (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois, 

1993).

Lowry, Bates, ed., The Architecture of Washington, D.C. (Washington: 

The Dunlap Society, 1976).

Lyons, Linda Brody, A Handbook to the Pension Building: Home of 

the National Building Museum (Washington: National Building 

Museum, 1993).

Mackintosh, Barry, Rock Creek Park: An Administrative History

(Washington: National Park Service History Division, 1985).

Macqueen, Philip O., “Cabin John Bridge,” The Military Engineer,

vol. 24 (1932), pp. 566–8.

_____, “Rock Creek Bridge,” The Military Engineer, vol. 28 (1936), 

pp. 111–3.

Martin, Robert, ed., Korean War Veterans Memorial: A Tribute to 

Those Who Served (Paducah, Kentucky: Turner Publishing, 1995).

Mathews, Catharine VanCortlant, Andrew Ellicott, His Life and Letters

(New York: Grafton Press, 1908).

Maury, William M., Alexander “Boss” Shepherd and the Board of 

Public Works, GW Washington Studies, no. 3 (Washington: George 

Washington University, 1975).

McDaniel, Joyce L., “Caspar Buberl: The Pension Building Civil War 

Frieze and Other Washington, D.C., Sculpture,” Records of the 

Columbia Historical Society, vol. 50 (1980), pp. 309–44.

Melder, Keith, City of Magnificent Intentions: A History of 

Washington, District of Columbia (Washington: Imac, Inc., 1997).

“Memoir of Peter Conover Hains,” Transactions of the American 

Society of Civil Engineers, vol. 85 (1922), pp. 1682–3.

“Memoir of William Voorhees Judson, M. Am. Soc. C.E.,” 

Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. 88 

(1925), pp. 1405–8.

Miller, David W., Second Only to Grant: Quartermaster General 

Montgomery C. Meigs (Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: White Mane 

Publishing Co., 2000).

Miller, James E., Jr., Walt Whitman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 

1959).

Molloy, Peter Michael, “Technical Education and the Young 

Republic: West Point as America’s Ecole Polytechnique, 

1802–1833,” Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1975.

Montagna, Dennis, “Henry Mervin Shrady’s Grant Memorial in 

Washington, D.C.: A Study in Iconography, Content, and 

Patronage,” Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1987.

Moore, Charles, ed., The Improvement of the Park System of the 

District of Columbia (Washington: GPO, 1902).

_____, The Life and Times of Charles Follen McKim (Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin Company, 1929).

Morgan, James Dudley, “Historic Fort Washington on the Potomac,” 

Records of the Columbia Historical Society, vol. 7 (1904), p. 15.

Murphy, David J., “Architects, Engineers, and the New Agriculture 

Department Building: A Reinterpretation of the Fight Over 

Implementing the McMillan Plan,” unpublished paper delivered at 

the annual meeting of the Society for American City and Regional 

Planning, Richmond, Virginia, November 1991.

Myer, Donald Beekman, Bridges and the City of Washington

(Washington: Commission of Fine Arts, 1974).

294

B i b l i o g r a p h y
Nagle, John L., “The Arlington Memorial Bridge,” The Military 

Engineer, vol. 20 (1928), pp. 154–60.

“National War College Completes Historic Renovation, 4/18/2000,” 

www.ellerbebecket.com.

Noreen, Sarah Pressey, Public Street Illumination in Washington, 

D.C.: An Illustrated History, GW Washington Studies, no. 2, 

(Washington: George Washington University, May 1975).

O’Brien William P., “Reality and Illusion: The White House and 

Harry S. Truman,” White House History, vol. 5 (Spring 1999), 

pp. 4–12.

Ogilvie, Philip W., “Chronology of Events in the History of the 

District of Columbia,” typescript, D.C. Office of Public Records, 

1989.

Oppel, Terry, and Tony Meisel, Washington, D.C.: A Turn-of-theCentury Treasury (Secaucus, New Jersey: Castle Publishing Co., 

1987).

Orlin, Glenn S., “The Evolution of the American Urban Parkway,” 

Ph.D. diss., The George Washington University, 1992.

Ossman, Jennifer L., “Reconstructing a National Image: The State, 

War and Navy Building and the Politics of Federal Design, 

1866–90,” Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1996.

Owen, Robert Dale, Hints on Public Architecture (New York: 

Da Capo Press, 1979 reprint of 1849).

Padover, Saul K., Jefferson and the National Capital (Washington: 

GPO, 1946).

Pearson, J. C. and J. J. Earley, “Successful Building in Stucco,” 

American Architect, vol. 117, no. 2309 (March 24, 1920), 

pp. 386–92.

Peters, Charles A., Jr., “The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool,” 

The Military Engineer, vol. 15 (1923), pp. 209–13.

Peterson, Jon A., “The Hidden Origins of the McMillan Plan for 

Washington, D.C., 1900–1902,” Historical Perspectives on Urban 

Design: Washington, D.C., 1890–1910, edited by Antoinette J. 

Lee, Conference Proceedings, October 7, 1983, Center for 

Washington Area Studies, Occasional Papers No. 1.

Pitch, Anthony S., The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion 

of 1814 (Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1998).

Poore, Ben Perley, Perley’s Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the 

National Metropolis (Philadelphia: Hubbard Brothers, 1886).

“Principal Local Events During 1904,” Records of the Columbia 

Historical Society, vol. 8 (1904), p. 203.

“Principal Local Events During 1906,” Records of the Columbia 

Historical Society, vol. 10 (1906), p. 255.

Rathbun, Richard, “The Columbian Institute for the Promotion of 

Arts and Sciences,” United States National Museum and Bulletin

101 (Washington: GPO, 1917).

Reiff, Daniel D., Washington Architecture, 1791–1861 (Washington: 

Commission of Fine Arts, 1971).

Report of the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission (Washington: 

GPO, 1924).

Report of the Commission on the Renovation of the Executive Mansion

(Washington: GPO, 1952).

Report of the U.S. National Museum (Washington: GPO, 1905).

Reps, John, Monumental Washington (Princeton: Princeton 

University Press, 1967).

_____, Washington on View (Chapel Hill: University of North 

Carolina Press, 1991).

Richardson, James B., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers 

of the Presidents, 1789–1908 (Tennessee: Bureau of National 

Literature and Art, 1908).

Richman, Michael, Daniel Chester French, An American Sculptor

(Washington: National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1976).

Riling, Joseph R., Baron von Steuben and His Regulations

(Philadelphia: Ray Riling Arms Book Co., 1966).

Roth, Leland M., McKim, Mead & White Architects (New York: 

Harper & Row, 1983).

Royall, R. E., “The Mount Vernon Memorial Highway,” The Military 

Engineer, vol. 24, no. 135 (May–June 1932), pp. 238–42.

Rubincam, Milton, “Major General U.S. Grant, 3rd, 1881–1968,” 

Records of the Columbia Historical Society, vols. 66–68 (1966–68), 

pp. 369–408.

Ryan, Gary D., “War Department Topographical Bureau, 1831–1863: 

An Administrative History,” Ph.D. diss., American University, 

1968.

Salay, David L., “‘Very picturesque, but regarded as nearly useless’: 

Fort Washington, Maryland, 1816–1872,” Maryland Historical 

Magazine, vol. 81 (1986), p. 67–. 

Sanderlin, Walter S., The Great National Project: A History of the 

Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University 

Press, 1946).

Santoyo, Elsa M., ed., Creating an American Masterpiece

(Washington: American Institute of Architects Press, 1988).

Schmitt, Edwin A. and Philip O. Macqueen, “Washington 

Aqueduct,” The Military Engineer, vol. 61 (1949), p. 205.

Schubert, Frank N., ed., The Nation Builders: A Sesquicentennial 

History of the Corps of Engineers, 1838–1863 (Fort Belvoir, 

Virginia: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 1988).

Scott, Pamela, “L’Enfant’s Washington Described,” Washington 

History, vol. 3, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1991), pp. 96–111.

_____, “Moving to the Seat of Government,” Washington History,

vol. 12, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2000), pp. 70–3.

_____, “Stephen Hallet’s Designs for the United States Capitol,” 

Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 27, nos. 2–3 (1992), pp. 145–70.

_____, Temple of Liberty: Building the Capitol for a New Nation

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

_____, ed., The Papers of Robert Mills (Wilmington, Delaware: 

Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1990).

Seale, William, The President’s House: A History (Washington: 

White House Historical Association, 1986).

B i b l i o g r a p h y

295
_____, The White House: The History of an American Idea

(Washington: American Institute of Architects Press, 1992).

Searle, Henry R., “Washington Monument Monograph,” (Washington: 

Gibson Brothers Printers, [1877]).

Sherrill, C. O., “The Arlington Memorial Amphitheater,” The Military 

Engineer, vol. 17, no. 92 (April 1925), pp. 152–3.

Singleton, Esther, The Story of the White House (New York: 

The McClure Company, 1907).

Skramsted, Harold K., “The Engineer as Architect in Washington. 

The Contribution of Montgomery Meigs,” Records of the Columbia 

Historical Society, vols. 69–70 (1969–70), pp. 266–84.

[Smithmeyer, John L.], History of the Construction of the Library of 

Congress (Washington: Beresford, printer, 1906).

Somma, Thomas P., “The McMillan Memorial Fountain: A Short 

History of a Lost Monument,” Washington History, vol. 14, no. 2 

(Fall/Winter 2002), pp. 96–107.

Spratt, Zack, “Rock Creek’s Bridges,” Records of the Columbia 

Historical Society, vols. 53–56 (1953–56), pp. 101–34.

Steinberg, Michael S., “The United States Army Corps of Engineers 

in the Federal City” (manuscript, n.d.).

Sullebarger, Beth, Historic Structures Report, U.S. Pension Building

(Washington: Privately printed, 1984).

Swift, Joseph G., The Memoirs of Gen. Joseph Gardner Swift (Privately 

printed, 1890).

Thomas, Christopher A., “The Lincoln Memorial and Its Architect, 

Henry Bacon,” Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1990.

_____, “The Marble of the Lincoln Memorial: ‘Whitest, Prettiest, and 

...Best,’” Washington History, vol. 2, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 1993–94), 

pp. 43–63.

Thompson, Gilbert, The Engineer Battalion in the Civil War,

Occasional Papers, No. 44, Engineer School, United States Army 

(Washington: The Engineer School, 1910).

Tindall, William, Origin and Government of the District of Columbia

(Washington: GPO, 1908).

_____, Standard History of the City of Washington from a Study of 

the Original Sources (Knoxville, Tennessee: H. W. Crew and Co., 

1914).

Tompkins, Sally Kress, A Quest for Grandeur: Charles Moore and 

the Federal Triangle (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 

1993).

Torres, Louis, “Federal Hall Revisited,” Journal of the Society of 

Architectural Historians, vol. 29, no. 4 (December 1970), 

pp. 327–28.

_____. “To the immortal name and memory of George Washington,” 

The United States Army Corps of Engineers and the Construction 

of the Washington Monument (Washington: Office of the Chief of 

Engineers, 1984).

Townsend, George Alfred, New Washington, or the Renovated City

(Washington: Chronicle Publishing Company, 1874).

“Transforming the White House into a Magnificent Dwelling,” 

The Architect and Builders Journal, vol. 3 (June 1902), p. 17.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Baltimore District, “Camp Simms, 

Former Defense Site, Washington, D.C.,” 2003, 

www.nab.usace.army.mil.

_____, “District of Columbia Public Schools Capital Improvements 

Program Project Brief,” 2003, www.nab.usace.army.mil.

_____, “The Pentagon Memorial Project,” 2004, 

http://pentagonmemorial.nab.usace.army.mil.

_____, “Spring Valley, Washington, D.C. Project Overview,” 2003, 

www.nab.usace.army.mil

Vermeil, Sara E., Army Engineer’s Contributions to the Development 

of Iron Construction in the Nineteenth Century (Kansas City, 

Missouri: Public Works Historical Society, 2002).

Walker, Paul K., Engineers of Independence: A Documentary History 

of the Army Engineers in the American Revolution, 1775–1783

(Washington: GPO, 1981).

Washington Present and Future: A General Summary of the 

Comprehensive Plan for the National Capital and its Environs

(Washington: National Capital Park and Planning Commission, 

1950).

Water for the Future of the Nation’s Capital Area (Washington: 

National Academy Press, 1980).

Ways, Harry C., The Washington Aqueduct, 1852–1992 (Washington: 

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, c. 1993).

Weigley, Russell F., Quartermaster General of the Union Army: 

A Biography of M. C. Meigs (New York: Columbia University 

Press, 1959).

_____, History of the United States Army (New York: The MacMillan 

Company, 1967).

Welling, Alvin C., “Pollution in the Potomac River,” Medical Annals 

of the District of Columbia (May 1960), pp. 289–90.

Wilson, Rufus Rockwell, Washington: The Capital City and Its Park 

in the History of the Nation (Philadelphia: J.P. Lippincott 

Company, 1902).

Wojcik, Susan Brizzolara, “Thomas U. Walter and Iron in the United 

States Capitol: An Alliance of Architecture, Engineering, and 

Industry,” Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 1998.

Wolanin, Barbara, Constantino Brumidi, Artist of the Capitol

(Washington: GPO, 1998).

Wolff, Wendy, ed., Capitol Builder: The Shorthand Journals of 

Montgomery C. Meigs, 1853–1859 (Washington: GPO, 2001).

Wood, J. E., “Improvement of Washington Channel,” The Military 

Engineer, vol. 15, no. 83 (September–October 1923), pp. 435–7.

Work of the National Capital Planning Commission (Washington: 

GPO, 1928).

Young, Brig. Gen. Gordon R., A Preliminary Six-year Plan for 

Postwar Washington (Washington, 1946).

Zangrando, Joanna Schneider, “Monumental Bridge Design in 

Washington, D.C., as a Reflection of American Culture, 

1886–1932,” Ph.D. diss., The George Washington University, 

1974.

296

B i b l i o g r a p h y
N e w s p a p e r s

Centinel of Liberty, 1800

Constellation, 1988–2002

Engineer Update, 1997–2003

Georgetown Weekly Ledger, 1791

Metropolitan and Georgetown Commercial Gazette, 1824

National Intelligencer, 1814

New York Times, 1881–1900

Northwest Current, 2004

Potomac Basin Reporter, 1986–88

Washington Evening News, 1928

Washington Evening Star, 1886–1962

Washington Gazette, 1796

Washington Herald, 1913

Washington Post, 1928–2004

Washington Times, 1984–90

Washington Times Herald, 1949

P r i m a r y S o u r c e s

Li b r a r y o f Co n g r e s s

Digges-L’Enfant-Morgan Papers

District of Columbia Letters and Papers

Bernard R. Green Papers

Alexander Hamilton Papers

Thomas Jefferson Papers

Pierre Charles L’Enfant Papers

McKim, Mead & White Papers

Montgomery C. Meigs Papers

Olmsted Associates Papers

Elihu Root Papers

George Washington Papers

Hi s t o r ical Soci e t y o f Wa shi n g t o n, D.C.

Philip W. Ogilvie Collection

U.S. Grant III Collection

Of f ice o f Hi s t o r y, U.S. Ar m y Co r p s o f En g i n e e r s

Glen E. Edgerton, “Diary of Progress on the Renovation and 

Remodeling of the Executive Mansion,” 1948–52

Brigadier General Robert E. Mathe Papers

Engineer Memoirs: Lieutenant General Frederick J. Clarke

Bernard L. Robinson Papers

Biographical Files

Ma r t i n Luthe r Ki n g Me m o r i al Li b r a r y

Evening Star Collection

Ma s s achus e t t s Hi s t o r ical Soci e t y

Henry Knox Papers

Nat i o n al Archi v e s a nd Reco rds Adm i n i s t r at i o n

R.G. 42, Records of the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds

R.G. 77, Records of the Chief of Engineers

R.G. 233, Records of the House of Representatives

R.G. 360, Papers of the Continental Congress

New Yo rk Hi s t o r ical Soci e t y

McKim, Mead & White Papers

Soci e t y f o r the Pr e s e rvat i o n o f New En gla nd

An t i qui t i e s

Thomas Lincoln Casey Papers

The Whi t e Hous e

Journal of Joseph Dentz

G o v e r n m e n t P r i n t e d D o c u m e n t s

Annual Reports of the Chief of Engineers (ARCE), 1867–1984

Annual Reports of the Commissioners of the District of Columbia,

1879–1921

Annual Reports of the Commission of Fine Arts, 1913–44

House and Senate Reports, 1830–1925

U.S. Statutes at Large

B i b l i o g r a p h y

297
N o t e s o n I l l u s t r a t i o n s

The largest source of images for this book is the Research Collections 

maintained by the Office of History, Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of 

Engineers. The Office of History has accumulated its large image collection over many years and it continues to grow. In addition to the 

visual materials maintained by the U.S. Army and the Corps of 

Engineers, the collection includes materials culled from other repositories and sources. Where information on the originating source was 

available, credit in this publication is given to that organization or individual. Where no information was available, or where the originating 

source was another element of the U.S. Army, credit is given to the 

Office of History, Corps of Engineers. In addition, illustrations were 

gleaned from the Annual Reports of the Chief of Engineers and other 

reports, as well as the Office of History’s Personal Papers collections 

that have been donated by individuals. Images from the Baltimore 

Engineer District—both the headquarters office and the Washington 

Aqueduct Division—are credited to those organizations.

Substantial research also was conducted in other archives and 

repositories. The Library of Congress has a vast collection of 

Washington-related photographs, maps, and drawings and its holdings were tapped considerably. Many images were located at the 

National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, 

Maryland. The Washingtoniana Division at the Martin Luther 

King branch of the D.C. Public Library was an invaluable source 

of photographs. Other important repositories consulted included 

the Smithsonian Institution Archives, the Curator’s Office of the 

Architect of the Capitol, and the Historical Society of Washington, 

D.C. Images were acquired from the library and the museum of the 

U.S. Military Academy at West Point, as well as: AP/Wide World 

Photos; Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library of Columbia 

University; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; the Image 

Archives of the Historical Map and Chart Collection of the National 

Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration; the National Park Service, 

including its Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American 

Engineering Record; the New-York Historical Society; the New York 

Public Library, The Society of the Cincinnati; The Washington Post;

and Picture History, an internet-based photograph supplier. Local 

photographer Darren Santos captured current images of D.C. public 

schools. Greg Knott of McFarland Photography, Inc., photographed 

the highway map on the inside cover flap. Jean Diaz and Douglas J. 

Wilson scanned the original 59-inch by 28-inch map that is the basis 

for the cover of the book. Using skill, ingenuity, and patience, Ms. 

Diaz produced a clear and accurate copy of this striking map. The 

author, Pamela Scott, generously offered several images, maps, and 

illustrations from her personal collection; these images are credited to 

their original sources.

All efforts were made to properly credit the images and, where necessary, to obtain permission to publish them. Permissions granted are 

greatly appreciated.

Image captions are based primarily on information from the text, or 

from sources cited in the text, and from the information supplied with 

the original visual material. Additional sources of information for the 

captions include:

Annual Reports of the Chief of Engineers (ARCE)

Brewster, Casondra, “‘Extractors’ Put Training to Test. Special 

Unit Vital in ‘Operation Noble Eagle’ at Pentagon Site.” MDW 

News Service, http://www.mdw.army.mil/news/Extractors_put_

training_to_test.html.

Data pages of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) 

and Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) of the 

National Park Service, http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html.

D.C. Highway Department Map of Truxton Circle, 1946, 

http://www.truxtoncircle.org/doclib/DChighwaydept1946.doc.

Engineer Memoirs: Lieutenant General Walter K. Wilson, Jr., Office 

of History, Corps of Engineers, May 1984, http://www.usace. 

army.mil/inet/usace-docs/eng-pamphlets/ep870-1-8/toc.htm.

Government of the District of Columbia, Department of 

Transportation, “Thomas Circle Restoration Project,” 

http://www.ddot.dc.gov/ddot/lib/ddot/information/pdf/ 

Thomas_Circle.pdf.

James, Clayton, “Corps of Engineers’ Watermen Keep Channels 

Clear.” Pentagram, July 25, 1997, http://www.dcmilitary.com/

army/pentagram/archives/july25/pt_d725.html.

Myer, Donald Beekman, Bridges and the City of Washington

(Washington: GPO, 1974).

National Transportation Safety Board website, http://www.ntsb.gov/ 

publictn/1982/AAR8208.htm.

Newell, Frederick Haynes, ed., Planning and Building the City of 

Washington (Washington: Ransdell, Inc., 1932).

Office of History, Corps of Engineers, Biographical Files.

The Washington Post, 1900, 1921, 1947.

Ways, Harry C., The Washington Aqueduct, 1852–1992

(Baltimore: U.S. Army Engineer District, Baltimore, n.d.).

Direct quotations used in the image captions are extracted from the 

text except as noted here:

Page 142, Government Printing Office. ARCE, 1901

Page 162, Willow Tree Park. ARCE, 1919

Page 163, Dupont Circle. ARCE, 1916

Page 169, Truxton Circle. D.C. Highway Department Map of 

Truxton Circle, 1946, http://www.truxtoncircle.org/doclib/ 

DChighwaydept1946.doc

Page 183, Calvert Street Bridge. Paul Cret, architect, to 

Commission of Fine Arts, November 13, 1935, as quoted in 

Historic American Engineering Record, Calvert Street Bridge 

(Duke Ellington Bridge), HAER no. DC-23 (HAER, DC, 

WASH, 578-), by Amy Ross, Summer 1992

Page 255, Marshall Hall. Headquarters, U.S. Army Corps of 

Engineers, slide show presentation on the 1992 Chief of 

Engineers Design and Environmental Awards Program, Office 

of History, Corps of Engineers, unprocessed Baltimore District 

PAO images

298

B i b l i o g r a p h y
A

Abert, John James, 35, 35, 125

Capitol extension, 49, 53

National Institute, 36

Abert, Sylvanus T., 125, 126

Ackerman, Arlene, 267

Adams, John, 21

Agriculture Department Building, 145–47, 

147

Air Florida crash, 262

Alexander, Barton S., 38–39, 67

Allen, Charles J., 124, 127, 181, 185

Allen, George, 257

Amateis, Edmund, 152

American Institute of Architects (AIA), 

136–37, 157, 211, 226

Corps of Engineers relations with, 

147–49

American Red Cross. See Red Cross 

Buildings

Anacostia River. See also water supply and 

systems

Anacostia Park, 181, 206

Baltimore Engineer District study and 

oversight, 263–65

bridges, 120–24. See also Anacostia 

River Bridge, Benning’s Bridge, 11th 

Street Bridge, John Philip Sousa 

Bridge, Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge, 

South Capitol Street Bridge, temporary 

bridges

Kingman Lake restoration, 264, 265

L’Enfant, Peter Charles, 8–9

reclamation project, 180–81, 205–6, 207, 

208

survey and plans, 8–9

Anacostia River Bridge, 121–22. See also

11th Street Bridge

Analostan Island, 125. See also Theodore 

Roosevelt Island

Anderson-Austra, Carol, 271

Anderson Cottage, 250

Aqueduct. See Washington Aqueduct

Aqueduct Bridge, 221

construction, 32–33, 33, 34

reconstruction, 120, 121, 122–23, 122, 

185

replacement, 202–3, 203, 204

architects, conflicts with engineers, 147-49

Arland D. Williams, Jr. Bridge, 248, 249.

Arlington Memorial Amphitheater, 196, 

197, 198, 251

Arlington Memorial Bridge

approaches, 221, 230

commission appointed, 198–99

construction, 188, 199–202

design, 198–99

engineering, 199–202

location, 198–99

photo essay, 200–1

proposed, 123, 185, 198

Arlington National Cemetery, 123, 198

amphitheater, 196, 197, 198, 251

columbarium, 252

Kennedy grave site, 251–52, 253

Pentagon, 227

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, 196, 198, 

251, 251

visitors’ center, 252, 252

Armistead, Walker K., 28

Armstrong, John, 27

Army Medical Museum, 97–98, 97

Army War College, 144–45, 145, 146, 254

Arthur, Chester A., 98, 114, 197

Arthur, Joseph D., 221

Arts and Industries Building (formerly 

National Museum), 96–97, 96

B

Babcock, Orville E., 75, 129

bridges, 121, 122

corruption, 81

federal reservations, 75–77, 79

Officer in charge of Public Buildings and 

Grounds, 75–81, 84, 125

State, War and Navy Building, 91

Washington Monument grounds, 78–79

White House, 79–81

Bache, Alexander Dallas, 36

Bacon, Henry, 156–58, 192, 193

Bairstow, Ernest C., 182

Baker, Newton D., 191

Ballard, Joe N., 267

Baltimore Engineer District

Air Florida crash, 262

Army War College renovation, 254–55, 

255

D.C. public schools and, 267–69, 268

Kennedy Center renovation, 254, 254

Korean War Memorial, 269–70

Pentagon renovation and memorial, 

270–72

Potomac and Anacostia rivers study and 

oversight, 258–65

Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home, 250–51, 

250

Spring Valley cleanup, 265–66, 266

Bandera, John, 255

Banneker, Benjamin, 7, 15

Barden, William J., 230

Barnard, John G.

Index

Page references in italic refer to photos and illustrations.
Civil War defenses and, 65–67, 69

Washington Monument, 84

Barnard Elementary School, 268

Bartholomew, Harland, 191

Beach, Lansing H., 165–66, 166, 167, 198

Beckman, Julie, 271

Bell, Franklin, 192, 193–94, 217

Bennett, Edward H., 211

Benning’s Bridge, 124

Bergstrom, George E., 226, 227

Bernard, Simon, 29

Biddle, John, 148–49

Bingham, Theodore Alfred, 76, 135–40, 

151, 167, 170, 179, 211

biography, 138, 138

Black, William M., 144, 166

Blagden, George, 29

Blair House, 233

Bloomington Dam, 259–60, 259

Board of Commissioners. See

Commissioners of the District of 

Columbia (1874–1967)

Board of Public Works. See territorial form 

of government

Board of Trade, 167, 192

Bolling Army Air Field, 230–31

Bomford, George, 26, 28–29

Botanic Garden, 151, 206

Bowman, Alexander H., 46, 47

Boynton, Henry V. N., 164

bridges, 8–9, 120–24, 202–6, 249. See also

Anacostia River Bridge; Aqueduct 

Bridge; Arland D. Williams Bridge; 

Arlington Memorial Bridge; Benning’s 

Bridge; “Buffalo Bridge;” Cabin John 

Bridge; Calvert Street Bridge; Chain 

Bridge; 11th Street Bridge; 14th Street 

Bridges; Francis Scott Key Bridge; 

George Mason Bridge; Grant Road 

Bridge; Highway Bridge; John Philip 

Sousa Bridge; Long Bridge; 

Massachusetts Avenue Bridge; 

Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge; 

Rochambeau Bridge; 16th Street Bridge; 

South Capitol Street Bridge; temporary 

bridges; Theodore Roosevelt Bridge; 

William H. Taft Bridge

Brown, Benjamin, 161

Brown, Glenn, 137, 157

Brownlow, Louis, 189–92

Brumidi, Constantino, 61

Bryan, William H., 41

Buberl, Caspar, 100–1

Buchanan, James, 62

“Buffalo Bridge” (Q Street Bridge), 182

building codes and regulations, 46, 117–18

buildings. See Agriculture Department 

Building; Anderson Cottage; Arlington 

Memorial Amphitheater; Army Medical 

Museum; Army War College; Arts and 

Industries Building; Blair House; 

Capitol, U.S.; Corcoran Museum of Art; 

District Building; executive department 

buildings; Federal Hall; Federal Triangle; 

Ford’s Theater; General Accounting 

Office; General Post Office; Government 

Printing Office; Kennedy Center for the 

Performing Arts; Library of Congress; 

Marshall Hall; National Museum of 

Natural History; Patent Office; Pension 

Building; Pentagon; Post Office 

Department Building; Pulaski Building; 

Red Cross Buildings; Smithsonian 

Institution; Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home; 

State, War and Navy Building; Theodore 

Roosevelt Hall; Tiber Island complex; 

Treasury Building; Walter Reed Army 

Medical Center; War Department 

Buildings; Wartime Temporary Buildings; 

Washington Arsenal; White House; 

Winder Building

Bulfinch, Charles, 48, 49, 51

Bureau of Construction, Treasury 

Department, 46

Burnham, Daniel, 132, 150, 153, 193, 199

Burr, William H., 185

Byrd, Robert C., 249

C

Cabin John Bridge, 42–43, 44–45

Calhoun, John C., 24, 29, 35

Calvert Street Bridge, 183

Camp Alexander, 68

Camp American University, 264–65

Camp Simms, 266–67

Camp Springs Army Air Field, 231

Cannon, Joseph, 153, 156, 159

Capitol, U.S. See also Capitol extension, 

U.S.

Bomford, George, 28–29

designs, 16

Latrobe, Benjamin Henry, 28–29

Monroe, James, 28–29

site, 12, 14

Swift, Joseph G., 28–29

vaults, 28–29

Capitol Extension, U.S. , 47–63, 51, 53, 55, 

56

Corps of Topographical Engineers design, 

49, 49

Davis, Jefferson, 51, 60

decoration, 61–63

Dome, 20, 47, 50, 54, 54, 57–60, 60, 

110

Floyd, John B., 62–63

innovative engineering, 61–62

Library of Congress, 51

materials, 50, 54–56, 60–61

Meigs, Montgomery, 51–63, 71

photo essay, 58–59

sculpture, 54, 60, 60

Walter, Thomas U., 50–51, 53, 56–57, 62

Carroll, Daniel, 6

Carrollsburg, 8–10

Casey, Edward Pearce, 106, 107, 108, 109, 

151, 152

Casey, Hugh J., 226

Casey, Thomas Lincoln, 129, 164, 170

Army Medical Museum, 97–98

biography, 90, 90

Library of Congress, 103–11

State, War and Navy Building, 91–95

Washington Monument, 84–88

Cassidy, William F., 259

Chain Bridge, 120, 121, 202, 203

Cheney, Howard L., 223

cherry trees in Potomac Park, 180, 215

citizens’ involvement, 78, 79, 118, 123, 

132, 160, 191–92, 194, 216, 233, 

246–47, 247, 264

Civil Aeronautics Authority, 221–22

Civil War

memorial sites, 196–97. See also

specific memorials

Washington’s defensive positions, 65–69, 

65, 66, 67, 68, 69

Clark, Edward, 89

Clark, Gilmore D., 227

Clark, James Beauchamp, 156–57

Clarke, Frederick J., 242, 247, 249

Clinton, William J. [Bill], 264

Cluss, Adolf, 39, 96, 96, 97, 98, 112, 113

Cobb, Henry Ives, 170

Columbia Historical Society, 233

Commission of Fine Arts, 152, 153, 156, 

157, 181, 186, 193, 198–99, 227, 249, 

250

Commission on the Renovation of the 

Executive Mansion, 233

Commissioners for the District of Columbia 

(1790–1802)

Washington, George and, 6

L’Enfant, Peter Charles and, 13–14, 

18–19

Commissioners of the District of Columbia 

(1874–1967). See also Engineer 

Commissioners

end of commissioner government, 242

establishment of, 71–72, 113–16

highway planning, 247

Metro, 248–49

parks, 75, 78

relationship between engineer and 

civilian commissioners, 189, 191

Rock Creek Park, 160, 166, 167

streets, 75, 118, 119, 193

utility rates, 191

urban redevelopment, 245

zoning, 191–92

Comstock, C. B., 126

Connecticut Avenue Bridge. See William H. 

Taft Memorial Bridge

Cooke, Henry D., 112

Coolidge, Calvin, 197, 199, 216, 217

Corcoran, William W., 40, 74

Corcoran Museum of Art, 133

corruption, 81, 91, 113

Cosby, Spencer, 151, 153, 156, 157, 179, 

180, 215

Craighill, William P., 126

Crawford, Thomas, 54, 60

D

Dalecarlia Treatment Plant and Reservoir. 

See Washington Aqueduct

Dallas, George M., 36

Davis, Charles E. L. B., 124, 127

300

I n d e x
Davis, George B., 85

Davis, Jefferson, 85

Aqueduct, 41, 45

Capitol extension, 51, 60

defensive positions. See also specific forts 

by name

Civil War, 65–69, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69

pre-Civil War, 25–28, 25, 26

de Krafft, Charles, 15–16

Delafield, Richard, 35, 39

Delano, Frederic A., 216, 217, 227

Delano, William Adams, 216, 233

Dickson, S. R., 121

District Building, 186, 187

District Commissioners. See Commissioners 

of the District of Columbia (1874–1967)

District of Columbia Redevelopment Land 

Agency (RLA), 243–46, 247

District Zoning Commission, 192

Dodge, Grenville M., 149, 151, 152

Dodge, Roy T., 248–49

Dos Passos, John, 193

Downer, Jay, 225

Downing, Andrew Jackson, 72, 73, 73

Duane, J. C., 84

Duke Ellington Bridge. See Calvert Street 

Bridge

Dunlap, William, 19

Dupont Circle, 77, 163

Dyson, Samuel T., 27

E

Earley, John J., 209

Edgerton, Glen E., 233, 234, 236

Edwards, James, 27

11th Street Bridge, 120, 121–22, 238

Eliot, Charles II, 217

Eliot, Charles W., 109

Ellicott, Andrew, 7, 13, 15, 17

Elliott, George H., 173

Engineer Commissioners. See also specific 

commissioners by name, Appendix, 

and Commissioners of the District of 

Columbia (1874–1967)

American Institute of Architects and, 

148–49

Anacostia River Reclamation, 183

Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission, 

198

bridge construction, 124, 203–4, 238, 

249

building codes, 117–18

citizen involvement, 118, 191–92, 194

city services, state of, 111–13, 190–91

development summary, 128–29

establishment of, 71–72, 113–14, 116

highway system, 118–20, 247

municipal administration, 189–94

relations with Congress, 118

replacement of, 242

Rock Creek Park, 161, 164–67

sanitation and sewers, 114, 117, 190

street lighting, 116, 192, 193

streets and parkways, 114–16, 115, 

118–20, 119, 193

urban redevelopment, 243–48

utility rates, 191, 192

Washington City Canal, 114

water supply, 114

zoning plan, 191–92

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Experimental Estuary Water Treatment 

Plant, 260

water quality concerns, 257–58

Ewing, M. C., 34

executive department buildings, 21–23, 22

Executive Mansion. See White House

Experimental Estuary Water Treatment 

Plant, 260

Ezdorf, Richard von, 94–95

F

federal government

move to Washington, 2, 6, 21–23

other locations proposed, 90, 111

permanent capital for, 2, 6

Federal Hall, 5–6, 6, 18

Federal Interdepartmental Task Force on the 

Potomac, 259

federal reservations. See reservations, 

federal

Federal Triangle, 209, 211, 211, 213

Fenderich, Charles, 84

Fieburger, Gustav, 165

Fillmore, Millard, 39, 40

Fish, Hamilton, 89, 90, 91

Fisk, Walter L., 202

Flood Control Act, 259–60

Floyd, John B., 62

Foggy Bottom, 47, 111

Ford’s Theater, 97

Fort Drive, 223–25, 224

Fort Ethan Allen, 67

Fort Lesley J. McNair

Army War College, 146

Marshall Hall, 254–55, 255

officers quarters, 146

Theodore Roosevelt Hall, 255

Fort Stevens, 65, 67

Fort Totten, 66

Fort Warburton, 26–28

Fort Washington, 25, 26, 28, 72

14th Street Bridge, 248, 249

Francis Scott Key Bridge, 9, 85, 202–3, 

203, 204

Franklin Square, 77

French, B. B., 71

French, Daniel Chester, 152, 158–59, 

196–97

Frishmuth, William, 88

G

Gaillard, David D., 185

Garfield Park, 162

Gaylord, Frank, 270

General Accounting Office (GAO), 252

General Post Office, 47, 51, 96

George Mason Bridge, 249

George Washington Memorial Parkway, 221. 

See also Mount Vernon Memorial 

Highway

Georgetown, 1–2, 7, 8–10, 17

Georgetown Channel project, 46–47

Georgetown Reservoir, 39

Gillette, Douglas H., 233

Gillmore, Q. A., 84, 126

Glover, Charles C., 161, 164, 177

Government Printing Office (GPO), 140–44, 

142–43

Graham, Campbell, 35

Graham, Jackson, 248–49

Grant, Ulysses S. III

Arlington Memorial Bridge, 199, 202

biography, 212, 212

Fort Drive, 224, 225

memorials and, 194, 198

Meridian Hill Park, 208–9

National Capital Park and Planning 

Commission, 216–17, 236–37, 243

National Capital Stadium, 231, 233

parks and recreation, 212–17

Public Buildings and Public Parks, 

Office of, 211–16

Public Buildings Commission, 209, 211

White House, 216–17

Grant, Ulysses S., 80, 81, 90–91, 112, 113

Grant Memorial, 130, 150, 151

commission established, 149–50

dedication, 197–98

design, 151

site, 150–51

sculpture, 151–52, 197

Grant Memorial Bridge (proposed), 123

Grant Road Bridge, 165

Gravelly Point, 222

Green, Bernard, 146, 148, 149

Library of Congress, 104, 106–111

State, War and Navy Building, 94

Washington Monument, 85, 88

Greene, F. V., 114, 118

Groves, Leslie R., 227

H

Hains, Peter C., 123

Anacostia River, 180

bridges, 122–23, 185

Mount Vernon Memorial Highway survey, 

128, 129, 157, 221

Potomac Flats reclamation, 124, 125–28, 

126, 127, 128

Hains Point, 128, 170

Hallet, Stephen S., 15–16

Hamilton, Alexander, 10, 19

Hand, David, 251

Harbaugh, Leonard, 22

Harding, Warren G., 199, 216

Harrison, Caroline, 134–35

Harts, William W., 152, 152, 166

duties described, 159–60

Lincoln Memorial, 157–59

on his Washington years, 187

parklands, 216

Red Cross Building, 194, 195, 208

Reflecting Pool, 159

Tidal Basin, 215

Wilson, Woodrow, 186

301

I n d e x
Hatch, Stephen D., 95

Hazen, Melvin C., 186

Henry, Joseph, 37, 38, 50

Hermant, Leon, 183

Highway Act of 1893, 118–20

Highway Bridge, 198, 221, 230. See also

14th Street Bridge

Highway Commission, 118–20, 216

highways. See also streets, avenues, roads, 

and alleys; specific highways and 

parkways

development and, 247–49

permanent system of highways, 114, 

118–20, 119, 224

Hill, James G., 141, 185

Hill, Samuel, 17

Hough, William Jervis, 36

housing, 192, 243–46, 246

Howard, Ernest, 233

Howard University Reservoir, 177

Hoxie, Richard L.

biography, 116–17

building codes, 117

Engineer Commissioner, Assistant, 114, 

117

Municipal engineer, 113–14

Rock Creek Park, 161

Hughes, George W., 32, 35, 40

Humphreys, Andrew A., 72, 81, 84, 125

Capitol extension, U.S., 49

Rock Creek bridge, 34

streets, 35

Hydrilla, 262–63

I

“inner city” issues, 241–42

Inner Loop Freeway (I-95), 247, 247

Ives, J. C., 83, 85

J

Jefferson, Thomas

L’Enfant, Peter Charles and, 6–12, 13, 

18–19

Military Academy, 23–24

John Philip Sousa Bridge, 124, 202, 203–4

Johnson, Andrew, 71

Johnson, John M., 231

Johnson, Lyndon B., 242, 259

Johnson, Thomas, 6, 13

Joint Commission, Washington Monument, 

84–85

Judson, William V., 157

Justement, Louis, 218, 244–45, 245

K

Kaseman, Keith, 271

Kearney, James, 31–32

Kendall, William M., 199

Kenilworth Gardens, 181

Kennedy, John F., 242

grave site, 251–52, 253

Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 

254, 254

Key Bridge. See Francis Scott Key Bridge

Key Elementary School, 267

Kingman, Dan C., 84–85

Knight, John G. D., 190–91

Know Nothing party, 82–83

Korean War Veterans Memorial, 269–70, 

269

Kurtz, J. D., 84–85

Kutz, Charles Willauer, 242

biography, 190, 190

Engineer Commissioner, 81, 166, 

189–92, 236

Kutz, Elizabeth, 242

L

Lafayette, Marquis de, 4

Lafayette Square, 79

Langdon, James G., 167, 208

Latrobe, Benjamin H., 23, 28–29

Lear, Tobias, 1

Lee, Robert E., 199

L’Enfant, Peter Charles, 2

Anacostia River, 8–9

assistants, 15–16

biography, 2, 4–6, 10–11, 19

Commissioners of the District of 

Columbia, 13–14, 18–19

Corps of Engineers proposals, 2–4

federal banquet pavilion design, 5, 6

federal city site, 1, 4, 8–10, 12, 17

Federal Hall, 5–6, 6, 18

Fort Warburton, 27–28

Hamilton, Alexander, 10, 19

independent behavior, 7–8, 9, 12–16

Jefferson, Thomas, 6–14, 18–19

landowners, 8–10, 12

military engineer, 2–5, 27–28

planning the federal city, 5–6, 8–9, 

10–12, 11, 12–18

Potomac River, 6, 7, 9

public buildings, 5–6, 6, 12, 13, 14, 18

reports, 8–9, 10–12

Society of the Cincinnati, 5, 5

streets and avenues, 9

surveys, 1–2, 8–10

symbolic designs, 5–6, 17–18

urban planning, 14–18

War of 1812, 27–28

Washington, George, 6–8, 10–12, 13, 18

West Point, 3, 25

Library of Congress

bookcarrying apparatus, 104, 104

Capitol location, 51, 94–95, 103

Casey, Thomas Lincoln, 103–11

construction, 104–6, 105, 109–11

construction management, 104, 106, 110

design, 103–4, 109–10

Green, Bernard, 104, 106–11

ornamentation, 71, 106–9, 106, 107, 108, 

109

Smithmeyer & Pelz, 103, 104, 106, 107, 

109, 110

Lincoln, Abraham, 97, 197, 199, 250

Lincoln, Robert T., 97, 197

Lincoln Memorial

Arlington Memorial Bridge and, 198–99, 

214

commission appointed, 153, 156

construction, 157–59, 195

dedication, 196–97

design, 156–57

location, 151, 153, 156

photo essay, 154–55

Lincoln Memorial Highway, 157

Logan Park, 78

Long Bridge, 31–32, 32, 33, 75, 125, 184, 

185. See also 14th Street Bridge

Lydecker, Garrett J., 170, 171, 173

M

Madison, James, 13, 29

Mall. See also Potomac Park; Senate Park 

Commission; specific buildings and 

memorials

Agriculture Building, 145–47, 147

Army Medical Museum, 97–98, 97

Arts and Industries Building, 96–97, 96

Bingham plan, cover image

Downing plan, 72–73, 73, 126

flooding, 126

National Museum of Natural History 

(formerly National Museum), 148, 148

Parsons plan, 133, 133

Public Buildings and Grounds, Office of, 

72–73, 73

Reflecting Pool, 159, 195–96, 214–15

Senate Park Commission plan, 131–34

Smithsonian Institution. See Smithsonian 

Institution

Washington Monument. See Washington 

Monument

Marsh, George Perkins, 88

Marshall, George C., 226

Marshall, William L., 83–84

Marshall Hall, 254–55, 255

Mason, J. L., 50

Massachusetts Avenue Bridge, 124, 185, 

218–19

Mathe, Robert E., 242

Maurice, Theodore, 28

McClellan, George B., 65, 80

McCoach, David, Jr., 204

McKim, Charles Follen, 132, 137–38, 140, 

144, 146, 148, 149, 151

McMillan, James, 131–34, 153, 160, 177, 

198, 257

McMillan Commission. See Senate Park 

Commission

McMillan Reservoir. See Washington 

Aqueduct

McPherson, James B., 78

Mehaffey, M. C., 209

Meigs, Montgomery C., 81, 129

biography, 52, 52, 98

Cabin John Bridge, 42–43

Capitol extension, 47, 51–63, 71, 96, 97

Civil War fortifications, 67

General Post Office Building, 46, 47, 51, 

96

302

I n d e x
National Museum, 96–97

Patent Office Building, 46, 51, 96

Pension Building, 63, 98–103, 99, 100, 

101

public parks, 160, 161

State, War and Navy Building, 89

street paving, 113

War Department Building, 89, 99

Washington Aqueduct, 40–46, 41. See 

also Washington Aqueduct

Washington Monument, 82

Mellon, Andrew, 211

memorials. See Arlington Memorial 

Amphitheater; Arlington Memorial 

Bridge; Grant Memorial; Korean War 

Veterans Memorial; Lincoln Memorial; 

Memorial to Women of the Civil War; 

Mount Vernon Memorial Highway; 

Washington Monument; World War II 

Memorial

Memorial to Women of the Civil War, 194

Meridian Hill Park, 208–9, 210

Merrill, William E., 122

Metro. See Washington Metropolitan Area 

Transit Authority

Michler, Nathaniel N., 129

Anacostia River Bridge, 121

miscellaneous projects, 72–75, 89

Potomac River and Flats, 75, 125

Rock Creek Park, 74, 160–61

street paving, 112–13

White House relocation, 72, 73–75, 160

Miller, Alexander M., 177

Mills, Robert

Capitol extension, U.S., 48

Patent Office Building, 46

War Department, 35

Washington Monument design, 48, 82, 

84–85, 84

Miner Elementary School, 267, 269

Monocacy Aqueduct, 259

Monroe, James, 28–29

reconstruction, 28–29

Moore, Charles, 133, 140, 152, 153, 198–99

Morrill, Justin, 107

Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, 73

Mount Vernon Memorial Highway

survey, 128, 129, 157

dredge and fill operations, 220, 221

realignment, 222, 223

Mount Vernon Square Park, 77

Mullett, A. B., 89–91, 112, 113

munitions cleanup, 265–67

Mussey, R. D., 73–75

N

Nagle, John L., 199

National Arboretum and Botanic Garden, 

206

National Capital Park Commission, National 

Capital Park and Planning Commission, 

National Capital Planning Commission, 

252, 264

bridges, 230, 249

establishment and reorganization, 

216–17, 236–37

Fort Drive, 224, 225

highway planning, 247

Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, 218

urban renewal, 243, 244, 245

National Capital Stadium, 231, 233

National Defense University

Marshall Hall, 254–55, 255

Theodore Roosevelt Hall, 255

National Institute for the Promotion of 

Science, 36. See also Smithsonian 

Institution

National Museum of Natural History 

(formerly National Museum), 148, 148

National Park Service, 208, 209, 212, 237

National Trust for Historic Preservation, 237

National Zoological Park, 131, 161, 164, 

167

Navy Department Building, 22, 22

Niernsee, John R., 38

Noyes, Crosby S., 161

O

Office of Construction of Public Buildings, 

District of Columbia, 149

Office of Public Buildings and Grounds. See

Public Buildings and Grounds, Office of

Office of Public Buildings and Public Parks. 

See Public Buildings and Public Parks, 

Office of

Olmsted, Frederick Law, 81

Olmsted, Frederick Law, Jr., 132, 153, 166, 

181

Organic Act of 1878, 116

Owen, Frederick Dale, 134, 136, 186

Owen, Robert Dale, 36

P

Palmer, Frank W., 141

parks, circles, and squares. See also

reservations, federal and Senate Park 

Commission

Anacostia Park, 206, 207, 208

Dupont Circle, 77, 163

Farragut Square, 117

Franklin Square, 77

Garfield Park, 162

Layfayette Square, 79

L’Enfant’s plans and methodology, 16–18

Logan Park, 78

Meridian Hill Park, 208–9, 210

Mount Vernon Square Park, 77

Office of Public Buildings and Grounds, 

73–79, 208–17

petitions and lobbying for, 160–61, 162, 

164

photo essays, 162–63, 168–69

playgrounds, 162–63, 217

Potomac Park. See Potomac Park

President’s Park, 76

relation to avenues, 17–18

Rock Creek Park. See Rock Creek Park

Smithsonian Park, 77

Thomas Circle, 168

Truxton Circle, 169

watchmen, 79, 79, 161

Willow Tree Park, 162

Parsons, Samuel, Jr., 133, 167

Patent Office, 51, 96

Peaslee, Horace W., 209, 210

Peets, Elbert, 244

Pelz, Paul J., 103, 104, 109, 110, 123

Pennsylvania Avenue, 35, 81, 112

flooding, 126, 126

Pennsylvania Avenue Bridge, 45, 123–24, 

123

Pension Building, 100, 101

Buberl, Caspar, 100–1

cost, 102–3

design, 99–101, 99

engineering, 101–2

inspiration, 99–101

materials, 100, 102

Meigs, Montgomery C., 98–103

Pentagon

Bergstrom, George E., 226–27

construction, 227–30

construction management, 230

design and planning, 226–27

landscape and utilities, 230

location, 226–27

photo essay, 228–29

renovation, 270–72

September 11th Memorial, 271–72

September 11th terrorist attacks, 271, 

271

Witmer, David J., 227

Perry, Roland Hinton, 182

Perry, R. Ross, 164

Pierce, Franklin, 41, 46, 51

Platt, Charles Adams, 216

Poinsett, Joel R., 35, 36

pollution, 191, 241, 256, 258, 260–67

Pope, John Russell, 156

population, 16, 111, 190, 204, 241

Post Office Department Building, 213

Potomac Drive, 180

Potomac Park, 72, 76, 128, 128, 131, 133, 

170, 177, 178, 179–81, 217

photo essay, 214–215

Potomac River. See also water supply and 

systems

Air Florida crash, 262

Baltimore Engineer District study and 

oversight, 258–65

bridges, 33, 120–24, 184–85. See also

Aqueduct Bridge; Arland D. Williams 

Bridge; Arlington Memorial Bridge, 

Chain Bridge, 14th Street Bridges; 

Francis Scott Key Bridge; George 

Mason Bridge, Highway Bridge, 

Rochambeau Bridge, temporary 

bridges; Theodore Roosevelt Bridge

fish repopulation, 257

invasive vegetation, 261, 261, 262–63

L’Enfant, Peter Charles and, 6, 7, 9

navigation, 46–47

pollution, 191, 256, 257–58, 260–63

Seneca Project, 259

surveys, 72, 75

Washington Engineer District river 

control and reclamation. See Potomac 

River Flats

303

I n d e x
Potomac River Flats, 75, 111, 131

reclamation, 71, 72, 114, 125–29, 126, 

127, 128, 133, 177–80, 177, 178, 180

Powell, Charles F., 118

Powers, Hiram, 54

presidential inaugurations, 5, 59, 76, 98, 

179

“presidential palace,” 12

President’s House. See White House

Proctor, Alexander Phimister, 182

Public Buildings Act, 209

Public Buildings and Grounds, Office of

Agriculture Department Building, 

145–47, 147

Anacostia River Reclamation, 180, 181

Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission, 

198

Arlington National Cemetery, 196

Army Medical Museum, 97–98

Army War College, 144–45, 145, 146, 

254

bridge construction, 120–24

Commission of Fine Arts, secretary of, 

153

establishment of, 72

Federal Triangle, 209, 211, 211, 213

Government Printing Office, 140–44, 

142–43

Grant Memorial, 149–52, 197–98

Lincoln Memorial, 151–59, 195, 196–98

Mall, 72–73, 73, 78–79

maps of federal reservations and 

buildings, 76, 185–86

parks, squares, and federal reservations, 

72, 73–79, 78, 79, 162–63, 168–69, 

208–9, 210, 212–13, 215

photo essays, 162–63, 168–69

Potomac Park, 177–80

Potomac River reclaimed land transferred 

to, 125, 170, 177

Red Cross buildings, 194

Reflecting Pool, 159, 195–96, 214–15

reorganized as Office of Public Buildings 

and Public Parks, 208–12

responsibilities transferred to 

National Park Service, 212, 236–37

Rock Creek Park, 166, 167, 167, 170, 

208

State, War and Navy Building, 89–95, 

92–93, 94, 95

statues. See statues

transferred from Interior to War 

Department, 71

wartime temporary buildings, 194–95

Washington Monument completion, 

81–88, 82, 84, 85, 86–89

watchmen, 79, 79, 161

White House care and renovations, 73, 

79–80, 134–38, 140

Public Buildings and Public Parks, Office 

of, 208–17

Public Buildings Commission, Treasury 

Department, 209

public schools, 267–69, 267, 268

public transportation, 248–49

public works, 31–36, 71–72, 243–46. See 

also Washington Aqueduct; specific 

aspects, e.g., sewerage and sanitation; 

water supply and systems; etc.

Public Works Administration, 231

Pulaski Building, 252

Q

Q Street Bridge, 182

Quartermasters Corps, 226, 230

R

racial issues, 212, 241, 247

recreation areas. See parks, circles, and 

squares; reservations, federal

Red Cross Buildings, 194, 195, 196

Redevelopment Land Corporation. See

District of Columbia Redevelopment 

Land Corporation

Reflecting Pool, 159, 195–96, 214–215

Renshaw, Clarence, 227, 230, 231

Renwick, James, 37, 38

reservations, federal

improvements by Engineer 

Commissioners, 111–12, 162

improvements by the Office of Public 

Buildings and Grounds, 72–73, 75–79, 

77, 78, 79, 162–63, 168–69, 208–9, 

210, 212–13, 214–215, 216–17

increase in, 75, 212–13, 216–17

maintenance, 79, 79

maps of, 75, 76, 167, 185–86, 208

original design concepts and plans, 10, 

11

reservoirs. See Washington Aqueduct; water 

supply and systems; specific reservoirs

Residence Act, 6, 21

Reynolds, Joe, 254

Richards, William P., 118

Ridley, Clarence. S., 186

Fort Drive, 223

wartime temporary buildings, 194

Lincoln Memorial and Reflecting Pool, 

195–96

Rives, Alfred L., 45

Roberdeau, Isaac

biography, 30, 30

L’Enfant’s assistant, 15–16

Topographical Bureau, 29–31

Roberts, Henry M., 164

Robinson, Bernard L., 225, 256

Rochambeau Bridge, 248, 249

Rock Creek & Potomac Parkway, 167, 203, 

208, 209, 213, 218–19

Rock Creek Park

authorization, 164

bridges, see “Buffalo Bridge;” Calvert 

Street Bridge, Grant Road Bridge, 

Massachusetts Avenue Bridge, 16th 

Street Bridge, William H. Taft Bridge

origins, 74, 160, 164

improvements, 164, 165, 165, 208, 212

land acquisition, 131, 164, 208

parkway, 167, 203, 208, 209, 213, 

218–19

plan for, 166–67, 167, 170

Rogers, Isaiah, 37

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 221–23, 226, 227

Roosevelt Bridge. See Theodore Roosevelt 

Bridge

Roosevelt, Theodore, 137, 139, 146, 148

Root, Elihu, 140, 144, 148, 150, 151

Rossell, William T., 164, 167

S

Saint-Gaudens, Augustus, 108, 133

Scheinsberg, Dale, 254

schools, 267–69, 267, 268

Scott, Winfield, 78, 251

Searle, Henry R., 85

Seaton, William W., 36

Senate Park Commission, 131–34, 146, 147, 

148, 150, 151, 153, 160, 164, 166, 170, 

181, 186, 198, 199, 205, 208, 221

sewerage and sanitation, 35, 111–14, 117, 

190, 256, 260

Sewell, John S., 141, 148, 149

Agriculture Department Building, 

145–47, 147

Army War College, 144–45, 145

Government Printing Office (GPO), 

140–44, 142–43

Shepherd, Alexander R., 81, 91, 111–17, 

125

Sherman, John, 164

Sherman, William T., 96–97, 117

Sherrill, Clarence O.

Arlington Memorial Bridge, 198–99

Grant Memorial, 151–52, 197–98

Reflecting Pool, 196

Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, 208

White House rehabilitation, 216

Shrady, Henry M., 151–52, 197

16th Street Bridge, 182

slums and alley dwellings, 111, 243–44, 

243

Smit, Arthur H., 260

Smith, Chloethiel Woodard, 244–45, 245

Smith, Frederick A., 40, 50

Smithmeyer, John L., 103, 104, 106, 107, 

109, 110

Smithson, James, 36

Smithsonian Institution

Arts and Industries Building (formerly 

National Museum), 96–97, 96

grounds, 77

lecture hall, 38

National Museum Building Commission, 

96–97

National Museum of Natural History, 

148, 148

Smithsonian Institution Building 

(“Castle”), 36–39, 37, 38

Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home, U.S., 38, 74, 

250–51, 250

Soldiers’ Home, U.S. See Soldiers’ and 

Airmen’s Home, U.S.

Somervell, Brehon B., 213, 221, 226, 227

Sousa Bridge. See John Philip Sousa Bridge

South Capitol Street Bridge, 239

Southeast-Southwest Freeway, 247–49, 245

304

I n d e x
Southwest Washington, 240, 243, 244

redevelopment, 244–46, 245, 246

waterfront, 125–26, 217, 217

Spofford, Ainsworth, 103, 104, 106–7, 109

Spring Valley, 265–67, 266

Stanton, Edwin M., 39, 67, 89

Stanton, Richard H., 51, 56

State Department Building, 22, 22, 89

State, War and Navy Building, 211

Casey, Thomas Lincoln, 91–95

construction, 90–94

Crump, John, 89

design, 89, 94, 95

Hatch, Stephen D., 95

materials, 94–95

photo essay, 92–93

statues

Dupont, Samuel F., 77

Farragut, David G., 117

Freedom, 54, 60, 60

Grant, Ulysses S., 149–52, 150, 151, 

197–98

Korean War Veterans Memorial, 269–70, 

269

Lincoln, Abraham, 158, 196–97

McClellan, George B., 80

McPherson, John B., 78

Rawlins, John A., 78

Scott, Winfield, 78

St. Louis world’s fair, 76, 180

Stevens, Thaddeus, 73

Stoddert, Benjamin, 7

streets, avenues, roads, and alleys, 216

alley dwellings and slum areas, 111, 

243–44, 243, 244

L’Enfant, Peter Charles and, 9, 12, 16–18

“parking,” 112–13

paving, improvements, and maintenance, 

22, 73, 79, 81, 111–16, 193, 193

photo essay, 115

relation to public squares, 17–18

street cleaning, 193

street lighting, 112, 162, 168, 182, 192, 

193

street plan, 75–76, 114, 118–20, 119

Strickland, William, 48, 49, 53

Stuart, David, 6

suburban development, 118–20, 119, 193, 

212–13, 241

highways and, 247–49

Suitland Parkway, 231, 231

Surgeon General’s Office, 97, 98

Swift, Joseph G., 28–29

Symons, Thomas W., 123, 161, 173, 185

T

Taft, William H., 153, 156, 157, 177, 195,

197. See also William H. Taft Memorial 

Bridge

Tardy, John A., 72

temporary bridges, World War II, 231, 232

territorial form of government, 71, 81, 

112–14

Board of Public Works, 77, 81, 91, 

112–14, 117, 125

Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, 249, 249

Theodore Roosevelt Hall, 255

Theodore Roosevelt Island, 125, 249

Thomas, Christopher A., 158

Thomas, Robert S., 223

Thomas Circle, 168

Thomson Elementary School, 268

Thornton, William, 16

Tiber Creek, 11, 110, 111

Tiber Island complex, 246

Tidal Basin, 72, 124, 179, 195, 212, 214,

217. See also Potomac Park

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, 198, 251, 

251

Topographical Bureau, Corps of 

Topographical Engineers, 28, 29, 35–36, 

71

Aqueduct Bridge, 31–36

water supply, 40

Totten, Joseph G., 23, 36

Capitol extension, U.S., 50

Civil War fortifications, 67

Smithsonian Institution, 36–38, 40

Townshend, George Alfred, 78–79

traffic circles, 168–69. See also parks, 

circles, and squares; reservations, federal

Treasury Building/Treasury Department, 

21–22, 22, 89

Truman, Harry S, 233–37

Truxton Circle, 169

Turnbull, William, 32–34, 38

Twining, William J., 114, 117, 126

Tyler, Max C., 198, 202

U

urban redevelopment, 243–46

highways and, 247–49

U.S. Soldiers’ Home. See Soldiers’ and 

Airmen’s Home

V

Vilas, William F., 103

Virginia

retroceded land, 112

water supply to, 205, 255

Vitale, Ferruccio, 209, 210

W

Wadsworth, Decius, 27

Walter, Thomas U.

Capitol extension, 47–48, 50–51, 53, 54, 

56, 57, 63, 138

influence on State, War and Navy 

Building, 94–95

Treasury extension, 46

Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 231, 270

Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, 251

War Department Building, 21, 22, 22,

89–95, 186, 226. See also State, War 

and Navy Building; Pentagon

War of 1812, 27

Ward, John Quincy Adams, 108

Warner, John, 257

Warner, Olin Levi, 108

Wartime Temporary Buildings, 194, 213, 

225, 226

Washington, George

L’Enfant, Peter Charles and, 6–12, 13, 

14, 18

selection of building locations, 12

survey of District of Columbia and, 7–8

Washington Aqueduct

Cabin John Bridge photo essay, 42–43

conduit, 204–5, 205

construction, 39–47, 39, 40, 41, 44, 45

Dalecarlia Treatment Plant and 

Reservoir, 205, 206, 256, 257

expansion in the 1920s, 204–6

filtration, 173, 175, 176, 177

Georgetown Reservoir, 39

Great Falls, 204

McMillan Filter Plant and Reservoir, 

176, 177, 257, 257

post-World War II expansion, 255–58

superintendence, 72, 75

Washington City Tunnel, 170–73, 171, 

172–73, 174, 175

Washington Arsenal, 144, 145

Washington Channel, 125, 126–27, 126, 

127, 128, 178, 217, 217, 221, 260

Washington City Canal, 48, 73, 82, 110, 

111, 112, 114, 125

Washington City Tunnel. See Washington 

Aqueduct

Washington Engineer District. See also

Washington Aqueduct

abolished, 258

Anacostia River control and land 

reclamation, 180–81, 205–6, 207, 

208, 263

Aqueduct Division, 204–5, 205, 206

Bolling Army Air Field, 230–31

bridge construction, 120–24, 184–85, 

202–3, 261

establishment of, 72, 125

Mount Vernon Memorial Highway, 221

National Airport, 221–23

Potomac River control and land 

reclamation. See Potomac River Flats

Soldiers’ Home, U.S., 250

Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 231, 

251

World War II emergency bridges, 231, 

232

Washington Metropolitan Area Transit 

Authority (Metro), 248–49

ordnance items found, 266–67

Washington Monument

completion, 88

construction by Corps of Engineers, 

85–88

design, 81–83, 84, 85, 85

engineer studies of foundation, 83–85

grounds, 48, 78–79, 86, 111

Joint Commission, 84–85

Mills, Robert, 82, 84–85, 84

photo essay, 86–87

Searle, Henry R., 85, 85

Senate Park Commission and, 133

Washington National Airport, 221–23, 222, 

223

305

I n d e x
Washington National Monument Society, 

81–83, 84

Water Resources Development Act, 260

water supply and systems, 31–34, 38–47, 

111–14, 170–77, 191. See also public 

works; Washington Aqueduct

expansion, 204–5, 255–65

fluoridation, 256

water quality concerns, 257–58

Welling, Alvin C., 256

West Point, U.S. Military Academy, 3, 

23–25, 35

Wetmore, George Peabody, 150

Wheeler, Raymond A., 250

Whiskey Ring, 81, 91

White, Edward B., 38

White, Stanford, 185

White House

Coolidge renovations, 216

maintenance by Office of Public 

Buildings and Grounds, 79–80

proposed renovations by Bingham and 

debate, 135–40

photo essay, 234–35

President’s House, 12, 13, 21, 21, 22

public events, 79–80, 139, 140

relocation proposals, 72, 73–75, 125

Roosevelt (Theodore) renovations, 136,

137–38, 137, 140, 236

Truman renovations, 233–37, 234–35

Whitman, Walt, 111

Wilkinson, James, 26–27

William H. Taft Memorial Bridge, 182, 238

William Jennings Randolph Lake, 259–60, 

259

Williams, Jonathan, 24, 26

Willow Tree Park, 162

Wilson, Edith Galt, 179, 195

Wilson, John M., 98, 135

Wilson, Joseph M., 171

Wilson, Robert, 254

Wilson, Rufus Rockwell, 116

Wilson, Woodrow, 179, 186, 189, 194, 195

Winder Building, 64, 89

Winslow, Lorenzo, 233

Witmer, David J., 227

Wood, Leonard, 179

Woodruff, Isaac C., 46–47

World War I, 190, 194–95, 204, 226

munitions, cleanup, 265–67

World War II, 225, 230–33

World War II Memorial, 196

Wyeth, Nathan C., 202

Y

Young, Ammi B., 37, 46

Young, Gordon R., 247, 249

Young, Notley, 14

Z

Zirschky, John, 257

zoning plan, 191–92 

306

I n d e x