Evening star., 1925-04-27

vailed until recent date, though the
Nation has been under the partner
ship obligations in capital building
imposed by the equitable agreements
OF 1878 and 1922, and though the
whole American people are affection
ately proud of the Nations City.
Washington's Building Problem.
The modern builders of a city
beautiful on the banks of the Poto-
mac have had a simple problem to
solve compared with that set by
Buenos Aires or Rio. In the single
item of broadening and Strengthening
streets they were spared millions OF
expenditure necessary in the south
ern capitals. The forefathers pro-
vided a magnificent street plan be-
fore there was a city. The owners or
the soil donated a greater area for
streets than was reserved for building
lots AS late as Charles Dickens visit
in 1912, the most notable thing about
the Capital was its pretentious plan,
characterized by the great novelist as
the vast design of an aspiring
Frenchman, displaying as its leading
features spacious avenues that be-
gin in nothing and lead nowhere;
streets miles long that only want
houses, roads and inhabitants; public
buildings that need but public to be
complete, and ornaments of great
thoroughfares, which only lack great
thoroughfares to ornament.
Our modern capital builders have
had as their task: Q) Protection or
the original streets and avenues, parks
and parFlets of the city's plan: t2) ex-
pensive maintenance and development
of the original streets and avenues
covering vast area, suitable for
the thoroughfares of populous and
wealthy capital ludicrously out of re-
lation to the resources of self-sup-
porting, self-developing Maryland vii
lage: 80 extension of the city's origt-'
nal plan. as far as possible, to the new
Washington outside of the original
limits, which is spreading urban con-
ditions to the boundaries of the Dis
trict; ~ removal of conditions which
have sprung up to mar the original
plan and the harmonious development
of the city beautiful; and 6) acquisi-
ton and development of all the com.
ponent parts of the new system of
connected outer parks which did not
enter into the plans of the forefatherS,
but which are essential to the ade-
quate and rounded development of the
modern capital.
Redeeming Pennsylvania Avenue.
The special immediate labor under
the fourth heading is the removal
of ugly and discreditable conditions
affecting Pennsylvania avenue, the
great historic thoroughfare and parade
street of the Capital, 100 feet wide.
with Capitol Hill and the Capitol
building with it's swelling dome in
vista at one end, and with the Treas
ury Department and White House at
the other. Between this avenue and
the public garden of L'Enfant's plan,
the Mall. is a triangle. containing at
this time between 20 and 80 acres of
land not owned by the Government,
which when the process of transform
ing it began furnished an entirely un-
worthy setting and environment for
one side OF Pennsylvania avenue. This
space is clearly devoted in the very
nature of things to public purposes. to
the sites of public buildings with park
approaches and surroundings. The
law has already placed within it the
Capitals Municipal Building and the
Nations Post Office Department, and
in prospective the State Department,
Commerce and Labor Department"
and Department Of Justice. Years ago
three blocks in the triangle were con-
demned and bought by the Govern
ment specifically as the sites of new
buildings for these three then-existing
departments. but the new structures
contemplated have never been erected.