Notes and Reviews 
T HE jeopardy in which the Mall at Wash¬ 
ington has been placed by the uncer¬ 
tain juggling of the position for the new 
Agricultural Building has been extremely 
exasperating to those who have felt the long 
delay in ridding that vista of the railroad 
tracks and who hope for the ultimate execu¬ 
tion of the Senate Commission’s plan. The 
placing of his new building by the Secretary 
of Agriculture was quite sufficient to start an 
energetic movement on the part of architects 
throughout the country when it was discov¬ 
ered that the building would considerably 
encroach upon the width of the Mall as 
proposed to be preserved by the Commis¬ 
sion’s plan. Senator Newlands, of Nevada, 
saved the day for the beauty of the city. He 
introduced a bill (one sentence in length) 
prohibiting any future building from ever be¬ 
ing placed in Washington less than 445 feet 
from a straight line drawn from the dome of 
the Capitol to the center of the Monument. 
Then he quickly gathered together prom¬ 
inent senators, representatives and architects, 
at which meeting Mr. Frank Miles Day 
showed bv the aid of lantern slides the irre¬ 
trievable loss to the city any encroachment 
on the Mall would mean. 1 'he bill quickly 
passed the Senate; but its companion known 
as the “Powers Bill” is still before the 
H ouse. The successful passage of the meas¬ 
ure will fix a width of 890 feet for the Mall, 
which as thus established was the most beau¬ 
tiful and impressive single feature of the 
well-known scheme of reconstructing the city 
according to the lines originally laid down 
by Major L’Enfant. 
T HE spectacle offered by the attempted 
legislation with object to authorize an un¬ 
trained person to alter the Capitol at Wash¬ 
ington is a shock to the esthetic — to say 
nothing of the moral — sensibilities of the 
country. The former, even in the case of 
laymen, has slowly created an appreciation 
of this remarkable work of the architect 
Thomas El. Walter and has justly ranked the 
Capitol as the most beautiful building in 
America. The plot against it, led by Speaker 
Cannon in the interest of his friend Elliott 
Woods, who is now superintendent of the 
building, would only be the more astounding 
if we had not grown a little accustomed to 
offhand outrages upon public property 
carried on without the slightest perception of 
the intrinsic beauty of the objects in ques¬ 
tion. It the conspirators think at all of 
any ends but their own, it is probably to 
conclude that anything new is altogether 
likely to be better than the old ; that en¬ 
largement means improvement; that change 
is always an advance. On the contrary, this 
extension of the Capitol as foreshadowed by 
Mr. Cannon’s scheme can only end in a 
bungle, it once it is launched. There will 
probably always be Cannons and Woodses ; 
but it would be a satisfaction to believe that 
while their counterparts may long lead our 
cities along the way of these ill-advised 
projects, a superior mode of action—or be it 
inaction—may gain ascendancy at the Na¬ 
tional Capital. By what seems to be a for¬ 
tuitous compromise the project has now been 
postponed. A promised new office building 
for their use pacifies the Cannon party, and 
it is hands off the Capitol, for the present at 
least. But its enlargement will later have to 
be taken up, and this will probably occur in 
December next, when a joint committee of 
the Senate and House is to report on the 
subject. It is then that the architects of the 
country must again be at their arms. For it 
is one of the blessings of democracy that the 
citizens may interest themselves in the pro¬ 
ceedings of their government, while the 
price of this privilege is that busy men must 
lay down their private affairs and hasten to 
the seat of government, adjuring the powers 
that be to preserve from harm the most 
valuable public possessions. 
258 
