PLATES

One of six pavilions in the Washington Monument gardens. Watercolor on paper, 19x13 inches. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts

Plate I. L'Enfant plan of 1791, as reproduced by the U.S. Coast and Geodectic Survey, 1887. This would have been the version known by the members of the Senate Park Commission. Library of Congress, Geography and Maps Division

Plate II. L'Enfant plan as modified by Andrew Ellicott, 1792. Library of Congress, Geography and Maps Division.

Plate III. James G. Langdon, map of the District of Columbia prepared for the Senate Park Commission, showing the existing park system in 1901 and giving other information. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Plate IV. Map showing the existing District of Columbia park system (green) and the additions proposed by the Senate Park Commission (dark green). D.H. Burnham and E. H. Bennett, Plan of Chicago, 1909.

Plate V. James G. Langdon, second Mall plan, 27 April 1901. The New-York Historical Society, McKim, Mead & White Collection, Neg. #75561T

Plate VI. Mall plan, 3 June 1901. New-York Historical Society, McKim, Mead & White Collection, Neg. #75560T

Plate VII. Senate Park Commission, general plan. Senate Park Commission Report No. 19. Watercolor on paper, 46 x 110 inches. Unsigned, but very likely the work of William T. Partridge, as alluded to in his "Personal Recollections." Partridge laid out all the exhibition drawings in pencil before turning them over to the illustrators to render them in color. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts (click on image for a PDF version)

Plate VIII. Senate Park Commission rendering of the plan from a point 4,000 feet above Arlington, by Francis L.V. Hoppin, signed and dated 1902. Senate Park Commission Report No. 20. Watercolor on paper, 34 x 72 inches. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts.

Plate IX. Senate Park Commission rendering of the Washington Monument Gardens and Mall, looking toward the Capitol, from the original rendering by Charles Graham. Senate Park Commission Report No. 58. Watercolor on paper, 37 x 68 inches. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts. Photo: Lee Stalsworth

Plate X. Senate Park Commission rendering of Union Square, at the head of the Mall, by Charles Graham. Senate Park Commission Report No. 37. Watercolor on paper, 40 x 62 inches. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts. Photo: National Gallery of Art

Plate XI. Senate Park Commission rendering of the proposed development of the site for the Lincoln Memorial, seen from the east; from the original rendering by Robert Blum. Senate Park Commission Report No. 49. Watercolor on paper, 24 x 59 inches. Collection: Commission of Fine Art. Photo: Lee Stalsworth

Plate XII. Vaux-le-Vincomte, the gardens. These gardens, one of Le Nôtre's finest achievements, held a particular fascination for the commission. They spent a day at the chateau, the guests of the owners, M. and Mme. Sommier, who turned on the garden fountains for them so that they could see Le Nôtre's intended effect. See Charles Moore, The Life and Times of Charles Follen McKim, p. 196. Photo: Sue Kohler

Plate XIII. Birds-eye view taken from a point 4,000 over Saint Elizabeths Hospital. Senate Park Commission Report No. 21. Unfortunately the original has been lost as it was the companion piece to the View from Arlington. This color photograph appeared in the September issue of The New Country Life, p. 49.

Plate XIV. An artist's conception of how Washington might look if developed according to the Senate Park Commission plan. The design of the buildings is based on concepts available at the time. The text accompanying the illustration reflected the great enthusiasm the Park Commission's plans had generated. It said, in part: "Washington will be a place of public buildings, massive, magnificent, beautiful. Unter den Linden, Princes Street [Edinburgh], the Champs Elysées, will pale into insignificance; the Rome of the Caesars will rise again in a new world." Woman's Home Companion, February 1905. Collection: Dana Dalrymple

Plate XV. Senate Park Commission model, 1902, showing existing conditions in the central area of Washington, looking east. William T. Partridge, in his "Personal Recollections," remarks on the unusual accuracy of these models, due to the taking of hundreds of photographs by landscape architect James D. Langdon. Originally given to the Commission of Fine Arts with the other remaining Park Commission material, the models were kept in storage until 1974, when they were transferred to the Smithsonian Institution and completely restored for exhibition in the bicentennial exhibition, "The Federal City: Plans and Realities." Although the Smithsonian still owns the models, the National Building Museum is now their custodian; at this writing, further restoration is planned. Photographs from the Olmsted Associates' scrapbook. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts

Plate XVI. Senate Park Commission model, 1902, showing existing conditions, looking west.

Plate XVII. Senate Park Commission model, showing Park Commission's proposals, looking east.

Plate XVIII. Senate Park Commission model, showing Park Commission's proposals, looking west.

Plate XIX. Daniel Hudson Burnham, as painted by Anders Zorn, 1899. Oil on canvas, 30x35 inches. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts, gift of the Burnham family, 1958. Photo: Lee Stalsworth

Plate XX. Charles Moore, as painted by Eugene Savage, 1935. Oil on canvas, 39x34 inches. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts. Photo: Lee Stalsworth

Plate XXI. Alfred Githens' humorous "Coat of Arms" of the Senate Park Commission, and Olmsted's recollection of how it happened, as well as an account of some parts of the plan that, because of the rush to meet the exhibition deadline, were "unavoidably hurried to a finish." See also William T. Partridge's comments in his "Personal Recollections" under topic F. "Final Days of Preparation," in Kurt Helfrich's essay in this volume. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts

NOTES ON GITHENS' CARICATURE COAT OF ARMS FOR THE SO-CALLED "SENATE PARK COMMISSION OF 1901"

My recollection of the story as McKim told it to me is as follows:

When the bunch of draughtsmen, under W.T. Partridge as head draughtsman, were working under great pressure to finish the drawings for the "Central Area" of the Plan of Washington in 1902 in the office set up for that purpose on the floor above McKim, Mead & White's office in New York, Mr. McKim on coming in one day saw Githens surreptitiously cover up a drawing he was working at, and went and uncovered it. McKim was so amused by the caricature that he had it reproduced and sent several copies to members of the Commission and other friends.

There had been endless discussion especially by me and by McKim, about "typical elms", and of course about the "Dome" and the "Monument", and about Guerins technique in the drawings made by him. The hydra heads of the Commission are, from top to bottom, those of McKim, Saint-Gaudens, Burnham and myself; all amusingly recognizable caricatures except perhaps Burnham's. The most amusing touches in the sketch, we all thought, lay in the symbolic representation of the pressure under which all hands were then working to get the drawings completed on time—driven to death with the pressure and the mercilessness of the Commission in "socking it to 'em".

It was in that eleventh-hour rush to finish the drawings that some parts of the plans had to go through without the same deliberate study and unanimous unqualified approval by the Commission as a whole which was given to the major decisions. Among the parts thus unavoidably hurried to a finish were the designs for the eastern end of the Mall vista, from the Capitol to and including "Union Square"; those for the rearrangement of the Tidal Basin area; and those for some of the details of the Washington Monument Gardens: by way of distinction from the major and earlier decisions dealing with the width and character of the main Mall vista and its enclosing rows of elms; the framing of the Washington Monument by an orderly expansion of the frame of elms flanking the Mall, first devised in plan by McKim and me on a piece of quadrille paper in a train en route from Budapest to Paris in 1901; the development, on the site afterwards assigned to the Lincoln Memorial, of a great terminal monument of a form non-competitive with the Capitol Dome and the Washington Monument; the introduction west of the Monument Grounds of a long reflecting basin; the opening through of the White House axis to the southward, at a relatively low elevation, past the west side of the Washington Monument; and the development of a southern monumental focal point on the White House axis at its intersection with the line of Maryland Avenue in such a way as to leave the axial view from the White House down the river unobstructed by any bulky monument on the axis itself.

Frederick Law Olmsted
November 1935