Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-03-02

Here and there one may point to in
stances where men have selected tract
of vacant land, far perhaps from any
other community, and declared that a
city, perhaps q capital city, would rise
there. Washington, the National Capt.
tai of the United States, was placed in
such q manner. washington now Is q
splendid city, standing where its
founders willed it should rise.
This is the exception. There has been
wider experience of q contrary nature,
the experience of men who held the
conviction that they could cause a city
to rise at a given place or who believed
they could accurately foretell what de-
velopment would occur.
Take a notable case in point. In the
very early days of San Francisco, when
it was town of but 1000 inhabitants.
Richard Pindell Hammond, father of
John Hays Hammond, the eminent
mining engineer and capitalist, lived
there. In fact. John Hays Hammond
was born in the Golden Gate city in
1855. The elder Hammond, himself a
surveyor, looked over the magnificent
San Francisco Bay and foresaW that a
great city would rise on its shores. He
saw how the land lay with a surveyors
eye. He visioned q great port of the
future, mistress OF the Pacific Coast. So
ings of land where he was certain the
future city would stand He surveyed
it himself, laying out streets and de-
marking town lots. 1t was only a mat
ter of waiting q few years. There in
the harbor lay tall ships which had
brought out gold-seekers and some
which came from strange ports to trade
The day was not far distant when ships
from all the world would lie in that
harbor, thought Hammond.
Today. three-quarters of o century
afterward, that carefully surveyed town.
site Is a mud nat, still vacant. save for
an occasional shack of fisherman.
San Francisco has grown into the proud
city Hammond foresaw, but on almost
every bit OF ground save that he Sc
lected as the inevitable site.
Plans Often Go Awry.
When the authorities of the Mary
land proprietary and leading eolonists
began to push northward and explore
that great province Of the New World,
they looked forward to the day when
q great port would arise as the result
of teeming trade. Desiring to be be-
forehand in real estate operations, they
selected what they regarded as the GER
tain site of Maryland's future chief
port. They selected o site not far from
JtlS present. lOcAGlOn OF k1AVFe Qe Grace.
There Is q little group of buildings
there to this day. 1t is q small town
called Joppa, of which few people dis
tant from the neighborhood have ever
heard.
Baltimore, now one Of the leading
ports of the United States with not far
short of 1,000,0 900 population, was UNI
thought of at that time.
What causes cities to grow where
they do often Is an unsolved mystery,
What causes the logical sites chosen
for them to be neglected or abandoned
Is, perhaps, equally mysterious. In
deed, some of the greatest cities have
arisen in the most unlikely places. Ven
Ice, for example, city which has in
fiuenced the trade and culture of the
world, from Venice Beach, Calf, TO
the courts of Kubla Kahn in China
around the world, indeed-was built on
piles by fugitives, who ned into the
morasses at the head Of the Adriatic
Sea to escape their enemies. Paris, too,
was built on piles In . swamp, that
being deemed q safe place where its