PLANS OF THE McMILLAN PARK COMMISSION
The plans prepared by the McMillan Park Commission and submitted, with its report, to the Senate, constituted the first and most notable proposal for grouping of public buildings ever put forward in the United States. The outlying sections of the District of Columbia were studied in relation to a system of parks, both large and small areas being indicated; the most convenient and the most picturesque connections between the various parks were mapped; the individual treatment which each important park should undergo was recommended; an extension of the park system to Great Falls and to Mount Vernon was discussed. Primarily, however, the development of the Mall received detailed and elaborate treatment, and the location of new public buildings, whether legislative, executive, or municipal in character, was arranged according to a rational system of grouping; and those memorials which mark distinct epochs in our national history were brought into harmonious relation with the general scheme of development.
As a result of this study, the desirability of making every considerable undertaking within the District of Columbia a part of a general plan was made evident, so that each undertaking should contribute its part to enhancing the value of the whole; and no undertaking would be allowed to invade, to mutilate, or to mar the symmetry, simplicity, and dignity of the one great composition designed to comprehend the entire area.
In working out the plans the park commission found it necessary to have prepared two models, one showing the existing disturbed conditions in the section from the Library of Congress westward to the Potomac, and the other showing the arrangement proposed. These models, constructed with the utmost attention to the details of topography by George C. Curtis, were accurate maps of the section they so graphically depicted, and served as guides in carrying the plans to completion. To present in graphic fashion particular features of the plans, the accurate architectural drawings were rendered in color by leading artists, and by means of these pictures a clear and distinct idea of the completed work was obtained.
One of the greatest obstacles to a restoration of the Mall as provided for in the L’Enfant plan was the fact that since 1872 the Mall had been occupied by railroad tracks, the board of aldermen and the board of common council having on March 20, 1871, granted the Mall site to the Baltimore Potomac Railroad Co., later the Pennsylvania Railroad Co., which action was confirmed by act of Congress May 21, 1872. The Mall was then no better than a common pasture. The railroad had taken the place of the canal, which it paralleled, and held the right to use the property by a title good in law and in equity; also by virtue of an act of Congress adopted in 1890 the railroad space had been enlarged, in consideration of the surrender of street trackage and the proposed elevation of the tracks within the city of Washington.
It so happened that the chairman of the commission, Mr. Burnham, was the architect of the new Pennsylvania Railroad Station at Pittsburgh, and he had also drawn for the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. the preliminary plans for the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station in Washington. After consultation, Mr. Burnham proposed to the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. that the station be built on the south side of the Mall and the adjoining lands; and, while the matter received serious consideration, no action was taken. It was during the stay of the commission in London that President Cassatt announced to Mr. Burnham his willingness to consider the question, not of moving the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station to the south side of the Mall but of withdrawing altogether from that region and uniting with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co. in the erection of a union station on the site established by legislation for the new depot of that road, provided suitable legislation be secured to make compensation for the increased expense such a change would involve, and provided, also, that the approaches to the new site be made worthy of the building the railroads proposed to erect.
Subsequent examination convinced the commission that from an esthetic standpoint there were insuperable objections to the depot site provided by law; the chief objection being that were the station to front on C Street a train shed 800 feet long would be thrown across Massachusetts Avenue, one of the great thoroughfares of the city. Not only would the vista be blocked by a commercial building, but also the street would be carried underneath this enormous structure in a tunnel so long as to cause the avenue to be avoided by traffic. The commission thereupon proposed a site fronting on Massachusetts Avenue, and that was the one adopted for the Union Station. The plans called for a station 8 feet and 8 inches longer than the Capitol, the building to be of white marble, the façade Roman in style of architecture, and the construction and arrangements so planned as to make this station superior to any structure ever erected for railway purposes. Facing the Capitol, and yet not too near that building, the new station was designed to front upon a plaza 600 feet in width and 1,200 feet in length, where bodies of troops or large organizations could be formed during inaugural times or on other like occasions. Thus located and so constructed, the Union Station makes a great and impressive gateway to Washington.
In considering the views of the commission, and in reaching his decision, the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. looked at the matter from the standpoint of an American citizen, saying in substance that he appreciated the fact that if Congress intended to make of the Mall what the founders of the city intended it to be, no railroad should be allowed to cross it, and that he was willing to vacate the space provided the matter could be arranged without sacrificing the interests of the stockholders of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. This conditional consent on the part of the railroad, which was later agreed to by Congress, removed the one great obstacle to the preparation of adequate plans for the improvement of the city. Lesser obstacles, such as the lack of surveys of the oldest parks in the District and the difficulties of getting together the widely scattered data, were surmounted. On the other hand, the work was much lightened by the excellent topographical maps of the District outside of the city prepared by the Coast and Geodetic Survey.
TREATMENT FOR AREA WEST OF THE CAPITOL, PLAN OF 1901