The city of Washington, with progressing years, is becoming more and
more the popular residential city of the country. It is one of the
most beautiful and attractive, the admirable plan, with the wide
asphalted streets, lined with trees, opening up vista views of grand
public buildings, statues, monuments or leafy parks, making it
specially popular. The northern and northwestern sections, on the
higher grounds, have consequently spread far beyond the Executive
Mansion, being filled with rows of elaborate and costly residences,
the homes of leading public men. The streets are kept scrupulously
clean, while at the intersections are "circles," triangles and little
squares, which are availed of for pretty parks, and usually contain
statues of distinguished Americans. Among the noted residence streets
are Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut Avenues and K Street and
Sixteenth Street, all in the northwestern district. Among the many
statues adorning the small parks and "circles" are those of
Washington, Farragut, Scott, Thomas, McPherson, Dupont, Logan,
Franklin, Hancock, Grant, Rawlins and Martin Luther, the latter a
replica of the figure in the Reformation Monument at Worms.
To the northward the suburbs rise to Columbia Heights, with an
elevated plateau beyond, where there is a Government park covering
nearly a square mile of rolling surface, and surrounding one of the
noted rural retreats on the borders of the Capital, the "Soldiers'
Home." This is an asylum and hospital for disabled and superannuated
soldiers of the American regular army, containing usually about six
hundred of them, and founded by General Winfield Scott, whose statue
adorns the grounds. Its cottages have been favorite retiring-places of
the Presidents in the warm weather. Amid lovely surroundings the
veterans are comfortably housed, and in the adjacent cemetery
thousands of them have been buried. Scott's statue stands upon the
southern brow of the plateau, where a ridge is thrust out in a
commanding situation; and from here the old commander of the army
forty and fifty years ago gazes intently over the lower ground to the
city three miles away, with the lofty Capitol dome and Washington
Monument rising to his level, while beyond them the broad and placid
Potomac winds between its wooded shores. This is the most elevated
spot near Washington, overlooking a wide landscape. In the cemetery at
the Soldiers' Home sleeps General Logan, among the thousands of other
veterans. To the westward the beautiful gorge of Rock Creek is cut
down, and beyond is Georgetown, with its noted University, founded by
the Jesuits in 1789, and having about seven hundred students. In the
Oak Hill Cemetery, at Georgetown, is the grave of John Howard Payne,
the author of "Home, Sweet Home," who died in 1852. Far away over the
Potomac, in the Arlington National Cemetery, are the graves of
Generals Sherman and Sheridan.
Down near the Potomac, on the Mall, to the westward of the Smithsonian
turrets, is the extensive brick and brownstone building representing
the dominant industry of the United States, which gives the
politicians so much anxiety in catering for votes--the Agricultural
Department. Here are spacious gardens and greenhouses, an arboretum
and herbarium, the adjacent buildings also containing an agricultural
museum. As over three-fifths of the men in the United States are
farmers and farm-workers, and many others are in the adjunct
industries, it has become a popular saying in Washington that if you
wish to scare Congress you need only shake a cow's tail at it. This
department has grown into an enormous distributing office for seeds
and cuttings, crop reports and farming information. Among its
curiosities is the "Sequoia Tree Tower," formed of a section of a
Sequoia or Big Tree of California, which was three hundred feet high
and twenty-six feet in diameter at the base.
Behind the Agricultural Department, and rising almost at the river
bank, and in front of the Executive Mansion, is the noted Washington
Monument, its pointed apex elevated five hundred and fifty-five feet.
This is a square and gradually tapering shaft, constructed of white
Maryland marble, the walls fifteen feet thick at the base and eighteen
inches at the top, the pyramidal apex being fifty-five feet high and
capped with a piece of aluminum. Its construction was begun in 1848,
abandoned in 1855, resumed in 1877 and finished in 1884, at a total
cost of $1,300,000. The lower walls contain stones contributed by
public corporations and organizations, many being sent by States and
foreign nations, and bearing suitable inscriptions in memory of
Washington. A fatiguing stairway of nine hundred steps leads to the
top, and there is also a slow-moving elevator. From the little square
windows, just below the apex, there is a grand view over the
surrounding country. Afar off to the northwest is seen the long hazy
wall of the Blue Ridge or Kittatinny Mountain range, its prominent
peak, the Sugar Loaf, being fifty miles distant. To the eastward is
the Capitol and its surmounting dome, over a mile away, while the city
spreads all around the view below, like a toy town, its streets
crossing as on a chess-board, and cut into gores and triangles by the
broad, diagonal avenues lined with trees, the houses being
interspersed with many foliage-covered spaces. Coming from the
northwest the Potomac passes nearly at the foot of the monument, with
Arlington Heights over on the distant Virginia shore, and the broad
river channel flowing away to the southwest until lost among the
winding forest-clad shores below Alexandria. From this elevated perch
can be got an excellent idea of the peculiarities of the town, its
vast plan and long intervals of space, so that there is quite plainly
shown why the practical Yankee race calls it the "City of Magnificent
Distances." Possibly one of the best descriptions of Washington and
its characteristics is that of the poet in the _Washington Post_:
A city well named of magnificent distances;
Of boulevards, palaces, fountains and trees;
Of sunshine and moonlight whose subtle insistence is--
"Bask in our radiance! Be lulled by our breeze!"
A city like Athens set down in Arcadia;
White temples and porticoes gleaming 'mid groves;
Where nymphs glide and smile as though quite unafraid o' you,
The home of the Muses, the Graces, the Loves;
The centre of Politics, Letters and Sciences;
Elysium of Arts, yet the Lobbyist's Dream;
Where gather the clans whose only reliance is
Gold and the dross that sweeps down with its stream;
An isle of the lotus, where every-day business
Sails on its course all unvexed by simoons;
No bustle or roar, no mad-whirling dizziness
O'er velvety streets like Venetian lagoons;
A town where from nothing whatever they bar women,
From riding a bicycle--tending a bar;
Ex-cooks queen society--ladies are charwomen--
For such the plain facts as too often they are.
A city where applicants, moody, disconsolate,
Swoop eager for office and senseless to shame;
The "heeler" quite certain of getting his consulate,
Although, to be sure, he can't sign his name;
A town where all types of humanity congregate;
The millionaire lolling on cushions of ease;
The tramp loping by at a wolfish and hungry gait;
And mankind in general a' go as you please.
A city in short of most strange inconsistencies;
Condensing the history of man since the fall;
A city, however, whose piece de resistance is
This--'tis the best and the fairest of all.