An elaborate park system is in course of development, which will ultimately surround the city with parks and connecting boulevards. The principal park is Rock Creek Park, to the north of the city, containing two thousand acres extending along both sides of Rock Creek. Its natural beauties are very great. On Mt. St. Alban, near Woodley, to the northwest of Georgetown, is the Peace Cross, a large Celtic cross erected at the close of the war with Spain (1898) on the grounds of the new Episcopal Cathedral, of which the cornerstone was laid in 1907. It affords a fine view of Washington. On the Chevy Chase Road, to the northwest of the Zoölogical Park, are the National Bureau of Standards and the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution, the administration building of which latter is in Sixteenth Street.
South of Rock Creek Park, on Rock Creek, lies the National Zoölogical Park of one hundred and seventy acres, reached from Washington in a half hour.
On a commanding site overlooking Rock Creek, north of Georgetown, in handsome grounds, is the United States Naval Observatory, of white marble, with its twenty-six-inch equatorial telescope.
Scattered throughout the city are numerous squares, circles, and small parks, nearly all of which contain statues.
Of bronze statues erected in honor of famous men, Washington has an abundance—mainly to military characters. Equestrian statues of Washington, Jackson, Greene, Scott, Thomas, and McPherson are erected, besides full-length statues of Lafayette, Luther, Franklin, Chief Justice Marshall, Lincoln, Garfield, Professor Henry Farragut, General Rawlins, and Admiral Dupont.
ARLINGTON HOUSE, HOME OF GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE
At Arlington, across the river from Washington, on commanding heights, is the National Cemetery containing the graves of about sixteen thousand soldiers. Arlington House, in the middle of the grounds, two hundred feet above the river, was once the residence of George Washington Parke Custis (step-grandson of Washington) and afterwards of General Robert Lee, who married Miss Custis. Near the house are the graves of General Sheridan, Admiral Porter, General Lawton, General Wheeler, and other distinguished officers.
To the south is a tomb containing the remains of two thousand one hundred and eleven unknown soldiers. The sailors destroyed by the blowing up of the “Maine” in 1898 and other victims [627] of the war with Spain are buried in the southern part of the cemetery.
The cornerstone of a splendid military memorial or Hall of Fame was laid here in 1916, to be erected in classic style, of marble, and to cost several millions of dollars.