A Capital Tour

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 1

This story, which coincidentally contains a pictorial tour of Washington, DC, is a continuation of The Dinner Guest and its predecessor stories. If you're interested in reading The Dinner Guest, you can find it at http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36809

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One day in April when it wasn’t too hot to go outside, the nice lady and I did some sightseeing in Washington, DC. We live just across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital, so it’s easy for us to do that. If you’re not too busy doing more important things at the moment, you might want to consider coming along with us on this tour. We actually wrote down everything right here, and we even found some pictures in the public domain, so we could re-visit everything later by computer – even when it’s over 100 degrees and we would have to stay indoors where there’s air conditioning.

It gets over 100 degrees here in Washington more often than we’d like, because we have so many politicians who make this place their headquarters. They never seem to stop putting out hot air, which is helpful in the wintertime, but it’s a real bear during the summer.

We wondered if my cat Eleanor would care to join us on this venture, but she seemed to be very happy with her two brand new scratching posts. And besides, she’s not that crazy about riding the Metro because they don’t provide any good cat toys for her to play with during the ride, and I refuse to bring her cat toys on the Metro because I’m afraid she will lose them. Besides, she would worry about someone stepping on her on the crowded Metro.

Speaking of the Metro, which I’ve discussed in other stories, here’s what our Metro looks like pulling into a below-ground station:

http://www.prosecutethepresentstudy.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/WashingtonMetro3.jpg

And here’s what the inside of a car looks like. I tried to get one with a picture of that young girl with weird green hair, piercings, and tattoos that I met on the Metro in an earlier story, but I don’t think she ever posed for any photos on the internet.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Washington_DC_Metro_in_car.jpg

So just the nice lady and I went, leaving Eleanor in my apartment to work over her new scratching posts so she could break them in, and to take a nap or two while we were gone. Off we went to the Metro, and before long, we arrived at the Capitol South Station, which allowed us to start out our sightseeing with the U.S. Capitol Building.

Now I didn’t realize this until the nice lady corrected me – while the city is the capital, the building is the capitol. I don’t know how the nice lady can keep things like that straight in her head and stay so nice, all at the same time.

Here is what the U.S. Capitol Building looks like, when it’s viewed from the west. If you ever watch the televised Memorial Day or Fourth of July concerts from Washington, this is the spot where they perform – to the west of the Capitol Building.

http://www.highrock.com/WashingtonDC/Capitol-long_b.jpg

And when it’s viewed from the other side, from the east, it looks like this:

http://www.ilovelanguages.com/Wallpaper/papers/capitol1.jpg

I really don’t know which of these is the front, and which is the back – but they’re both very nice views.

In the olden days, which in this particular case was just eight years ago, you could just walk into the Capitol Building from the east side, and take a tour. Now it’s not so easy, and you have to go through lots of security checks before you even get into the building. We’ll bypass security for our computer-based tour, though.

The building has a beautiful rotunda, which is the first part of the interior you see when entering. Here’s a quick view of what we’re talking about, and we’ll get into more detail on the various parts in a minute.

http://www.teslasociety.com/pictures/capital/c5.jpg

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/0dEE4HC66DgxC/610x.jpg

The Rotunda is where former presidents lie in state before their funerals.

http://www.mikelynaugh.com/ReaganFuneral/Images/IMG_5582.jpg

http://www.defenselink.mil/dodcmsshare/homepagephoto/2006-12/hires_123006-D-1142M-001.jpg

We’ll now start at the top of the Rotunda and work down, seeing everything of major importance a little closer than we’ve seen in the overview. The Apotheosis of Washington is a fresco atop the Rotunda – actually the inner part of the dome. It’s 180 feet above the floor, and was painted by Constantino Brumidi in 1865. The fresco shows George Washington, and to his left is the Goddess Victory, while the Goddess of Liberty is to his right. Forming a circle between Liberty and Victory are 13 women, representing the original thirteen colonies of the United States.

Here is a ‘close-up’ view of the Apotheosis, but the figures are large enough to be clearly seen all the way from the floor of the Rotunda, which is 180 feet below the dome, if your memory is like mine and you can’t remember what you read in the paragraph just above. George Washington is in the center at the bottom of the painting in this view.

http://sniggle.net/Experiment/apoth_center.jpg

And here’s a view stepped back a little so you can see the inner dome as well. Remember that you’re looking straight up at the inner dome in this view.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/183/463096883_3afb774637.jpg

Before coming to the United States in 1852, the artist Brumidi worked for three years in the Vatican under Pope Gregory XVI. He spent the last 25 years of his life working in the Capitol. We’ll see some of his other works as we proceed through this tour.

Working our way down from the top of the inner dome, we next see a frieze, which is a large continuous brown and white painting that rings the entire wall of the Rotunda about a quarter of the way up. It is a painting and is not in three-dimensional relief, even though it looks three-dimensional from a distance. The painting is about eight feet tall, so the figures are larger than life. Several painters worked on the frieze, and it was not completed until the early twentieth century. It is comprised of scenes from American history.

Here’s a distant view of the frieze, in which you can also see the inner dome and the Apotheosis. Remember that the frieze is the narrow continuous ring of figures.

http://z.about.com/d/godc/1/0/C/7/rotunda.jpg

Here is the part of the frieze which represents the Pilgrims celebrating their landing at Plymouth Rock.

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/06RgguH5cscSe/610x.jpg

And here is a scene from the frieze representing the Civil War.

http://z.about.com/d/godc/1/0/D/7/peace_l.jpg

Below the frieze is a series of individual relief panels with more scenes of American history. Here’s one showing the Pilgrims meeting the Indians – it doesn’t look all that great in this closeup view, but in a minute you’ll see it in connection with everything else around it, and it will look better:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/PIX/relief9.gif

Below the relief panels are eight large paintings, such as the one in the link below, called Embarkation of the Pilgrims. We’ll get a closeup in a minute. You can’t see the details of the painting in this view, but this view is shown just to demonstrate where the paintings hang relative to the other items, because it’s getting to be pretty confusing to deal with the frieze, the relief panels, and the paintings all at the same time. You can see the continuous frieze at the top of the picture, and the relief panels below the frieze, and then the paintings below the relief panels.

http://www.vacationlovers.net/washington_dc/washington_dc_077_capitol_rotunda_big.jpg

Note that the relief panel at the left edge of the picture above is the one we viewed by itself a few seconds ago – the Pilgrims meeting the Indians. I hope you agree that it looks better in the picture that shows everything, as compared to the view that just shows the relief panel by itself.

Below is a link to the Baptism of Pocahantas which is one of the eight paintings. It also has links to each of the other seven major paintings in the Rotunda, along with a short description and background for each. Check out as many as you wish to using the links to the left of the painting.

http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/rotunda/baptism_pocahontas.cfm

If you want to get into more detail on anything, you can further explore the sites I’ve shown, or you can find others on your own. For example, here’s something that will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about the entire frieze:

http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/rotunda/frieze/index.cfm

In the next episode, we’ll continue our tour of the Capitol Building.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 2

If you’re American, and if you have a television set (and no, you don’t have to own a television set to be an American), you’ve probably seen the Senate Chamber numerous times, so it should be relatively familiar to you. Here are a couple of views for those of you who are not Americans, or who don’t have television sets:

http://www.c-spanarchives.org/library/images/Pictures/Programs/205151/205151-m.jpg

http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z100/generalissimodp/sendembraintrust.jpg

http://weblogs.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/politics/blog/senate314

The people seated in the upstairs gallery of the last view are reporters and visitors. You can get tickets from your Congressman if you want to sit in and listen to the proceedings.

If you’re one of those people who leaves your cellphone on all the time so someone can call you no matter where you are just to tell you vital things like the fact that you’re going to have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner tonight, you’re required to turn off your cellphone when you’re in the gallery. Despite the tremendous importance of everything that’s discussed on cellphones today, it’s considered bad form to interrupt the proceedings of Congress just to show everybody around you that you have absolutely no concept of common sense. Some of us let our cellphones go off loudly in the movies, in church or synagogue, and in lots of other public places. I guess some people don’t have those modern cellphones that allow us to set it for a silent signal that someone is calling. So if you can’t live with your cellphone off for a few minutes, you’ll just have to take Congress off your list of places where you can ignore everyone around you, and babble away like you’re in a private phonebooth somewhere.

Here is the larger House of Representatives Chamber, where the Representatives routinely meet, and where joint sessions of Congress are held. This picture is of a joint session, which is why the place is so full. In addition to both houses of Congress, there are lots of other attendees, such as the Supreme Court Justices, members of the Cabinet, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the various military services.

http://www.c-span.org/questions/images/ac2.jpg

The Senate and the House are very familiar sights to anybody who watches the news, so now we’ll see some of the lesser known parts of the Capitol.

Here is the Old Senate Chamber, which was used until 1859, when the country’s rapid growth led to outgrowing this room. It’s not used for anything now, but is preserved in a state similar to what it was when it was a working room, to serve as sort of a museum. These mahogany desks are replicas, as the original desks have been moved to the current Senate Chamber. And yes, there are desks on the order of 200 years old still in use in the Senate.

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Lab/2459/oldsenate.jpg

It was in this Old Senate Chamber that the issue of slavery was debated for many years, and the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was formulated in this room. Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John Calhoun all argued forcefully right here for years. This Old Senate Chamber became the Supreme Court Room in 1860, a year after the Senate had moved to its larger quarters.

Here’s a scene of the Old Senate Chamber in use:

http://www.cqpress.com/incontext/constitution/images/coaz4d_im440.jpg

The Old House of Representatives Chamber was used until 1857, at which time the House relocated to its current chamber, which is much larger. This older room is now called Statuary Hall, because statues of famous Americans are displayed there. There have been 99 statues contributed so far, with contributions from each of the 50 states. Only 38 of them are displayed in Statuary Hall, and the others are scattered about in other parts of the Capitol Building – such as in the Rotunda. Several of the early presidents were inaugurated in what is now the Statuary Room, including James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson.

Among the individuals honored with a statue are: Dwight Eisenhower, Sam Houston, Andrew Jackson, Will Rogers, George Washington, Daniel Webster and Robert E. Lee.

The Statuary Room has some very unusual and unexplained acoustical properties. You can very clearly hear what a whispering person is whispering even when he’s 75 feet away from you and has his back turned toward you. The guides give demonstrations of this phenomenon, so it’s not just an old wives’ tale or hearsay.

Here’s what the Statuary Room looks like:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/national-statuary-hall.jpg

http://z.about.com/d/godc/1/0/I/7/nat_stat_hall_1.jpg

And here is the Old Supreme Court Chamber, which was used from 1810 until 1860. This room is immediately below the Old Senate Chamber.

http://www.aoc.gov/cc/capitol/oscc_1.cfm

The Supreme Court was located in the former Old Senate Chamber from 1860 to 1935, and moved into its present location in 1935. We’ve already seen the Old Senate Chamber and discussed it above, and later in our adventure, we’ll see the current Supreme Court Building.

The Brumidi Corridors in the Senate wing are quite ornate – maybe too much so. I guess things like that vary with the taste of the individual, and I’m certainly no authority on art. Remember that it was Contstantino Brumidi who painted the Apotheosis of Washington on the inner dome in the Rotunda. Well, apparently that’s not all he did. As we discussed before, Brumidi worked in the Vatican before he came to the United States, so the plan for what came to be known as the Brumidi Corridors was based on Raphael’s Loggia in the Vatican.

Here is one of the corridors, and with this picture, there are links to several others.

http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/brumidi/w_corr.cfm

The following link provides lots more information on the Brumidi Corridors – probably more than you want, but that is up to you.

http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/brumidi/index.cfm

Now Brumidi wasn’t the only guy who was really into corridors, because there was another artist named Allyn Cox, who also has some hallways named for him. While the Brumidi Corridors are on the Senate side of the building, the Cox Corridors are on the House side. Here is one of them:

http://z.about.com/d/godc/1/0/L/7/greatexphall2.jpg

And here is a Cox painting of what the Rotunda looked like during the Civil War:

http://z.about.com/d/godc/1/0/0/7/rotunda_civil.jpg

The Minton Tiles are also worth spending a few minutes admiring. They were installed between 1851 and 1865, as the Civil War undoubtedly delayed progress. Here are two views, one in an office and another in corridor:

http://www.aoc.gov/cc/capitol/minton_1.cfm

http://www.aoc.gov/cc/capitol/minton_2.cfm

Here’s an extended discussion of the tiles for those who may want more information:

http://www.aoc.gov/cc/capitol/minton.cfm

The President’s Room is one of the most ornate rooms in the Capitol, richly adorned with fresco paintings by Brumidi. The room was completed in 1859 as part of the Capitol’s vast extension, which added new Senate and House wings and the new cast-iron dome.

Here is the ceiling:

http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/graphic/xlarge/BrumidiMadonna_xl.jpg

I can’t find any still photos of the President’s Room, but there is a ‘movie’ in one of the virtual tours that I will point out later.

Here’s a pretty good overview of some of the major parts of the Capitol, if you want a quick refresher of what we’ve just waded through in Parts 1 and 2.

http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Lab/2459/USCapitol.html

If you want more detail than the overview contained, try this site, which is probably the best single source of information on the Capitol:

http://www.aoc.gov/cc/capitol/index.cfm

And here’s a virtual tour that shows movie-like panoramas of the following rooms:


Old Supreme Court Chamber
Old Senate Chamber
[New] Senate Chamber
President’s Room

STOP after checking out the President’s Room, as this is as far as the tour goes.

http://www.senate.gov/vtour/index.html

In the next episode, we’ll cross the street to visit the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court, which sit side by side.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 3

I think my favorite of all the fantastic buildings in Washington is the Library of Congress, which is so much more than a library. Here is the outside of the Thomas Jefferson building, which is the primary of several structures comprising the Library of Congress. The Jefferson Building is just across the street from the Capitol Building.

The first view is a painting from a more distant perspective, while the second one is a photo that focuses more closely on the building’s facade.

http://annamaebell.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/library-of-congress.jpg

http://www.ilovelanguages.com/Wallpaper/papers/loc2.jpg

After you first enter the building and complete your security check on the ground level, you proceed up to the first level, which is where main doors open to, but these main doors are now permanently closed. It was a good thing that we didn’t bring Eleanor, because Eleanor just hates going through security checks. She always wants to know what it is that the security guards think a cat could possibly do, and why they have to check out her necklace so closely. All it has is her name and phone number.

When we reached the top of the first set of stairs bringing us to the first level, we come into a rather modest looking room, which for some reason that I don’t really understand, is called The Great Hall. It looks like this:

http://myloc.gov/_assets/ExhibitSpaces/GreatHall/Assets/Great_Hall_East_725.Jpeg

And here are a few views within The Great Hall:

http://www.loc.gov/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/great-hall.jpg

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/library-congress-address.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Library_of_Congress_ceiling_columns_Washington_DC. jpg

While we were having our tour, tables were being set up for a dinner that evening right here in The Great Hall. What a magnificent dinner that would be, in a setting like that, but we weren’t invited.

Here’s a closer look at the central staircase which was shown on the second level in the first view of The Great Hall above.

http://mishilo.image.pbase.com/u45/sentforth/upload/28924731.ed27.jpg

This central staircase leads to a breathtaking view of the Main Reading Room, which is a whole lot nicer than the bookmobile that used to stop on my block back when I was a schoolboy in San Antonio:

http://www.maxlyons.net/images/web/locrr_small.jpg

The Great Hall leads to separate corridors proceeding north, south, east, and west. When we get to the virtual tour at the end of this episode, you can check out each of these corridors on your own, if you want to. They each have lots of paintings and statues to honor various writers over the ages, and the virtual tour explains all of them, in detail.

The Library of Congress always has exhibits that rival those of major museums. For example, one of the more interesting, to me at least, was an exhibit of World War II era handwritten letters from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Harry Truman.

Here is a sample of FDR’s handwriting dating back to 1921 – this was not at the exhibit that I saw, but it’s an earlier example of his writing. You can see that he used a broad nib in his fountain pen, and his writing ran slightly downhill.

http://www.historyinink.com/FDR scan edited.jpg

Here are some artificial signatures from FDR dating back to the 1930s, which the letters I saw on display were not – they were REAL and were confined to 1942-44. I couldn’t find anything on the internet from the World War II years. Now note that these signatures are called PROXY, meaning that they are NOT actually from FDR himself. For the most part, they must have been CLOSE to the real thing, at the time, except for the very bottom one, which is quite different from all the others.

http://www.geocities.com/szarelli/fakes/FDR_secretary30s.jpg

You can see that his signature in the 1930s looks pretty good, and they only run very slightly downhill. Well, FDR’s 1944 signature runs downhill a lot more sharply than these older ones, but I don’t have samples of them – I just saw them on display. By then, he was worn down by the pressures of leading a country engaged in a world war, and was obviously starting to run out of steam.

Here is a pretty nice virtual tour of the Library of Congress, that you can use to explore things on your own if you wish:

http://www.loc.gov/jefftour/

Just next door to the Library of Congress, is the Supreme Court, which has been in its own building since 1935. If you remember from our tour of the Capitol Building, until 1935 the Supreme Court met in the Capitol.

Here is what it looks like from the outside, without any protesters carrying signs in front. There are usually protesters, so I don’t know how the photographer got this shot, unless he paid all the protesters to get out of the way for a minute or two while he snapped the picture:

http://pics4.city-data.com/cpicc/cfiles27585.jpg

Here is a nice old linen post card showing both the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress together. This post card isn’t from my own collection, because my collection concentrates on San Antonio, Texas, while these buildings are in Washington, DC.

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/FIP/DC-138-C~Supreme-Court-Washington-D-C-Posters.jpg

Here’s a closeup of the pediment above the building’s front entrance – it shows three central allegorical figures representing Authority, Liberty, and Order.

http://rationalrevolution.net/images/supremecourtwest.png

And here’s a closeup of the pediment adorning the top of the building’s back entrance. It shows Moses with two blank tablets (which some consider to represent the Ten Commandments), along with Confucius (to Moses’ right hand) and the Greek lawmaker Solon (to Moses’ left hand):

http://www.catholicexplorer.com/explore4325/bm~pix/court~s600x600.jpg

Inside, the first room you encounter is called The Great Hall, but it’s a different room than The Great Hall in the Library of Congress next door. This Great Hall contain the busts of all former Chief Justices, but it’s hard to see these busts in the public domain pictures I could find.

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/supreme-court-appointment-9.jpg

http://i.pbase.com/g6/96/675696/2/74914817.dt6D22ZI.jpg

Sometimes they host elaborate dinners in The Great Hall, just like they do in the Library of Congress, and they come complete with entertainment:

http://www.achievement.org/newsletter/2003/0074.jpg

I think that’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg playing the harp, but I’m not sure because the photographer didn’t get close enough for me to see very clearly, and my eyes aren’t nearly as good now as they were when I was younger.

Another interesting room is the Supreme Court’s Library Reading Room:

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/images/photo8.jpg

And here is the Court Room, where the Justices sit when they are trying a case. You can see that the seating is arranged in three groups of three chairs each, but I don’t know how they figure out who sits with whom when they are in their chairs:

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/images/photo7.jpg

If you want more information than I give in this brief overview, you might want to check out a virutual tour like this one:

http://www.oyez.org/tour/introduction/

Next up: The White House, the Treasury Building, and the Executive Office Building, which are just a few blocks away from the buildings we’ve looked at so far.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 4

The White House is probably even more familiar to most Americans than the Capitol Building.

Here’s the view from the South Lawn, where the Easter Egg Roll is held every year. They wouldn’t let the nice lady and me participate in the Easter Egg Roll because there is a cutoff age, and we didn’t make the cut:

http://www.anders.com/pictures/public/04-views/33%20-%20The%20Whitehouse%20-%20Washington%20DC_sm.jpg

And here’s the North Portico on Pennsylvania Avenue, which you used to be able to drive past. However, Pennsylvania Avenue has been closed off to traffic around the White House for many years now. It was always awe-inspiring to see this from the street while you were driving by.

http://www.anders.com/pictures/public/04-views/34%20-%20The%20Whitehouse%20-%20Washington%20DC_sm.jpg

Several years ago, there was a famous country-and-western song entitled I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. The singer of that song told her lover that things can’t always be as fantastic as we’d like, and that occasionally we have to count on some rain to go along with the sunshine. But apparently that’s not true for those who live in the White House, because here’s what their Rose Garden looks like:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/white-house-rose-garden.jpg

We’ve all heard of the Oval Office, which is the most well-known room in the whole place. Here are a few views (the first one is actually a computer re-creation):

http://www.whitehousemuseum.org/west-wing/oval-office-3d-bush2-above.jpg

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/photographs/large/c1612-10.jpg

http://www.whitehousemuseum.org/west-wing/oval-office.htm

http://www.aventuraproductions.net/oval_office.gif

In the Oval Office, several presidents have used the Resolute Desk, which was constructed of timbers from the wooden Royal Navy vessel HMS RESOLUTE. RESOLUTE was an abandoned British ship that was discovered by an American vessel and returned to Queen Victoria as a goodwill gesture. Here’s a brief overview of the Resolute Desk, with pictures:

http://www.whitehousemuseum.org/furnishings/resolute-desk.htm

Here is a virtual tour of White House, if you care to spend more time checking out the building. For example, you might want to look more closely at the West Wing, which I believe is the only Government structure ever named after a television series. You can visit that wing, as well as the East Wing of offices, and the Residence portion of the building:

http://www.whitehousemuseum.org/

Lafayette Park, across from the White House, is known for its demonstrations and protests on controversial issues. Lafayette was a young French nobleman who was very helpful to our cause during the American Revolution. Here is the park and a statue of Andrew Jackson, who was our seventh president. You can see that he rode his horse to work:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/lafayette-park-washington-dc.jpg

What I always knew as the Executive Office Building, is now called the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It is situated next to the White House – actually to next to the West Wing of the White House. Gore Vidal described it as a ‘wedding cake of a building’ in his novel Empire, which took place back in 1898 when it was the State, War and Navy Department Building. You can see that wedding cake is an appropriate description.

http://www.hsmm.aecom.com/media/6087.jpg

Here’s a shot of the building front set up for a visit from a British dignitary:

http://blogs.chron.com/beltwayconfidential/WHCA.jpg

Here are a couple of views of the library, which is one of the more impressive rooms in this building – unfortunately the lighting isn’t very good in the next picture, but it’s still the best overall view I can find of the room:

http://clinton4.nara.gov/media/gif/Law_Library.gif

This one shows the railings better, but that’s about all:

http://clinton4.nara.gov/media/gif/EOP_Library.gif

The Indian Treaty Room is a glorious room that is often used for important events, when the grandeur of the setting is required to match the grandeur of the event that is happening:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/eeobtour/images/Indian_Treaty.jpg

The former office that was used many years ago by Secretary of the Navy is one of the more beautiful rooms in the building, and it’s now used as a ceremonial office for the Vice President. I can’t find any good photos of it on the internet, other than those in the virtual tour of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building here:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/eeobtour/

While the Executive Office Building is on one side of the White House, the other side is occupied by the Treasury Building. Here is the north side of the building, with a statue of Albert Gallatin, the fourth Secretary of the Treasury.

http://www.mikeandkathie.com/images/Washington DC/DSC09472_edited-1rs.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/US_Treasury_Building.jpg

And here is the south side, with a statue of Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury. I don’t know if they have statues of numbers two and three, or any of the others after the fourth, for that matter.

http://lostworld.pair.com/trips/ny_dc_2005/IMG_7424.jpg

However, one of the nicer rooms in the building is called the Salmon P. Chase Suite, named for the Secretary of the Treasury during the Civil War. I couldn’t find any decent pictures on the Internet that show the whole room, but here’s a part of it. The virtual tour cited later shows more of this room.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/images/20070111-3_p011107sc-0085-756v.jpg

Another of the more famous rooms in Treasury is the Cash Room, which is a two-story marble hall where the country’s financial business was transacted many years ago. If you wanted to buy government bonds, you could do it in this room. Here’s what it looked like back then:

http://www.officemuseum.com/IMagesWWW/1876_The_New_Marble_Cash_Room_U_S_Treasury_Wash_Am es_p._341.jpg.jpg

http://www.treas.gov/education/fact-sheets/images/photo-cashroomengraving.jpg

Now this room is more or less a museum piece. Here’s what it looks like now:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/garden/01treasury.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

You can take your own tour of the Treasury Building with this, if you want more in-depth information than I’m giving in this brief overview. There are lots of other rooms that are discussed in the virtual tour.

http://www.treas.gov/education/fact-sheets/building/treas-build-tour.shtml

Next up: The Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, as well as some other things in the vicinity of those two places.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 5

The Lincoln Memorial is one of the more popular sites in the city. It has 36 Doric columns, one for each state at the time Lincoln died in 1865. It is patterned after the Parthenon in Athens. Construction was begun in 1914, and the Memorial opened to the public in 1922. Here’s a view from the front:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/lincoln-memorial-picture.jpg

Inside, just beyond the columns in the view above, sits a statue of Lincoln. It was originally planned to be 10 feet high, but wound up at 19 high because the 10-foot version would have been dwarfed by the chamber in which the figure sits.

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/lincoln-memorial-address.jpg

And on one of the walls is the full text of the Gettysburg Address:

http://www.wibben.net/Lincoln Memorial Gettysburg Address.jpg

There have been many important events that have taken place at the Lincoln Memorial over the years. We will focus on two of these here.

Marian Anderson had one of the most recognized concert voices in the United States during the 1930s, and she also happened to be black. A concert was scheduled for her to sing at Constitution Hall for Easter Sunday of 1939. The hall was owned by the Daughters of the American Revolution, and when the DAR realized that they had booked a ‘singer of color’ for this concert, they cancelled the show. Many Americans objected to this treatment of a brilliant singer, but the most important reaction was First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s resignation from the DAR.

On April 9, 1939, a concert was held at the Lincoln Memorial with Marian Anderson singing there instead of at Constitution Hall. A crowd of 75,000 attended, which was the largest to that date ever assembled at the Memorial, and the event was also broadcast on the radio nationwide.

Here are some excerpts from that concert:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQnzb0Jj074

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King organized a massive march on Washington, DC. The assembled throng of 250,000 people marched down the Washington Mall from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, where the Reverend King gave his moving “I Have a Dream” speech.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1732754907698549493

The Washington Monument is over 555 feet high, and was built in two phases. The first was from 1848-1856, but work was halted, first due to lack of funds and then because of the Civil War. Work was resumed in 1876, and the monument was finally completed in 1884. If you look closely in the next view, you can see a difference in stone color between the two phases, about one-third the way up from the bottom.

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/washington-monument-picture.jpg

You can ride an elevator to the top of the Washington Monument, which gives a great view of the entire area if the air is clear, which it usually is. Here’s a view of the White House from the top of the Monument. Sometimes on a windy day you can feel the top of the Monument swaying.

http://www.rhied.com/DC/Backgrounds/Washington_Monument_White_House.jpg

Here is the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool, which is positioned between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. The lighting in this view accentuates the difference in stone color that was mentioned before.

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/washington-monument-address.jpg

And here is a view of the Lincoln Memorial from its backside, so that you can also see the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol off in the distance:

http://www.anders.com/pictures/public/04-views/54%20-%20Capital%20Building%20-%20Washington%20Monument%20-%20Lincoln%20Memorial%20-%20Washington%20DC_sm.jpg

And here in the next picture you can barely see the Memorial Bridge itself in the foreground, in a night-time view that also shows the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol Dome. There must have been a Washington Nationals baseball game being played when the photographer took this picture, because you can see the ‘curly W’ logo of the team in the sky above the Lincoln Memorial, and that only happens when the team is engaged in playing a home game.

http://www.silverscreentest.com/koala/eucalyptus/nats05card.jpg

The World War II Memorial was recently completed in the area we’ve been discussing. Here is what it looks like, and you can see the Lincoln Memorial and Reflecting Pool also:

http://www.arlingtonvirginiausa.com/images/wwiimem_large.jpg

There are 56 pillars, each 17-feet in height, and each inscribed with the name of a state or territory. There were 48 states at the time of the war, and eight territories (e.g., Guam). At either end of the memorial are two large inscribed arches, one for the Atlantic theater and the other for the Pacific.

Here you can see the Atlantic Theater Arch, as well as some of the state pillars:

http://z.about.com/d/dc/1/0/X/A/WWII2.jpg

And a bit closer view of the pillars:

http://www.vacationideasguide.com/images/world-war-ii-memorial/world-war-ii-memorial-pic-8.jpg

And here’s an aerial view of the Mall, which is between the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building. This is where the concerts are given on the Fourth of July and Memorial Day, and where Earth Day celebrations are held to emphasize the importance of protecting the environment. After each of these occasions, garbage is collected the next day, measured not in pounds, nor in cubic feet, but in tons. The mess left by the Earth Day folks talking about the environment on the Mall is said to rival even the mess left by the Earth Day folks in New York City’s Central Park. This shot is taken from the top of the Washington Monument.

http://www.american-architecture.info/USA/USA-Washington/Mall-002.jpg

And here’s a view of the Mall from the other direction, taken from the Capitol. To either side of the following picture, you can see buildings of the Smithsonian Institution, which we’ll be visiting in a later episode.

http://www.vacationlovers.net/washington_dc/washington_dc_075_national_mall_view_from_capitol_ big.jpg

On the Fourth of July there is a great fireworks show on the Mall, in conjunction with a concert:

http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/10d-6/fireworks-national-mall-1.jpg

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial was modeled after the Pantheon in Rome. Jefferson himself used this circular, colonnaded design in some of the buildings he laid out, which is why this design was used in his memorial. The Memorial was completed in 1943. Here’s a nice aerial view of the memorial. One of the military bands gives free concerts on these steps every week during the summer:

http://www.anders.com/pictures/public/04-views/55%20-%20Thomas%20Jefferson%20Memorial%20-%20Washington%20DC_sm.jpg

And the bronze statue of Jefferson inside, looking toward the White House, along with an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence carved into the wall:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/thomas-jefferson-statue.jpg

This memorial is situated near what’s called the Tidal Basin, and during a few select days in the spring, this place is awash in cherry blossoms. The Cherry Blossom Festival started in 1927 – the trees were a gift from the mayor of Tokyo in 1912, so from putting this tour together, I now know that it takes cherry trees about 15 years to bloom to their potential – either that, or it took longer than it should have just to start the festival and its tradition.

Actually, none of the pictures I can find posted come close to capturing what you see when it’s cherry blossom time.

http://www.geraldbrimacombe.com/East Coast/Washington,DC Cherry Blossoms 2.jpg

http://www.the-hague.net/archives_files/full_cherry.jpg

http://z.about.com/d/dc/1/0/r/M/cbjeffersonmemorial.jpg

The next episode will concentrate on Arlington National Cemetery, the Vietnam Memorial, and the Korean War Memorial.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 6

Arlington National Cemetery is just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. There are 290,000 souls who rest there now, ranging from the American Revolution through to the current day. Since the cemetery was established after the Civil War, all those who had died before the Civil War were later re-interred here at Arlington. This is what the burial grounds look like:

http://www.vacationlovers.net/washington_dc/washington_dc_014_arlington_cemetery_headstones_ro ws_big.jpg

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is a memorial to those who fell in World War I, in World War II, in Korea, and in Vietnam. On November 11, 1921, an unidentified soldier who had been killed in France during World War I was buried there in a temporary crypt over which a marble slab was placed. The completed tomb, including a sarcophagus of Colorado marble placed on the original base, was dedicated as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on November 11, 1932. This first soldier was later joined by comrades from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, who were also unknown. So now, it’s referred to as the Tomb of the Unknowns. With rapidly-advancing technology, the Vietnam representative was eventually identified, and was then removed from the Tomb of the Unknowns so his family could honor him elsewhere with his own tombstone.

Here is one of the Third Infantry Regiment sentinels guarding the tomb.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Guard_at_the_Tomb_of_the_Unknown_Soldier,_Arlingto n.jpg

The tomb has been patrolled continuously, 24 hours a day, every day since 1937. Before that, it was patrolled only during daylight hours.

In 2003 as Hurricane Isabelle was approaching Washington, Congress took two days off because of the storm. According to ABC Evening News, because of expected dangers from the hurricane, the soldiers assigned to guard the Tomb of the Unknowns were given permission to suspend their duties. They very respectfully declined the offer. Soaked to the skin and marching in the driving rain of a tropical storm, they said that guarding the Tomb is not just an assignment – it is the highest honor that can be afforded to a soldier.

John F. Kennedy’s grave is here – surprisingly he is one of only TWO presidents buried here – the other is William Howard Taft.

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/kennedy-grave-site.jpg

Here’s the official website of the cemetery. It does NOT, however, provide a list of those who are buried here, which is considered private information.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/

The Marine Corps Memorial is usually referred to as the Iwo Jima Monument, because it represents the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima during World War II. It is right outside Arlington National Cemetery:

http://z.about.com/d/dc/1/0/g/Z/DSC03149.jpg

The main feature of the Vietnam Memorial is a graceful, height-varying wall, for which the design was intentionally kept “elegantly simple” to allow everyone to respond and remember. It is near the Mall, just northeast of the Lincoln Memorial. The main part was completed in 1982, but additional elements have been added over the years.

Here is a perspective of the Wall:

http://www.franklin.ma.us/auto/upload/schools/sullivan/406-vietnam-memorial.jpg

And a little closer:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2a/Vietnam_war_memorial.jpg

And even closer yet:

http://www.capousd.org/bams/vietnam 8.jpeg

The Three Soldiers Statue was added after the Wall had been there for a while:

http://www.photohome.com/pictures/washington-dc-pictures/vietnam-memorial-soldiers-1a.jpg

There were lots of women serving as nurses during the Vietnam War, and they have their own Women’s Memorial:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/vietnam-women's-memorial.jpg

The following site has a lot more information on the Wall, for those who would like to know more than the little bit I’m including here. It also has a database of all the 58,195 names currently on the Wall.

http://thewall-usa.com/

The Korean War Memorial is situated near the Vietnam Memorial. There are nineteen figures, made of stainless steel – here is a winter view, which is appropriate since there were some very harsh winters during the war:

http://answersinhistory.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/korean-war-memorial_large.jpg

Here’s the website of the Korean War Memorial, if you would care to explore this further:

http://www.nps.gov/kwvm/home.htm

Next up: National Archives and National Gallery of Art.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 7

The National Archives displays the originals of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and is the warehouse for storing all kinds of historical documents. The National Archives was established in 1934 by President Franklin Roosevelt, but its major holdings date back to 1775. I don’t know yet where everything was stored before the National Archives came into being, but I’m still trying to find out. I’m tentatively guessing that the Department of State kept their own, and other agencies did likewise, but I don’t know for sure.

Included in the holdings here are slave ship manifests and the Emancipation Proclamation, captured German records and the Japanese surrender documents from World War II, journals of polar expeditions and photographs of Dust Bowl farmers, and Indian treaties making promises that weren’t kept.

The building, like most important structures in Washington, has a beautiful classical exterior:

http://www.nhhistory.org/eimages/NationalArchives.jpg

The main attraction for tourists is the Rotunda, where the major documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are displayed. I was lucky enough to see one of the originals of the Magna Carta there on loan a few years ago (there are four of them), but I couldn’t understand even one word of it. The Magna Carta made a return engagement to our Archives in March 2008.

Here are two views of the Rotunda, starting with an interesting shot taken downward from the inner dome which is directly above the room:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2003/09/17/arts/rotunda_650.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/ArchivesRotunda.jpg

The large mural on the left is entitled Declaration of Independence; the one on the right is called The Constitution of the United States. Both were painted by Barry Faulkner in 1936, and were restored to their original condition in 2002.

Here’s a closer view of Declaration of Independence – Thomas Jefferson is the redhead holding the rolled-up document:

http://i.pbase.com/g6/63/720563/2/78846329.suQjQ1iH.jpg

Other documents in the Archives include the Louisiana Purchase Treaty:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals/loupurch.html

And the Gettysburg Address – contrary to popular belief, Lincoln did not write the speech on the back of an envelope during the trip to Gettysburg, and he spent a lot of time writing it. He set down a first draft in Washington shortly before November 18, 1863 and revised it into a second draft in Gettysburg. The second draft constitutes the text of the speech delivered at the dedication ceremony, and is two pages long. Here is the first page:

http://www.archives.gov/global-pages/larger-image.html?i=/historical-docs/doc-content/images/civil-war-gettysburg-address-l.jpg&c=/historical-docs/doc-content/images/civil-war-gettysburg-address.caption.html

You can find records of immigrants arriving in the United States, census documents over the years, and countless types of other papers. Here is an example of the documents stored here, this one is a letter from a Special Examiner to the Commissioner of Civil War Pensions, written in 1897:

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2005/winter/taylor-1.html

There is a lady in our apartment building by the name of Yvette. She is a volunteer at the National Archives, and she works there once a week with several other people researching certain aspects of the Civil War. She grew up in France – she was a teenager in Paris during the Nazi Occupation, but she has been in the United States for almost fifty years now. For her first task with the Archives, she translated several Revolutionary War period documents from French into English. These documents were letters between the Foreign Minister of France and several other French officials. As I’m sure you remember from your history, France played a major role in our Revolution, and we couldn’t have done it without their help.

Most of the time, Yvette worked with typed versions of the correspondence, but on several occasions in which the typists couldn’t read the originals, she had to refer to the source documents, written in the 1780s with nice quill pens, to make sure her translations were correct.

You can find all kinds of additional information on the National Archives at their website:

http://www.archives.gov/

Across the street from the National Archives is the Navy Memorial, featuring the Lone Sailor Statue, which represents sailors past, present, and future. It is a bronze statue of a sailor with his seabag, with the bronze coming from artifacts on eight Navy ships ranging in age from the War of 1812 to a modern nuclear-powered submarine.

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/lone-sailor-statue.jpg

Near the National Archives and the Navy Memorial, sits the National Gallery of Art, which has two buildings – East and West. I like the West Building and its contents. Here’s the building:

http://k43.pbase.com/g6/96/675696/2/79500902.9RS6mAwq.jpg

And during the winter time, ice skaters can do their thing right in front of it:

http://www.thedctraveler.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/national-gallery-of-art-sclupture-garden-winter.jpg

Andrew Mellon (of steel-making fame as the right-hand man of Andrew Carnegie) served as Secretary of the Treasury in the 1920s, and before he died, he donated his entire art collection to the Government. This collection eventually became the foundation which was then expanded into the National Gallery of Art.

Back in 1997, some of the works of Thomas Moran were on display in the West Building. These are breathtaking oil paintings of the American West dating from the late nineteenth century. They had a lot to do with getting Congress to declare Yellowstone a national park.

One of the paintings on display was on the order of 20 feet wide by 10 feet high, which makes quite an impression – and with Moran’s vivid colors, the impression is even greater. The images you’ll see below don’t come close to capturing what you would see if you were standing in front of the originals. Nonetheless, here are some of Moran’s works, minus the color that gets lost:

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/m/moran/moran_grand_canyon.jpg

Cliffs of Green River
http://www.cartermuseum.org/files/imagecache/artwork_detail/files/1975-28.jpg

Nearing Camp, Evening on the Colorado River
http://www.boltonmuseums.org.uk/collections/art/paintings_prints_and_drawings/images/artimages/moran_camp_full.jpg

Grand Canyon
http://courses.missouristate.edu/KevinEvans/images/moran_grandcanyon2.jpg

Under the Red Wall, Grand Canyon
http://images.bridgeman.co.uk/cgi-bin/bridgemanImage.cgi/600.CH.690690.7055475/92917.JPG

An Arizona Sunset Near the Grand Canyon
http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/ThomasMoran4.jpg

Miracle of Nature
http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/ThomasMoran3.jpg

Here are two more Moran paintings that I haven’t been able to get titles for yet – but I’m still working on it:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/ThomasMoran1.jpg

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/ThomasMoran2.jpg

There is a particularly interesting exhibition going on right now (February 1 – May 3, 2009) called Pride of Place, which shows seventeenth century oil paintings showing scenes in Holland. Here’s an example, called Haarlem With the Bleaching Fields, by Jacob van Ruisdael:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/View_of_Haarlem_with_Bleaching_Grounds_c1665_Ruisd ael.jpg/536px-View_of_Haarlem_with_Bleaching_Grounds_c1665_Ruisd ael.jpg

You can get an overview of this exhibition at:

http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/cityscapesinfo.shtm

You can get all kinds of information on the National Gallery of Art at the following site, including what is on display at the moment, and what is planned for the future. You can also treat yourself to an online tour of the place without even having to leave your computer. There are some great artists included in the Online Tour section – Edgar Degas, Edward Hopper, and Winslow Homer are three that I’m familiar with, but there are lots more. You can spend a lot of time checking these out at your leisure, but even then, you’ll still spend less time doing that than if you physically went to the place. Of course if you actually go to the place, you can see better color and larger images than what comes through on the computer.

http://www.nga.gov/

The East Building contains only modern art, so I don’t even go there anymore. I checked it out on my first visit to the Gallery, but modern art isn’t high on my list – I don’t think it’s even in the top hundred. Just as an example, take a look at the exterior of the East Building, and compare it to the West Building that we already checked out at the beginning of the National Gallery of Art discussion:

East Building:

http://www.cambridge2000.com/gallery/images/P32019354e.jpg

West Building:

http://k43.pbase.com/g6/96/675696/2/79500902.9RS6mAwq.jpg

If you want to explore this East Building monstrosity any more deeply on your own, feel free to do so, but leave me out of it. As good ol’ Kipling said over a hundred years ago “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet ....”

The next episode will be Part 1 of the Smithsonian Institution (and yes, it’s Institution rather than Institute).

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 8

The Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum complex and research organization. It is composed of 19 museums, 9 research centers, and the National Zoo. We’ll go through some of the museums, and will then show you where you can find in-depth information on the rest.

The museums are often called America’s Attic, and contain things such as a 50-foot section of the legendary American highway Route 66, the original Kermit the Frog handpuppet, Charles Lindbergh’s historic transAtlantic solo plane The Spirit of St. Louis, and Archie Bunker’s well-worn armchair from the television series All in the Family. You could spend weeks trying to look at everything in the Smithsonian complex, but you can get an overview right here in this on-line tour. Then I’ll point out the Smithsonian’s website, where you can really get down into the details of any particular area that interests you.

The building known informally as the Castle houses the Smithsonian’s administrative functions, and there is an Visitors’ Information Center in there as well, but no exhibits. It’s certainly worth looking at because it lives up to its name. Here’s the front of the building:

http://www.ilovelanguages.com/Wallpaper/papers/smithsn1.jpg

And the back, which has a great garden:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Smithsonian_Castle.jpg

The Arts and Industries Building is right next door to the Castle, and it has always been my favorite of all the Smithsonians. But right now, it’s shut down in preparation for renovation. The building is a High Victorian style of architecture, and it opened in 1881 in time for the inaugural ball of President James Garfield. Here’s the beautiful exterior of Arts and Industries:

http://dcist.com/attachments/dcist_sommer/2007_0509_arts_industries.jpg

As a quick aside, something I remember distinctly about this building was the fact that it has a carousel in front of it, and I always used to bring my children down here when they were younger – but they aren’t that young anymore and now they have children of their own. Here is the carousel:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/smithsonian-carousel.jpg

With this written overview of the museum, we can go over some of the things that were in the building before it closed down, and which I hope will still be there when it reopens.

In 1976, shortly after we arrived here in DC, and when the Bicentennial Celebration was in full swing (but that’s another story for another day), the Arts and Industries Building opened a display called 1876: A Centennial Exhibition. This was an intriguing display of tools, machines, office equipment, and other devices that were considered cutting-edge technology in 1876. Philadelphia hosted the Centennial back when President Grant was in charge of the nation, and the organizers gathered high-tech objects from all over the country to dazzle our citizens.

Well, in 1976, a full hundred years after the original Centennial, they put lots of these same items back on display. There was a bright and shiny steam locomotive and countless machines that performed various tasks much more efficiently than these tasks had ever been performed before 1876. Of particular interest to me because I collect fountain pens, was an incredible display of writing products in housed in beautiful cabinets.

Here is the locomotive that was on display for the Bicentennial. This locomotive is now in the American History Museum:

http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/collection/object_2.html

I’m pretty sure this exquisite cabinet of blank books to serve as ledgers and journals was on display in the 1976 rebirth of the Centennial:

http://www.officemuseum.com/IMagesWWW/1876_Centennial_Expo_Francis__Loutrell_NY_NY_blank _books_c020332.jpg

And I believe this impressive cabinet that stored ink and glue was also on display:

http://www.earlyofficemuseum.com/IMagesWWW/1876_Carter_Dinsmore__Co_exhibit_Centennial_Exhibi tion_Free_Library_of_Phila_c021073.jpg

And I’m pretty sure these writing instruments were on display, in this same cabinet from 1876:

http://www.officemuseum.com/IMagesWWW/1876_Centennial_Expo_Eagle_Pencil_Co._NY_NY_pencil s_writing_instruments_c022667.jpg

And even more writing instruments, again in this same original cabinet:

http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/Pendisplay.jpg

The following is a fantastic site that gives an excellent rundown of office supplies available in 1876 – lots of these items were on display in the Arts and Industries Building before it was shut down for renovation. You can scroll down to find writing paper and ledgers, writing implements, typewriters, printing presses, calculators, and lots of other things. And if you click on a thumbnail (small picture), you can see an enlarged version of that picture.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.officemuseum.com/IMagesWWW/1876_Centennial_Expo_Francis__Loutrell_NY_NY_blank _books_c020332.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.officemuseum.com/centennial%2520exposition.htm&h=540&w=425&sz=67&hl=en&start=13&tbnid=iCrbEYw4JEz6TM:&tbnh=132&tbnw=104&prev=/images%3Fq%3D1876:%2BA%2BCentennial%2BExhibition%2 6gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

The source of this information is a great site called Early Office Museum, which you might want to check out as well, since it has much more besides the 1876 Centennial:

www.earlyofficemuseum.com

This is the best example I can find of a large machine that was on display in Arts and Industries before the shutdown. But there were lots of other machines just as big. This Corlis steam engine provided power to drive all the other machines in the 1876 exhibition. In the 1976 rebirth, I’m pretty sure that no machines were in action, as maintenance would then have become a problem:

http://www.newsm.org/steam-engines/Corliss-centenial.jpg

As I said earlier, I hope that this Centennial exhibit returns when the renovations are completed. But I get nervous when I hear that one of the plans being considered for the renovated building is to make it a Latino Museum. And no, I don’t have anything against Latinos, and I’m sure Latinos deserve their own museum as much as any other ethnic group. I just hope that 1876: A Centennial Exhibition returns to center stage again, and the Arts and Industries Building seems to be the place to make that happen.

The Museum of American History is about to re-open (November 2008) after a two-year renovation. It holds items from the American Revolution to the present.

It has a wonderful inside, but to my mind, a not-so-great exterior (sometimes this download hangs up – if it does, stop and immediately try again).

http://newsdesk.si.edu/images_full/images/buildings/general/building_10.jpg

The flag that flew over Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 bombardment, the one that inspired the writing of The Star Spangled Banner, is on display here. This is how it was shown in the past, but with the ongoing renovation, it will be displayed in a different way:

http://photo2.si.edu/different/nmahflag.gif

And the lap desk that Thomas Jefferson designed and used to write the Declaration of Independence is displayed. This view shows the drawer opened – it held paper, pens, and an inkwell.

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/images/vc30.jpg

As an example of what kind of other exhibits are shown here, take a look at this current display on transportation, one of my favorite topics. If you have a little patience and aren’t too timid to click boldly here and there, and if you follow the instructions carefully, you can have all kinds of virtual tours here:

http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/themes/

Here’s a website just for Smithsonian’s Museum of American History:

http://americanhistory.si.edu

Next up: Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and the National Portrait Gallery.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 9

The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History has over eighty million artifacts. These include stuffed wild animals, dinosaur skeletons, gems, early man, insects, and a live coral reef. There is a butterfly garden outside the building.

Here is the building exterior. This image sometimes downloads slowly, but it’s the best picture I can find. If it seems to be hanging up, stop the download and immediately try it again. Usually it works pretty well, but sometimes you have to try it more than once.

http://newsdesk.si.edu/images_full/images/buildings/general/building_16.jpg

There used to be a statue of a rhinoceros in front of the building, and my kids would climb all over it. Well, the rhino must have been worn down to a stub by all the kids abusing it over the years, because it isn’t there any more.

This trained elephant has been performing in the rotunda since my kids were small, and he’s still doing it. He never moves an inch during his performance – I don’t know how he stays so still.

http://newsdesk.si.edu/images_full/images/museums/nmnh/objects/elephant.jpg

In Dinosaur Hall, they don’t feed the animals nearly as well as they do at the National Zoo, which is also managed by the Smithsonian. We’ll visit the zoo later in this tour.

http://photo2.si.edu/dino/allosr.gif

http://photo2.si.edu/dino/dino.gif

http://www.aaskolnick.com/fieldmuseum/sue/smithsonian.jpg

The Hope Diamond is the star attraction of the gemstone displays. It was originally 112 carats, but was later chopped down to less than half that size, a mere 45 carats. Most of the photos I can find make it look either blue, black, or some other color that it really isn’t.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/15/Hope_Diamond.jpg/400px-Hope_Diamond.jpg

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/hope-diamond-picture.jpg

This one seems to be the most faithful that I can find with respect to showing the color properly:

http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/10d-5/hope-diamond.jpg

If you want to explore the Museum of Natural History more thoroughly on your own, here is a good place to start:

http://www.mnh.si.edu/

The National Portrait Gallery is housed in the Old Patent Office Building, which is one of the oldest buildings in the city, as you can tell from its name. It was built between 1836 and 1867, and, like the Lincoln Memorial, is modeled after the Parthenon in Athens. The White House, the Capitol Building, and the Treasury Building are the only buildings in the city that are older than the Old Patent Office Building. It served as a temporary hospital during the Civil War.

Walt Whitman worked in this building after the Civil War when it housed the Bureau of Indian Affairs. And no, Walt isn’t the guy who invented the Whitman Sampler – that was a different Whitman. This particular Whitman got fired from the Bureau of Indian affairs in 1867 when his supervisor found a manuscript of Leaves of Grass in his desk, and gave him the ax for not giving his full attention to his work on Indian Affairs.

Here’s what the building looks like – actually this building holds both the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/national-portrait-gallery-washington-dc.jpg

Here’s a closer view with a great shot of the entrance, but occasionally it’s slow on the download. If it hangs up, stop the download and try again immediately:

http://z.about.com/d/dc/1/0/w/C/DSC00581.JPG

Incredibly, there were people who actually and seriously wanted to demolish this building in 1958, but President Eisenhower stopped that nonsense, and took action to let the Smithsonian take it over. It’s hard to believe that someone would want to knock down a building like this one and put up some more McDonalds restaurants or boxes that look like the East Building of the National Gallery of Art – which is even outshined by McDonalds. I have to admit that I never knew about this demolition idea until doing the research to write this piece. I mean how many buildings like this are there, that we can go around knocking any of them down? They actually knocked down Pennsylvania Station in New York City in 1964, which is enough lunacy for two centuries.

As an aside, here are two views of the Pennsylvania Station, which was leveled. The magnificent exterior before it was smashed to smithereens and carted away:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/Penn_Station3.jpg

And the breathtaking General Waiting Room before it was pulverized and dumped into a landfill:

http://blogs.redding.com/mbeauchamp/archives/PennStation2.jpg

Here is the Great Hall of the National Portrait Gallery, but remember that this building was constructed to house offices, and not a glorious museum:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2413/2166432665_ea6222493a.jpg?v=0

A George Washington portrait by Gilbert Stuart, 1796:
http://www.nga.gov/press/exh/209/assets/209-043-big.jpg

The America’s Presidents display area (with the Washington portrait mentioned above):
http://img.groundspeak.com/waymarking/display/840b9f83-c72e-48ae-aaa8-fadf3b2c2cbf.jpg

Thomas Jefferson by Gilbert Stuart, portrait of 1805:
http://www.zenithgallery.com/artists/Stevens_Bradley/Portraits/Jefferson-Stuart.jpg

And Thomas Jefferson by Mather Brown, portrait painted in London 1786:
http://bokertov.typepad.com/btb/images/thos_jefferson.jpg

The Cracked-Plate Lincoln photograph, 1865 by Alexander Gardner:
http://images.artnet.com/images_US/magazine/features/karlins/karlins7-7-9.jpg

And here’s a portait that is one of my favorites, of a dignified lady:
http://www.geocities.com/mike_zimmy/Eleanorpic.jpg

Well, Eleanor isn’t really on display at the National Portrait Gallery, but if those folks knew their business, she would be. By the way, the chair under which Eleanor is lying is the same chair the nice lady sits in when she comes to dinner – just in case you’re into details like that. But when the nice lady and I are sitting at the table, Eleanor certainly doesn’t stay on the floor – no, she’s right up there on top of the table checking out all the serving dishes.

Here’s the website for the National Portrait Gallery – if you want a more thorough discussion of what’s in the gallery, except for matters about Eleanor which they don’t seem to have:

http://www.npg.si.edu/

And the website for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which shares the building with the National Portrait Gallery. If you want to explore this museum, you’re on your own. Note that the Renwick Gallery, across the street from the White House, is now part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, so check it out as well. There is a separate Renwick Gallery portion within the following overall website:

http://americanart.si.edu/index3.cfm

Again, the Smithsonian’s overall website, for those who might want to explore further:

http://www.si.edu/

Here you can examine close-up things by yourself, like the Air and Space Museum, which is said to be the most popular museum in the world. I’ll pass on this one, and let you check it out yourself if you’re interested. Just click on the link above, and check the list of museums on the right side of your screen. Then click on Air and Space Museum (the second one in the list), or any of the others you wish to explore.

Next up: The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Union Station, and the Postal Museum.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 10

The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial is is one of the newer structures in the city, having opened in 1997. It’s located near the Tidal Basin – remember that the cherry blossoms that we mentioned earlier in conjunction with the Thomas Jefferson Memorial are also near the Tidal Basin – but on the other side of it. The FDR Memorial is not only to commemorate FDR, but also to remember the difficult time period in which he served, which included the Great Depression and World War II.

Here he is, with his beloved Scottish terrier named Fala, who often travelled with FDR:

http://w0sd.com/eastcoast2004/7480.jpg

With politicians being what they are, somone once accused FDR of spending taxpayer money for some special treatment for Fala. Well, FDR didn’t take too kindly to that and he made a speech saying something to the effect that “these folks have not been content with attacks on me, or on my wife, or on my sons ... but they now include my little dog Fala ... I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, his Scotch soul was furious.”

The memorial shows a too-frequent scene from the Great Depression, very stark-looking men standing in a bread line:

http://www.cyberlearning-world.com/images/bread.line.jpg

And here is FDR sitting openly in his wheelchair, which was almost always hidden from sight during his presidency. In fact, this wheelchair version was added years after the memorial first opened, because of the uproar at the fact that the main statue (the one above with Fala) hid the president’s wheelchair under a cloak:

http://www.cyberlearning-world.com/images/wheelchair.jpg

And his wife Eleanor, who can’t help but remind me of my cat who shares her name. She’s shown standing with the symbol of the United Nations because of her devotion to that body:

http://www.cyberlearning-world.com/images/eleanor.jpg

Running water is an important physical and metaphoric component of the memorial. Each of the four rooms representing Roosevelt’s four respective terms in office contains a waterfall. As you move from room to room, the waterfalls become larger and more complex, reflecting the increasing complexity of a presidency marked by the upheavals due to the Great Depression and the World War. Later in this episode I’ll show you where you can find more information on each of the rooms, if you want to explore a little more. Here is one of the waterfalls:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Franklin_Roosevelt_Memorial_waterfall.jpg

My Aunt Louise came to Washington as a young lady in the early 1930s to work for the government. She’s 93 years old now, living in a retirement home in Norfolk and doing quite well, but she lived in Washington from 1936 until 2007. She remembers much about FDR, having lived and worked here during most of his presidency. When the FDR Memorial opened, we had planned that I would take her over to check it out. Well, although we went to many other places, we kept putting off our visit to the FDR Memorial, and it eventually reached the point that she moved to Norfolk before we ever went to the Memorial. I still regret the fact that we never made it to the Memorial together. She is quite accomplished in using her computer, so I’m sending this story to her, just so she can see the FDR Memorial that I never took her to see.

If you want more information on the FDR Memorial, you can find it here:

http://www.nps.gov/fdrm/

Washington’s Union Station has been restored magnificently to its original grandeur. It was completed in 1908, back in the days when a railroad station was considered the Gateway to the City in cities all over this country, and nothing was held back in providing the station with features that would put to shame all the other railroad stations in all the other cities in the entire land.

Union Station is considered to be one of the finest examples of the Beaux-Arts style of architecture. At the time it was built, the Station covered more ground than any other building in the United States and was the largest train station in the world. In fact, if put on its side, the Washington Monument could lay within the confines of the Station’s Main Hall, or alternatively, the entire standing Army of the U.S. at that time, which was comprised of 50,000 men, could stand shoulder to shoulder inside that mammoth room.

Union Station brought Washington a new spirit that echoed the architecture displayed at Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, and began the city’s monumental transformation. Daniel Burnham, whose credo was “Make No Little Plans,” was the architect and Louis Saint-Gaudens provided most of the sculpture.

Seventy pounds of 22-karat gold leaf adorn the 96-foot barrel-vaulted, coffered ceilings, principally over the majestic Main Hall. There are 36 statues of Roman warriors carrying their shields, looming high above and looking down into the Main Hall. Union Station’s East and West Halls flank the Main Hall, and are fitted with skylights. Both of these halls now have very tasteful stores. There are over 130 stores and restaurants in the restored building. When the station re-opened there was a very nice fountain pen shop, but the pen shop has since closed down.

As train travel was the mode of transportation even for U.S. Presidents before the 1960s, an elaborate Presidential Suite was provided in Union Station. In the restored version of today, the former Presidential Suite is now a restaurant.

Here’s a shot of the station’s exterior today:

http://www.adventurist.net/trips/washington_dc_08-2004/around_dc/photos/union-station.jpg

And here’s the Christopher Columbus statue in front of Union Station, which also shows the station in the background:

http://www.washington-reise.de/bild/washington4%20111.jpg

Here’s the entrance into the Main Hall, which is where the waiting room was back in the station’s early days:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mkli/images/washingtondc/177_7796.JPG

And here’s what the Main Hall looks like now – the nice lady and I had lunch in the restaurant shown at the right – on the floor level rather than the upper one:

http://community.iexplore.com/photos/journal_photos/UnionStation4.jpg

http://mowabb.com/aimages/images/05-28-04.jpg

For half a century and through two World Wars, Union Station served Washington and the U.S. as a major center of transportation and the venue for many historic events. On April 14, 1945, a funeral train crossed the Potomac and backed into Union Station carrying the casket of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had died two days before in Warm Springs, Georgia.

The Smithsonian National Postal Museum is across the street from Union Station and was the Main Post Office for Washington, DC from 1914 to 1986. It was designed by Daniel Burnham, the same architect who designed Union Station.

http://siarchives.si.edu/history/92_15710.gif

http://newsdesk.si.edu/images_full/images/buildings/general/building_5.jpg

It has been a museum since 1993, and it holds the largest and most comprehensive collection of postal history items in the world.

http://siarchives.si.edu/history/exhibits/thisday/july/94-1301.jpg

Owney the Mail Dog used to help on the mail train back in the 1890s, working the rails in Ohio. I wasn’t all that surprised to learn this, because my cat Eleanor likes to work over the mail sometimes when I bring it into the apartment, and she’s always there helping whenever I’m at my desk writing. Anywhere, here’s Owney at his workplace, with some of his colleagues:

http://www.columbusrailroads.com/photogallery/owney.jpg

Now my stamp-collecting as a youngster was very rudimentary, but if you were a serious stamp collector, you might want to explore this museum more extensively. Or if you want to see John Lennon’s stamp album which he made as a teenager long before he was a famous Beatle, and which the museum recently obtained, just click below – and make sure you scroll all the way down to see the comment someone made about Lennon and the movie A Hard Day’s Night:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/10013281.html

Or if you want even more info, and especially if you are a stamp collector, you can start with this spot:

http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/

Next up: John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Ford’s Theater, and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 11

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is called the Kennedy Center by all of us who don’t have the energy to use its full title. It opened in 1971, and has three main theaters, plus several other important areas. Here’s what it looks like from the outside at night, which is a lot better than it looks during the day:

http://www.usacitydirectories.com/travelamerica/images/kennedy-center.jpg

And the Grand Foyer is said to be one of the largest rooms in the world, as it’s 60 feet in height and 630 feet long. The Washington Monument lying on its side would fit in the Grand Foyer. And I’m sure you can remember from the previous episode that the Main Hall of Union Station is another room large enough to hold the Washington Monument.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3295/2293026616_b4453f1cf2.jpg?v=0

The Grand Foyer during intermission, showing a bust of JFK:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2209/1894698786_5928a85553.jpg?v=0

The three main theaters at the Kennedy Center are the Opera House, the Concert Hall, and the Eisenhower Theater.

The Opera House, in the middle, has over 2,300 seats. Its interior features include much red velvet, as well as a distinctive red and gold silk curtain, which was a gift from Japan. The nice lady and I saw Phantom of the Opera in this impressive room. I don’t know if they put it on in the Opera House because the title of the musical contains the word Opera, but whatever the reason, it was a beautiful room. And the show was great, too.

The annual Kennedy Center Honors program takes place in the Opera House also, and is always televised nationally.

The Concert Hall, on the south side, seats over 2,500. It was renovated in 1997, and currently is state-of-the-art, with a high-tech acoustical canopy. The Hadelands crystal chandeliers were a gift from Norway. There is a 4,144-pipe organ behind the stage. This is the home of the National Symphony Orchestra.

http://www.videogameslive.com/files/images/kennedyconcerthall.jpg

The Eisenhower Theater, on the north side, seats 1,142 and is named for President Dwight D. Eisenhower. It primarily hosts plays and musicals, smaller-scale operas, ballet and contemporary dance.

Here is Kennedy Center’s website, if you would like to learn any more on your own:

http://www.kennedy-center.org/

Ford’s Theater is best known for being the site of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. It’s now closed for renovations and will re-open in the winter of 2009. The theater shut down after the assassination which took place on April 14, 1865, and didn’t re-open until 1968, more than a hundred years later. It continues to feature performances, but it is clearly recognized that its most important attracting quality is as a museum honoring Lincoln.

And here’s what it like today, which is pretty much how it looked in Lincoln's time:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/fords-theater-washington-dc.jpg

And here’s what the stage looks like today – the flag on the right side of the photo marks Lincoln’s box on the fateful evening:

http://static.travelmuse.com/docs/artwork/washington-dc/washington-dc-theatre-for-kids-fords-theatre-stage-set-full.jpg

Here is Ford’s Theater’s website, if you would like to learn any more on your own:

http://www.fordstheatre.org/

The Folger Shakespeare Library is a research center on Shakespeare. Now I thought maybe Folger’s Coffee had something to do with the library’s name, as sort of a grandfather to FedEx Field where the Washington Redskins play, or QuickenLoans Arena where the Cleveland Cavaliers play – and apparently neither team is even embarrassed about these names.

But as often happens in cases like this where I try to think, I was wrong. It turns out that Henry Folger, the President of Standard Oil of New York, financed the project and he probably didn’t even drink coffee. The library opened in 1932, and it is claimed by some to be the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare materials. However, I would think someone back in Shakespeare’s homeland might dispute that claim.

Here’s the building’s exterior as shown on an old post card:

http://www.shakespeareinamericanlife.org/images/006321w5_l.jpg

And here two views of the main reading room:

http://wiz2.cath.vt.edu:8200/wizard/wizard.2.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/43/84370702_12a16fd6d9.jpg?v=0

Performances of Shakespearean plays continue to be shown here, in a small theater.

Here is the library’s website, if you would like to learn any more on your own:

http://www.folger.edu/

Next up: The Old Post Office (not the Main Post Office we already visited that is now the Smithsonian Postal Museum), the National Building Museum, and Chinatown.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 12

The Old Post Office is not to be confused with Main Post Office that is now the Smithsonian Postal Museum, which we visited in an earlier episode.

When it was first built in 1899, a writer for the New York Times said the building looked like a cross between a cathedral and a cotton mill. But as usual, and in a tradition that the newspaper still upholds today, that writer got it all wrong. Here’s what the building looks like and you can determine for yourself if it’s as bad as the New York Times writer thought:

http://www.belenjesuit.org/academics/socialstudies/closeup/CLOSE UP Web pictures/1994 Old Post Office picture.jpg

And it’s even better at night when the clock dials light up:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/old-post-office-washington-dc.jpg

Consideration was given to demolishing it back when it was only about 30 years old, probably at the instigation of the New York Times writer who made that brilliant assessment when the building first opened. But one of the very few good things to come from the Great Depression was that there wasn’t enough money to be found within the government to demolish the building, and the New York Times didn’t offer to help the government pay for the demolition either.

The building doesn’t serve as a post office anymore, but now houses commercial and governmental offices, along with a large atrium featuring shops, an entertainment stage, and a food court. I have eaten in their food court several times without getting sick even once, so I can attest to its great quality.

The highlight of the building is an elevator ride to the 270 foot-high observation deck. Being one of the tallest buildings in Washington, DC, it offers fantastic panoramas of the National Mall. And here’s what it looks like when you look back down from the top of the elevator to the floor below, inside the building:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1278/936905046_a173160483_o.jpg

The Old Post Office Building is a reminder of the foresight of preservationists devoted to conservation of our treasured buildings, as it has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places since 1973.

You can find more information on the Old Post Office at this site:

http://tourofdc.org/tours/OldPostOffice/

The building that now serves as the National Building Museum was completed in 1887, having been designed by General Montgomery Meigs of Civil War fame. It was built to provide a home for the Civil War Pension Bureau, which was very active at that time, but which has since faded from the list of hot topics. It had been used as an office building by several government agencies over the years, before reaching its current status in 1986.

It now serves as a forum for exchanging ideas and information about such issues as managing suburban growth, preserving landmarks and communities, and revitalizing urban centers. There are always interesting exhibits relating to buildings, and they change periodically.

Here is the exterior:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/building-museum-washington-dc.jpg

http://www.beatrixalpine.com/dcphotos/large/buildingmuseum.jpg

The Great Hall is impressive, as you might suspect from its name. Presidential inaugural balls are held here.

http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/green/images/meigs.jpg

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/national-building-museum-washington-dc.jpg

Here’s the museum’s website, if you want more information. If you’re interested in buildings, whether old/beautiful, or modern/hideous, you can learn a lot here:

http://www.nbm.org/

Like many major cities, Washington has its own Chinatown, which is very nice. Now if you’re intimately familiar with the Chinatowns in either New York City or San Francisco, you’ll find Washington’s to be much less impressive than those. We just have a few blocks in ours. Well, that’s just the way it is.

The first time I was there, I didn’t know I was there, and I was looking for a Mexican restaurant. I can now tell you with firsthand knowledge, don’t go to Chinatown looking for a Mexican restaurant because you won’t find one.

Here’s the Friendship Gate that provides even someone like me with a pretty good indication that I’m now entering Chinatown:

http://z.about.com/d/dc/1/0/t/C/DSC00574.JPG

And in this view of the gate, which is taken from a sidewalk rather than the middle of the street, note the Metro pillar that says Gallery Place-Chinatown. The gallery spoken of is the National Portrait Gallery that we visted in a previous episode. And I believe that the CVS Pharmacy in the background is a Chinese company that sells opium, with its headquarters in Shanghai, but I can’t confirm this beyond a doubt:

http://manufacturedenvironments.com/fotos/washington_dc_2006/images/009chinatowndc.jpg

Below is a now-then photo. On the left is a pair of buildings in Chinatown now, and on the right is that same pair of buildings during the Civil War. The white building was a boarding house in Civil War days, run by a lady named Mary Surratt. The plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln took place here, and John Wilkes Booth, the man who pulled the trigger, was a frequent boarder here. The white building is now a Chinese restaurant in Washington’s Chinatown. I ate there once, more out of curiosity than anything else:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2188/2192484694_c3f6f023aa.jpg?v=0

Next up: The National Zoo, the National Cathedral, and the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which are not part of the same family even though they all have National in their names. Lots of things in Washington carry the name National – including our major league baseball team – the Washington Nationals. We’ll also look at the recently-restored Sixth and I Synagogue.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 13

The National Zoo was established in 1889, and it’s now home to about 500 species of some 2,700 animals, many of which are pretty rare and some are endangered. You can see cheetahs, zebras, camels, elephants, tapirs, antelopes, pelicans, kangaroos, hippos, rhinos, giraffes, apes, and, of course, lions, tigers, and bears.

The Giant Pandas are the biggest attraction in the whole place. This is because pandas are so cute in the first place, and secondly, the two adults managed to produce a baby. A panda birth in captivity was a rarity in the past, but it’s hoped that there will be more and more in the future.

The proud parents – mother Me Xiang (pronounce as Mee Shawng) has papa Tian Tian in a headlock:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2141/2063325739_d935053111.jpg?v=0

Baby – Tai Shan (pronounce as Tie Shan – second word rhymes with Dan) when he was just a few days old and would still fit in a small Tupperware container:

http://english.people.com.cn/200510/03/images/sci1.jpg

Baby and Mother – Tai Shan and Me Xiang, the first time Tai Shan saw snow:

http://www.jeffsweather.com/archives/Simthsonian National Zoo Pandas-thumb.jpg

Tai Shan getting his exercise in the form of chin-ups:

http://photos3.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/6/c/f/6/highres_3387894.jpeg

When Tai Shan was almost full-grown, but still a momma’s boy:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/176/483260766_ed0e56c3c8.jpg?v=0

Some of my cat Eleanor’s relatives, who were born at the Zoo just like Tai Shan. First, a tiger with cubs:

http://a.abcnews.com/images/US/rt_tigers_060906_ssv.jpg

And then a cheetah with cubs, but they don’t look as friendly as Eleanor:

http://www.thebigcats.com/news/2005_0204_cheetah_cubs07.jpg

http://gallery.photo.net/photo/3135913-lg.jpg

And Luke the Lion can sneak up on you if you’re not careful and pay close attention:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2129/2540290186_5bbce1bd61.jpg?v=0

The zoo’s website is shown below, for more information if you want. This includes updates on the newest pending panda pregnancy, which is probably too many P words to lump together like that. Some of my fellow volunteers at the Animal Welfare League of Arlington think this latest pregnancy is a false one, but I don’t know how they figured that out:

http://nationalzoo.si.edu/

Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone for the National Cathedral back in 1907. It’s an Episcopal church, and is the sixth largest cathedral in the world.

http://pics4.city-data.com/cpicc/cfiles26936.jpg

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/national-cathedral-picture.jpg

Here are two views of the nave, which I hope will help me remember this frequent answer to crossword puzzle clues:

http://www.american-architecture.info/USA/USA-Washington/National_Cathedral_Center.jpg

http://image54.webshots.com/154/2/93/20/523629320USdFmr_ph.jpg

The main altar of the cathedral, called the Jerusalem Altar, was built from twelve stones brought from Solomon’s Quarry in Jerusalem.

http://image57.webshots.com/57/8/89/3/479888903OHQNWg_fs.jpg

Now if I could only find a picture of an apse somewhere, I’d be all set for my crossword puzzles.

The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception is the largest Roman Catholic church in the United States and North America. And that includes Saint Patrick’s in New York City, which appears in lots more movies than does the Immaculate Conception.

It is even one of the ten largest churches in the world. In 1990, Pope John Paul II elevated the National Shrine to the status of a minor basilica, bestowing this papal honor for its historical importance, dignity, and significance as a center of worship and devotion. On April 16, 2008 Pope Benedict XVI visited the basilica during his visit to the United States.

Here’s what it looks like when you’re in a helicopter hovering in the vicinity:

http://www.inn-dc.com/shrine.gif

And when you’re back down on the ground:

http://www.loc.gov/rr/european/slavdc/images/immacconcept1.jpg

And here’s what’s inside that beautiful dome that we saw in the exterior view:

http://www.kofc.org/cmf/images/news/Dome_580.jpg

And the nave:

http://abbeyjazz.com/ts/2007 Pictures/Inside the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.jpg

The shrine’s website for those who want more information:

http://www.nationalshrine.com/site/pp.asp?c=etITK6OTG&b=106948

Adas Israel Synagogue was an important place of Washington Jewish worship from 1908-51, but the congregation outgrew the building and moved on. The classical old building was recently restored, and is now called the Sixth and I Synagogue because that’s its address. There’s a new Adas Israel Synagogue just off Connecticut Avenue, so they couldn’t call the restored building by its original name. My wife and I considered Adas Israel for our wedding many years ago, but due to our financial situation at the time, we wound up getting married in the living room of the Rabbi of Annapolis instead – that was a lot less expensive. The newly-restored synagogue is used for religious services and for musical performances. Here are several views of it:

The exterior:

http://www.goethe.de/ins/us/was/pro/vtour/dc1/images/3/6thandi2004.jpg

A fantastic window:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/53/138841155_e4a5a71dd2.jpg

The window below is actually a re-creation of the original. Amazingly enough, the original was left in place when the synagogue moved to its new home, and was destroyed when the new owners took occupancy of the vacated building. The re-creation was made possible only by the fact that a few people still had wedding pictures that showed the window:

http://www.thedctraveler.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/rose-window-in-the-synagogue-at-6th-i-scott-ableman.jpg

The sanctuary:

http://dcist.com/attachments/dcist_mehan/Sixth-&-I-sanctuary.jpg

And a picture showing people at the bimah:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/09/images/20050914-24_p091405pm-0108jpg-515h.jpg

Here’s a virtual tour if you care to look further (note that you have to click on the star at the bottom of your screen to move to each successive section of the tour):

http://www.sixthandi.org/VirtualTour.htm

The next episode will cover the FBI Building, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Holocaust Museum.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 14

One of my favorite movies as a child was The FBI Story, starring Jimmy Stewart. So when I eventually became an adult and moved to Washington, I went to see the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s headquarters. There used to be an interesting tour given at the FBI Building in downtown Washington, where you could see crime laboratories and lots of historical artifacts, including weapons taken from famous criminals. I was lucky enough to have one of those tours many years ago, but tours are no longer given.

The FBI is now celebrating its centennial in 2008. I didn’t realize that the Bureau had started on July 26, 1908, either because they didn’t show that in the Jimmy Stewart movie, or else I just missed it. I haven’t seen the movie for years now, but it seemed to me that in the movie, the Bureau started much later – probably something like 1924, when J. Edgar Hoover came on the scene. But of course, that only proves how dangerous it is to study history in a movie theater.

Since there are no more tours – and not even virtual ones from your computer – here’s an interesting place to start looking around – the history portion of the FBI’s website:

http://www.fbi.gov/fbihistory.htm

And in particular, some information about the capture of John Dillinger, one of the FBI’s most famous cases:

http://www.fbi.gov/page2/july08/dillinger_072208.html

And the FBI’s overall website:

http://www.fbi.gov/homepage.htm

The Corcoran Gallery of Art is a block from the White House, and is the largest privately supported cultural institution in the city. It’s in the building shown below, which was designed by Ernest Flagg (my favorite architect for reasons you’ll learn later in this tour) back in 1897. But the Corcoran’s exterior isn’t nearly as nice as some of Flagg’s other works:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/corcoran-gallery-washington-dc.jpg

http://www.union.umd.edu/GSL/social/images/corcorngallery.jpg

If you want a sample of their paintings, here’s a 24-painting series of images representing works now in the Corcoran, called The American Evolution – A History Through Art. You should remember from a previous episode of this story what you’ll see in Image 4 of 24 in this series of images:

http://arthistory.about.com/od/from_exhibitions/ig/americanevolution/corcoran_0308_01.htm

You can find other art works at the gallery’s website, but you have to do some exploring to find them:

http://www.corcoran.org/index.asp

The U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing is the largest producer of security documents in the country. The bureau prints billions of Federal Reserve Notes each year – they do paper money only. Coins are made by the United States Mint – a separate agency. The bills are printed in Washington, DC, and in Fort Worth, Texas. This bureau also produces other security-related documents, such as parts of passports, ID cards, and naturalization certificates. They used to print postage stamps as well, but as of mid-2005, the Post Office has assumed those duties and contracts the work out to private printers.

The most popular part of the tour that is given here is the part where paper money is printed, and each tourist who comes here always assumes he is the first one clever enough to ask for free samples.

The building’s exterior:

http://www.furman.edu/riley/programs/images/TOG06BureauofEngraving_jpg.jpg

Breaking in some new $20 printing machinery:

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/02uianE8pu1YF/610x.jpg

Some $2 bills:

http://www.sybarites.org/wp-content/795pxUnited_States_Two_Dollar_Uncut_32Subject_Curr ency_Sheet.jpg

And the bureau’s website:

http://www.bep.treas.gov/

If you’d like to learn about the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, you’re on your own. I’ll point you to the website, but I no longer do the Holocaust myself. After many years of learning about it, I finally decided I’ve had enough. What served as the last straw for me was watching the movie Sophie’s Choice, and eventually learning what the movie’s title actually meant.

http://www.ushmm.org/

The next episode will visit Embassy Row, Anderson House, the Hillwood Museum and Gardens, and the Willard Hotel.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 15

For some reason, there are lots of embassies located throughout the city of Washington. I'm working on figuring out why this is so, but I haven’t gotten there yet. The most impressive concentration of these is an area called Embassy Row, on Massachusetts Avenue. Or maybe I should have said that the most impressive concentration used to be here, because in the ‘olden’ days, this place was very impressive. Unfortunately, some of the embassies have traded in their attractive-but-now-too-small quarters for very large structures that you might not believe even when you see them later.

The British Embassy is still attractive, but I’ve never actually been there in person, so forgive me if I get anything wrong here. Here’s the exterior, seen through a gate:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/200/488975866_782de5b71a.jpg?v=0

The Ambassador’s House looks like an English country house in the Queen Anne style of architec¬ture – I believe the house is the red building to the left and the building to the right with the columns is the Embassy:

http://ukclarks.net/Residence.JPG

Here’s a statue of Winston Churchill near the embassy:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/54/126100473_d65480e910.jpg?v=0

Next to the British Embassy is the U. S. Naval Observatory, which isn’t an embassy but we’ll discuss it anyway because it’s right here in the middle of the area that we’re discussing.

The U.S. Naval Observatory is one of the oldest scientific agencies in the country. Established in 1830 as the Depot of Charts and Instruments, its primary mission was to care for the U.S. Navy's chronometers, charts and other navigational equipment. Today, USNO is the preeminent authority in the areas of precise time and accurate navigation. I don’t know if the observatory played a role in the recent downgrading of Pluto from being a planet to being something else.

Here’s the exterior view of the observatory behind some nice cherry blossoms:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/US_Naval_Observatory_(Washington,_District_of_Colu mbia).jpg

The Embassy of Indonesia is an interesting building, and is located on Embassy Row. The building was constructed as a private residence in 1903 by a man who made a fortune when gold was discovered in his silver mine. He probably would have made a fortune with the silver alone, but his riches increased dramatically when gold was found:

http://lh5.ggpht.com/maskirovka77/SDyi4NjoMFI/AAAAAAAAXc4/3m0rEY1KQ50/s800/Embassy Row065.jpg

The mine owner’s name was Thomas Walsh, and his daughter Evalyn who inherited the house married Edward Mclean, so the building was eventually called the Walsh-Mclean House. Evalyn was the last private owner of the 45-carat Hope Diamond that we saw earlier at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. You can get a little history of the building here, along with some pictures of very exquisite interiors:

http://www.embassyofindonesia.org/aboutembassy/building.htm

The embassies of France, Italy, and Germany are all modern buildings. If you want to get an idea of what they look like, just buy a pair of shoes, toss the shoes, keep the box they came in, and look at the box.

For example, here is the Embassy of France, but I have to wonder if maybe this is just the stacked parking garage since that’s what it looks like. However, the official embassy website says this is actually the main building, and makes no apparent effort to hide this fact. Maybe you’ll get lucky and this picture won’t even download – that seems to happen every now and then:

http://www.consulfrance-washington.org/local/cache-vignettes/L360xH255/File0198-2-aab32.jpg

And the Embassy of Italy, the homeland of Michelangelo, da Vinci, Bramante, Bernini, and so many other talented artists, looks like the picture below. Fortunately for those wonderful artists, they aren’t around anymore to see this absolutely pathetic abomination. It replaced the former embassy building which was attractive but apparently lacking in size:

http://images.clubzone.com/company/images/16708.jpg

I guess the flag in front of the Italian Embassy is flying at half-mast in outright mourning for this hideous building, which I’m sure is large enough and very functional.

Anyone who wants to take an actual tour of Embassy Row (sorry – can’t find any virtual tours) can find the information at the site below, which also shows some beautiful interiors, but doesn’t identify the buildings in which each of them is located:

http://tourguidemark.com/tours/embassyrow/embassyrow.html

Anderson House is the home of the Society of the Cincinnati, which is a hereditary historical society. It was built as a private residence, and was presented to the society on the death of its owner. It’s one of the few remaining palatial residences from the turn of the century. The library of the Society is housed there, and it serves as an important historic collection of manuscripts, letters, publications and media from the Revolutionary period. Here’s its impressive exterior:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/80/225717341_76e3db69ec_o.jpg

The ballroom at Anderson House:

http://www.societyofthecincinnati.org/img/visit/ballroom.jpg

Here are some nice interior photos taken by a Princeton tour group, and you’ll recognize the second photo as having been taken in the ballroom:

http://tigernet.princeton.edu/~cl1972/Images/Washington DC Trip/julius23anderson.jpg

http://tigernet.princeton.edu/~cl1972/Images/Washington DC Trip/julius26anderson.jpg

Hillwood Museum and Gardens is the former estate of art collector and philanthropist Marjorie Merriweather Post, the heir to the Post cereal fortune. The museum showcases “the most comprehensive collection of 18th and 19th century Russian imperial art outside of Russia.”

Post was an avid art collector who assembled a superb collection of Russian art including paint¬ings, furniture, Fabergé eggs, jewelry, dinner plates, glass, and textiles. The 36-room Hillwood Museum also features an impressive collection of 18th-century French decorative arts including furnishings, tapestries and porcelain. The 25 acres of gardens include a circular rose garden, a formal French crescent-shaped lunar lawn, a traditional Japanese-style garden and waterfall, and a greenhouse for orchids.

The entrance to the mansion part of the museum – there’s also a different reception area for arriving visitors, and some fantastic gardens as mentioned above:

http://www.loc.gov/rr/european/slavdc/images/hillwood1.jpg

A couple of typical rooms in the house, of which there are no less than 36:

http://www.wallsupholstered.com/images/hillwoodP3150019-2rt.gif

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/100/291275714_6b86ceccbd.jpg?v=0

There are lots of dinner plates on display, mainly from the days of Imperial Russia, and when I say lots of dinner plates, I really mean lots. I think they could have hosted dinners for 50 people every night for a month without having to wash any dishes:

http://www.marquette.edu/haggerty/exhibitions/current/plate01.jpg

The museum is well known for its two fantastic Fabergé eggs (there were a total of 69 created, all in Russia, and most of them remain there). It seemed to me that there were more than just two when I visited the place many years ago, but maybe some of them were copies, or something like that. Or maybe my memory is faulty – actually there’s a good chance of that.

Here’s one of the eggs on display at Hillwood:

http://trio.hillwoodmuseum.org/detail.php?t=objects&type=related&kv=14536

Here is a general site for Fabergé eggs, and not just those at Hillwood:

http://www.someonespecial.com/cgi-bin/someone/fabergeimperialeggs.html

If you want to try a computer walkthrough of the mansion, start here and then use the arrows to advance or go back:

http://www.hillwoodmuseum.org/walkthrough/mansion1.html

And if you want a computer walkthrough of the gardens, start here and use the arrows again:

http://www.hillwoodmuseum.org/walkthrough/garden1.html

And the museum’s site, for additional information:

http://www.hillwoodmuseum.org/

The Willard Hotel in downtown Washington is just a few blocks from the White House, and has been there since Franklin Pierce’s presidency in the mid-1850s. Here’s what it looked like in Abraham Lincoln’s time, and Honest Abe used to go there a lot, as did lots of Union generals during the Civil War:

http://www.american-architecture.info/USA/USA-Washington/Willard2.jpg

And here’s what it looks like now, which is the same as it did in Lincoln’s day, except that (1) the transportation is different, and (2) the flag on top of today’s building has more stars:

http://afternoonteasociety.com/willard1.jpg

A shot of the lobby – I used to take my kids into here just to see it:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/40/82134766_7bf7b5a696.jpg?v=0

In the next episode, we’ll visit the Hay-Adams Hotel, the Woodrow Wilson House, the Steven Decatur House, and Dupont Circle.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 16

Another great Washington institution is the Hay-Adams Hotel. John Hay started out his government career as a 22-year old secretary to President Abraham Lincoln, and completed his service to the government more than 40 years later as secretary of state. At first I thought maybe he just couldn’t move up the ladder, but then someone told me that those two secretary positions weren’t really identical to each other. Henry Adams was a novelist, historian, and journalist, and was descended from John Adams, our second president.

Hay and Adams had beautiful homes next door to each other on Lafayette Square, across from the White House, back at the turn of the twentieth century. After they had both passed away, a hotel was erected on this site, and it was called the Hay-Adams Hotel in their honor. I don’t know how it was decided which of the individuals would be first in the hotel’s name, and which would be second. It obviously was not done in alphabetical order.

Here’s the exterior of the beautiful hotel, first from a distance in its early days (it was built in 1927), and and then closer up at the present time – you can see that a more grandiose entrance has been added:

http://www.gasolinealleyantiques.com/images/Historical Page/mayadams1.jpg

http://www.hotelsoftherichandfamous.com/hotels/hay-adams-hotel/hay-adams-hotel-default.jpg

And here’s the view from the hotel’s rooftop terrace:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2135/2375469373_85bdedb8b2_o.jpg

And the lobby:

http://images.johansens.com/cgi-bin/GPAOnline2/id/U1970_91532/Class/JohansensLarge/v/o/U1970_91532.jpg

A dining room:

http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/182/PreviewComp/SuperStock_182-3527.jpg

The Woodrow Wilson House is where our 28th president lived after his days in the White House, and it’s been preserved exactly as it was when he was still living there. Here’s a view of the house’s exterior:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/woodrow-wilson-house.jpg

And one of the living room:

http://www.preservationnation.org/assets/slideshow/travel-sites/sites/wilson/WW-200ss.jpg

I can’t find too many other individual interior shots, but having toured the house, I know that there’s a lot worth seeing here. If you check out the House’s own website, it has lots of great pictures of the interior, along with explanations. Start with About Woodrow Wilson House and then go straight to Tour Preview at the following site:

http://www.woodrowwilsonhouse.org/

One of the primary features in Wilson’s kitchen is the wood-burning stove, which was found intact and in excellent condition, down in the basement, when the National Trust for Historical Preservation took over the house and spruced it up to give tours. For some reason, there are no pictures of the stove at the House’s site, nor is it even mentioned. But I can assure you that it is quite impressive.

At the time of writing this, The History Channel was filming a program on how presidential personal relationships have affected their administrations. The segment filmed at Wilson House is scheduled to air sometime before November 2008.

Decatur House is one of the oldest houses still standing in Washington. It was built in 1818 for Stephen Decatur, a hero of the U. S. Navy in their campaign against the Barbary pirates. These were the bad guys who were always capturing our merchant ships when they were operating in the Mediterranean, and then asking us for ‘ransom’ money to get the ships back unharmed. So Decatur led the effort to put a stop to that practice, and he was rewarded with a beautiful home near the White House, just across Lafayette Square from the presidential residence.

It’s a modest looking house, both inside and outside, but remember that it’s pretty old. It is kept in top-notch condition:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/decatur-house-washington-dc.jpg

The upstairs parlor:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2149/2270548482_a66fd07946.jpg?v=0

I wish I could find a larger image of this beautiful sitting room:

http://www.eventsolution.com/images/wasdecatur.jpg

And of this hallway:

http://wedding.belfar.com/images/decatur_house.gif

Here’s the official website of Decatur House, where you can check out other interesting things, such as the recently-opened section of the house that was used as slave quarters:

http://www.decaturhouse.org/

Saint John’s Episcopal Church is also situated across Lafayette Square from the White House and continues to function as a church, which it has done since 1816. Abraham Lincoln used to attend services here when he was praying for a speedy end to the Civil War, as did all the other non-Jewish presidents:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/st-johns-church-washington-dc.jpg

The sign out front which welcomes new worshipers:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/St._Johns_Episcopal_Church,_Lafayette_Sq._(8941694 9).jpg/788px-St._Johns_Episcopal_Church,_Lafayette_Sq._(8941694 9).jpg

The church is quite attractive inside, but I can’t find any interior photos on the internet.

Dupont Circle is home to one of the best concentrations in the city of private mansions dating from the turn of the twentieth century.

The Heurich Mansion was completed in 1894, the home of a beer magnate.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3256/2562898387_33df01ac26.jpg?v=1212984679

http://www.victoriansociety.org/images/heurich house.gif

It is being preserved as a museum, through which tourists frequently pass, and some even rent the place out for special events.

Here’s the museum’s website, which gives additional information:

http://www.heurichhouse.org/

The next episode will be a visit to the Pentagon, the old Carnegie Library, and Washington Nationals Stadium, the home of our major league baseball team.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 17

No visit to the nation’s capital would be complete without at least a quick stopover at the Pentagon, which I believe is still the world’s largest office building. During the 2008 Olympics broadcasts, discussion was made of a building under construction in Beijing which sounded like it would be larger, but it’s not finished yet. There are 23,000 employees working at the Pentagon, and there are 3.7 million square feet of office space. Planning began in July, 1941, several months before Pearl Harbor, and construction was completed in 1943, while World War II was still raging.

Here’s what the Pentagon looks like from the air – and it’s just four blocks from the apartment building where the nice lady and I live. It’s actually in Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington proper.

http://www.triviaqueen.com/images/pentagon.gif

There was a singles square dance club – called the Bachelors and Bachelorettes – that used to dance in the concourse of the Pentagon every Thursday evening. Now if any of you think square dancing is some kind of childish activity like it was when you were forced to do it for a few days during your schooldays, you can stop snickering now. Square dancing today is very sophisticated and it’s taken very seriously by lots of folks, and there several levels of proficiency to which you can climb. You don’t climb very far unless you’re a pretty good dancer, and there are lots of fantastic dancers who are devoted to square dancing.

I used to go to the B&Bs, as we cleverly called this club so we didn’t have to use their entire name which took too long to say, as well as lots of other square dance clubs, but that’s another story for another day. However, with today’s security concerns being what they are as compared to what they used to be, there’s no more square dancing in the Pentagon, and the B&Bs have moved elsewhere.

The Carnegie Library was a favorite of mine back in the late 1960s – I was here for a Navy assignment from 1967-69, when the building was still a library. Here’s what it looks like from the outside:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3090/2566625286_0e42165a17.jpg?v=0

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3008/2562538086_85d16fbe04.jpg?v=0

However, this building closed in the early ‘70s, being replaced by the more modern Martin Luther King Library. By now you have a sense for how I feel about modern buildings replacing classical ones, so you won’t be expecting any pictures of the modern library. The Carnegie Library is now being used as the headquarters of the Historical Society of Washington, which keeps a small library in addition to a museum operating, but it is expensive to maintain the building, so it’s not certain how long this society can afford to stay there.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/City_museum_dc.jpg/800px-City_museum_dc.jpg

Our Washington Nationals major league baseball team has been playing here since 2005, and I even wrote a story that took place in the team’s first home, RFK Stadium which was named for Robert Francis Kennedy. You probably don’t even remember that story, which was called My Baseball Scorecard, because it had so many diversions that had absolutely nothing to do with baseball – things like Hebrew National hotdogs and the lucky New Jersey quarter that I found at the park – that you probably gave up and quit reading it. Well, since that story was written during the Nationals’ first year back in Washington, the team has gotten a new home to replace RFK Stadium, which was about 45 years old and not really well-suited for baseball.

I was afraid that the Nationals were going to wind up with some strange name like Avodart Field or Viagra Park, just to stay in line with the current trend of naming a sports arena for some obnoxious product. But so far, it’s just called Washington Nationals Park, and I hope we can keep it that way for a long time.

Here’s what it looks like from above the field, but not too far away:

http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/i/acrosstheworld/03_26_08/IMG_7032.jpg

Here’s a more distant perspective, so you can see more of the stadium’s outer walls. Notice in this view that the curly W we see in the stadium’s outfield grass is identical to the one we saw over the Lincoln Memorial Bridge in one of the early episodes of this story:

http://www.extrememortman.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Washington Nationals Stadium.jpg

And they don’t just have baseball games here. Pope Benedict XVI visited the United States in April, 2008, and when he came to Washington, he celebrated a mass at the Nationals Ballpark with 46,000 people in attendance. We rarely get as many as 30,000 fans to come to the baseball games in this park, so I hope the Pope knows he outdrew the team.

http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/04_03/PopeStadAP_800x522.jpg

You might have noticed a small part of the Capitol Dome in the previous picture, out beyond the left field wall, but it’s partially hidden by some building under construction. I guess that there will be no monuments visible from the park, in a city chock full of monuments, when the building that now partially obscures the dome is finished, and the building then totally obscures the dome.

As a slight aside, on a related topic, we’re going to take a quick view of the Bromo Selzer Tower that used to hover over Baltimore’s Camden Yards in a beautiful backdrop. Here’s the tower as shown in a very old postcard:

http://blogs.nationaltrust.org/preservationnation/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/bromo.jpg

For many years at Camden Yards in Baltimore you could see the tower out beyond the left field fence:

http://mcgonnigle.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/cybromo.jpg

However, if you noticed all that empty ground between the ballpark and the tower in the picture above, you’ll be glad to know that they have now completed construction on a new high-rise hotel on that empty ground, so that the empty ground wouldn’t go to waste. Now you can’t even see the Bromo Selzer Tower anymore. What you can see is some sleazy hotel that’s all glass and steel, and which somehow doesn’t have the same cachè as the old tower.

Now let’s get back to Nationals Park. Here’s an in-progress view of the Presidents’ Race, which takes place at every home game. I hope you can identify these presidents, but if you can’t, we’ll go over them individually.

http://www.mentalfloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/presidents-racing.jpg

Here they are on the South Lawn of the White House, right after the Easter Egg Roll. I’m sure you remember in the White House discussion that I mentioned the nice lady and I were excluded from the Easter Egg Roll because we didn’t make the age cutoff. Well, these guys are even older than we are, so I don’t know why they are allowed to roll Easter eggs. They are, from left to right in the picture BELOW: George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Jefferson.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/03/images/20080324-8_p032408jb-0093-384h.jpg

Teddy Roosevelt has never won a single race since the team’s inception in 2005. I don’t know when he is expected to win one, nor do I know of any particular reason for his failure to win thus far.

The next episode will be two side trips, one to Mount Vernon (George Washington’s home) and another to Monticello (Thomas Jefferson’s home). Neither of these is in Washington, DC, but they aren’t all that far away either.

[AuntShecky]

What makes this thread so special are the funny comments
made by the author. It's terrific. No wonder there are over 1500 hits so far.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 18

George Washington’s mansion was called Mount Vernon, on the Potomac River and just a few minutes from where the nice lady and I live. It’s still a popular site for visitors today. The entire estate was 8,000 acres when Washington still lived there and worked the place as a farm. Now it’s a lot less.

Here’s what the Mansion looks like from the front:

http://postcardwars.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/mt-vernon-2.jpg

And here’s the view of the Eastern Façade (a fancy way of saying the back), as seen from the Potomac:

http://www.visitingdc.com/images/mount-vernon-picture.jpg

A very nice and maybe too colorful dining room, which you can see better in the virtual tour I’ll point out later:

http://intelligenttravel.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/12/10/dining_at_mount_vernon.jpg

There are lots of other great rooms in the mansion, but it’s best to view them all in the virtual tour.

Both George and Martha Washington are buried here. First, here’s a painting of the Prince of Wales and President Buchanan visiting the tomb in 1860 – the painting is from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (remember that this museum shares the building with the National Portrait Gallery that we visited in Part 9). The painting has a title that’s a few lines long, but it depicts a visit by the Prince of Wales, President Buchanan, and various dignitaries.

http://americanart.si.edu/images/1906/1906.9.18_1a.jpg

And here’s what the tomb looks like today, which is the same but without the Prince of Wales and all the others:

http://z.about.com/d/dc/1/0/v/3/gwtomb.jpg

You can get a little more info, if you want, on the above painting at this site of the American Art Museum, listed below. It’s pretty interesting – I think – especially the part about Washington’s head in the clouds. Besides, I feel guilty about skipping over the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and this in a way will atone for that.

http://eyelevel.si.edu/2006/08/george_washingt.html

If you want to check out the entire mansion, you can get a virtual tour that’s almost like actually being there. But check out the Virtual Tour Instructions (lower right corner) before you start, so you’ll know what you’re doing. Don’t assume you can figure it out on the fly. For example, when you’re in the large dining room on the first floor, there are a number of buttons you can click to see detailed features of the room. Ditto for other rooms. It’s also important to know how to move from room to room, and from floor to floor:

http://www.mountvernon.org/virtual/index.cfm/ss/29/

And here’s what’s called the Mansion House Farm virtual tour, for which you can check out separately such things as the stables, the coachouse, the smokehouse, slaves quarters, and lots of other things listed on the LEFT side of your screen:

http://www.mountvernon.org/learn/explore_mv/index.cfm/

The Mount Vernon official website has lots more than I could ever tell you, including a movie about the estate:

http://www.mountvernon.org/

And as long as we’re doing the President’s homes, we should also cover Monticello, where Thomas Jefferson lived. Now don’t worry – we’re not going to do the homes of all the presidents because there are 43 of them, and you would get very tired after about 20 or so.

The front of the mansion is patterned after the building that is on our old nickels. Here’s what it looks like today:

http://www.artfuldiner.com/monticello.jpg

And here’s what it looked like back in Jefferson’s day:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/View_of_the_West_Front_of_Monticello_and_Garden,_d epicting_Thomas_Jefferson's_grandchildren_at_Monti cello,_watercolour_on_paper_by_Jane_Braddick_Petic olas_1825_at_Monticello.jpg

And here’s a nice view of the house today from afar highlighting the changing foliage around it:

http://www.monticello.org/gallery/aerials/monticello_west_earlyspring.jpg

Some interior shots follow, but you’re better off checking out the virtual tour pointed out later.

Here’s the entrance hall, sporting antlers brought back by Lewis and Clark:

http://www.voyageofrediscovery.com/part3/scenes/images/monticello2.jpg

And a few others:

http://www.richardsalinas.info/images/Sally/Interior_1.jpg

http://www.richardsalinas.info/images/Sally/Interior_2.jpg

http://www.caed.kent.edu//History/Nineteenth/Jefferson/monticelloint.jpg

http://www.monticello.org/gallery/house/interior/tearoom.jpg

And the official website, which includes the Monticello Explorer, a virtual tour of everything there, if you have the time and the inclination to do some exploring on your own:

http://www.monticello.org/

The next episode will be another side trip, to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.

[DickZ]

A Capital Tour
Part 19

The city of Annapolis is the capital of Maryland, but I like it even more as the home of the U.S. Naval Academy. The nice lady and I visited the place not too long ago, and here’s a little bit of what we saw.

The core buildings were designed by Ernest Flagg, the same architect who designed the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Bancroft Hall is the dormitory which houses the entire Brigade of Midshipmen, which is about 4,400. It was built from 1901-06, starting with a central rotunda flanked by two wings in which the midshipmen lived. It has since been expanded to eight wings. Here’s the front of Bancroft Hall, viewed from a distance:

http://www.baltimorecontractors.com/bancroft.jpg

And a little closer:

http://www.usna.com/parents/alabama/images/Bancroft Hall.JPG

And part of the Rotunda, showing the staircase which goes up to Memorial Hall:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/ff/USNA_Rotunda_View.JPG/450px-USNA_Rotunda_View.JPG

A closer view of the staircase to Memorial Hall:

http://www.ericpageusmc.com/Photos/Naval Academy/Memorial Hall.jpg

And high in the Rotunda, a painting of the battleship USS SOUTH DAKOTA (BB-57) of World War II vintage, shown in action:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/USNA_Rotunda_Fresco.JPG/800px-USNA_Rotunda_Fresco.JPG

And the inner dome of the Rotunda:

http://www.ericpageusmc.com/Photos/Naval Academy/Rotunda.jpg

Memorial Hall is at the top of the staircase we saw earlier, and is dedicated to the memory of all graduates who have given their lives in the line of duty.

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/03Sm2qh997fYn/610x.jpg

As you can see in that view above, the floor is ideal for dancing, and we also had our ballroom dancing lessons right here in Memorial Hall back in the 1960s, but I don’t know where they learn now.

Some of the names of the graduates we mentioned above, who gave their lives in the line of duty:

http://www.navytimes.com/xml/news/2007/07/ap_academymemorial_070715/070715memorial_500_287.jpg

On November 27, 2007, Memorial Hall was the site of a conference between Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and several other Middle Eastern countries:

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/09Rzb8l74r4wh/610x.jpg

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/06lJ5YV6TO8PD/610x.jpg

The academic building complex is centered on Mahan Hall, with its majestic clock tower.

http://www.goodyclancy.com/media/images/USNA-MainComplex/USNA-Complex_01-Exterior.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2339/2426864016_82d01d7ce3.jpg?v=0

It was in the building just to the right of Mahan Hall that on November 22, 1963, I walked out of an afternoon economics class and was told that President Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas.

Mahan Hall housed an auditorium and the library during my earlier days – here’s the library’s reading room back then:

http://www.usna.edu/LibExhibits/Anniv_25th/Images/n1949.jpg

The library has since been modernized and moved to a place with more room, but I can’t find a picture of it. The auditorium is still used – just as it was back in the olden days.

When we came trudging back from classes to Bancroft Hall, here’s one of the red-bricked routes we could take:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/USNA_Bancroft_1.JPG/800px-USNA_Bancroft_1.JPG

And off to the right of this walk, sits the glorious Chapel:

http://i185.photobucket.com/albums/x144/marycarlson10/east coast vac 2007/2078-NA-chapel.jpg

Since I went to synagogue out in town, I only came into the Chapel as a visitor. The view up the aisle to the altar:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Naval_Academy_chapel.jpg

And a little closer to the altar:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_jMCwnFMIH6g/R0MJ74Xk7iI/AAAAAAAABoI/pP4WaJobuZc/DSC00195.JPG

And from the side:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e0/US_Naval_Academy_chapel_side_view.jpg/450px-US_Naval_Academy_chapel_side_view.jpg

In the basement of the Chapel, we honor naval hero John Paul Jones, whose crypt is there:

http://weibel-lines.typepad.com/photos/usna_commissioning_week_2/img_0112.jpg

http://www.uss-rangerguy.com/images/John_Paul_Jones_1.JPG

Well, folks, we’ve reached the end of the tour - everybody out of the bus. And thanks for coming along.

THE END

[DickZ]

I deleted this message which has been overtaken by events.