The San Francisco call., 1896-10-01
HAYoo AT WASHINGTON.
Trees Cprooted and Roofs Torn Fro,
Hundreds of buildings.

Trees Cprooted and Roofs Torn From,
Hundreds of buildings.
WASHINGTON, D. c., Sept 30.-The
West Indian tornado which struck Wash
ington between IL P. NJ. and midnight last
matte properties. 1t ripped off some of
the coping of the White House and laid
low most of the historic trees in the White
House grounds, including the elm tree
which Lincoln planted, and this gave the
relic fanatics a fruitful field for their
operations. 1t carried away part of the
roof of the State Department where the
official documents are stored, but fortu-
nately left them uninjured. The costly
roof of the Patent Office, constructed after
the fire there some years ago, was rolled
up and distributed all around the neigh
borhood, and skylights half an inch thick
were remorselessly beaten in. The Naval
Observatory and, in fact, pretty well every
other public building was more or less
damaged. Diplomatic residences were
not spared. That of the French Minister
was left roofess and even the substantially
built embassy of Great Britain suffered
the loss of the portico.
Churches and theaters suffered alike.
The slate roof of the Church of the Cove
nant, where President Harrison used to
worship, was blown down, and each square
slate by curious freak planted itself up
right in the parking which surrounds the
edifce. Still more disastrous was the fate
of the New York Presbyterian Church
which Mr.. Bryan recently attended. The
whole tower of that edifice was reduced to
matchwood, and persons in search of
souvenirs had no difficulty in obtaining
them.
Nearly every other church in the city
suffered more or less and the theaters
were equally visited. The tower of the
Grand Opera-house, formerly Albaugh's,
was blown down. fortunately without
hurting anybody. The debris still OBJ
structs the whole width of one of the
broadest streets in Washington. Several
other theaters lost their roofs in whole or
part. The new Albaugh's Opera bouse,
built on the site of Blaine's old residence,
where the Seward assassination was at
tempted, escaped injury, but the watch
mans box at the corner, where through
several wintry weeks newspaper men
awaited the progress of the last illness OF
the great Secretary, was caught up by the
storm and crushed into splinters.
The devastation wrought among the
beautiful trees of the capitol was heart
rending. For years the Parking Comm is
sion. which controls this part of the Ma
tional Capitol decoration, had been i'm
plored TO have the redundant foliage of
these trees trimmed. Thereby has always
been that there has not been sufficient
appropriation made. Now thousands of
trees. which would have weathered this
storm. if reduced to less redundancy,
were blown up by the roots or hopelessly
dismembered and the damage done can
not be replaced by any appropriation five
times as large as that usually made by
Con gress for any one years tree-cutting.
There was no loss of life as far as was
learned in Washington, though list of
twenty-four persons seriously injured by
falling branches and crumbling walls is
given out by the hospitals.
The total destruction of property in
Washington City by the storm is estima-
ted at nearly half million dollars.
In Alexandria, the Virginia suburb of
Washington, just across the Potomac
River, the damage done by the storm is
estimated at not less than s100, 1000. and at
least two lives are known to have been
lost. The killed are Mrs. Louisa Holt and
William D. Stewart, crushed to death by
falling walls.
Nearly 200 houses were badly damaged
by the tornado in its course.