Washington, the City of Enchantment
Broadcast from WCAP, September 26, 1924
C. Francis Jenkins
Washington is the home of our Federal Government; but it is more than that—it is a delightful place to work, a stimulus to excellence in mental activity. Those of us who had wandered about more or less aimlessly before we discovered Washington well understand how its genial climate called forth the Presidential praise of our honor guest from the cool, green hills of Vermont.
Add to the delight of the climate, the charm of Washington’s setting, and one appreciates why, from the Executive Mansion outward to the very rim of federal activity, all remain, if they can, after leaving office. Woodrow Wilson stayed here, until he passed away. President Harding was hurrying home when his end came. The only living ex-president resides in the District.
Abraham Lincoln was loath to leave Washington, it is said, and so preferred a summer cottage in the Soldier’s Home Grounds, as did many of his successors, rather than a more elaborate executive residence elsewhere, while the White House was getting its annual dressing.
In the house now occupied by the Cosmos Club, Dolly Madison ruled social Washington in such a scintillating setting that even the widows of presidents, with few exceptions, have made their later homes here.
Nor is it strange, for this is the city the unequaled plan of which was worked out with such loving care by Major Charles L’Enfant, as he leaned over a drawing board in his home near the old Tudor Mansion; the parks of the plan later beautified by the landscape gardener, Andrew J. Downing.
And this magnificent dream city had the proper antecedents, too, for it was from this very site the old Indian chief Powhatan ruled his own vast territory before ever the white man had set up the capital of a nation dedicated to peace and opportunity.
Many eminent statesmen and great orators have found Washington environs so satisfying that they have spent their last years within this forest-like city. The inimitable Henry Clay was buried here in 1852; Elbridge Gerry, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, lies in the Congressional Cemetery; and John Lee Carroll, a former Governor of Maryland, found his last resting place in a local graveyard.