Evening star., 1925-01-25
Pressing Need Is for Competent Body
To Plan Future Development of Capital

already inadequate for the city's needs. The
Fine Arts Commission is not intended to be
a planning agency. 1t is an advisory body
and its opinions in matters of design are given
only on sculpture, park projects and public
structures in the District. 1t has juris-
diction whatever the streets or private
building development which make up the
bulk of the city. Far from being develop
ed under a great plan, there are few cities
which are torn apart by conflicting in
terests and, what is more to the point, by
conflicting powers. Washington represents
the acme of decentralization.
Division OF Authority.
To begin with, there is the legislative body
holding detailed jurisdiction every
penditure OF funds and requiring plans to meet
Its approval. In the executive group, the
parks and the park trees are under plan
ming Jurisdiction: the streets and the street
trees under another. There is no concerted
planning of highways for parkways, no adap-
tation of parkways for trafic needs. The
transportation system is not prescheduled to
meet the needs of zoned districts. There is
no definite location of public building projects,
no advance study estimate of the housing
complement for their future occupants,
correlated study OF the arterial feeders and
conveyances between the two. Notwithstand-
ing all the object lessons labor1g
under today and all the shining examples,
good and bad, of other American cities,
blundering along and doing our best, bit by
bit, instead of getting down to business and
putting to work best talent, special
lied talent in working out all these diverse
problems in their relation to each other, in
comprehensive co-ordinated scheme.
This is a cold business proposition and it
should make its strongest appeal business
men. No business man would think of hav-
ing a department store without head. In
which each department working without
regard for the interest of every other depart
ment and without coordination. No business
man would sanction policy of half adopting
a scheme OF business extension and then COM
pleting 1t after allowing spectators to buy up
the options the property. That is what
happens here We half-heartedly launch
scheme for Government buildings such leg
islative square around the Capitol or Execu-
tive Square around the White House and then
We shift back and forth for a couple of de-
cades until the land has gone out of sight
in value or is preoccupied with Improvements
which block the Government scheme. Finally,
We build a Treasury annex a third of it,
and let private office buildings go up around
the square.
An Age of Specialization.
The time has passed when it was the proper
thing for every man to be a jack Of alI-trades.
We have found that by puttering around in
amateur fashion we have wasted money and
time and lives. We have wasted millions of
dollars In Washington by doing things that
we need not have done and in leaving undone
things that ought to have done and in dis
carding or doing over the things that could
Just as well have been right in the first place
Until all the diverse problems of Washington
are sorted out and studied from a single CO.
ordfnating point of view, by specialists in
modern city planning, there will continue Just
the sort of difficulties have met in the
past only much intensified as the years go on
Philadelphia, Chicago, New York are readjust-
ing themselves at tremendous costs of physical
alteration. How much simpler 1t is to make
the adjustments on paper before the errors
translated into streets and buildings for
future generations to remove
From immemorial times the nations of the
world have lavshed their arts upon their
capital cities and to all other nations these
capitals represent their countries. One can
not think of Italy without recalling Rome;
nor of France without Paris; nor or England
without London. This pre-emnence is not ac-
cidental. 1t is the result of genius. Pericles
called to his aid the greatest artists of Greece
and to this day 1.-The glory that was Greece"
sets the standard by which judge our own
accomplishment-the Lincoln Memorial. Moth