Opposite Lafayette Square is the entrance to the White House or Executive Mansion of the President of the United States. The White House is a two-story stone building, painted white, one hundred and seventy feet long and eighty-six feet deep, with an Ionic portico. It was first built in 1792, occupied by President Adams in 1800, burned by the British in 1814, and rebuilt in 1818. In 1902-1903 the whole building was admirably restored, within and without. The esplanade or terrace on the west side connects the house with the new Executive Offices and Cabinet Room. The large East Room (eighty by forty by twenty-two feet) is open to the public from ten to two. The Reception Rooms, which contain portraits of Presidents and valuable gifts, and the handsome Dining Room are shown by special order only. The rest of the house is private. The grounds surrounding the house are seventy-five acres in extent.
To the west of the White House is the huge building of the State, War, and Navy Departments, enclosing two courts and measuring five hundred and sixty-seven feet in length by three hundred and forty-two feet in breadth. It is a granite building, in Renaissance style, the largest public edifice in Washington, covering four and one-half acres, has five hundred and sixty-six rooms, and cost eleven million dollars. The north and west wings are occupied by the War Department. The Navy Department is in the eastern part of the building.
The Department of State occupies the southern part of the building. Among the finest rooms are the Diplomatic Reception Rooms, containing portraits of the Secretaries of State from 1789 to the present day, and the Library, with Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence and other relics.
In Seventeenth Street, to the southwest of the State Building, between New York Avenue and E Street, is the Corcoran Gallery of Art, built and endowed by the late W. W. Corcoran. The present building, erected in 1894-1897, is a handsome white marble structure in a Neo-Grecian style, by Ernest Flagg. The semicircular hall at the north end is used for occasional exhibitions, while the rest of this part of the building is occupied by a School of Art. The steps to the main entrance are flanked by colossal bronze lions, modeled after those by Canova at the tomb of Pope Clement XIII. The Gallery contains more than two hundred paintings, the finest collection of Barye bronzes, Power’s Greek Slave, and Vela’s Dying Napoleon in marble.
Also in Seventeenth Street, south of the Corcoran Gallery, are the new Continental Hall, built by the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the new building of the International Bureau of the American Republics, erected at a cost of one million dollars by Andrew Carnegie.
The Interior Department occupies an entire square in the heart of the city, and is constructed of white marble in pure Doric, costing three million dollars. The General Land Office opposite is a Corinthian marble edifice.
In Judiciary Square on the north side stands the Pension Office, an enormous structure of brick, four hundred feet long and two hundred feet wide. It is surrounded by a terra cotta frieze illustrating military and naval operations. The interior, with its mammoth columns (seventy-five feet high), can accommodate about twenty thousand people at an inauguration ball, or other occasions.
ST. JOHN’S CHURCH, WASHINGTON
Nearby, in B Street, is the large Census Bureau, in which a large staff is constantly at work. The enumerating machines are especially interesting.