4 COLUMBIAN INSTITUTE FOR THE 



tion dating from June, 1816, sixteen years after the occupation of 

 the city as the Federal Capital, and less than two years after its 

 invasion by the British troops. The population was little more than 

 10,000, and the repair and reconstruction of the public buildings was 

 still in the initial stage. The time and circumstances would scarcely 

 appear to have been propitious for starting such an association, but 

 prosperity was rapidly returning to the city, and the materials for 

 leadership and an active membership were available — residents in 

 business or professional occupations, civilian and military officers 

 and other employees of the Government, and Members of Congress. 



Bryan, 1 speaking of the conditions at this period, notes the increase, 

 in the principal centers in 1818, of new structures, used wholly or in 

 part for the retail trade, the number of persons brought to Wash- 

 ington to attend to their interests before Congress and the Executive 

 Departments, and the attractions of the National Capital as a place 

 of residence to persons of means, a phase of the situation commonly 

 believed to have developed only in comparatively recent years, Mayor 

 Blake, two years after the war, giving as one of the causes of the 

 increase in the population of the city, "the acquisition of many 

 wealthy citizens." 



The lower section of Pennsylvania Avenue, however, had a desolate 

 appearance, being without houses or brick sidewalks. The land 

 between Sixth Street and the Capitol on the south side and between 

 John Marshall Place and Second Street on the north side, belonging 

 to the Government, was entirely neglected. Some improvements in 

 this neighborhood were brought about through the agency of a board 

 of commissioners appointed in 1822 by the city council, including the 

 partial reclamation of the low lands south of the avenue, in which 

 a site for the botanic garden of the Columbian Institute had just 

 before been located. 



The objects of the Institute, which was chartered by Congress in 

 1818 for a term of twenty years, were as a whole very diversified, those 

 specifically named in the beginning having been almost wholly of a 

 utilitarian nature, such as the Government has from time to time 

 assumed and made the basis of the work of several scientific bureaus, 

 established for research, experiments and the application of the 

 knowledge so gained to useful purposes. Four years later, however, 

 an organization was adopted which gave to the Institute the latitude 



1 For much of his information regarding affairs generally in Washington at 

 the beginning of the last century, the writer desires to express his indebtedness 

 to tbe admirable and painstaking work by Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, entitled 

 "A History of the National Capital from its foundation through the period of 

 the adoption of the organic act," published in two volumes by The Macmillan 

 Company, New York, in 1914 and 1916, respectively. 



