Comment on The Irregulars

I’ve tried to stay away from book reviews because for one, this isn’t a book club blog. Secondly, I like to consult at least two (and preferably more) sources when writing to get some consistency and originality. I’m breaking my rules.



The Irregulars. The reason for my delay in blog postings (that and the holidays, and the daily 9 to 5—so there are lots of excuses). The problem with The Irregulars is that it should be awesome. Espionage, World War II, Washington, British Embassy, AND it centers on author Roald Dahl of James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fame. His autobiographies are on my bookshelf. He’s a favorite and always has been.

However, this is one of those books where you tell yourself, “I’ll get through a chapter tonight. At this rate that book will be done by Sunday. Success!” Sunday rolls around and you read ten pages, put it down for a few days. Read ten pages, put it down. At the same time it is not a bad book, but the way the book is marketed is that you think you’re getting a continued bio on Dahl and his days as a spy in Washington, his connection to Eleanor Roosevelt who would have him to the White House for tea, his days as a womanizing playboy, or his connection to Bond creator and co-worker Ian Fleming. Instead you get are vague tales of a Washington society with vapid cocktail parties in the midst of war and of paper-pushing memos which go nowhere or have minimal effect (Doesn’t that sound like Washington today?). In fairness, there is not much author Jennet Conant can say. Lots of the dealings with the British Embassy remain confidential, leaving room for speculation. Despite this, I am left with the feeling that British propagandist Dahl was no grand spy, but a mid-level embassy employee, who had good connections as a budding writer. He was only about 28 at the time—too young for a diplomat.

Is this all to say that there is no redeeming factor in the book? No, absolutely not. Conant’s work shows the level of access the Roosevelt’s had. You could be 28 and have tea with Eleanor for tea, or get invited to Hyde Park. I get the sense that the author thought to herself, “Roald Dahl, a spy? This will be a terrific book.” She followed the documents, but could not get enough information to make it gripping. To compensate for that Conant spins a tale of an American government who was lost in a war with little intelligence. She demonstrates the influence of Britain’s embassy over both the legislative and executive branches, over the democratic process, and over the value of friendships in DC as well.

My favorite tidbit gleaned from The Irregulars? It’s rumored that one wild night Dahl went out and painted red the errrr “nether regions” of the Bison statues by the Dumbarton Bridge leading from Dupont to Georgetown. It was written up in the gossip columns. I’ll look in to it this month and let you know what I find out (or at least let you know the history of the bison).

It's cold outside

Central dome of the old main conservatory in the late 19th or early 20th century

As Washington sets into it's annual deep freeze, it seems like as good a time as any to start highlighting some beautiful building interiors. If you are looking for a place to visit in the cold, the United States Botanic Garden has the added benefit of high tech temperature controls to make every visit a trip to the equator. The building itself, located at the east end of the National Mall near the Capitol Building, was built in 1933 with a nod to the palm house conservatory architecture made famous in Victorian England. The soaring glass structure of the palm house - now referred to as the Jungle - was one of the first large buildings in the country to use aluminum for its structural supports.

The garden's collections date back as far as 1816, when the Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences in Washington DC proposed the creation of a botanic garden, "to collect, grow, and distribute plants of this and other countries that might contribute to the welfare of the American people." In 1820 Congress passed legislation allowing for the Institute's garden to be planted to the west of the Capitol Grounds, approximately where the Capitol reflecting pool is located today. This garden existed until 1837 when the Columbian Institute disbanded. In 1838, American naval officer and explorer Charles Wilkes was commissioned by Congress to circumnavigate the globe and explore the Pacific as part of the United States Exploring Expedition. While abroad Wilkes carefully amassed live and dried plant specimens, returning in 1842 with an impressive collection of plants previously unknown in the US. News of his findings reestablished interest in a national botanic garden, and his collections were displayed in a specially constructed greenhouse behind the Old Patent Office Building. A new structure was built in place of the Columbian Institute's garden in front of the Capitol in 1850, and the collections were developed and maintained there until moving to their present location in 1933.

The 1933 building was designed by Architect of the Capitol David Lynn. The 56,000 ft conservatory was originally conceived of as as a complex of glass greenhouses connected by brick galleries. The austere limestone facade was typical of government building during the New Deal, but the airy glass greenhouses were a novelty and a delight. By 1997 the collections had outgrown the aging structure, and the building underwent a four year multi-million dollar restoration. While the glass greenhouses were modernized to accept state of the art climate control systems, many of the building's details (including the exterior limestone, fountains, and exterior windows and doors) were restored or recreated to match the original designs.

Sources:
http://www.usbg.gov/
http://www.hort.wisc.edu/mastergardener/Features/botgardens/USBG/USBG.htm

Photo source:
http://www.usbg.gov/

You too can sleep like a President, at the Hay Adams hotel

Looking for a place to stay in DC? The Hay Adams hotel, directly across Lafayette Square from the White House, is one of the premier addresses in the Nation’s Capitol. The hotel is used today as a swanky site for weddings, a nice place to put up visiting diplomats, and was briefly the residence of the Obama's before the inauguration. Built in 1927 by famed DC developer Harry Wardman and his architect Mihran Mesrobian, the hotel actually sits on the site of two neighboring houses owned by statesmen John Hay and Henry Adams. (Hence – The Hay Adams hotel.)

The original Hay and Adam’s houses were commissioned by the two long time friends from famous American architect Henry Hobson Richardson, a former Harvard classmate of Adams. John Hay and Henry Adams had become close friends in 1880, and together with their wives, Marion ‘Clover’ Adams and Clara Hay, as well as their friend and director of the US Geological Survey, Clarence King, the group formed the so called ‘Five of Hearts’ club. The ‘Hearts’ were a literary society of sorts, and even went so far as to create and correspond on stationery with five playing card hearts across the top. The five were always involved in the political circle, writing anonymous political histories and satires, and in 1883 Adams convinced Hay that they should buy adjoining lots at 16th and H Streets facing Lafayette square.

Henry Hobson Richardson, who became famous for the “Richardson Romanesque” style of architecture he created, was well known for his heavy use of masonry, deep arches, steep pitched roofs, and turreted towers. In order to ensure that their homes took on characteristics of Richardson’s style without being too elaborate for a downtown DC neighborhood (Lafayette Square was entirely residential at the time) Adams, who was a good friend of Richardson’s asked that while the houses be unique, they should still remain generally within the confines of a plain square box with a flat roof. The final house cost $60,000 dollars to complete, and was, in form, a square brick building on the side of the lot at the center of H Street. The uniqueness came from some typically Richardsonian elements on the facade, including heavy arched entranceways, a beautiful arched central window at the third floor, and a series of nine small finial type windows at the fourth floor. So that the two facades would match along H Street, the houses were constructed with the same materials; red brick accented with Ohio buff sandstone around the doors and first floor windows.

Houses of John Hay and Henry Adams, circa 1884

After Adams death in 1918, his house was bought by Senator James Wadsworth and his wife Alice, who had acquired the Hay house after Clara Hay died in 1914. The Wadsworth’s leased the building to the Brazilian embassy, and in 1927 it was sold to DC developer Harry Wardman. Wardman was widely considered the most important real estate developer of the twenties, and he bought the property with intentions to raze the Richardson buildings and replace them with a Beaux Arts style apartment hotel. The city of Washington was going through an apartment house boom during the period of “Coolidge Prosperity” and the expansion of the federal government during preparations for World War I. Harry Wardman was at the forefront of this building craze, and during the 1910s and 20s he was responsible for building 4,000 houses, 12 office buildings, two clubs, two hospital annexes, two embassies, one parking garage, 400 apartment buildings, and eight hotels.

Wardman’s primary architect Mihran Mesrobian was a Turkish born architect who emigrated to American in 1921. Mesrobian had been trained in Turkey at the Academie des Beaux Arts in Istanbul, and he brought this classical building mentality to his work in Washington. Although apartment hotels at the time were favoring Tudor and Second Empire styles, as found with Washington’s famous Willard Hotel, Mesrobian felt that the Beaux Arts principles were well suited to D.C.’s tight lot sizes and height restrictions. Mesrobian also believed that the Beaux Arts association with the Italian Palazzo styles gave the residents a feeling of, “presiding in an elegant and stately building.”

Architect H.H. Richardson was himself trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and because Richardson employed Beaux Arts methods in his design, there were aspects of the original Hay and Adams façades and interiors that Mesrobian was able to emulate in his own work. Some of the artistic iron grilles Richardson had used in the original exteriors were saved and then added to replicas used in flanking the hotel’s entrance. The entrance and curved driveway off of 16th street were built in imitation of Richardson’s original plans. The homes were also designed to have a heavily rusticated base on the façade, a technique typical of Beaux Arts design done in an imitation of Italian renaissance palazzos, and Mesrobian followed suit by rusticating the hotel façade at the street level. This method of deeply cutting and distressing the stone helped Mesrobian to give the illusion of walking alongside a renaissance palace, and also helped to bring back some of the memory of the original homes.

Photo source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

Sources: O’Toole, Patricia, “What they had in common was wit and friendship” Smithsonian, 21(June 1990 pg. 132-138)

Mesrobian, Caroline Isabelle, A selection of the architectural oeuvre of Mihran Mesrobian, beaux arts architect Washington DC (New Orleans, Louisiana: Tulane University, 1978, 47-58

Goode, James M, Best Addresses: a century of Washington’s distinguished apartment houses(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, c1988)

Everyone Blogs About Julia Child

Returning from Sri Lanka after World War II, you never would have pegged Julia Child as a spy. Clandestine isn’t a word I’d use to describe someone so loud…and tall. But she was indeed employed by the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA, as a secretary. In Southeast Asia, Julia was responsible for cataloging and registering highly classified information. It was there that she met her husband Paul Child, a mapmaker and war room designer.

The couple moved to Washington, where Paul worked as an exhibits officer for the State Department and Julia as a file clerk. The two bought a three story, white clapboard house in Georgetown. In My Life in France, Julia gives her Georgetown address as 2706 Olive Street, and as you can see from the yellow building at right it is still there. Success! I found it! The two lived in the house for two years, before heading to France—a move that would lead Julia to her destiny.

Paul and Julia returned to their Olive Street house 8 years later with several coq au vins and bourguignons under their belts. The 150 year old house was in need of some serious repair, which the Child’s took up with gusto. The kitchen, of course, was expanded to include a dishwasher. From her clapboard house, Julia conducted research on the habits of American cooks—what products they ate, where they shopped, and how measurements differed. This information would be useful for what would become Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In the spring of 1957, Julia began to teach cooking to a group of housewives in her Olive Street kitchen. She used her house as a base, from which she could travel to New York and Boston to push for the publication of her masterpiece. In 1962 Paul retired from the State Department. The two decided that while they liked Washington, they didn’t love it enough to want to live out the rest of their lives here. I imagine Paul Child’s questioning by the McCarthy Commission a few years earlier, might have tainted their opinion of this bureaucratic town. They moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sadly for us Washingtonians, Julia’s Georgetown days were over. Ah well, at least we have her kitchen in the Smithsonian.

Sources: Julia Child, My Life in France, Anchor Books, June 2009.

Jailed for Freedom: Silent Sentinels

Alice Paul grew up in a Quaker and was likely influenced by the early Quaker suffragists including Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott. But it was during her years in England that she learned tactics to draw attention to the Votes for Women cause. At the time, British suffragists had become a militant movement. They organized mass demonstrations, threw rocks at windows, and participated in hunger strikes. Paul took all of this in and took part in these events. In 1912 Paul moved back to the United States, where she was appointed to the position of Chairmen of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). Prior to this time the suffrage movement had been largely based in New York meeting halls, but Paul was a supporter of “Deeds not Words.” The time had come to get Women’s Rights back on the national agenda. To accomplish that she needed to move to Washington.

In 1913, the women of NAWSA organized a mass parade down Pennsylvania Avenue which coincided with Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration. The parade was led by Inez Milholland, a suffragist and labor attorney, dressed a Grecian goddess astride a white horse. It was a grand scene that stole the show from Wilson. Though the parade garnered front page media attention put the movement on the national scene, Paul left the organization to form the National Women’s Party(NWP). While NAWSA was focused on achieving suffrage on a state level, NWP believe change could only come with a constitutional amendment. Paul and her supporters engaged in a series of pickets at the White House, with signs (like the one above, left) calling the president “Kaiser Wilson” among other things. The picketers known as “Silent Sentinels” were frequently arrested and charged with “obstructing traffic.” Sentences varied from 60 days, with Paul herself receiving 7 months in the Occoquan Workhouse.

At the Occoquan Workhouse in Fairfax County, Virginia the detained women engaged in hunger strikes. The strikes led to their mistreatment and in to being force fed three times a day for three weeks. Insubordinate women were beaten by the guards; Lucy Burns, a fellow suffragist and friend of Alice Paul’s, was handcuffed to her bed with her arms above her head for a whole night. Public outrage at the prison conditions and at the treatment of the women grew. It is one thing if poor and impoverished women are imprisoned, but many of the suffragists were educated upper middle-class ladies, who (in some opinions) may have been out of their senses, did not deserve harsh treatment. Across the country women took part in the strike as a show of solidarity. In January 1918, President Wilson finally declared his support for the Right to Vote Amendment. With public support growing, the NWP (with new headquarters at 14 Jackson Place) continued its parades, pickets, and took to starting fires around Washington, DC. Frequently, the women were attacked by suffrage opponents, as well as the police. However, the tide was turning. In August 1920, Tennessee became the 36th and final state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment.

Things quieted after that. The NWP took up residency at the “Old Brick Capitol.” From their they drafted the “Equal Rights Amendment Bill,” which to this day has yet to be ratified. Known as the Sewall-Belmont house (front door at seen right), Alice Paul contintued to live and work there. The house became famous for its tea parties. The house now serves as a museum dedicated to the suffrage movement, and features artifacts from NWP’s campaign for the passage of the 19th Amendment and NWP’s feminist founder Alice Paul.

Sources: Library of Congress, American Memory: Photographs from the Records of the National Women's Party.

Tour of the Sewall-Belmont House on July 2009, http://www.sewallbelmont.org/

Oration Nation

Do you ever watch CSPAN? It's OK to say no. The coverage of the floor of the two bodies of our legislature is really dull. Much of the time is devoted to procedural monotony, the shuffling of papers and feet, and the occasional speech delivered by someone you've never heard of before. Most importantly, however, is the fact that the chambers always seem empty. Sure, there are some aides running around, maybe a few congressmen here and there, but nobody seems to be paying any attention to what's going on. The aides are rushing to deliver papers; the senators are checking their Blackberries; the congresswomen look bored. Even the important moments, the ones that make the national news programs, are ignored by most everyone in the room.

This brings me to one of the many reasons I love history, especially eighteenth and nineteenth century history: People were so often passionate about things that matter. Of course, there was procedural nonsense and people who didn't care in the past, as well. Yet, I can't help but romanticize a time when delivering speeches was an art, and one could actually sway the opinion of another with rhetoric.

Daniel Webster was the kind of orator who could do that. Webster hailed from Massachusetts, and though he wasn't much to look at (but what politician ever is), his voice could hold even his opponents in rapture. In January of 1830, Senator Robert Hayne delivered a speech denouncing federal interference with the South, specifically a tariff that largely protected Northern industry at the expense of Southern landholders. Webster, who had been passing by on his way back from the Supreme Court, stopped to listen to Hayne speak. Hearing Hayne's impassioned denunciation of the federal government, Webster was displeased. The next day, he responded with an impassioned, eloquent defense of national policies. "[I cannot] regard him as a safe counselor in the affairs of this Government," Webster declared, "whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should best be preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the People when it shall be broken up and destroyed."

Webster continued, pleading with his fellow Americans not to put their own interests before that of their country. Imagining a future in which the South took the drastic action of breaking up the Union, Webster hoped aloud that he would not see such a day: "When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in Heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union... Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather behold the gorgeous Ensign of the Republic... its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured -- bearing for its motto, no such interrogatory as What is all this worth? Nor other words of delusion and folly... but... that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart -- Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable."

If you go to the Capitol today, you probably won't hear anyone speak like this. Admittedly, Webster's speech was considered exceptional even at the time: Hayne, his opponent, reputedly responded by telling Webster, "A man who can make such speeches as that ought never to die." Nevertheless, should you find yourself sitting in the galleries of the Senate chamber, close your eyes, and recall all the persons and words that have echoed through that hall. Maybe, just maybe, you can imagine Webster, standing with one hand in the small of his back, the other on the podium (the oratory style of the time), humbling his foes with fiery rhetoric and sweeping imagery.

Perhaps then you won't notice that the senator next to you is Twittering.

Source: Jon Meacham, American Lion: Jackson in the White House (New York: Random House, 2008).

Panic! It's the Swine Flu...and Walter Reed

At Right: Walter Reed experiments

I was planning on writing about the Snow Riot this week, but it will have to wait. We’ve got an epidemic to deal with people! The Swine Flu has gotten to the World Bank, and now the Secret Service reportedly has it too!!!!

What should I do? A. Wear a mask? B. Avoid the metro? C. Skip out on tonight’s Nats game? I don’t have a mask, and I’m planning to take the metro to the game, so options B and C are out. I know from writing on the Great Influenza of 1918 that I ought to “avoid tight clothes, tight shoes, and tight gloves.” But that can’t be enough! The paranoia is just too great! I shall console myself by reading up on Walter Reed, for which Walter Reed Hospital is named.

In recent years we’ve associated Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) with the scandal of neglect for wounded American servicemen, but this is a taint on the good name of Walter Reed. Born in 1851, Walter Reed was a precocious student who graduated from the University of Virginia with a medical degree in 1869. Joining the Army Medical Corps in 1875, Reed was sent to remote outposts including Nebraska and Arizona. In 1893 he moved to Washington, DC to serve as a faculty member at the Army Medical School. At the school he studied infectious diseases including malaria, cholera, and yellow fever. His research led him to Havana, Cuba in 1900 to study yellow fever, a serious killer at the time (During the Spanish-American War more soldiers died from yellow fever than combat wounds).

In the late 1800s, it was still believed that yellow fever was transmitted through clothing (i.e. germs on blankets) and from person to person. Despite taking precautions like burning “infected” blankets, yellow fever remained a persistent threat in tropical climes. The idea that yellow fever was transmitted through mosquitoes had been floating around, but it was not until Reed and his US Army Yellow Fever Board decided that the only way to prove the theory was by conducting tests on humans that the theory was confirmed. Essentially, Reed’s experiments involved allowing oneself to be bitten by a mosquito that had bitten a yellow fever victim and then waiting to see if you got yellow fever and died. Sign me up for that!

Reed returned to Washington to present his findings, short one team member who had died while using himself as a test subject. His presentation did not go well, and in fact the Washington Post called it “silly.” And so, more tests were conducted in an isolated camp in Cuba. This time the trials (using paid volunteers) were met with success when Reed presented the new findings at the Pan-American Medical Congress in 1901. Efforts to eradicate mosquitoes in Havana led to a sharp decline in the prevalence of yellow fever.

In recognition for his work Major Walter Reed received honorary degrees from Harvard and the University of Michigan. Sadly, his life was cut short in 1902 by complications arising from appendicitis. He died in the hospital named for him, and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

All right, I’m getting on the metro where I will be holding my breath and not touching anything.

Sources: The American Experience, “The Great Fever.”

University of Virginia, Phillip S. Hench Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection.

Walt Whitman's Washington Part 2

A continuation of Walt Whitman's hangouts. At Left: Walt Whitman and companion Peter Doyle in 1865.

14th Street: From this thorough-fare for Union troops, Walt witnessed wounded soldiers returning from the fronts in thousands. Noting their disheveled states and pained gazes, so unlike the grand military reviews held near the White House, Whitman stated, “This is way the men come in now, seldom in small numbers, but always in these long, sad processions.”

Analostan Island (Teddy Roosevelt Island): Though Whitman was by and large a Unionist, he was not an abolitionist. In effort to convert him, abolitionist coworkers in the Army Paymaster’s Office took him on a trip to Analostan Island, near Georgetown, to watch the First Regiment US Colored Troops receive pay. Whitman conceded that the colored troops fought bravely and honorably, but still believed them to be genetically and intellectually inferior.

Pennsylvania Ave: After hospital duty, Whitman strolled down the Avenue in the night air, clearing his thoughts and taking in the scenery.
· On this street he would see President Abraham Lincoln walking to and from the White House. Though he never met Lincoln personally he commented, “Who can see that man without losing all wish to be sharp upon him personally? Who can say he has not a good soul?”
· Whitman found love and companionship toward the end of the war from Pennsylvania Avenue horsecar operator and Confederate deserter Peter Doyle. Though 25 years Doyle’s senior, the two became inseparable over the next five years. At night Whitman would ride the lonely streetcar from Georgetown to Capitol, talking and confiding in Doyle.
· At the Center Market on Penn and 7th, Doyle and Whitman purchased watermelon. Sitting on a curb eating it, with passersby laughing at the odd couple. Walt would say, “They can have the laugh—we have the melon.”

Union Hotel: Early in the Civil War, the Union Hotel in Georgetown (at 30th and M Streets) became a temporary hospital for those with contagious diseases. By 1864 the Hotel had reverted back to its status as a popular saloon. Tired after a late shift on the streetcar, Doyle would fall asleep at a table in the bar, awoken at the end of the night by Whitman.

Walt Whitman resided in Washington, DC until 1873, when working late one night in the Treasury Building he suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. At age 54, he had become an old man. Relocating to be close to family in Camden, New Jersey, Whitman hoped that he would be well enough to return to Washington, DC and Peter Doyle. However, he never recovered fully enough to make DC his home once more and lived the rest of his days in Camden.

Sources: Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman: A Life.

Roy Morris, Jr., The Better Angel.

Walt Whitman's Washington Part 1

Finding his brother’s name on a casualty report after the Union’s blunder at Fredericksburg in 1862, poet Walt Whitman left his home in Brooklyn, and set out to confirm his brother’s death. He arrived on the battlefield to find his brother alive, though wounded in the cheek from a shell fragment. It was in Virginia that Walt Whitman witnessed the horrors of the war with the blood, the amputations, the disease, and the filth. Vowing that his New York days were over, Whitman moved to the Capital of the Union to volunteer at the army hospitals. Below, is a rundown of his Washington haunts.

Various Homes: The Federal City Whitman arrived in ran the gamut from office-seekers, profiteers, religious zealots, prostitutes, and deserters.
· It was a wild town, and it’s no wonder that Whitman’s landlord kept 7 locks and a bulldog to guard the front door at his L Street apartment.
· In 1863, Whitman moved to a third story backroom at 456 6th Street between E and D Streets, coincidently located diagonally across his nemesis’s Salmon Chase’s stately mansion.
· Later he lived at 502 Pennsylvania Avenue, which was “a miserable place, very bad air.”
· In 1865, he was renting a room at 468 M Street.

Work: Whitman initially secured a position as a part-time copyist in the Army Paymaster’s fifth floor office at 15th and F Street.
· Seeking a higher Clerkship, Whitman used Ralph Waldo Emerson as a reference when applying for a Treasury position under Secretary of Treasury Salmon Chase, who refused him the position because he considered Leaves of Grass to be a disreputable book. Whitman called Chase “the meanest and biggest kind of shyster.”
· Becoming sick in 1864, Whitman left his copyist position for a time while returning home to Camden, NJ.
· Moving back to DC, he took a position in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, located in the dusty basement of the northeast corner of the Patent Office at 7th and G Streets (now the National Portrait Gallery). His annual salary was $1,200. Whitman lasted only months before he was fired, perhaps again because of his controversial writings.
· Fortunately, friends found him a position in the Attorney General’s office in the Treasury Building, and there he stayed until 1873.

The Hospitals: During the Civil War, Washington had between 40-50 military hospitals.
· Many were little more than canvas tents set up on wooden planks, such as the Lincoln Hospital located in a swamp just east of the Capitol.
· Two newer “state of the art” hospitals included those at Amory Square (seen at right), adjacent to the Smithsonian castle, and the Carver Hospital at Judiciary Square, built on the “Pavilion Plan” that allowed for wards with ample ventilation.
· About 70,000 wounded or sick soldiers were treated in the Washington hospitals at a given time, a number equal to Washington’s peacetime population. Running out of space, the city used churches, the US Patent Office, the Capitol, and the prison in Georgetown for overflows.
Surrounded by suffering, Whitman became consumed with his volunteer work at the hospitals. With the soldiers he played games of Twenty Questions, read Shakespeare, and wrote letters to their families. On one visit he secured ten gallons of ice cream to offer at the Carver Hospital (no meager feat during wartime rationing). Many of his patients would die, but Whitman held their hands, knowing well the look of death upon their faces. According to Whitman, war was “nine hundred and ninety-nine parts diarrhea to one part glory.”

Eventually the horrors of war got to Whitman, who became feverishly ill in June of 1864. The diagnosis for his illness is still contested, but at the time the doctors referred to it as “hospital fatigue.” Health and family issues brought him home to Brooklyn, to spend a few months recovering. The War progressed, the Union began winning, and by the end of 1864 only 17 hospitals in Washington remained, treating 9,265 patients. Returning to the Capitol after his illness, Whitman assured his brother that he was not visiting the hospitals as much as before. Still, he volunteered at least two or three times a week, particularly frequenting Amory Square Hospital until after the war had ended.

The nice thing about writers is that they leave a paper trail...stay tuned for part two.

Sources: Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman: A Life.

Roy Morris, Jr., The Better Angel.

-. ..- -- -... . .-. ... ..--- ...-- ..--- ...-- STOP

He was a young artist on the rise; Dying Hercules and Judgment of Jupiter were already considered masterpieces by the British public. His paintings embodied Americanism—the rise of common man over the aristocracy. He was an admirer and friend of James Fenimore Cooper, whose The Last of the Mohicans proved to the world the value of American culture. If he could be a success in London, he could certainly reach equally great heights in America. Deciding in 1815 that he had studied in Britain long enough, he returned home to the United States. His talents brought him to Washington, DC to paint the official portrait of President James Monroe. John Quincy Adams and the Marquis de Lafayette also sat for him.

And now, Congress was expanding the Capitol. Murals would be needed to cover the halls and rotunda. Congress was calling on artists to submit designs depicting the young nation and democracy. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, and he desperately needed this accolade. Economic recession had slowed his commissions. When he submitted his design, Samuel F.B. Morse was confident that the commission would be his. To prepare for the Capitol project, Morse sailed to Europe in 1829 to improve his skill.

In 1832, Morse learnt that he had lost the Capitol commission. Dreams shattered, he gave up on a career as an artist. Broke, he returned to America to take up a position as a professor at New York University. But fortune smiled upon him, for it was on the boat home that he met Dr. Charles T. Jackson, who introduced him Michael Faraday’s theories of electrical current. Always intrigued by science and invention (he was an early fan of photography), Morse studied electromagnetism and designed his first telegraph machine.

His new machine needed funding. In New York he found the financial backing of entrepreneur Alfred Vail, who assisted Morse in improving the telegraph design so that it was smaller, sleeker, and had a button for typing dots and dashes. It was this version that received a patent in 1840. In 1842 it was time to test the range of the electrical current. Morse and Vail set up a wire from Governor’s Island and Manhattan (a two mile range), but the test failed when a boat sailed in to the wire, snapping it.

Persistent, Morse returned to Washington, DC submitting a bill requesting $30,000 to run a telegraph line from the Supreme Court Chamber in Washington to the B & O Rail Station in Baltimore. Congress stalled on the bill for over a year. Just as a once again defeated Morse was about to leave town, he heard news that the bill had passed! The 38 mile experimental line was completed in 1844. On May 24, 1844 (as of today that’s 164 years and 11 months ago) Morse officially opened the line for communication. Sitting in the old Supreme Court Chamber, Morse typed out his famous first message, “What Hath God Wrought!” The message was received in the B& O Rail Station, but no one paid much attention. In fact, Samuel Morse had to write his own newspaper article proclaiming its success, “The Electric Telegraph Triumphant.”

It wasn’t until three days later when Morse sent news of James K. Polk’s presidential nomination from a deadlocked Democratic Convention in Baltimore across the wire to the Capitol that the nation finally took notice. The journalists and public were astounded! The ability to transfer information within minutes had just rendered the postal service obsolete! Ok, well maybe that last part is an exaggeration as we still continued to use snail mail, but the telegraph had changed the speed at which Americans lived their lives. “3 cheers have been given here for Polk and 3 for the Telegraph!” was the message of the day, and the rest is history!

Note: Morse asked a US Patent Commissioner’s daughter Annie Ellsworth to compose the first message. To find out the source of “What Hath God Wrought!” translate the blog title. Or, cheat and look it up on Wikipedia.

Source: Kenneth Silverman, Lightning Man.
Thomas Streissguth, Communications: Sending the Message.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUMUEL MORSE! April 27, 1791! You don't look a day older!

What the Francis Scott Key Happened to that House?

“Lost!? What do you mean lost? How big is this house, and who lost it?” I exclaimed, while sitting in my doctor’s office, discussing history’s mysteries. My doctor replied, “Francis Scott Key’s house was a two or three story brick house, and they were planning to relocate it. They dismantled it and lost it in the process. Nobody knows where it is now.” Huh, go figure. The house of an American hero and author of the “Star Spangled Banner” was lost. We concluded that the Key homestead must have been placed in an undisclosed government warehouse along with the Ark from Indiana Jones.

Weeks later, I was walking across the Key Bridge into Georgetown when I stumbled upon the small Francis Scott Key Memorial Park. A plaque in the park stated that this was the location of the original Key residence. The story my doctor told me resurfaced in my mind. We know the house was lost, but who lost it and why was it to be relocated in the first place?

Built in 1803, the house was located at 3516-18 M Street, NW. Key was residing at this house in 1814 when he headed to Baltimore to secure the release of Dr. William Beanes, a prisoner of the British. Taken prisoner himself, Key watched the Battle of Baltimore from the Chesapeake Bay. When the smoke cleared, Key was inspired to write the poem that would one day become the United States of America’s national anthem.

The Key family vacated the house in the 1830s due to the turbulence of the then operating C&O Canal. Time passed, and the house fell into disrepair. Admiral George Dewey, hero of the Civil and Spanish-American War, led the first effort to preserve the Key House in the early 1900s. The Francis Scott Key Memorial Association was a commercial operation dedicated to preserving the house. Revenue was generated through house tours and general donations. Certificates were granted to those making donations (see image). Demonstrating the popularity of the song in American culture, it’s worth noting that preservation efforts began prior to when the “Star Spangled Banner” was made the national anthem in 1931.

The Francis Scott Key Memorial Bridge was constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of engineers between 1917 and 1923. The government purchased the Key home in 1930. Little effort was made to restore it. Traffic congestion in Georgetown in the 1940s brought a push for the demolition of the Key House in order to make room for a clover entryway onto the Bridge. Though the Historical Society of Washington, DC fought hard to preserve the building, the home eventually fell victim to the ever-increasing freeways of the 1950s. Once dismantled, Congress passed a bill that would finance the reassembly of the house and give it to The Historical Society. However, this bill was vetoed by President Harry Truman for budgetary reasons. And so the house disappeared during roadway construction and was last seen in 1947. Personally, I’m still holding out for the undisclosed government warehouse theory.

Sources: The Historical Society of Washington, DC, “About Us,” 2008, http://www.historydc.org/about/HSW_History.asp.

F. Regis Noel, “Preservation of the Residence of Francis Scott Key,” Washington, DC: Columbia Historical Society, January 1947.


Picture Source: http://greensleeves.typepad.com/berkshires/