"When Amrusail describes what he has seen President OF THE Association of Collegiate Alumnae MISS CAROLINE L. HUMPHREY Drabbington Lodge 1. Kendal Green, Mass. Executive Secretary MRS. GERTRUDE S. MARTIN Ithaca, N. Y. Vice-President-at-Large DR. ELSIE SEELYE PRATT MISS KATHARINE E. PUNCHEON Ann Arbor, Mich. Treasurer 5103 Pulaski Ave. Germantown, Pa. The Association has standing committees directing investigation and practical work in the following fields: AMERICANIZATION: Miss Frances Kellor, Chairman, 20 W. 34th St., N. Y. EDUCATIONAL LEGISLATION: Mrs. F. C. Turner, Chairman, 255 Ridgeway Ave., Oakland, Cal. FELLOWSHIPS: Miss Margaret Maltby, Chairman, 400 W. 118th St., N.Y. FOREIGN STUDENTS: Mrs. Lucien A. Howe, Chairman, 522 Delaware Ave., Buffalo, N. Y. City. HOUSING: Mrs. Albert N. Wood, Chairman, 70 W. 11th St., New York STUDENT AID: Chairman to be appointed. VOCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES: Miss Florence Jackson, Chairman, 264 Boylston St., Boston, Mass. VOLUNTEER SERVICE: Mrs. Helen R. Elser Chairman, 130 E. 22d St., New York City. T Journal of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae VOL. X-NO. 7 SPACIOUS WASHINGTON MARCH, 1917 LILLIAN C. B. MC A. MAYER "I will build me a city Of winning and wide-wayed ease, With room in the streets for the soul." As he went over the green reaches from Williamsport, Maryland, to what is now Anacostia, D. C., studying carefully every acre of ground and every point of scenic beauty that he might determine the best possible site for the new Federal capital, George Washington had a prophetic vision of our delectable city by the Potomac. He saw it grown beyond all conception of the times, a city ample and splendid, fitted for the seat of government of a great people, and he chose with the eye of an artist and the wisdom of one who knew well the land, that his vision might be fulfilled. The site was unsurpassed-a spacious amphitheatre, hillencircled, the most beautiful in all that region. Jefferson came and marveled at it; Lafayette looked across the river from the Arlington mansion and declared it one of the rarest sights his eyes had ever feasted upon; and Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the master designer to whom Washington was to entrust the laying out of the city, conceded it to be as beautiful as Paris, a great admission from a Frenchman to whom Montmartre was Parnassus and the Seine the silver river of Heaven. Most of our cities are badly planned; some are not planned at all but just grow from huddled nuclei and the breathing spaces are an after thought, often grudgingly given. Washington was planned at the start widely inclusive of everything that makes for out-of-door rapture. "Take all the land you need" was the welcome mandate and L'Enfant rejoiced in unrestricted territory for his design. As by magic the new city took on the structural lines of a great symphony, a plan so vast and comprehensive that even now artists and architects and engineers are lost in wonder and amazement at its perfection. But although the plan was thus early completed, it was not swift-builded, this glorious many-columned, many-fountained city. There were in those days as now, men short-sighted, without imagination, who opposed its development and harangued in the halls of Congress about appropriations and letting each generation look out for itself; but finally out of this wrangling came an awakened national pride and the beautiful order of the Fine Arts Commission. Senator McMillan of Michigan, the good angel of Washington at what may be termed the period of its renaissance some fifteen or twenty years ago, was responsible for the creation of this commission and he had the excellent judgment to put artists upon it-McKim and St. Gaudens, Olmsted and Burnham. He was heart and soul with them in their work; his time, his disinterested service and his money were expended in furthering their plans, and he deserves something better to commemorate his name in Washington than a little park down by the filtration plant. There have been only two or three deviations from the original plan during the process of the city's development, and these, it is generally conceded, are errors. One, a transgression that would have broken L'Enfant's heart, was the eclipsing of the White House by the United States Treasury. This is nothing against the Treasury. It is an architectural gem in itself with its majestic colonnades chiseled from solid blocks of granite, but it is the one obstruction in the flowing vista from the Capitol on the eastern hill to the president's house at the other end of the avenue-the main artery of the whole scheme. Another blunder was the placing of the War, State and Navy building on the other side of the White House, thus closing the view from the west. This building it may be stated is without doubt the ugliest thing in Washington, with the possible exception of the tomb of poor L'Enfant; and in the course of time when the city approaches more nearly the "artist's dream" of loveliness toward which it is striving, it will be torn down and a series of lovely gardens will cover the ground it now occupies. The architectural rebirth alluded to saw an increase in the templed buildings that give Washington its unique distinction among cities. Three of the more recent ones of this type are included |