Pride and Prejudice: The Names On Cabin John Bridge

It doesn't get noticed a lot any more, unless you're driving out MacArthur Boulevard and you have to wait your turn to use the single lane that crosses over it. The original Cabin John Bridge (not the big highway bridge that carries the Beltway over the Potomac River), lives in quiet obscurity now, just past the town of Glen Echo in Montgomery County, Maryland. But it was once an engineering marvel too important for a well-rounded sightseer to miss. The relative profusion of early twentieth-century postcards depicting the bridge, such as the ones shown here, attests to its former prominence. And maybe this is why people once had such strong feelings about whose names should be on it.

Also known as the Union Arch Bridge, it was constructed between 1857 and 1863, under the supervision of Captain Montgomery C. Meigs of the Army Corps of Engineers, who was also in charge of overseeing the expansion of the U.S. Capitol building and the replacement of its dome. The bridge was at the time the longest masonry single-span arch (at 220 feet) in the world and is still reportedly the longest in the United States. Its simple, graceful design includes sidewalls of rusticated Massachusetts granite and Seneca sandstone trim. The bridge is the most striking element of the Washington Aqueduct system, which has been carrying water from the Potomac at Great Falls to downtown Washington for over 140 years.

Sweatshop: The Bureau of Engraving and Printing c. 1905

With the exception of the reviled “continentals” circulated during the American Revolution, it wasn’t until the Civil War—when the government essentially needed to write IOU’s for hard currency it didn’t have—that the production of paper money by the federal government began in earnest in this country. In the early years, this was done in the main Treasury building next to the White House, but officials soon realized that the industrial aspects of printing large quantities of paper money dictated the need for a separate facility. Congress finally authorized $300,000 for such a facility in 1878, and after a prominent piece of real estate at 14th and B Streets (now 14th and Independence Avenue NW) was purchased from banker William W. Corcoran, construction commenced.

The building to house the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing, opened in 1880, was designed by James G. Hill, who would go on to hit his stride with several classic Richardson Romanesque buildings, including the Washington Loan and Trust Company building previously discussed. This one is a bit of a transitional piece, still adhering to techniques that were soon to be out of fashion, including the use of pressed red brick and architectural elements of the Italianate style popular in the mid-19th century. There are also many features of the Queen Anne style here. But there are also Romanesque elements, pointing the way to a coming trend.

Farragut Square

Farragut Square, where Connecticut Avenue intersects with I, K, and 17th Streets, NW, has been set aside as an open area since Pierre L'Enfant's original plan of Washington in 1791, although it was not specifically designated as park land. It remained largely open and unimproved through the first half of the 19th century, when development was concentrated to the southeast along the Pennsylvania Avenue corridor between the White House and the Capitol. At the beginning of the Civil War, troops were encamped there, and they damaged the trees along K Street by hitching their horses to them. After the war, efforts began to improve public spaces throughout the city. Temporary frame buildings that had been built by the military were cleared from the space in 1869, and in 1871 Congress authorized establishment of Farragut Square as a public park, with a memorial statue in its center that has been discussed in a previous post.

When the square was first fixed up as a park in about 1872, it was not  rectangular; Connecticut Avenue cut through the middle of it, creating two triangular parks to the northeast and southwest, which were fenced to keep cows, chickens, dogs, and pigs from foraging through. An oval area was set aside in the middle of the avenue as the future spot for the memorial statue. However, when the statue was finally completed and installed in 1881, the roadway through the middle of the square was torn up and the large rectangular park that is there today was created. Extensive flowers, trees, and shrubbery were planted, and an ornamental iron fence replaced the original wooden picket version.

Rock Creek Park's Old Harvard Street Bridge

One hardly ever notices it anymore; it does its job quietly and unobtrusively. The original Harvard Street Bridge, built in 1901, provides an entrance to the National Zoo not from Harvard Street anymore but from down on Beach Drive. It also connects a zoo parking lot that lies between the east bank of the creek and Beach Drive. Harvard Street is now connected to the zoo by a soaring modernist bridge slightly to the north, completed in 1965.

The Farragut Statue: Vinnie Ream's Other Big Commission

In 1872, Congress appropriated $20,000 "for the purpose of erecting a colossal statue of Admiral David G. Farragut...in Farragut Square in the City of Washington." Farragut, who had just died in 1870, was one of the great naval heroes of the Civil War, famous for his supposed cry of "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" at the Battle of Mobile Bay. Thus the obvious need for a colossal statue of the man. -But who should sculpt this statue? Twenty-four sculptors would officially compete for the honor, but it seems the Admiral's widow, along with General William Tecumseh Sherman, head of the selection committee, knew who they wanted. It was Vinnie Ream, the "radiant-faced, dark-eyed little woman" (as described in the Washington Post) who had sculpted Abraham Lincoln for the Capitol Rotunda.

Born Lavinia Ellen Ream in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1847, Ms. Ream moved around quite a bit as a child due to the demands of her father's job as a government surveyor. The family had been in Washington for a time but then were back "out west" when she attended Christian College in Columbia, Missouri, where she developed her talents in music and poetry. She was introduced as one of the school's star pupils to Missouri politician James S. Rollins, who would join the U.S. House of Representatives in 1861, the same year that Ream's family moved permanently to Washington. It was on the basis of Rollins' connections that Ream got herself established as an assistant in the workshop of Clark Mills, the most prominent Washington sculptor of the day. Mills had done the statues of Jackson in Lafayette Square and Washington in Washington Circle.