PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES,
CHIEF MAGISTRATES OF THE NATIONAL CAPITAL


QUOTATIONS FROM GREAT AMERICANS ON WASHINGTON, THE NATIONAL CAPITAL

“I most earnestly hope that in the National Capital a better beginning will be made than anywhere else; and that can be made only by utilizing to the fullest degree the thought and the disinterested efforts of the architects, the artists, the men of art, who stand foremost in their professions here in the United States and who ask no other reward save the reward of feeling that they have done their full part to make as beautiful as it should be the Capital City of the Great Republic.” Theodore Roosevelt.

“If General Washington, at a time when his country was a little hemmed-in nation, boasting but a single seaboard, with a population of only five million, and with credit so bad that lot sales, lotteries, and borrowing upon the personal security of individuals had to be resorted to in order to finance the new capital, could look to the future and understand that it was his duty to build for the centuries to come and for a great nation, how much more should we do so now?” William H. Taft.

It is hereby ordered that whenever new structures are to be erected in the District of Columbia under the direction of the Federal Government which affect in any important way the appearance of the city, or whenever questions involving matters of art and with which the Federal Government is concerned are to be determined, final action shall not be taken until such plans and questions have been submitted to the Commission of Fine Arts, designated under the act of Congress of May 17, 1910, for comment and advice. (Executive order of November 28, 1913.) Woodrow Wilson.