Washington, D. C. 



Every American cares first about the improvement of his own city, but beyond 

 that there is one thing all are agreed on. Washington, the Nation's Capital, 

 must be made the most beautiful city in the land. Three years ago the Senate 

 appointed a commission of experts of the greatest ability to prepare a plan for the 

 improvement of the District of Columbia. 



THE PLAN OF THE CITY 



The Commission at once directed public attention to the altogether admirable 

 street plan of the city, a plan prepared by L' Enfant with the cooperation of 

 Washington and Jefferson. Such a plan, in which diagonal avenues traverse a rec- 

 tangular network of streets, and have at their intersections small public parks in 

 the form of squares, circles or triangles, is one that should be adopted in principle 

 for the outlying level sections of Philadelphia, giving way to curved streets where 

 the rolling character of the ground makes them reasonable. Washington has, chiefly 

 at such intersections, 275 green spots less than an acre in extent. Philadelphia 

 has not a dozen of them. 



THE CITY'S GATEWAY 



The Commission made many important recommendations, the first of which 

 was that the Station of the Pennsylvania Railroad should be removed from the 

 mall which it so greatly disfigures, and a Union Station worthy of the Nation's 

 capital be erected at a more suitable point. This recommendation was accepted, 

 and the splendid new station is now approaching completion. 



THE MALL 



Next the Commission recommended that a stately mall eight hundred and ninety 

 feet wide be laid out on a line from the dome of the Capitol to the Washington 

 Monument, and extended in a straight line to the Potomac River, the mall to be a 

 broad lawn of grass flanked on either side by four rows of American elms. This 

 project is shown by a bird's-eye view herewith reproduced. 



THE PLACING OF THE PUBLIC BUILDINGS 



The Commission also devised an intelligent and reasonable scheme for the 

 placing of future public buildings ; those related to legislative affairs about the 

 capitol ; those for administrative purposes about Lafayette Square near the White 

 House; those for general purposes, such as museums, flanking the mall; and those 

 for the public uses of the District of Columbia in the triangle between Pennsyl- 

 vania Avenue and the mall. It is most gratifying that since this well-considered 



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