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DESIGNING THE NATION'S CAPITAL: The 1901 Plan for Washington, D.C.
PLATES
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One of six pavilions in the
Washington Monument gardens. Watercolor on paper, 19x13 inches.
Collection: Commission of Fine Arts |
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Plate I. L'Enfant plan of 1791, as reproduced by the U.S. Coast and
Geodectic Survey, 1887. This would have been the version known by the
members of the Senate Park Commission. Library of Congress, Geography
and Maps Division |
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Plate II. L'Enfant plan as modified by Andrew Ellicott, 1792. Library of
Congress, Geography and Maps Division. |
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Plate III. James G. Langdon, map of the District of Columbia prepared
for the Senate Park Commission, showing the existing park system in 1901
and giving other information. Library of Congress, Prints and
Photographs Division. |
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Plate IV. Map showing the existing District of Columbia park system
(green) and the additions proposed by the Senate Park Commission (dark
green). D.H. Burnham and E. H. Bennett, Plan of Chicago, 1909. |
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Plate V. James G. Langdon, second Mall plan, 27 April 1901. The New-York
Historical Society, McKim, Mead & White Collection, Neg. #75561T |
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Plate VI. Mall plan, 3 June 1901. New-York Historical Society, McKim,
Mead & White Collection, Neg. #75560T |
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Plate VII. Senate Park Commission, general plan. Senate Park Commission
Report No. 19. Watercolor on paper, 46 x 110 inches. Unsigned, but very
likely the work of William T. Partridge, as alluded to in his "Personal
Recollections." Partridge laid out all the exhibition drawings in
pencil before turning them over to the illustrators to render them in
color. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts (click on image for a
PDF version) |
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Plate VIII. Senate Park Commission rendering of the plan from a point
4,000 feet above Arlington, by Francis L.V. Hoppin, signed and dated
1902. Senate Park Commission Report No. 20. Watercolor on paper, 34 x
72 inches. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts. |
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Plate IX. Senate Park Commission rendering of the Washington Monument
Gardens and Mall, looking toward the Capitol, from the original
rendering by Charles Graham. Senate Park Commission Report No. 58.
Watercolor on paper, 37 x 68 inches. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts.
Photo: Lee Stalsworth |
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Plate X. Senate Park Commission rendering of Union Square, at the head
of the Mall, by Charles Graham. Senate Park Commission Report No. 37.
Watercolor on paper, 40 x 62 inches. Collection: Commission of Fine
Arts. Photo: National Gallery of Art |
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Plate XI. Senate Park Commission rendering of the proposed development
of the site for the Lincoln Memorial, seen from the east; from the
original rendering by Robert Blum. Senate Park Commission Report No. 49.
Watercolor on paper, 24 x 59 inches. Collection: Commission of Fine Art.
Photo: Lee Stalsworth |
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Plate XII. Vaux-le-Vincomte, the gardens. These gardens, one of Le
Nôtre's finest achievements, held a particular fascination for the
commission. They spent a day at the chateau, the guests of the owners,
M. and Mme. Sommier, who turned on the garden fountains for them so that
they could see Le Nôtre's intended effect. See Charles Moore,
The Life and Times of Charles Follen McKim, p. 196. Photo: Sue
Kohler |
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Plate XIII. Birds-eye view taken from a point 4,000 over Saint
Elizabeths Hospital. Senate Park Commission Report No. 21.
Unfortunately the original has been lost as it was the companion piece
to the View from Arlington. This color photograph appeared in the
September issue of The New Country Life, p. 49. |
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Plate XIV. An artist's conception of how Washington might look if
developed according to the Senate Park Commission plan. The design of
the buildings is based on concepts available at the time. The text
accompanying the illustration reflected the great enthusiasm the Park
Commission's plans had generated. It said, in part: "Washington will be
a place of public buildings, massive, magnificent, beautiful. Unter
den Linden, Princes Street [Edinburgh], the Champs Elysées, will
pale into insignificance; the Rome of the Caesars will rise again in a
new world." Woman's Home Companion, February 1905. Collection:
Dana Dalrymple |
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Plate XV. Senate Park Commission model, 1902, showing existing
conditions in the central area of Washington, looking east. William T.
Partridge, in his "Personal Recollections," remarks on the unusual
accuracy of these models, due to the taking of hundreds of photographs
by landscape architect James D. Langdon. Originally given to the
Commission of Fine Arts with the other remaining Park Commission
material, the models were kept in storage until 1974, when they were
transferred to the Smithsonian Institution and completely restored for
exhibition in the bicentennial exhibition, "The Federal City: Plans and
Realities." Although the Smithsonian still owns the models, the National
Building Museum is now their custodian; at this writing, further
restoration is planned. Photographs from the Olmsted Associates'
scrapbook. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts |
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Plate XVI. Senate Park Commission model, 1902, showing existing
conditions, looking west. |
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Plate XVII. Senate Park Commission model, showing Park Commission's
proposals, looking east. |
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Plate XVIII. Senate Park Commission model, showing Park Commission's
proposals, looking west. |
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Plate XIX. Daniel Hudson Burnham, as painted by Anders Zorn, 1899. Oil
on canvas, 30x35 inches. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts, gift of
the Burnham family, 1958. Photo: Lee Stalsworth |
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Plate XX. Charles Moore, as painted by Eugene Savage, 1935. Oil on
canvas, 39x34 inches. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts. Photo: Lee
Stalsworth |
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Plate XXI. Alfred Githens' humorous "Coat of Arms" of the Senate Park
Commission, and Olmsted's recollection of how it happened, as well as an
account of some parts of the plan that, because of the rush to meet the
exhibition deadline, were "unavoidably hurried to a finish." See also
William T. Partridge's comments in his "Personal Recollections" under
topic F. "Final Days of Preparation," in Kurt Helfrich's essay in this
volume. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts |
NOTES ON
GITHENS' CARICATURE COAT OF ARMS FOR THE SO-CALLED "SENATE PARK
COMMISSION OF 1901"
My recollection of the story as McKim told it to me
is as follows:
When the bunch of draughtsmen, under W.T. Partridge
as head draughtsman, were working under great pressure to finish the
drawings for the "Central Area" of the Plan of Washington in 1902 in the
office set up for that purpose on the floor above McKim, Mead &
White's office in New York, Mr. McKim on coming in one day saw Githens
surreptitiously cover up a drawing he was working at, and went and
uncovered it. McKim was so amused by the caricature that he had it
reproduced and sent several copies to members of the Commission and
other friends.
There had been endless discussion especially by me
and by McKim, about "typical elms", and of course about the "Dome" and
the "Monument", and about Guerins technique in the drawings made by him.
The hydra heads of the Commission are, from top to bottom, those of
McKim, Saint-Gaudens, Burnham and myself; all amusingly recognizable
caricatures except perhaps Burnham's. The most amusing touches in the
sketch, we all thought, lay in the symbolic representation of the
pressure under which all hands were then working to get the drawings
completed on timedriven to death with the pressure and the
mercilessness of the Commission in "socking it to 'em".
It was in that eleventh-hour rush to finish the
drawings that some parts of the plans had to go through without the same
deliberate study and unanimous unqualified approval by the Commission as
a whole which was given to the major decisions. Among the parts thus
unavoidably hurried to a finish were the designs for the eastern end of
the Mall vista, from the Capitol to and including "Union Square"; those
for the rearrangement of the Tidal Basin area; and those for some of the
details of the Washington Monument Gardens: by way of distinction from
the major and earlier decisions dealing with the width and character of
the main Mall vista and its enclosing rows of elms; the framing of the
Washington Monument by an orderly expansion of the frame of elms
flanking the Mall, first devised in plan by McKim and me on a piece of
quadrille paper in a train en route from Budapest to Paris in 1901; the
development, on the site afterwards assigned to the Lincoln Memorial, of
a great terminal monument of a form non-competitive with the Capitol
Dome and the Washington Monument; the introduction west of the Monument
Grounds of a long reflecting basin; the opening through of the White
House axis to the southward, at a relatively low elevation, past the
west side of the Washington Monument; and the development of a southern
monumental focal point on the White House axis at its intersection with
the line of Maryland Avenue in such a way as to leave the axial view
from the White House down the river unobstructed by any bulky monument
on the axis itself.
Frederick Law Olmsted
November 1935
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Last Modified: March 20, 2009
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