Evening star., 1935-02-24
By Don Bloch.

ties of the live. art, mystery. oddity
and romance that the public has
never seen.
With a pocketful of curiosity and
an uncomfortable itch to peer behind
closed doors and into dark places. the
writer set out to prowl in unfre-
uuented spots. What follows is log
of that journey, mostly worms eye
view of downtown Capital cellars.
STATE, WAR AND NAVY BUILD
1NG.-A tripartite metropolis UNDER
ground. with separate sets of laborers
for each department, each with their
own rest rooms. locker rooms, lunch
rooms, paint, electrical. carpenter and
plumbing shops. foremen, superin-
tendents-and problems.
In a room all by itself, the White
House boiler. which supplies all the
heat for the Mansion across the street.
It sports a coat of aluminium paint and
a brass railing around it, squats Sc
dately in a hole below floor level and
never gives trouble. 1t shares quar-
ters with a pompous-b -bellied little blast
furnace. the pet of E. w. Wilson,
building superintendent. He trans
forms brass shavingS into name-plateS
and ornamental fittings in it for the
building, as a hobby.
The tight little shop of Charles Hell
Ter. German keeper of the keys for
the building. No lock has ever defied
him in all the years he has been re-
pairing and making them. Keys OF
fantastic shapes, double -jointed and
ancient, hang over his bench, overrun
drawers.
A roaring old brick furnace where.
twice a day, special employees bring
down patches of scratch-pad scribbles
and inter- office memoranda. errors and
confidential data to be destroyed by
fire. These flames live entirely on
international and national secrets.
A complete ice-house with a ca
pacity of 96 300-pound cakes per day.
A room full of old huge brass hinges
and door stops. Room O-52, War De-
partment stores, cavelive dungeon
with musty smell and flligree of
spider webs feStooning its records. A
red plush covered dentist chair in
one corner of the place. Room 0-38 e,
adjutant generals stores, with chest
and safe (opened by set of false
teeth"), which contain the authentic
relics of another greatest trial in
hiStory"-that of the conspirators con-
nected with the assassination OF Alb
raham Lincoln. Here is the material
evidence admitted at the trial, all OF
it, now held by the Office of the Judge
advocate general of the Army. Phineas
T. Barnum is said to have made
bona fide offer of S1o00,000 for the
contents of the small wooden chest
and a tiny pasteboard box from the
safe which together hold these objects.
The old library of the Navy, on the
fourth floor, once haWked as the
chief ShoWplace of the building. Its
stained glass dome and ceiling fres-
coed in blues, greens, whites and
studded with golden stars, cast
diffused soft glow over room where
once our own and foreign admirals,
bigwigs and newspaper men fore
gathered to settle worlds problems.
In 1922 the books were moved, the
library given over to filing cabinets
of the Division of Communications
and Records.
Room 632, up under the caves, Is
the rarely opened code room, where
secret dispatches and codes of the
United States and other nations are
closely guarded. Only two men ever
enter here and they go in and come
out together.
That ball that winds slowly up the
pole and drops suddenly at noon,
released from Arlington, is as big as
barrel, made of iron strips covered
with canvas-and, incidentally, pretty
Vun1 n of hol
it has been the serious duty of one
wind that ball by hand up the flag
pole. He keeps count of the bell
signals which govern his winding
speed by means of an iron nut tally
moved up and down an intricate
number board, painted in red, beside
him.
WHITE HOUSE.-Open to the
public-most of it, that is. Two fea-
lures of the engine room under the
northeast wing are of interest, and
these the normal visitor cannot See
From one wall a large, Wrought-iron
extension arm jutS out. From it used
to hang the huge kettles for boiling
water in the old days. And where
once they stored coal are two deep
marble troughs in the floor Milk
was poured into these to separate. and
skim of the cream for earlier White
House tables.
TREASURY BUILDING.-Downt the
elevator and into Uncle Sans pin
money vault. probably to watch the
writer's reaction to being surrounded
by mere $50 0000, 900 in small change
heaped around. Then the rush of air
from inside the main vaults as the 80
tons of steel door swung open.
Aisle after aisle of barred and num-
bered monastic cells, each with its
walls stacked to the ceiling, four deep
outward, with packages of bills, quietly
'curing." I'VE usually keep six
months to a years supply of money.
seasoning, or drying out, down here"
volunteered a guide, casually. All to-
gether, 16 major cells, each divided
and subdivided. filled with money.
RELOW the vaults, the inspection
II Area" Every square foot of this
area is honeycombed with electrically
lighted, long. square portfolios, cr1s-
crossed at intervals for passage OF the
guards. Just in case any one tried to
drill up from below.
Into another portion Of the sub
easement, lined with obsolete plumbing
supplies. In to say hello to John v.
Shea, for 46 years in charge of the
Division Of Supply where, among other
things, three-quarters of a ton week
of obsolete paper supplies of one kind
or another are chopped up and pasted
together into serviceable scratch-pads
Under East Executive avenue. in case