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The New Washington: City Beautiful By the patient and steadfast cooperation of all those persons charged with the upbuildingof the District of Columbia,a result maybe attained such ashas been reached in no other capitalcityof the modern world.The task is indeedastupendousone ;it is much greaterthan anyonegeneration canhope to accomplish.The very hearty and intelligent cooperation that the plans have been [sic]received by the officers of the Government, the committees of Congress,and by the public generallymakes it reasonablycertain that the development of the National Capital will be prosecuted along the general lines proposed; and that the city which \Vashington and Jeffersonplanned with so much care and with such prophetic vision will continue to expand,keeping pace with national advancement,until it becomesthe visible expressionof the power and taste of the people of the United States. The Improvement of the Park System of the District ofcolumbia, Report of the Senate Con~n~ittee on the District of Columbia, January15,1902 Thc Senate Park Commission plan for Washington, issued January 15, 1902, marked a critical turning point in the city's history. Although more than a quarter century passed before the park commission ideal was realized , it left an indelible imprint on the capital city. Built on the accomplishments of the Shepherd era, in drawing on the ideals of the emerging City Beautiful movement the report assumed new stature as the nation's first comprehensive plan and a catalyst for the nascent cityplanning profession.' By urging a distinctive identity for Washington's core, it promised to link parks and public buildings in a scheme that would embrace the highest standards of magnificence and beauty as well as provide a powerful symbolic statement for the federal presence. In setting the government symbolically as well as physically apart from the city around it, however, the plan institutionalizedthe division between city and capital that made even more difficult persistent local problems. The dramatic turn of events that resulted in the formulation of a new vision for Washington owed much to ongoing efforts to modernize city services. But the chief influences on the new plan for the capital lay outside the city,in the aesthetic influences of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893and efforts in the architectural profession to assert a role in the physical planning of Washington, as well as a more general drive to raise Washington 's stature to that of other world capitals following the international prominence that the nation gained in winning the Spanish-American War. Although the Park Commission described its plan as "the most comprehensive ever presented for the development of an American cityn2it actually represented a turn toward a more specialized vision for the city The commission's recommendations, it is true, extended beyond Washington's city limits to envision a regional network of parks and parkways. It provided the framework for redoing the city's core area to a standard considered suitable for the nation then taking its place at the head ofworld affairs. But in emphasizing the monumental, practically to the exclusion of the residential city,the commission and its successor, the Commission of Fine Arts, narrowed the purview of planning. Charles Moore, the influential secretary to Senator James McMillan and the Park Commission he established, explained the commission's rationale by arguing that by the turn of the century Washington had reached an appropriate crossroads to undertake a new step in its development. "That the time has come for beautifying Washington none can doubt," he wrote in the introduction to the collected papers ofthe proceedings of the annual conference of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) for 1900."Those necessary matters of civic economy which must precede adornment either have been completed, or at least provision for them has been made." As evidence, he cited the public works accomplishments of the late nineteenth century, including a comprehensive sewer system,the water filtration plant, and the extended system of highways, as well as the new Rock Creek Park and reclamation of the Potomac River flats. With these projects serving to show "how conlprehensive and varied is the movement now in progress for the development of Washington," Moore argued, it was now time to apply more aesthetically imbued principles to the ornamentation of the capital city's monumental core.' Senator McMillan voiced a similar view by suggesting that the citymight employabody of experts to lay out parks similar to the plan used to complete Washington's system of ~ewers.~ In this, both men were clearly...

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