Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-08-01

Designers of the new Government
buildings for the National Capital should
learn a lesson and gain inspiration from
the work of the architects who designed
notable structures erected in the first
80 years Of Washington. according to
Waddy B. Wood Washington architect.
These buildings were of styles not only
lauded at the time they were built into
concrete form, but which have retained
public appreciation through all the in
tervening years. Mr.. Wood told recent
gathering of the Association OF Federal
Architects.
Mr.. Wood cited the United States
Capitol, the old District Court House and
the White House among examples of
the early Washington architectural ex-
pressions worthy Of study and emula-
ton.
Voicing fears Of the effects of de-
signers merely trying TO do something
different" Mr.. Wood said. in part:
Architecture often has been referred
to as frozen music but this. while
poetic, is a vague and meaningless def
milton. 1t would seem more logical to
call 1t frozen history as IL tells a con-
crete story Of civilizations that are
past
Record Of Architecture.
SiNA1hdUlOil lIoCc hllQ 1dJtS hliO HIN1h-
lecture writes it down on tablets of
stone for future generations to read.
Let us read these stones in Washington
and see If we cannot learn a lesson that
will help all of us present, who will
play a large part in either improving It's
beauty or hurting it,
I'VE turn back the pages about 100
years and arrive at the beginning. Do
we learn that we have improved on the
first 80 years of designing buildings
that are beautiful and still admired and
never disliked in all these years?
We find that during all the period
which has elapsed since they we're never
out of style; and while there may have
been times when the public was not as
interested AS they were in the begin
ming, and are today. there was no pc
Rod. even during our Victorian Age.
when they we're disliked. This does not
apply 10 any other period since then.
Starting when this work began to
degenerate gradually. we find the COM
pleted Treasury Department not as in
teresting as the buildings which have
gone before, but still very good. Later
we find the State, War and Navy and
the Pension Buildings worse than any,
thing that had gone before; and in our
day we find the Post once Building on
Pennsylvania avenue, with its tower,
not only impracticable, but very bad.
Still later we find Bacon's beautiful
Lincoln Memorial. which comes nearer
to being in keeping with the aspirations
Of our early architects than any modern
building in Washington and studied
by serious architect in very much the
way our early architects would have
studied it were they living now and had
similar problem.
To-day, with this information before
us. there is only one conclusion to be
reached-that styles that are anachro-
nisms and exotic. trying to do some
thing different. have been failure as
things of beauty in Washington. and
the only gain that has been made is in
the fleeting attention paid to something
queer that eventually becomes a horror.
THE lesson that can be drawn from
this is that If our civilization is as
good as it was in the beginning, the
chances are that we will carry on with
very beautiful Washington. If our
civilization is slipping, which some of
the work sometimes make me think is
so, then we are going to spend not So
900 900. the cost Of the old State De-
partment, but 100000 900. misspent.