PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE
Pennsylvania Avenue is the great historic avenue of the Nation, particularly that portion between the legislative and executive branches of the Government—the Capitol and the White House—extending a distance of 1 mile. It was named by Congress at the time the plan of Washington was under consideration, in compliment to the State of Pennsylvania. In the time of Thomas Jefferson it was a dusty highway, and to add beauty to it he planted quick-growing poplar trees. Being about at sea level in elevation, it was the scene of rowboats in times of flood as late as the year 1880. Several large department stores of the city to-day had their beginning on the Avenue. The Evening Star has been published there for about 89 years; its home, remodeled from time to time, to-day is a large and beautiful building.
Since the L’Enfant plan provided for giving Pennsylvania Avenue a conspicuous place in the development of the National Capital, Congress decided, by the public buildings act of May 25, 1926, that the necessary land on the south side of the Avenue from the Capitol to the Treasury should be purchased by the Government and monumental buildings erected thereon. In the House of Representatives the bill was sponsored by Congressman Richard N. Elliott. As Chairman of the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, he had a very prominent part in furthering the legislation for the public buildings program of the National Capital and also for the country at large. More public buildings were authorized during the Sixty-ninth and Seventieth Congresses (1925-1929) than in all the preceding Congresses. In the United States Senate the public buildings program was sponsored by Senator Bert N. Fernald and after his death in 1926 by Senator Henry W. Keyes, Chairman of the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds of the Senate. This is the Triangle Plan, which is now being carried out. In due time it is expected also that the north side will be developed to correspond to the south side. However, several buildings now there may be considered as established for decades to come.
Here at Pennsylvania Avenue, connecting the Capitol and the White House, we are at the heart of the Nation. It is the Via Sacra of the great Republic of the New World.
On September 5, 1931, at the ground-breaking ceremony for the Archives Building, at Pennsylvania Avenue and Seventh Street, Hon. Ferry K. Heath, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, who was in immediate charge of the public-buildings program, said: “The story of the traffic and parades of this great Avenue would be an outline of the history of the United States.”
The act for enlarging the Capitol Grounds, and the municipal center development on the north side of the Avenue, gives the Government control from the Capitol to Sixth Street.
UNION STATION AND PLAZA, LOOKING NORTH FROM THE DOME OF THE CAPITOL