>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. [ Silence ] >> I'm Bill Stanley, your moderator for session two this afternoon. And a couple of items that I thought I just throw out at you for the sake of knowledge. The city canal that was mentioned by several of our speakers was completed on November 21st 1815 which connected the Potomac River to the eastern branch which is now the Anacostia River. As an employee of the Department of Commerce, I became fascinated with the canal and determined and found out that not only was Constitution Avenue the canal, but there's a series of lockhouses. One that's closest to the Commerce Building is located at 15th and Constitution Avenue. A lot of people think it's something to do with the park service storage, whatever. This is actually one of the lockhouses. In addition, in the subbasement of the Department of Commerce, which I wandered down there many years ago, there's a wooden trapdoor which I opened, and flowing underneath there was Tiber Creek, most interesting. Another item, the first census was taken in 1799. And as of 1820, the population within the District of Columbia had reached 33,000, of which 15,700 and some that in Alexandria and Georgetown there were some 4000 free African-Americans within the district and another 6200 slaves. And as most of you know, slavery was abolished April 16th, 1862 within the district. I thought those facts were relevant as we move forward with the afternoon session and even in tomorrow morning. Without further ado, let me begin with our first speaker who is Mr. Chas Langelan. Chas is a retired professional land surveyor. He practiced for more than 40 years in Washington and run a busy survey office on Capitol Hill before retiring in 2008. Chas was the first private surveyor ever registered in the District of Columbia. Today, Chas serves on the board of a half dozen professional organizations, including the DC Associates of Land Surveyors, the Washington Map Society, and the Maryland Society of Surveyors. Chas' paper [inaudible] today is entitled Andrew Ellicott and his Survey of the Federal Territory on the Potomac, 1791-1793. Please welcome Mr. Chas Langelan. [ Applause ] >> Thank you, Bill, appreciate it. Let's see if this thing works. The slide advancers have four buttons and no matter what you push you're wrong. This is Garrett W. Jack's [phonetic] 1931 painting of-- depicting a scene that actually happened several times-- George Washington, obviously writing the land of the new city of Washington with the Commissioners and Andrew Ellicott who is dapperly dressed in the latest 1792 fashions. And Andrew Ellicott, the genius surveyor we're going to be talking about today and Benjamin Bannaker who assisted him for a few months. What's Andrew Ellicott holding right there? I'm going to use my construction site voice that I have to move away from the mic, can you hear me? [Simultaneous Talking] No? Andrew Ellicott is holding the colonial open site surveyor's compass. This is the pre-telescope instrument used in colonial America. It's a compass but instead of a telescope like modern survey instruments have, it has open sight slits like a tall rifle sight. The instrument does not tilt like a telescope does today. If you're going uphill, you put your eye low and you look high, that's why they're tall. If you're going downhill, you put your eye high and look down. This was used in Carroll County Maryland [Laughter] But really went out of use when the telescope transit was introduced in America about 1830. I'll talk about the-- I'll talk about the rest of the instruments a little later. Okay, Chas do this right. That of course is Andrew Ellicott's wonderful hundred square mile topographic map of the District of Columbia we'll talk about later. The reason-- [ Pause ] There are many famous people involved in the survey of Washington, DC. Land surveyor George Washington, thousands of books about him, tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, or maybe a million books about George Washington. Land surveyor Thomas Jefferson, same thing, thousands and thousands of books. Pierre L'Enfant, that's an artist conception based on a portrait of his father. So if you buy into that the kid looks There's stacks and stacks, truckloads of books about L'Enfant, Benjamin Bannaker in less 25 years, amazing number of books, publications, talks, articles, TV shows about Benjamin Bannaker. There he is with Andrew Ellicott's transit and equal altitude instrument. But the last guy involved in the survey of Washington, Andrew Ellicott, one book, 1908, published by a descendant. It's all the letters he wrote home to his family from all his far-flung survey expeditions, and that's the only biography of Andrew Ellicott that has ever been published. 1908, you have to read his letters to find out where he was and what he was doing. But he's very good, he wrote home about every 3 days and that's how we know. If it wasn't for this we wouldn't know. In addition, Andrew Ellicott's journals which are basically as reports on his surveys have been published. He wrote some papers on how-- he wrote a paper on how he did the survey at Washington that is available from the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. And there have been articles, people have written articles, some of them true, some of them false. This is Andrew Ellicott in my opinion and many others, one of the most significant scientific minds of the late 1700s and early 1800s. He was a scientist, a surveyor, he was an instrument maker. If you are an instrument maker, in this time period there are no factories making surveying instruments, everything is made by hand, by a craftsman instrument maker. If you are making the instrument, you have to understand the math, the surveying, the astronomy, how to machine things, how to make things, all the craftsmanship. Andrew Ellicott is an instrument maker, a clock maker, a cartographer, an inventor, a mathematician, and an astronomer. The whole Ellicott family is like that, and has been from generations. His father is like that. This is an extended family. Andrew Ellicott is of one of 9 kids and the family adopted 6 more orphan children. So he's one of 15 kids and then there's uncles, cousins. I'm going to push the wrong thing here. All right. The best way that I ever know to start is with the beginning. All geodetic surveying in America begins with Mason and Dixon. And this is a painting of Mason and Dixon that we actually reenacted, we surveyors in 2002, that's Charles Mason, that's Jeremiah Dixon. When I say geodetic surveying, that's surveying shorthand for surveys positioned from the stars that take into account curvature of the earth. That's what I'm talking about. Prior to Mason and Dixon, 1763, there are no surveys in North America that are done from the stars and taken to account the curvature of the earth. They are the first. They bring the technology which they themselves I think invented over from England. What impresses me about this more than anything else is Charles Mason is doing his astronomical and mathematical and geodetical computations with a quill pen on a piece of paper. Today, if a surveyor does not have his Pentium computer and his millimeter accuracy GPS and his wireless internet, he tells the client it can't be done. But it can be. [ Pause ] This is the Mason-Dixon Line, over 300 miles. It's the borderline between Delaware in Maryland and Pennsylvania in Maryland. Mason and Dixon survey these lines, about 320 miles total. And on their crew as a young man is the great David Rittenhouse of Norristown, Pennsylvania. Another genius, scientist, mathematician, astronomer. He learns the technique from Mason and Dixon on the Mason and Dixon survey. Mason and Dixon survey is not an Ellicott survey. That's where Rittenhouse learns from the two masters. Andrew Ellicott's first survey, Andrew Ellicott was not on the Mason-Dixon Line. In 1770, the whole Ellicott family, extended family 50-60 cousins, uncles move from Bucks County Pennsylvania which is just north of Philly to the new land they have purchased on the Patapsco River which becomes Ellicott City. They build mills, Ellicott's mills. There are two mills that they build on the Patapsco plus they build a mill on Jones Falls, plus they build another one at Elkridge Landing. These guys are the industrial revolution wrapped up in one large family. Andrew Ellicott is 16 years old when he moves with his whole family, his mom, his dad, and all his 15-- 14 I guess brothers and sisters from Pennsylvania to Maryland. And the first significant survey he does with his dad, his cousins, and everybody else. Andrew Ellicott surveys and builds-- not Andrew, the Ellicott's survey and build about the first 20 or 25 miles of the national road. Now, the official national road financed by the US Government starts at Cumberland, Maryland and runs to Vandalia, Illinois, the original capital of Illinois. But there's an eastern part that goes from Cumberland, which is about there, to Baltimore and that is a series of private roads. About every 20 miles is built by another private turn pipe company, and every 20 miles you have to pay toll to a different private company. The first 20 miles or so is built by the Ellicott family. Why did they build the first 20 miles? To bring machinery and raw materials to their mills at Ellicott City and to ship their products out, and there is no road that will handle that so they build it. Think a-- try thinking about getting a permit to do that today. The first Andrew Ellicott geodetic survey, I don't know if you noticed we had the Mason-Dixon Line. But Mason and Dixon were stopped in 1767 22 miles from the actual edge of Pennsylvania. They never were able to finish their survey. The Iroquois stopped them 22 miles short of the western edge of Pennsylvania. Said if you take one more step, we're going to kill you all. And they weren't smiling when they said it. So that was the end of the Mason-Dixon survey. Twenty years later, 1784, less than 20 years, the American Revolution has happened. The British are gone. The French are gone. The Indians are in full retreat to the Ohio Valley. And a survey crew is put together by the states of Virginia and Pennsylvania to complete the final 22 miles. And who leads it? David Rittenhouse, who learned from Mason and Dixon, the survey is done with Mason and Dixon's original equipment which is still at Harrisburg. Andrew Ellicott is on the crew that does these 22 miles. And that's where he learns the astronomical and geodetic techniques brought over to this country by Mason and Dixon. He learns them from David Rittenhouse. So it goes like this. Mason and Dixon teach David Rittenhouse, Rittenhouse trains Andrew Ellicott. All right. I'm going to go through the surveys that Ellicott does before the city of Washington, then we'll talk about the city of Washington, then I want to wrap this up by his remarkable career after the city of Washington. After they do the 22 miles of the Mason-Dixon Line, David Rittenhouse goes home and Andrew Ellicott is in charge doing the entire western boundary of Pennsylvania. This is like 200 miles, it's a longitude. They need a person who knows how to do longitude. Andrew Ellicott is now in charge of the crew doing geodetic surveying. This line is-- there's lots of-- in the Eastern United States, there's lots and lots of famous Ellicott lines and Ellicott stones and Ellicott marks and DC has got them. This is the first famous Ellicott line. That is the line becomes the [inaudible]-- get it right, Chas. The initial principal meridian of the United States Public Land System. For those of you who-- just starting to get technical surveying, good for you. Those of you who don't know about the two kinds of surveys in this country, if you've ever been on an airline or flying across the country and it's a clear day, you may have noticed that in the East, all the properties are jumbled together. [Inaudible] odd, it's all higgledy piggledy, but when you get about to Ohio, they become square-- 1 mile square pieces of property. That's the US Public Land System, 1-mile square parcels. So, the US Public Land System all begins to on this longitude put in by Ellicott in 1785 to 1786. Not only that, as part of the survey on the north bank of the Ohio River, Andrew Ellicott sets the origin point for the US Public Land System. NASA's astronauts in space tell us that from outer space, the first thing that you can see that would give alien invaders a clue that the Earth might be inhabited by intelligent beings is the work of American land surveyors out West, the United States rectangular public land system can be seen further out in the space than any other thing made by man. Andrew Ellicott sets the original point for it, the original line for it. His next survey is for the State of Pennsylvania or Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, they want the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers mapped out within the borders of Pennsylvania. So, they want the islands, they want the rapids, they want the shallows, they want the major settlements that are along, they want what tributaries are coming in. He spends the entire year of 1788 mapping out the two rivers for the Government of Pennsylvania. Next survey, this survey of the Western age of Ohio-- the Western age of Pennsylvania and his next survey here, the Western boundary of New York State are the surveys that bring him to the attention of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. This is done for Pennsylvania, but this survey, the Western boundary of New York State is done for the United States Federal Government. I've never quire figured that one out, but Andrew Ellicott is doing that job, he's doing the Western boundary of the State of New York. He's doing it for the Federal Government and his work is so accurate. it is so excellent it comes to the attention of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and note the year, we're getting close to the City of Washington. Then he does another famous survey. As part of this, the first survey ever done of Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls had never been measured. You can't go out there with a measuring stick. You have to do it by trigonometric triangulation. Very advanced for 1790, but Andrew Ellicott does the first survey of Niagara Falls. Another excellent job that comes to the attention of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Ellicott is being assisted on this survey, this survey, and this survey by his two brothers, both younger Benjamin Ellicott and Joseph Ellicott. So, it's like the Ellicott survey crew. They are on this job and they are not finished when a courier on a lathered horse comes with dispatches from Thomas Jefferson, please take the first available transportation to the new Federal District on the Potomac for the purpose of making a survey. They aren't done. This job has two or three months to go. He turns the boundary of New York over to his brothers and the crew and Ellicott comes to Washington all alone, but he brings his equipment. He doesn't bring his crew. He brings his equipment-- [ Pause ] -- to the City of Washington. [ Pause ] Everything is right about this picture except Andrew Ellicott's white hair. Benjamin Banneker was 60 years old at that time and probably had white hair. It's because he leaves his crew at New York that Benjamin Banneker comes into the picture because why? He's got no crew. Jefferson froze together a scratch pick-up crew of local surveyors. Some of them aren't bad, six guys. Normal crew in those days is 20 to 30 that give-- they give Andrew Ellicott six guys, but nobody really knows what they're doing. Andrew Ellicott has to be out in the field all day running the crew. He cannot also be under the astronomical instruments at night doing the astronomy observation. He either needs another good surveyor to run the crew during the days so he can do the astronomy or he needs another astronomer, that's how Benjamin Banneker gets into the picture. Benjamin Banneker is probably portrayed accurately here. He was a farmer. He lived on a hill above Ellicott City. His cabin has been restored, now a nice park there. He only had farmer's clothing and he was going to be meeting the president and the secretary of the state, so the surveyors all pitched in and bought him a nice suit of clothes so we know he was-- we know he was well dressed. Sixty years old, he probably had white hair, Andrew-- all pictures, all depictions of Andrew Ellicott are based on that original portrait that I showed you in the beginning, a side view of him. He was 56 years old when that portrait was done. He had white hair. He was 37 when he did a survey at Washington. He didn't look like this. He had blonde hair, but the instrument is accurate. Are they any surveyors in the crowd? Oh, I'm not forsaken. Guys, check this out. This is Andrew Ellicott's transit and equal altitude instruments. It's his telescope surveying instrument he built it himself. The-- note that the stanchions are back slanted so that you can elevate the telescope up to the stars are and note also this-- this will be lost on everybody but the surveyors. It's self leveling. He has built a heavy plumb bob into this thing that is an innovation as modern as tomorrow morning. Self-leveling instruments did not become available to us modern surveyors until very late in my career like, you know, 2003 or something and here Andrew Ellicott has built one himself and look at that tripod guys. You could set a Chevy Vega on that thing. This is in the Smithsonian today. It's one whale of a piece of equipment. Very, very accurate. I'll talk about it on a little later as a matter fact, I'll talk about it now. Okay. When I was in surveying school, it was almost 48 years ago and I had a single semester or astronomy. So, nobody is allowed to quiz me real close on this when it comes to question and answer, all right. But here's what I know. This is the transit and equal altitude instrument. With the-- that's a telescopic surveying instrument. You can lay out lines on the ground very, very accurately and straight, but what you really do with it astronomically is it gives you your due north meridian, bang on absolutely accurate and it gives you your local time, the exact time where you are by the stars. Very, very accurate. You can also use it for regular conventional survey. This, by the way, it was made by Andrew Ellicott and this here is an enlargement of the plate that sits on it right there. Now, the Zenith sector. I've never used one of these and don't really claim. I'm really fuzzy on this, but-- if I lose you, it's because I'm lost my myself. This is a six foot long astronomical telescope that looks straight up from wherever you set it. If the world is round and you set this thing up, it's got very sensitive leveling bubbles, you are looking straight out into space from the center of the Earth. You have to lay on your back all night in the snow, remember the survey takes-- takes place in January or February or March, okay. You're laying on the snow or the wet on your back looking straight up for hours and hours. The reason they want to go straight up-- [ Pause ] -- in astronomy, you have what's called the-- it's trigonometry, but it's a spherical triangle. You have zenith angle right ascension and declination. It's a triangle, but all the sides are curved, okay. Zenith distance is straight up so if you have a telescope that looks straight up, you've taken one of the complicated computations out of it. The second reason they use this is because when you look at a star this way, you get atmospheric refraction. You get refraction from the atmosphere and the dot of light that you see as the star is not the same place that the star really is. Today, astronomers have corrections for that. But if you look straight up, you don't have atmospheric refraction. If you look straight out from the center of the Earth, it takes that problem away. As I understand it the way this thing works, it's straight up, but you can't swing. You align this angle scale with your meridian. Straight up, due north, due south and you can swing it about 10 degrees in each direction. And if-- and it's got cross hairs, if you can get two stars coming across your cross hairs at roughly the same time, not exactly the same time. So, you got cross hairs. If you can get a star coming cross and a star coming across at roughly the same time and about the same distance from the center of your cross hairs, you can get your latitude very, very tight. Don't quiz me anymore on that because I don't understand how you do that. But, I think it's the same principle as using a sextant with any start, but you're doing it with two stars. As I understand it, it can be any two stars. You can get your latitude with this baby, absolutely bang on. But, you have to lie on your back in the snow sometimes for two weeks to do it. These things were actually in use believe it Jupiter, this is-- now, we all know that Jupiter doesn't oscillate back and forth. [Laughter] I stole this from NASAs website, okay? It's the best I could get. All right, from those two instruments we just looked at, you've got your local time, you've got your North, your due North Meridian and you've got latitude. What's missing? Longitude, that's the one that involves knowing how many hours you are from Greenwich. Galileo, with the very first telescope he ever built discovered that the moons of Jupiter, the four main moons of Jupiter. Jupiter has four big moons and probably a dozen little ones. The big ones have names. One of them is named after Newt Gingich's wife. [Laughter] they are-- I'm serious. Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto are the four main moons of Jupiter. They whiz around Jupiter and it was the British-- it was the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. They whiz around Jupiter on an absolutely predictable mathematical schedule and the Royal Observatory of Greenwich took observations on-- by that, what I want to say, they whiz around. It's like they come out from behind the planet, swing around, comeback in front of the planet then they go out this way then they disappear behind it and all four of them are constantly doing it. The Royal Observatory at Greenwich publishes an ephemeris which is one of those 89-cent words that means a "bus schedule" of these moons. [Laughter] and the angles are such from Jupiter. And the distances are such that if you are on this planet and can see Jupiter and its moons with your telescope, it doesn't matter if you're in England or Cairo or Sumatra or Cape Town or North America. The angle doesn't change enough to throw your time off. If you can lie, so what does Andrew Ellicott do? [Inaudible] do it, this is right [inaudible]. He has this baby, to observe the moons of Jupiter. This is the time honored technique that Mason and Dixon brought over. [ Pause ] You again have to watch this thing. Of course, it's never that simple. Jupiter has an atmosphere. So, just at the exact moment when the moon is coming out from behind, it tends to get fussy. So, you have to do multiple repetitions of multiple moons over and over and over again, but if you do, you have Greenwich Mean Time from the ephemeris. If you've got the moons of Jupiter and the ephemeris published by Greenwich, you are home free because you now know your local time and you now know your Greenwich Mean Time. The work-- if you actually work out the arithmetic on all this hour and angle stuff, if you are out one second from Greenwich Mean Time, you are out one mile in the position. You can work out the math and prove it to yourself that the radius, the diameter of the Earth, 360 degrees, 24 hours a day, solve it all back out. There's a famous boundary, a state boundary out west. I don't know which states it is but its four miles out of position. There is-- how could the surveyors have possibly been four miles out of position? They had the Greenwich Mean Time, four seconds off. All right, back to Earth. Land surveyor George Washington wrote the meets and bound description, the legal description of the District of Columbia. It's recorder in two Maryland Sate Legislature Acts, two Virginia State Legislature Acts and two Acts of Congress. This is written by land surveyor George Washington. And just demonstrating how he wanted, it's almost like word for word instructions on how he wants the survey to run. He's-- they say if you read this, it says, "First do this line, then do that line, then go to the terminuses and make them intercept, okay?" Here's how Andrew Ellicott actually does it. This is a later map, it's like 1820. The only reason I chose it to display this is This is how you do this. This is the same way Mason and Dixon did the Mason-Dixon Line. You don't make any attempt to run the actual boundary line exactly itself. You put in lines of experiment. You start from an astronomical observation. You run 85 miles. This line has to be absolutely ramrod straight. No bends. No hiccups. If you have any kind of a twist or kink in it, you have lost everything. Then, you do another astronomical observation, now you do another. You go around the other side. Andrew Ellicott does this job clockwise. He doesn't do it the way George Washington had said, counterclockwise. He's about here on this job when he gets a note from George Washington saying, "Hey, while you're out there, why don't you do us a topographic map of the whole hundred square miles? [Laughter] yeah a job just got a whole lot bigger. Closes back in on Jone's point, does the arithmetic now-- now, where are you? You have astronomical latitudes and longitudes at each ones of these points. You know where you are on the planet and you can compute where the stones have to be. This is how Mason and Dixon stones were set. You put them in by what we surveyors call station and offset which is simply how far down the line and how far over. So, if I'm putting this stone, how far down from where I know I am in the direction to where I know I am, do I go down the line and how far over do I go? This technique is still used on state highway jobs today, station and offset. That's how the stones are put it. The actual line is not run. Now, Andrew Ellicott is of course, much closer to the actual line than I've depicted here. I exaggerated the whole thing. I exaggerated the whole thing for clarity. But that's how the survey is done, that's how the stones are put in. By the way, this is another technical survey. This is for the surveyors, okay? Remember, we talked about the eastern states are a screwball [inaudible] cockeyed, leaps and bounds, English surveys and the western states are the public land states, there is one tiny spot, one tiny spot in the east that is a US public land survey and it is the original city of Washington. This is something that surveyors know that not too many other people do know. The original survey of Washington, not Georgetown, not the rest, not the rest of the district, the land was-- the title to the land was acquired by the Federal Government. It was surveyed by the Federal Government, it was staked out by the Federal Government and it was subdivided by Federal Government surveyors and then sold to new owners to raise money for the treasury. That's a public land survey. It's the only place in the East that is-- that I know of. Thomas Jefferson's famous sketch. Thomas Jefferson was a surveyor. Here's his wonderful English theodolite, a telescope instrument. Here's a statue of Thomas Jefferson surveying the University of Virginia, there's the same instrument. And here's a sketch. Everybody always wonders about this sketch. This is Thomas Jefferson's concept drawing and against to George Washington, and then I think, I thought about what he thinks the federal capitol [inaudible] is famous. There's about 20 blocks over in Foggy Bottom and everybody says, "Well, what with this?" You know, that's-- you know a little tiny. You got-- when you see this, just think of Ron Paul, okay? Thomas Jefferson is the original small government god. He does not want to see the Federal Government ever get big and powerful. And that's what this is all about. He is thinking, if we don't give them much space, they can't get big. [Laughter] so, whenever you see this famous sketch from Thomas Jefferson, it's like something that is scribbled up on a napkin at the bar between rounds of drinks. [Laughter] will you, this is Ron Paul's concept sketch of what the-- of the United States capital [inaudible] and that's exactly what it is. That's where it comes from. Three images of Pierre L'Enfant that people claim are accurate. Nobody really knows. This is from the Army Corps of Engineers. It's a coin, a medal they put out. They claim it's an accurate depiction of a young engineer or officer in L'Enfant but they don't have anything to prove it. This is the silhouette that he did. It looks like much later in life. He's an old guy when this was done. It looks like his nose have been punched a few times. And this-- and this is an artist conception that is based on a portrait of his father so it might be right. Jefferson's concept sketch was very, very minor, very small little town. L'Enfant of course comes through with this. This is the 1887 I think coast and geodetic capture or tracing of L'Enfant's plan which isn't entirely accurate. I know the experts are going to throw rocks at me but I have a theory about all this. Remember that first painting of George Washington on a horse with all those guys and are riding the city, here is my theory. I think [inaudible] I'm going to have to duck when I say this. I think L'Enfant and Washington reverted just as easy and naturally as 2 seconds into their old roles from the war commanding officer and major of engineers. And they rode the cities terrain together picking out positions. They picked out the high points, they picked out the high points, if it was in the war, they would have put their in placements there or their read outs. But now that it's peace time, what do they put there? Their traffic circles. What are the traffic circles, the intersection points of the avenue. They ride the land. They pick out the good ground just like military officers would do. They put the traffic circles on the good ground, they put the capital on the good ground, The White House then they run the avenues between them and I don't think it's anymore complicated than that. It was 2 military officers reverting back to the war which to them would have seemed like it just ended yesterday. That's my theory. Okay, I'm not going to go into all the things that go wrong with L'Enfant but he basically, he basically ticks off some of the most influential property owners and he is in constant hot water with the commissioners. I know other speakers are going to talk about that. L'Enfant is dismissed one week less than a year from the day he's hired and who do you think George Washington asked to take over the whole thing now that L'Enfant is canned, Andrew Ellicot. And this is a portrait of Benjamin Ellicott. The only portraits we have of the Ellicotts are when they're elderly. We have none when they're young except that who was it, Patrick O'Neill or somebody. This is Benjamin Ellicott take over the city plan. L'Enfant is dismissed and he is in Philadelphia when it happens and he's got his plan with him. He's got his sketches with him and his notebooks are with him. And he hasn't been paid, now he gives George Washington a plan, George Washington got the plan but he thinks the rest of it is proprietary until he gets paid. You know you're paid anything for decades. He doesn't turn over his sketches and notes and computations. So Andrew Ellicott is asked to-- George Washington tells Andrew Ellicott, get a plan of the city to the printer to print right now. I want it yesterday. I don't care what it looks like. And in 10 days Benjamin Ellicott and Andrew Ellicott turn out this plan. From memory, it has hundreds and hundreds of differences. All they are going by is a few sketches that Benjamin Ellicott has. Benjamin Ellicott has been working with Andrew on the survey and he has been moonlighting in L'Enfant's engineering office as a draftsman, and he's got it in his head and he's also got some sketches in his desk drawer. Andrew Ellicott knows the terrain, very, very well. He's been surveying it for George Washington. In 10 days they turn this out, it has hundreds of differences from the L'Enfant plan but it's easily explainable, they are doing it mostly from memory and a few sketches and notes. [ Pause ] Here are the 2 plans side by side. I'm going to teach you the trick that I teach my 3rd grade class. Every year I get invited to talk about this to a 3rd grade class on Capitol Hill and I teach them the trick and they go home, amaze their parents. You walk into restaurants and offices and real estate offices, and law offices, architects offices all over Washington and they got an old plan. They got an old plan of the city hanging on the wall. If you know the trick, you can nail it. L'Enfant 1792 and they'll go, "Oh, an expert." You're not an expert, you just know the trick. We say in surveying you don't know the trades or you know the tricks. It's helpful if somebody will label them for you, but if they won't what's the trick. All you do is look at Massachusetts Avenue, that's Mass Avenue right there, the biggest most prominent street on the plan. On the plan. On the L'Enfant plan-- what do I do? Yeah, a lot of people say, well, it's easy to tell them a part Chas, that's no problem. Ellicott's plan has the square numbers, L'Enfant's plan has no square numbers on it. But you can't always go by that. The very first published Ellicott plan has no square numbers so you look at Massachusetts Avenue, this one right here. On the L'Enfant plan it droops. On the Ellicott plan it's ram rod straight like a red blooded American surveyor would make it. [Laughter] here is the trick, mustache, mustache is a French word. If Mass Avenue droops like a Frenchman's mustache, it's the French. [ Laughter ] If it's straight, it's Andrew Ellicott. There are hundreds and hundreds of differences like this but that's the most prominent one. So my 3rd graders can go into any restaurant or any place and say Andrew-- yeah, that's a Ellicott plan 1792, everybody would go, oh, an expert. [Laughter] this draftsmanship is Benjamin Ellicott. It is not Andrew Ellicott. We have examples of enough of their other drawings. This-- the Ellicott plans are not drafted by Andrew. They are drafted by Benjamin. He was an excellent draftsman, just great. And he went on to be a United States congressman. Okay, none of the history books record. You won't find this in any book about the survey of Washington. In the middle of the survey of Washington, Andrew Ellicott gets a call from the Donald Trump of that era, Robert Morris, the wealthiest person in the United States who personally single-handedly financed the American revolution lending-- revolution lending millions of dollars to congress to get through that war. We'd never been a country if it hadn't been for him. Robert Morris is involved in a boundary dispute in western New York. Ellicott's in the middle of the survey of Washington gets a call, I mean this guy is like Donald Trump and Warren Buffett and Bill Gates all rolled together. He doesn't get a call, he gets a courier on horseback. Come on up to western, you know, he gets a text message, "Come on up to Western New York, I need you." He is involved in what's called a-- with boundary [inaudible] is what's called the preemption line. The preemption line is an old Indian tract boundary that also is the limits of Connecticut's claims in Western New York. Connecticut is one of the six original 13 colonies that have vast Western land claims. Connecticut claims land in Western New York, Western Pennsylvania and Ohio. Two surveyors have attempted-- and Robert Morris has interest in this, two surveyors have attempted to stake this line out and they are disagreeing side to side six miles. Okay, what does that mean? One of them or both of them has a Greenwich Mean Time a couple of seconds off, that's all it is. Who do they need to fix it? Andrew Ellicott, the guy with the equipment and the knowledge to nail Greenwich Mean Time, call. So he says to the commissioners and George Washington "See you " He turns over the survey of Washington which is actually in pretty good shape at this time because the Ellicott plan of the city has been published. They are still working on the topographic map. He's got his guys all over the 100 square miles with plain tables doing the topographic map and he can actually leave. They don't need his expertise at that moment. He bails for this-- this is 90 miles through the mountains of Western New York, he handles it like it's a Sunday afternoon moonlighting job, like a walk in the park. Nails it cold here, you know, here's your line and the line is accepted as satisfactory by both parties then he is back to the survey of Washington, this is his final plan much more elaborate, I think this is his final plan. There's actually three versions. I get them confused myself but there's a-- there is the original [inaudible] then there's a Samuel Hill of Boston and there's a later [inaudible] which is what I believe this is. Again, Benjamin Ellicott's drafting. And then in June of 1793 he completes this wonderful 100 square miles, this would kill a modern surveyor, having to do 100 square miles the way he did it with plain tables but he did. As one of the speakers said this morning, he submits this to George Washington without the city on it because-- it's an existing conditions plan it's supposed to be [inaudible] existing [inaudible] there's no city. So he submits it. It's just a flat area. Washington kicks it back and says "Hey have and put a city on, so we can see if we can be able to see how the city relates" so he does. So when you are looking at this to put it in modern surveying terminology, you are looking at an existing conditions plan with a proposed site plan shown. This is the proposed site plan, none of that is actually there. Back to Ellicott's career after Washington, I wanted to include this because it's remarkable. After Washington DC survey he-- Ellicott resigns in May of 1794. First job he gets is to do a road for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from Redding to Erie, Erie doesn't exist at that time so it's called Presque Isle which is like an island in lake Erie. This is hundreds of miles through the mountains of Western Pennsylvania. Andrew does the survey, Andrew designs the road and Andrew supervises the construction of the road. This is US route 322 today if you've ever done much traveling at Pennsylvania, you've been on the 322. Next survey, he lays out the cities of Erie, Waterford and Warren, Pennsylvania. These are very old towns they have the standard conventional 90-degree grid system so it's clear that Ellicott not Ellicott it's clear that L'Enfant deserves all the credit for the inspired plan of Washington. If there had been no L'Enfant it had been Ellicott doing the plan of Washington you'd have a conventional North South East West grid system, because he does three cities and that's exactly what he does. Now he's back for the work for the federal government. The federal government sends him on an expedition that's going to take four years and what he has to do is survey this, the line between the then existing United States of America and Spanish Florida but on the way Thomas Jefferson wants him to map the Ohio River, latitudes and longitudes of every major bend, every major tributary, every major settlement along the river starting with Wheeling, it's four years before they get home from all these. The first year is spent mapping the Ohio River all the way to its joint junction with the Mississippi. Second year, mapping the Mississippi River, latitudes and longitudes and [inaudible] all the major tributaries that come in. Then two years I believe spent surveying the boundary between-- this is the southern boundary of the United States right now so this is an international boundary line. Spain on Florida and in those days before steam engines you came down to Mississippi, you didn't go back up of it. There was no rowing power or sail power that was going to take you North on the Mississippi against that current. So you have to catch a ship home, there's no other way home. Well, this is in the build up believe it or not to the war of 1812 and the Royal Navy is-- the British Royal Navy is fighting everybody. They're at war with Spain who owns this. They are at war with France who owns this and they are impressing American sailors off of every ship that sails. The British war ships leave Portsmouth with a skeleton crew and it's the captain's problem where he's going to get his sailors and what they do is they impress basically enslave American seamen off of every ship. No ship are leaving New Orleans or Pensacola, you can not get passage back to the war but there's a schooner siting in the harbor of New Orleans with a for sale sign on. I've included this even though it's not a survey because I've always been impressed with this particular exploit. Andrew Ellicott has never been to sea not even as a passenger. He takes over the schooner as captain. Buys the schooner, his crew is his landlubber surveyors. These guys have never been on a ship, they came down to Mississippi on a raft that's it as far as they're sailing. He is unable to hire a captain. He is unable to hire any sailors in New Orleans. But Andrew Ellicot can stone cold navigate and he's got charts so, off they go out into the ocean and they don't know how to tack, they don't know how to sail against the wind. They are sailing sideways, they are sailing backwards but they make it to Pensacola. Andrew Ellicott's guys, he's got like 45 guys and they're strung out all along this line. About 15 of them and him kept the boat the old tub, he names it the Sally after his-- it's the USS Sally. I don't think they hit it with champagne because it's so old, I think they'd break it but he names it after his daughter, USS Sally. They actually make it to Pensacola picks up some more of his guys and a couple of war frats from the bars on Pensacola who have had some limited sailing experience. And with that out they go down around the horn of Florida right off my dumb little map here like Christopher Columbus out into the Atlantic. This is the graveyard of sailors and vessels since the days of the Spanish main through the Florida Keys. Now, the actual voyage is zig zig zig zig zig zig zig because they don't know how to sail but I had made it nice and smooth here and the map doesn't show because I screwed it up but they actually put it right here and pick up the rest of their guys then sail probably to Savannah, Georgia and they probably arrived in the harbor sailing backwards but they made it. And from Savannah, Georgia they were able to book passage on an actual vessel and get home to Philadelphia and Andrew Ellicott after four years out brings every single man back alive and in good health. I've been impressed with this. If this was me and I'm a landlubber too none of us would ever been heard from again. 1803 this is a famous training session, Andrew Ellicott at Lancaster, Pennsylvania trains Meriwether Lewis in Astronomy for his journey west which is about to start with William Clark. Here's how it works, Mason and Dixon train Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse trains Ellicott. Ellicot trains Meriwether Lewis. This is a passing of the torch to a new generation. Andrew Ellicott's career is winding down, new people are learning. It's not just Meriwether Lewis it's lots and lots of people who go on to famous surveying careers out west. Thomas Hodgins is real platinum, all these guys and a lot more are trained, trained by Andrew Ellicott. For 11 years he is chief surveyor of Pennsylvania, that's the surveyor general of Pennsylvania. He is at Lancaster, the land office. He does so many surveys personally and he is also responsible for checking so many surveys done by his deputies because the only way to possibly depict it is to speckle the whole state of Pennsylvania because he is everywhere doing hundreds of surveys. There are lots of surveys with Andrew Ellicott's signature on them, some of it's his works. Some of it is not. Some of it is the work of deputies. In 1811 and 1812 he is hired to survey the boundary between Georgia and North Carolina, they are fighting over-- over a-- it's a latitude in the agreement but they are fighting over where the latitude is. This is the site of the famous Ellicott's Rock. There are lots of famous Ellicott monuments. Ellicott's Rock is on the eastern end of this. He has to set a monument on the eastern end and what's there but a huge boulder. So he chisels GA for Georgia in the south side and NC for North Carolina in the North Side and that is Ellicott's Rock. 1813 to 1820, he is professor of mathematics and the head of the faculty at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He is not quite done surveying, at 1817 to 1819 it's his last survey. He does the line of New York State and Canada. So he's done one international boundary, now he's done another. By the way Bill, he works with your buddy Ferdinand Hassler on this job. These are the stones, they way they looked in 1908. There was a guy like to post, John Kelly who went around writing articles about things of interest. He photographed all the stones, all 40 of them in 1908. What this shows is, they're all in terrible condition-- nobody has been maintaining them. It's over a hundred years since they've been set so. What-- it's sort like the Mt. Vernon Ladies Association. The DAR, the women say. Well if the men of America are not going to maintain the priceless heritage treasures of our country, the women will. And there are lots and lots of photographs like this of the Daughters of the American Revolution having dedication ceremonies, put cages around stones. Most of the stones have nice cages around it from the DAR. Some do not because they're in people's front yards and people don't want the cage. These are on the west side of the city. Here are some on the east side of the city. This shows blown to hell trash all over the place. But look the cage did its job, the stone has not been hit. This is the one that's in my yard. I have an Ellicott stone in my yard, south east 4, it was knocked out by a heavy truck years ago. Lying by the side of the road, nobody took it. Some local residents took it and put it in the basement of their apartment building, in case anybody ever came looking for it. Nobody did for 20 years, finally a bunch of surveyors out there, "Hey, you are looking for the stone?" Yeah, we got it. [Laughter] we pass it around, who is ever doing a talk, but this is Sought East 4 an original Ellicott stone. How accurate are the stones around Washington? Ellicott's closure error is 3 times better than the Colonial norm. He closes out this survey 1 in a thousand. The colonial norm-- done with one of these things is 1 in 300. The accuracy of his instruments, by that I mean the accuracy by which he can establish latitude and longitude, using those contraptions he's got, he is within 200 feet, that's the speck on the instruments. He can get a lat and a long with that equipment within 200 feet. What this shows is that, if you come straight up from the south corner. North corner misses by 116 feet. And if you come straight west from the east corner, west corner misses by a 139 feet. He has exceeded the speck on his instruments. >> As Ferdinand Hassler would say, "The time has come"? >> That time has come. [ Applause ] >> Now you know why they put as on the first right after lunch. We're going to keep a lively audience here, so you are not going to fall sleep on us. Our next speaker is Don Alexander Hawkins. He's an architect in private practice and a nearly lifelong resident of Washington DC. I too am a native of the city. Dan studied architecture at Carnegie Institute of Technology and the Architecture Association in London. He earned his masters degree in urban design at CU, Catholic University for the out of towners. Don began his systematic study of Washington's architecture and planning history in 1976. His lecture at the Smithsonian, another Washington educational and cultural institution as well as numerous articles and reviews have largely dealt the unbuilt and built over subjects that include the lost original design of the US Capitol and the predevelopment geography of Washington that required a substantial amount of reconstruction from graphic and documentary evidence. Don's presentation today will take into account the character of the landscape of L'Enfant's, his understanding of the urban symbolization and his native creativity. Don now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains next to George Washington's favorite road in the west where he has assembled his studies in this region, historic landscape and beginnings of the federal city in a book that he hopes to, he hopes will deepen the publics understanding of L'Enfant's work. His care, his ideas and his presentation today. The geometry and geography of the L'Enfant plan. Please welcome Don Hawkins. [ Applause ] >> A time clock [laughter] a present from my wife a few years ago. She knows me. This isn't my talk. These are notes, corrections for the previous speaker's [laughter]. I love the presentation, Chas' presentation that concentrates on the physical reality that face the early developers of the city. If we much too often when the difference and-- between a hill and a valley for us is whether you press the accelerator a little bit or the break a little bit. We lose track of the difficulties that the physical, the geography made for us. And I think, but also and something really significant that Ron Grimm mentioned, little Nemo. It is significant. I have thought for sometime that L'Enfant returned to France only once after he left it to help us with our revolution. And when he returned to Paris representing the Society of Cincinnati and doing a little family business, he arrived in France 3 weeks after the [inaudible] first started taking people up in the air over Paris. L'Enfant is the first person ever to design a city in the full knowledge that people in the future would be looking down on the city. And 20 million people a year fly into and out of national airport and they get the advantage of his consideration I think of that point. I do want to make a couple of corrections. I think, I can probably deal with them along the way. Good. And I'm not trained in this. That's it, he's the guy. This is the only picture of L'Enfant and it was done by a young woman, daughter of the governor of New Jersey and it's as close as we are ever going to get to understanding what he looks like, consider that this is a cut out, a negative cut out in a paper. It's about the size of a quarter. So that means that the black part is the missing part. So that if Sarah the Heart, happened to slip a little bit with the scissors around his chin. He was stuck with this long chin as she couldn't correct it backwards. I think given what his father looked like, that he had a rounder chin than this and not merely so long. And the wig, Oh my dear friend [inaudible] found this image in a large sheet of paper that's at the American museum of American Art. And he looked it up and figured out that's a particular wig that he was wearing that was fashionable for a short while and you can't really tell much about the back half of L'Enfant's head from that. I'd like to start by reading, just one paragraph. The first paragraph in the book that I hope you're the firs 450 of the million who will buy it [laughter]. In this book, I intend to demonstrate that the L'Enfant Plan of Washington is unique. It is not an adaptation of the [inaudible] plans of autocratic nations. It is not derived from plans of fashionable gardens. It was not influenced in any meaningful way, by the occasional appearance of diagonal lines in earlier city plans. Instead, it was conceived as a diagram of the relationships among the essential elements of the new republic it was meant to serve owing little to broadly similar plans generated by dissimilar forces that preceded it. Secondarily, I will demonstrate that the geometry of L'Enfant-- that the geometry L'Enfant utilized imposed strict limits on his capacity for exploiting the full potential of every attractive characteristic of the landscape. This is aimed at you, Chas. So, by insisting upon the plan's uniqueness and slightly undercutting its brilliance, I hope to clear ways some common misconceptions that have obscured it's unexampled expressiveness and now that I know which way to go with this. What I hoped to do is by talking about what we can see and what we can derive from what we see that we can get back to L'Enfant's Plan, meaning plan as an idea, not plan as a drawing. What was the idea that he had when he came here and this is an idea. As we go along you'll see some details that will reflect the fact that L'Enfant was a long time and intimate friend of Alexander Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton helped L'Enfant write his letter to George Washington asking for the job. It was only part of what was in the letter, but he was asking for the job of the-- doing the design of the Federal Capitol when it came to be. That was about nine months before the site of the capitol-- the responsibility for picking the site of the capitol was given to George Washington. The date of that letter, by the way, was September 11th, 1789. It was-- what's important about it is not that retroactively significant date, but the fact that Alexander helped-- Alexander Hamilton helped him write it and it was Alexander Hamilton-- the day Alexander Hamilton was appointed to be Secretary of Treasury. So it was not a casual job, it was not a casual little thing he helped L'Enfant with. It was one of the things that was on Alexander Hamilton's agenda. This is the L'Enfant plan as I have manipulated it out of the darkness that has enshrouded it for over a century and a half. There you saw the 1887 tracing and the 1991 scanned image, a black and white image. The 1991 which I really-- I've always been grateful to Richard Stephenson for having gotten that done and I'm not sure if Ralph, too. The two of them, 20, 25 years ago were terrific supporters of my amateurish bumbling around in the geography and maps reading room. Having that 1991 scan allowed me to look at it in comparison with the original, the manuscript, and this will be throughout this talk referred to as the manuscript. It helped me find out that there were in the tracing which has stood as the word on what L'Enfant intended for over 120 years. There were about 50 errors in it that might have made the difference if anybody had ever known. It was not an exact tracing. We've always thought it was but when you get down to the details, it wasn't. So I've been trying to derive an authoritative map that really does reflect what's hidden underneath in the manuscript. [ Pause ] This is the engraving. I'm not going to refer to it as the Ellicott engraving, it's the engraving. The other one is the manuscript, this is the engraving. In between the two, the manuscript is August 1791. The engraving is March and in this case October. They're almost identical in every important detail. March and-- I'm sorry, October of 1792. In November of 1791, that is after the manuscript had been delivered to George Washington, a report on the survey was made to Washington and to the commissioners of public buildings. And the report, it was a written report and they map and this is the map referred to as the map of red and yellow dotted lines which is an integral part of that report and it is a proof. There's proof in two media, a drawing and a letter that L'Enfant was a part of the redesign team that was required to lay out the elements of the manuscript plan which had been accepted as the working plan. But in general terms, the-- it was a sloppy piece of drawing, the manuscript was. It had to be improved in order to be laid out on the ground. This is an attempt by a man named William Partridge who worked for the planning commission and who had been, in fact the chief draftsman and architect on the McMillan Commission. He made an attempt to put the two, the manuscript and the engraving images together to determine what were the differences between what Ellicott meant to do and what L'Enfant meant to do. A number of people tried to do this. Sibley Jennings made an attempt at it about 30 years ago. And this is my drawing that I think helps explain what was going on. As Chas pointed out, in the 18th Century especially, drawings intended to say the same things, would sometimes say different things. What I've got here are the-- there are five plans that I tried to show and up in the corner, there's a legend that shows that Ellicott, L'Enfant, the map of dotted lines, the king map of 1820 and the Coast and Geodetic Survey of about 1927. Those are the different colored lines there and the significant thing about them is that they all mean to be describing exactly the same things except for the Coast and Geodetic-- I'm going to go [inaudible] different instrument. In the river, you can see that the East and West Potomac parks are drawn there. Otherwise, they all meant to be drawing the same thing. But look how many-- how the lines in no case do they exactly coincide. That's the difference, in large part, between the what have been referred to as the L'Enfant and the Ellicott plans. First part of what I'm going to be talking about is the geometry and what I mean is the plane geometry, the two dimensional geometry of the plans. And to begin with, just to understand what we are talking about, we're talking about lines, singe lines that represent broad avenues in some cases, I'm sorry, that's the-- this is a close-up of the manuscript, my derived version and you can see the different widths of the avenues, they are not quite straight. This has been taken over the years, this has been taken to mean that this is an artist rendering of what this is going to be. That's not quite the case. It's a quick drafting job. And this is at least the third or the manuscript is at least the third version of a plan, a map of the city. And what needs to be kept in mind and I think it has never appeared in the literature and been given the significance it should is that George Washington got a preliminary map from L'Enfant. Let me step back, two steps. L'Enfant arrived in early March. By the end of March, he was going around, he was riding around the landscape of the city with George Washington and talking about, "We're going to have this over here and this over here," and they agreed on many parts of this. But George Washington said, "I don't like the way you want to put the Presidents' house, put it over here instead." Well, so between the end of March and the end of June when Washington had taken a tour of the South, Washington was back at Mt. Vernon and L'Enfant went to see him and he said, "You know, here's my preliminary map. It's still not complete," and Washington said, yeah but you got the President's house where you set it, I want it where I set it. And he-- L'Enfant believed in this time. He also said, "Were going to have-- Washington said, "We're going to eliminate some of the minor avenues and we're going to have the exchange be between the President's house and the Capitol Building. So, the between June 26 and the beginning of August, that is essentially during the month of July, L'Enfant made, designed and drew the manuscript plan. So this is something that was still very much a work in progress. At that time, it was delivered to Washington and Washington understood that. He made him no less in a hurry to get an engraving done and maps distributed before the October sale of lots. But he knew that he was getting only a preliminary. So back to what we find on that, we-- and our heads have to change from, you know, there're not avenues going this way or there're avenues meaning to go this way. And I want to show just so we know with the languages we're dealing with. This is-- obviously just a set of ways, lines can go together and what I mean to show here is that if you're not planning anything and you've got a couple of lines and you're talking about a place where there is going to be a settlement likely they're going to come together the way number 1 does here, just casually crossing. Lines crossing at a right angle are a subset of that and it's a very specific subset. It doesn't happen accidentally. A line crossing a couple of parallel lines is another subset because the parallel lines are not going to happen accidentally so it's a higher level of difficulty to do that and so on to the whole group of them, lines that are at right angles and lines that are parallel and then you start crossing them with lines going in other direction and what this is adding up to is down at the end we've got at least the 9th degree of difficulty when you have lines that cross deliberately in one place and they are at least two systems intersecting at one place and in this case two complex systems. So you got a 8-pointed star out of that keep that in mind because we're going to see that L'Enfant work with 12 pointed stars as the basis for his design. Back to the manuscript just to see where we are and the sometimes there are some avenues that were deleted all together between this and the engraving. And sometimes people refer to Washington's letter saying "Well these are the avenues that were deleted, or going to be eliminated." They are not. Those were deleted in an earlier draft. These were even more that were put in that were ultimately decided not to be important. So we have-- how many of those? There are 11 of those, minor avenues. These are the avenues that were intended to be precisely the same though they we're drawn in some cases a little bit differently and in most cases drawn exactly the same and there are 19 of them. These are the lines that are different, that were shifted either in position or angle from-- between the manuscript and the engraving. And you can see that the French mustache here-- what it's really doing, take a look at this point, doesn't that line up exactly with the place where the eastern bridge was going to be at the end of this capital street, I'll give you the answer, yes it does. And this was aimed across town. These are two avenues that were melded into one and so the blue is the way that they will appear on the engraving. You can see them here and this is what we end up with, an avenue which is ramrod street from the Marine Hospital to New Jersey Avenue and then has a little hitch in it and is ramrod straight to the edge of town, not ramrod street all the way. [ Inaudible Remark ] >> Two degrees difference and it should be in fact we're going to be talking about degrees here. A degree a mile out from a starting point one degree is about a 177-- sorry 117 feet. So that if you're off by a-- you've got a deg-- if you've say you're doing something by degrees you've got about a 60 foot latitude and you're still about within a degree. A minute is only, is less than 2 feet. The-- this is the, that in red these are the agreed upon avenues, I should have said that there are 11 avenues that were-- were, were not share, that were shifted. So, these are all of the avenues. And how did we get here from what L'Enfant had shown in the first. One of the things was that they were-- the avenues were all gathered into groups. And I should use the word gathered too strongly but they were made less different from one another. These are the 15 degree 44 minute avenues, grouped around the Capitol Building. These are at approximately 19 degrees from-- the first one was 15 to 44 from the vertical. These are about 19 degrees from the horizontal. These are a combination that they all fall within 24 degrees of either vertical or horizontal. And that might sound, as though it's less controlled. It is actually allowing a great deal of flexibility but there is still order to it, there is still order even though what it means is that you've got the-- that the-- the more vertical avenues are at right angles to the less vertical ones, the ones that are lower angle. Then set in the east are at 27 degrees. And I should say here trying to point out for the first time that one of the effect of George Washington's moving the White House-- the President's House further west was that the rhythm that L'Enfant established on the east side of the Capitol broaden out on the west side in order to allow for that greater distance between the President's House and the Capitol. I'll talk more about that as I go along. The last group are really kind of left overs that didn't fit in to anywhere else. But they still were done within a few degrees of one another and, you know, having the right angle at New Hampshire Avenue in Virginia on the west there is a little less disorderly than just throwing a couple of avenues in. So this is a comparison between the engraving and the manuscript. And it's just a slightly degree of order that I think one would have to admit is more satisfactory. It is-- it might say-- one might say well you can't tell from this that it isn't the artistry being lost, it looks as if something has just changed-- just a degree of order but there's another type of judgment that doesn't come into this, that's true. But now we're going to talk about geography or look at the plan in geography. And geometry is timeless. If they were no-- even though it means measuring the Earth, if there were no earth it's possible that there still might be geometry it's an abstract concept. Geography is very physical. And it's meant it is necessarily measured in 3 dimensions. And more than just dimensionally it has to be characterized in other ways than just by measurement. And so when we get to putting a plan on the geography-- a set of geometric lines on geography, it's a whole different ball game. And this is the map that I did one of the three maps that I created. This is base on my studies of the original geography. This intends to show what the site looked like in March of 1791. If there hadn't been any trees there because I still don't exactly where all the trees were. But this is topography to fairly high degree of certitude. And you can see that there not much here, if we were not-- here's not the Young's house. And the mill was up there you can see the creek. And this is the road from the fairy over the bottom edge of Capitol Hill up along. And this is what is generally said to the old road that they-- that suggested the alignment of Pennsylvania Avenue. I don't think it needed to be that but, that the road was needed for L'Enfant to figure out where it was going to go. Here's a modification of that. This is the same landscape redrawn with the engraved plan overlaid on it. The first one by the way it was, Ralph and Dick asked me if the Library of Congress could have it. And they do have it now and it was in the exhibition in 1992-'93. And I was really gratified by that. There's another version that has the, the manuscript version of the plan laid over it. And the Library also owns that. This one is by Dennis Gurtz who's here and a much appreciated collector of maps of DC. And on this, I would like to show how the plan got laid out in a little bit more detail. This is where the Capitol was always intended to be. This is where the president's house is. And in here, at about 12th Street, is where the president's house was meant to be by L'Enfant. He thought he was going to put it up on that hill there, and he couldn't. So it was moved several hundred yards farther west. Well the next thing that was done was they took the-- they took the longitude and latitude and drew it out in their minds. Actually, drew it out north, south up to the road which I think while they were waiting for instructions on what else to do. Ellicott did lay out the old road which was abandoned almost as soon as the city came into existence, this part of it did. So it was difficult to find. But then the 16th Street access was also drawn up to there. Now I'm not going to go through each of the avenues in the order that they were put in place, but with each avenue, I am going to do all the avenues but with each one I want to say what is significant about how they were placed. This is the third point that could not be placed until they had gotten where this is, and where that was. And that is the place where the itinerary column was supposed to be by L'Enfant. It was meant to be placed there in the middle of an open space and before George Washington mixed the idea, this was where the exchange was going to be. So the stories you hear about the capitol building was-- faces east because that's where downtown was going to be. And not quite on the mark, there was no such thing as a downtown in those days. There were marketplaces in different parts of the city but the downtown, the center of commerce that was intended to be at what is now 12th and East Capitol Street, was intended to be the symbolic commercial center of the United States. The exchange was meant to be there, and the downtown would've, it wouldn't have been [inaudible] and Garfinkles, it would have been JPMorgan of Lehman Bros, the Rothschilds. It would've been the financial and trading institutions. And the reason that the itinerary column was there, itinerary column being the place that would have delineated a prime meridian of the United States to replace the one at Greenwich on American charts. It was not of course for another hundred years that the Greenwich Meridian was determined maybe less than a hundred years before there was a general agreement around the world, everywhere but France accepted the Greenwich Meridian and then I think around the world where one France decided they'd lost that argument. But we were intended, we-- and someday, you might know the history of the Prime Meridian. By the time the engraved map was done the prime meridian was at the Capitol. And then Thomas Jefferson thought it ought to be at the White House and so that's why we get Meridian Hill which used to have a monument on it and the Jefferson Stone which was then reproduced and is out on the mall. So these are the important lines that we're drawn to begin with. And K Street as I have worked it out K Street was the, I don't know what the term for it is if it's the one that they really stick with, it's the line of-- Chas used the term line of experiment. K street is the line from which the verticals and the horizontals were basically determined in the actual laying out of the city I think. And here is 12th street at the east. You can see the difference between the 12th street, the Capitol of the 12th street and the Capitol-- North Capitol Street to 16th Street inside about 1 to 1 half or 1 in 5 8ths. It had been I believe in L'Enfant's mind originally been a 1 and 1 proportion. These I just in a day when I was feeling generous I went around looking at the landscape and at the development of it as L'Enfant had it and trying to figure out which one of these locations would've been-- would he have known about and would he have tried to put these things, for instance the marine hospital, yeah if it was going to be anywhere around here where it went is about the right place. There is a [inaudible] down here at that time. It's not a convenient one but-- so around I just picked out some of the places that ended up being developed because what I was looking for was where are these significant places in the landscape that George Washington and L'Enfant would've agreed were places to be connected by the avenues. Well then we have to go to what's the nature of the connections and the measurement. This is the itinerary column and you can see it's in the middle of the square, 12th street, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina and [inaudible] Massachusetts. Am I wrong? Anyway we have over here and they go right to the middle. Here we have the Capitol with Maryland Avenue hitting Pennsylvania Avenue on the east. 82 and a half feet, that's five rods east of the center line, the same on the west of the center line. New Jersey and Delaware meet inside the Capitol Building well passed the equivalent faade you might say. We don't know just why he did this, I'm hoping in a few weeks to find out in Paris why he did it and I wouldn't mind having guidance from Irish Miller who is in a way-- she's who I'm arguing with right now. She is a worthy opponent in the debate over how much is garden tradition influential in this plan. And so why he did it just that way we don't know. It would be easier to explain why he had the president's house, the-- what might be the foci of the avenues in front of the two facades of the president's house. We know that he meant for the president's house to be a lot bigger and it's very likely that he just meant for these to be hitting the faade while they do with the front that is the north front, they miss it by 60 feet or so at the back. So the lines don't go straight through the focal points. But the very first one, the prime one of course is from the Capitol to the president's house. And that means that the distance here is determined by that-- the measurable of-- once this has been determined. I should say, there are several ways, I started by saying, where some-- let's say buildings or functions were placed. But they are either placed or they can be measured out from one point to another or the construction of the geometry can determine in this plan where they are. And what we do know from just looking at the diagrams geometrically and breaking them down, that there are pairs of avenues. Every avenue has its pair just about, not quite but almost all of them. Here's the pair of the Capitol. Here's with-- Pennsylvania Avenue, you get Maryland. There's the pair of the from Pennsylvania to New York at the White House. And then you have the parallels that this is the first, you know, the first of the pair that is parallel with that. And this was Louisiana which is a reminder that there were not as many avenues as there were streets. There was no Louisiana at that time. But then the-- I just drawn what became a fairly important, north south division. The pair of Louisiana Avenue is Virginia Avenue. It goes to the point of Maryland. You can see how this is developing already. You don't need to have very many points in place if you're going to start triangulating before you find yourself pretty much locked in. I want tell you something about New Jersey Avenue. It was-- I believe that the [inaudible] was something like 15 or 20 feet into the right of way. And people said, "Why not just move the right of way over". Delaware Avenue goes from that point in the Capitol to the head of a reasonably deep inlet, a creek outlet from-- that goes into Anacostia River. And L'Enfant had designed this to be warehouses and wharfage. And the avenue goes right along a descending ridge from the Capitol Building towards that point. If he had moved the avenue over by say 14 feet there. You can see-- and that would have been about that point. It would have been 70 or 80 feet out of place by the time it got near the head of the creek. And then, that would have meant. It would have made a mess of a major idea that L'Enfant had. So it didn't happen. Daniel Carol [phonetic] of Dunnington lost the argument because he was wrong. He was warned not to build the house there. He began the house when he knew there was going to an avenue there and L'Enfant was not fired for tearing it down. He was fired because ultimately it just got too difficult to work with, but George Washington told him-- told Jefferson and the commissioners that L'Enfant was right and what he did. He was wrong in the way he did it. He was not a diplomat. Here are the pairs for the rest of the Capitol. And here is the second set of pairs for the White House. This-- Pennsylvania and Massachusetts are not the same alignment, Pennsylvania being about 19 that-- New York about 24 degrees. But here is the pair for New York Avenue. It's the rest of the Pennsylvania and it crosses K Street exactly, exactly the distance that 16th crosses relative to, I mean sorry, 8 street crosses relative to 16th. Now, I didn't draw the line there because in fact, it crosses at an awkward point, it crosses at Washington circle. But at 23rd Street which would this would be. It went in, the alignment would have gone into a ditch. Right now, when you come up 23rd Street towards the circle, you can feel something, well it's a much filled and leveled out road now. What they did was they did an alignment on 24th Street. And later by offset measurement, they put 23rd Street in. So 23rd Street was definitely not a major point. But because it was symmetrical, it became one of the circles. And the fact that this line crossed this line and that this line was determine by being halfway between 16th and north Capitol minus a distance because of the offset measurement down here. What I'm getting at is, they didn't know when they were out riding around. They didn't know that point, Mt. Vernon Square which is one of the wonderful serendipitous elements in the plan. They didn't know they were going to be doing it. They couldn't have known. And if it had been off by, say, 80 feet to the East, it would have been too far over the side of the hill. As little as that, there was that much difference. It would not have been as effective as it is now. Here's Massachusetts Avenue which we can draw now because originally, it was aiming down here. So where the bump was and where the hook was, it was kind of out in the middle of nowhere. Well now, it has a beginning or a-- at New Jersey Avenue goes through that intersection which was determined and out into space. There were no roads over here. This was impassable. So it didn't matter though L'Enfant indicated there was a road here, there wasn't really. It didn't matter exactly where that hit there. So they went from there, from here to here and they crossed here, then came out with an equivalent of L'Enfant's earlier avenue which had gone this way, made it at right angles to New York Avenue, made another one at right angles to Pennsylvania Avenue and brought Rhode Island in hoping in the abstract to cross at Washington Circle and cross Pennsylvania and K. But they couldn't do it, there was a trench. They would have gone down 40 feet just a little west of Connecticut Avenue. So now, it's the one avenue that is obviously dead-ended in the middle of nowhere. Used to be a big radio sign on the office building there, it gave you a little excitement when you got to the end there. But there is nothing there now because of the geography. [ Noise ] Now, you know, I've run over the time I meant to take but I'm not done. [ Laughter ] Here we are on the east and doing essentially a smaller version of what was done on the West because the Maryland Avenue going East crossing the connector between Massachusetts in there and the column in the center, they established another access which is filled out by the North Carolina pair to Massachusetts. And then another parallel down here with Georgia Avenue. Georgia didn't like going through the swamp and the mess of water down here so at the first opportunity, they got a bigger avenue uptown and the rest are really just kind of filling in the outlines. And-- but what's important about all of these, the reason I've gone through all these is I want to get to the, what's the plan? These are the avenues in blue which connect the points that we picked out, I picked out earlier. All of the ones that had significance, landscape significance that you could say, "Well, these are places that ended up being important and they had landscape significance, too." Well, there aren't very many. I think of the numbers something like 14. So that-- and that couldn't have been the plan. It wasn't that he came and picked out all of these high points and connected them. It didn't happen, all right? Here, we [inaudible] back to the naked landscape and I went in a more general sense instead of looking for places that did become important points, I just went around the landscape looking for what are the high points? Where would you put a significant element? And here they are. And here is the plan with the open spaces that are in the engraving. [Inaudible] and here they are and here they are. And what I had found years and years ago, one of the first things that I did was this kind of plan and I moved the open spaces around on the geography by 100 yards this way and that. No matter where I put the plan of the city, no matter where I put the set of avenues and streets, it always ends up with about 30 to 35 percent success rate which says to me, that wasn't the plan. If it's no more than 35 percent successful at hitting the significance of the city on the significance of the landscape, that wasn't the plan. So back to the-- this is my-- an earlier enhanced version of the L'Enfant plan that I did, I just drew over the one I brought from the Library of Congress and this is what I see. The three parts of the democratic republic that L'Enfant was dealing with, as seen by Alexander Hamilton, were a presidency, an executive, a legislative, and the people of the United states represented in the one way that they were connected and had an active interaction with the government was in commerce. Trade and commerce were regulated by the government. That's-- the government was supported by what happened here and they were supported by these people being happy. This was a federalist diagram. This was the idea. Then there's the urban design. You got to have-- you can't just put a bunch of stars down, they don't do anything after that. How did they become a city? Well, one of the ways was to connect them with the entry points. Here are four entry points into the city, a major bridge, a major town, a major road and the way to get in from down river. Those were the other elements that were needed to make a city. Now in detail, if we put them together, and you've got almost all of the avenues and as a designer, I know that good design is solving the problem with the smallest number of moves and here we have only two moves. We have the stars and we have the avenues. That's the whole thing and what isn't included in this in blue are couple of the minor infill urban-design avenues. I think that's where it came from. And here's another way of looking at it. It's amazing what it can do to turn drawings around. Look at the significance of these entry avenues. This is the original Massachusetts Avenue and then they cut that part of and hooked itself, look what happened in the change from this to this, it was a matter of shifting this access. You can see the significance if you came in on access with the commercial center and the Capitol and straight on out how much more powerful as a design that was. So here we are again, this is what I think. L'Enfant left New York or Philadelphia wherever he was hanging out, at the time he got the letter. By this time, he knew that there were three elements that had to be related in the landscape of the new Federal City and they were the executive, legislative, and commercial and when he got here, he found the places to put them because that was what Jefferson told him. Jefferson's commission to him said, "Find the proper places to put the important Federal buildings." And the reason I'm so certain of this with messing around with computers. You can get-- derive an awful lot from a drawing that you haven't-- don't see at the first time you look at it. And so, I did that with L'Enfant's image and I was astounded to find that that's what he was thinking about all along. [ Applause ] Chas, you come up. Oh, I think you all agree that we have certainly livened up the afternoon for you and perhaps, the program in general. At this point, we're going to have about 5 to 10-minute question and answer period if we can turn on the house lights. As this morning's moderator indicated, this event is being videotaped for a subsequent broadcast in the library's website and other media. The audience is encouraged to offer comments and raise questions during the formal question and answer period. But please be advised that your voice and or image may be recorded and later broadcast as part of this event. By participating in the question and answer period, you are consenting to the library's possible reproduction and transmission of your remarks. I would ask you as you have a question to please stand, give us your name and then your question. Do we have questions from the group? [ Pause ] Yes sir, over here. [ Pause ] They're coming to you. [ Pause ] >> My name is Susan Pearl. I'm a historian from Prince George's County. I have a comment and a question. On the remote chance that somebody in this audience does not know the true story of the names of Jupiter's moons, I will say that Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto were the mythical lovers and seductees of Jupiter. And three of them were women. [Laughter] my question-- my question, I recently read that L'Enfant did a plan for Perrysburg, Ohio. Has anyone ever heard of such a thing? >> A plan for what? >> Could you repeat that again ma'am? >> I recently read that L'Enfant did a plan or design for the town of Perrysburg, Ohio. >> I ran across-- the question was about Perrysburg. Yeah, I saw that reference. It's one of dozens that I have seen. I don't know specifically about that when I know that I'd say dozens of what I think of it as similar. It's kind of sightings of the sasquatch, the same kind of thing. [Laughter] I'm afraid. I really don't know. I had an example, John Fondersmith is here and he had sent me last year, he had dinner in a place in Abingdon, Virginia over in the other side of the Blue Ridge. And the place where I had dinner had once hosted L'Enfant according to their literature. I think they got it mixed up with the place called the Abingdon that is about two miles from here where I'm sure that he had dinner. But a place that's a 150 miles away saw the name and thought it was them. And that sort of thing is it's rampant, I'm afraid. So, that-- it may be true but I would have thought I'd know something about it by now. >> The gentleman up there. >> All right. Hello, yes, my name is Allen White and I live on 12th Street Southeast just below Lincoln Park which I now see is the quintessential example of the L'Enfant idea. And I've always wondered why 12th Street was wider than all the other ones near it, but it's now obvious. This was to be the center of commerce. It's of course not. [Laughter] so, did others lose this concept whatever happened with the people, the commerce center in what is now Capitol Hill? >> Yeah, I didn't want to run more overtime than I was running, but the whole idea of having the exchange over there kind of fell away when Washington said, "We're not going to have the exchange there." And L'Enfant, if we see it from the map of dotted line which is a fairly good report on what was done. They haven't gotten over to the East yet when he left the job. So, those two things went together. The other thing is that the good water is on the west side of town. The east side of the city always suffered until well, after the civil war suffered from the fact that the good water was easier to get on the west side than the east. So, it just didn't happen. >> Do we have other questions? >> Yes. >> Over here. Yes sir. >> My name is Tom Clifford. I live along Burches Hill. That's square 622 on North Capitol Street. My questions would be both for Mr. Hawkins. Judiciary Square, was that ever really a part of a 3-point plan for the branches? And if you could also-- when would the Tiber Valley as it slides down from Delaware Avenue to the mall have been taken on its current contours? >> I'll tell you about-- I didn't really hear the second part of that. What about Delaware Avenue? >> I was asking if the-- when the Tiber Valley, the Tiber Creek came in, when it kind of started going back up hill to Massachusetts's Avenue and down again when that whole area was regraded, yeah, if you knew that. >> Well, there was-- that was mostly neglected. The canal came through-- the canal-- there were two parts of the canal that split near-- where Delaware that cross. And the history of it is really kind of obscure even because only when the corps of engineers wanted to do something with it. Did we pay attention at all? That was a kind of neglected side. And the-- it has to be kept in mind, the canal didn't work largely because it was at sea level and the tide coming up would fill up the canal and the tide going down would empty the canal. So, the canal was never an effective element in the trade. And the-- first, remind me again what was the first part of that? [ Inaudible Remark ] Oh, Judiciary Square. It's hard to tell when that came about. It was very early on that it was decided that it would be there. I've never determined that it was L'Enfant who said so, but it was-- it's the kind of-- it's the nose of a hill and a good place to put something. I don't-- I would not be surprised if somehow, we found that L'Enfant, when he was going to put the President's house about where 12th Street is, that Judiciary Square would have been the equivalent of Mt. Vernon Square in that earlier plan which has entirely disappeared. Do we have any other questions? [Inaudible Remark] >> This would be our last question. Yes, yes sir. >> Not so much a question, it's a comment. My name is Dick Randle [phonetic] and as far as the third element to the east of the Capitol building, in those days it was considered to be where Washington's commercial center would be. It was flat, dry easy to access, to the west, it was swampy, damp and I think that is a comment I'd like to add too as a result of my restudy of the area as a geographer. Thank you. >> Thank you. Don Chas. Thank you both. Great presentations. [ Applause ] We'll take 20-minute break now. Return at 3:20. This gives you sometime to talk about the french mustache. [Laughter] Our next session will begin at 3:20, Session III: Charting Washington's Waterways and Waterfronts which will be moderated by former council member Charlene Drew Jarvis. [ Applause ] >> Good afternoon. I am delighted to be here today and I thank Iris Miller for having introduced me to this opportunity and to be here and to listen to some of you who have been in the field for so long. It's really quite mind expanding. I had a lot of aha experiences already today. We're going to be talking about Charting Washington's Waterways and Waterfronts. Our first speaker today is Dr. Timothy Davis. Dr. Davis is a historian for the National Park Service. He received his Bachelor Degree in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He has written extensively on the development of parks and parkways in the nation's capital and he's currently completing a historical overview of the national park road development. He lives a stone's throw away from the northwest branch of the Anacostia in Hyattsville, Maryland. Our second panel is really a partnership. Iris Miller is our first speaker. She's already been referenced today earlier. Iris Miller has two master's degrees, one in architecture from Catholic University and a second, in secondary education from the University of Pittsburgh and additional graduate study in psychology. She served for three years on the Fulbright-- on a Fulbright jury for selection of travel scholarships in the field of architecture and landscape architecture. And in 1991, she produced a book, the Vision of Washington based on map, the Vision of Washington based upon of-- founding a new multidisciplinary program of-- and eight years of urban design. She racks in over a thousand drawings. It is now in the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division. The form of Central Washington, the focus was Central Washington setting a vision for streetscapes, public circles and squares, connections between them, visitors and building footprints. And our third speaker of the morning is Gail Sylvia Lowe. Dr. Lowe is a senior historian of the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum with additional duties as manager of the museum's research and exhibitions function. She serves as the museum specialist on African-American religious and spiritual traditions. At present, she is the historian and project manager for Reclaiming the Edge: Urban Waterways and Civic Engagement. She's a native Washingtonian, a graduate of Theodore Roosevelt High School, a former presidential scholar, a united history major, has a bachelor's degree from Harvard University-Radcliffe College, a master's from Yale University, and a master's in library science from the Catholic University of America, and a Ph.D. in American Civilization from the George Washington. [Laughter] so I'm delighted, pleased to welcome the first, Dr. Timothy Davis. Each of our panelists will have about 30 minutes to speak and we will have a question and answer period afterwards. [ Applause ] >> Thank you Charlene. That's a George Washington silver dollars throw away from the western branch. Well, I want to thank you Charlene and I also want to thank Iris Miller for inviting me to participate in this panel. And I want to thank the conference organizers for prompting me to look at familiar material in an unfamiliar way rather than use maps and plans to illustrate the story of the development of our creek, what I've done for the day is turn that equation on its head. And I'll be looking at maps and plans of our creeks to see what sort of stories they tell themselves, both about the evolution of the creek and its environs and about the changing social, cultural, and pragmatic concerns of planners, map makers, and the broader worlds in which they operate. Like most cultural productions, maps and plans tells us at least as much about the concerns of their makers as about the things that they essentially represent. In both senses they reflect evolving social factors, cultural concerns, technological developments, and professional agendas. In many cases, these as interpretations are conscious and intentional but sometimes they're not. It's also important to know that we bring our own perspectives as viewers, scholars, teachers, surveyors to influence what we see in maps and how we interpret them. These differences may reflect our [inaudible] of knowledge about specific maps, about cartographic practices, historical developments, our personal professional predilections, our social and ethnic backgrounds, or even transitory moods and inclinations. As the case in point as I was working over maps in the last two weeks, I have found this 1972 guide of the Capitol Beltway that I acquired somewhere along the way. On a very basic level, it presumably provides us with the factual information about the physical reality of Washington relatively seen after the completion of the Capital Beltway. Though it's noteworthy also and I reflect a perceived need for special guides to the Beltway, it will coincide as replete with extensive information about exits and entrances and proper expressway etiquette. On a more symbolic and perhaps using [inaudible] level, I can't help but look at this as a cartographic representation of the dichotomy between the world's inside and outside the Beltway. [Laughter] and relate it to classical maps with similar focus and intent with the Belt-- within the Beltway within the known world, Beyond the pale, beyond the Beltway is wilderness, the green nature wilderness and stark wilderness, disorder, chaos. Now of course, most of America may view this in the opposite way [laughter] and sort of like the duck and the rabbit, you know, where you either see the duck or the rabbit-- and depending on various inclinations, you know, the classic optic illusion. Now I want-- you could go in various places, but what again what I want to do is. Today , it's focused on Rock Creek parkway and its changing representations. Looking at them both these ways of chronicling the evolution of the actual space and it consider the way the nature of various representations and what they suggest about the cultures and individuals who produce them. Okay. Now we're going to see a lot of maps and plans that we've seen before so I'll skip over especially a lot of the early material fairly quickly but I'm-- I hope I'm looking at it sort of different lands, the lands of our creek. What do these images role? There's about creek play in both of physical and symbolic biography, other nation's capital as it appears in these maps. Another way I might think of it might be about you know, you're looking at the role that Rock creek plays as a real place and of the character in Washing's continuing cartographic chronicle. Also in recognition of the following presentation on the redevelopment of the Anacostia and associated waterfronts, I want to note that in many ways Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway provides an encouraging analog and perhaps prologue. Much of Rock Creek Valley was viewed in much the same way as the Anacostia is now as a neglected environment that have negative influence on surrounding neighborhoods and property values and this is like for rehabilitation as a recreational environmental amenity and as an engine of a cultural and economic revitalization, much of the rhetoric that we see surrounding Rock Creek-- or the Anacostia today surrounded the Rock Creek Valley for a good part of its existence. And, as is the case with Anacostia, the Anacostia, it's decades of often pretentious planning with any start stops and changes in direction to produce the amenity we now enjoy and take-- more or less take for granted today. Now, again, I think Patrick O'Neil look at this map. The early explorers of Rock Creek-- now if it appears in this large at least explorer maps, say John Smith or John Senex's new map of Virginia 1714, it's one of hundreds, many hundreds of creeks, tributaries coming into the main waterways which would serve the-- as a transportation needs of the new colonies, and also the explorers, Captain John Smith, he's not [inaudible] but he's thinking about Rock Creek, they're thinking about the native inhabitants and natural resources. But you do begin to see in this inset here, Rock Creek identified, here you see a mixture of English and Indian names reflecting an earlier contact stage, Potomac Falls, the Anacostian and Turkey Buzzard point. [Inaudible] Rock Creek portrayed but not named. As the colonial era progresses, the geography here gets mapped out and defined a bit more. Here you see Rock Creek, you know, acquiring it's name, acquiring at least an identity along there with Goose Creek which becomes the Washington Canal eventually and here, again from the [inaudible] Anacostia-- Alexandria area. But it's clearly one of the demarcations of this piece of land that may soon become the nations' capital, along with its big brother, that's its wayward big brother, the Anacostia. It serves as a geographic boundary demarcation for this promontory and as a natural geographic feature, it serves to anchor and bound, say, if somebody wants to develop a geometric obstruction to the right and again we've heard a lot about that. Again, if you look at L'Enfant plans, you've seen multiple times today. It's really on of the most apparent features that the Anacostia, the Potomac and Rock Creek bounding this thing and, however, the plan itself within those boundaries develop and [inaudible] many different interpretations, Rock Creek, Anacostia and Potomac, you know, create that entity. And here in Samuel Hills, engraving of Andrew Ellicott's, you see the physiographic features and it still serves to dominate but now you see the physiographic features, the underlying geography being dominated by the plan, also, increasingly dominating the scholarship about the plan. Of course, in the image we've seen multiple times today, Ellicott's survey, again, really shows you why the creeks and the topography play an essential role in the formulation of the District of Columbia particularly in the shaping of the Federal City and Rock Creek. Again, sometimes it's just this, you know, two dimensional obstruction, sometimes it's just a little stub, here it's getting, in it's topographic version, much more of a sense of a physical entity. But this boundary-- and once again, on Don Hawkins' presentations which you'll see here, when he pulls out and creates this figure ground tightening, you really see how the [inaudible] bend itself becomes a very distinctive part of the shape of the Federal City, this little blip which again you see much better in the thing that Don Hawkins did on the upper left, you know. It's mostly irregular form but geography is just fighting back and it was helping to shape the geometry. And, again, in the multiple renditions, the topography, physiography is way the different ways here a French engraving of the Ellicott plan where you will see marshes, the channels and the river, the more assertive Rock Creek Valley and of course the geometric plan side of it and more of a balance. And moving along again I'm going to move through the stuff that's been dealt with more rather quickly. As the 19th Century progresses and Washington begins to develop, perhaps more an image of the reality, we begin to see an increasing focus on Washington City, on the public buildings and spaces of the Center City beginning to dominate both the actual and symbolic geography of the capital. You know in cartographic terms you see it here in this 1862 Johnson map, where you show Washington, Georgetown is literarily in lower case, and Rock Creek relocated to that sort of demarcating stub roll but you have the footprints and renderings of the Smithsonian and proposals for the Washington monument and the expanded Capitol. This mall-centric vision of Washington is also apparent in a lot of the bird's eye views that increasingly celebrate this view that's focused on the, you know, the plans, visions, realities of the Center City with Rock Creek just sort of out there. When Rock Creek [inaudible] are portrayed, you know, the conventions of Romantic landscape painting, the 17-- 1840s image of Kalorama, a state along Rock Creek Valley and those placid, you know, sort of prototypical pastoral view of the-- with the creek in the background with an early version of Pennsylvania Bridge and this other view which of course I have in black and white where you're looking down the valley and you see Lyons Mill, which is in the area above current day P Street. Now if you think of public grounds in Washington at all this time, pretty simple [inaudible], you're not thinking about a park in the environs of Washington, you're thinking of Downing's plan for the mall from 1851 and various hopeful, fanciful romanticized renditions of it and again, the proposal for the capital. These are the public realms of Washington, and most people [inaudible] it. But, of course, this larger context still exists and you see very starkly and, again, these images have been shown, the [inaudible] map has been shown repeatedly. You see the open ground outside, you see Rock Creek, you know, asserting a-- and look closer. You can see how it forms the edge of the city out beyond boundary. You see largely comprised still have undeveloped areas, gentlemen of states and farms, mills identified along the creek and also serving as the boundary between Washington and Georgetown. Now, again, we heard mentioned of Michler's 1867 vision of a national park along Rock Creek. And, you know, the president's house, you know, [inaudible] the president's house was important but I would probably argue that, you know, this is 1860 fix the commission. The Central Park is, you know, the latest, greatest thing in American urban development. Public parks, the ideology and designers public park is in everybody's mind. Michler's descriptions of what's available and what can be done in this area along Rock Creek Valley, I'll quote it but, you know, actually quintessential rhetoric from the 19th century park movement. So, it's not just the immediate context of Washington and the president's house but it's much broader cultural trend that's influencing this preliminary and not particularly successful attempt to create a park along Rock Creek Valley. Because again, while it's a-- you know, it's a beautiful classic report of park-making literature, but it would take, you know, 30 years of politicking to develop the public support and convince Congress to[inaudible] the necessary funds which was reluctant to spend on a project that seemed largely to benefit local residents with little political pay-off at home. Now, does that sound familiar to anybody today? Here you see an extremely ambitious 1880s proposal for park along Rock Creek that is even more grandiose than Michler's. And, you know, it's numerous political financial reasons why that was never going to happen. Put it again, it shows the vision of this leafy natural area along the creek that's going to-- in some form, you know, they play an important role, and again, in the symbolic and physical geography of Washington. But, as you see here in 1887 map, the park is yet to be created. And instead, what you actually see, what happens is the soldier's home becomes the suburban part for Washington. People drove carriages out to the soldier's home, drove around the-- you know, the grounds are meticulously landscaped and maintained by old soldiers. It was the classic driving part that was popular. The other thing you see is the city at least plotted starting to threaten the notion of an expansive park on Rock Creek and also development in a kind of loose suburban development beginning to leap the creek into to Northwest Washington. And I can't see it from here. Now, this isn't one where you also start to see Georgetown identified as West Washington rather than Georgetown in an attempt by some elements to merge the two because Georgetown is kind of falling behind Washington. In 1890, you do finally, you get the creation of the park, the authorization of the park, it doesn't really start to be seriously developed for about another 10 years when [inaudible] according by the Army Corps of Engineers. So it can fill that role but there's a problem. As seen in this 1890 tourist map, the Rock Creek is isolated from the Central City, you know, which poses a problem for residents and tourists alike. You see, you know, real and projected parks along the mall and the Potomac Waterfront and you see the leafy beckoning park in the distance. But, how do you get between the two without going through busy and not particularly engaging city streets? Now, by the 1870s, '80s, '90s, it was well understood that what you did in the situation was develop a parkway. Washington needed a parkway like the ones that park was used to pass from urban centers to suburban parks or from park to park without having to go through unsightly surroundings and there are the dangers and disruptions of city streets. Cities like Boston, New York, Buffalo, were developing this interconnected park system. Minneapolis had a, you know, park system of connective parks and parkways put the national capital to shame. And other cities, Kansas City and others were doing it as well. Now, while there are a number of isolated, you know, that the area north of P Street is still relatively pretty much undeveloped. You've got the romantically landscaped Oak Hill Cemetery. You've got the park and zoological park. Also noteworthy here is you see the two at the time colored cemeteries to the Southwest of Oak Hill Park and just below the zoo which were enough a part of the experience geography, known geography of Washington in the 1890s to be included on the tourist map, which then, you know, [inaudible] disappear from the public consciousness for much of the 20th century, and then are rediscovered relatively recently. Bu they play an important role here. And another important factor seen here in this real property evaluation map is the low property evaluations along the creek. Lighter is poor. And so you see that the-- classically the creek is, you know, it's a stream valley, not very useful and it's surrounded by cheap housing and you can sort of see this might be blown up too far. Scattered housing, scattered small industries making the creek even if you could get down there and not a particularly attractive way to go. And again, making it right for the increasing idea of revitalizing cities through park development. Skipping ahead to the-- you see it's late 19th, early 20th century, 20th century visions of the Potomac Waterfront near the creek, gas works, ammonia works. Other small factories that, you know, they're heavily industrialized canal into Georgetown. Not a great way to go from the mall through Rock Creek Park. Which gets even worse, area between-- I mean P Street is virtually impassable. One critique described it as unsightly to the virtue of ugliness seeking out this scratch as a shabby sort of and disagreeable. The Washington Board of Trades characterization range from a most tedious and unsightly dumping ditch to a noisy and repulsive dumping ground. District official Richard Bell referred to Lower Creek as an open sewer and recounted incidents in which he have seen young swimmers using the bloated body of a dead horse as a diving platform. Arguing for legislation to improve the valley, Senator Elihu Root of New York asserted that it was little less than criminal to go on without doing something like we have provided in this bill in regard to the treatment of Lower Rock Creek, the cesspool and [inaudible] that it is. Again, analogous language thrown at Anacostia from time to time. Now by what-- much as we adore the Central Park Commission, they actually preceded in many ways on a lot of fronts. The Washington Board of Trade in 1888 developed this proposal for cleaning up much of the Creek Valley, putting a riverside drive and possibly diverting the creek or the parkway from that bend at P Street which was one of the-- in many people's minds most [inaudible] at disagreeable parts. In 1893, the district engineer proposed enclosing the entire creek more or less from P Street South and a conduit, and filling in the ground on top and building an attractive residential district, you know, Boston's Back Bay, you know, located along Commonwealth Avenue was, you know, the kind of thing they were looking for. And this proposal remained a serious consideration for a good 15 years. 1900, they bring down the prominent New York City landscape architect Samuel Parsons who's involved in Central Park and other places. He comes up with this very big and again grandiose plan for taking a huge swath of the area above Georgetown, again which by this time would have been economically and politically impo-- financially and politically impossible. And a kind of a-- you know, a [inaudible] form of boulevard which actually may connect the Rock Creek Park and the mall but completely ignores their-- the problem of the Lower Rock Creek. It skirts it entirely. Then he asked me to get to the Senate Park Commission Plan, in which at least in the most prominent imagery, the Rock Creek issue is literarily marginalized, you see it on the margins here of this grand vision for the Center Park Commission, which is really again on the most popular images, the development of the mall surrounding areas. Also with the famous models, the parkway, as you see a little stub of it, a little parkway along the waterfront to Lincoln Memorial. And I argue, actually argue at length in a-- the centennial reflection value with the-- that the Commission of Arts-- Fine Arts put out, that this is all, you know, it's also a very mall-centric historiography. Again and again we learned the history of the mall, the grand-- grandiose vision which is both the, you know, all the good and bad parts of the City Beautiful will-- are going to be packed into that vision with the usual suspects, you know, playing a prominent role. But it was the Senate Park Commission Plan. It wasn't the senate monumental core plan. A good part of the volume is devoted to parks and parkways and playgrounds, this elaborate series of parkways. They're going to catch up with Boston and surpass Boston with this elaborate of series of formal and formal parkways including one, depict the other one depicted along Rock Creek. And here they-- actually, the biggest section of those Senate Park Commission report is devoted to discussing the open versus closed value issue which they portray here along with elevating the waterfront section to keep it above the industry. Now, the Park Commission rules in favor of the open valley plan. It also proposes Parkways for the Upper Potomac and envisions the revitalized Anacostia as a sort of Henley on Thames kind of English ideal river. And we're still working on that. But so the Senate Park Commission, you know, the most prominent architects, landscape architects, City Beautiful advocates of the day, Burnham, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., the commission-- oops sorry, the Commission of Fine Arts, long time secretary Charles Moore. They made a decision and, you know, so of course we're going to get the open value plan and we're going to get right to it, right? Well, obviously you don't know how things work at the District of Columbia. It takes another 7-8 years just to hush out the open versus closed valley argument. A lot of people in Georgetown, especially the business community actually want to fill over the creek and make a solid connection because they do things that it will help Georgetown catch up economically and socially with Washington. So in 1908, you get more, more important more plans, various permutations. So until 1908 that the decision was made, and I think so 1913 to get the parkway authorized, the boundary set, more presentation of this open valley image. Throughout the teams you get multiple visions is incredibly ornate, classic example, the City Beautiful era rendering-- what was that? It's rendering of this very elaborate parkway. Visions of-- this is the P Street bend area which was forecast as one of the most beautiful and useful and compelling urban parks in America developed according to this fashion. But 1915, the famous National Geographic special issue on Senate Park Commission Plan, you still see it's a proposed parkway, like Fort Drive, like the things along the Anacostia. Finally, in the late teens, here you are, 20-- early 20s, you start to get, they clean up the bottom of the parkway, now that's actually looking south from Pennsylvania avenue bridge. The northern park, there's a kind of a vernacular vital pass went up to the creek, but the middle park is still, you know, virtually impassable and an eyesore and a public health menace. It takes the better part of the 20s and early 30s to get that cleaned up and massively rehabilitated. And during this time, you also get the popularization, the automobile. So you see the plan, it's increasingly streamlined, it becomes less of an ornate pedestrian park with much-- lots of access, more and more green tunnel into the center of the city. And when it's completed, it does function as we all know as a [inaudible] amenity and park. But it also increasingly is viewed as a [inaudible] in 1937. For 1937, they're already doing the one way traffic era because it's actually becoming overloaded. Now another thing it does and not unintentionally is Rock Creek Parkway plays a significant role in displacing the African-American population along Rock Creek Valley, the lower part of Rock Creek Valley. Here again you see a, you know, darker-- is darker. The environments of Rock Creek and eastern towards down western Washington it have the African-American. And the Creek itself plays an important role in the ceremonial religious recreation life of the African-American community. Most of the houses that were destroyed to make the parkway were occupied by African-American. Entertainment places like the Blue Moon Theatre were also demolished to make the parkway. And, you know, it wasn't just a bunch of new deal, people hunting bargains and old houses, it was the physical transformation and [inaudible] and social transformation created by Rock Creek Parkway to play the prominent role in the gentrification of Georgetown. So in this poster image, you see, okay, the [inaudible], we've got the parkway and, you know, everything is great. The grand plan has been envisioned and realized. Well, even big plans are subject to the business students of the time and traffic engineers. This is one of the scariest cartographic representations of Washington in my book. And this is a traffic flow diagram, from the 1946 DC highway plan showing traffic projected to move along Rock Creek Valley. And here you see most of the upper park along the west side of the park. But it wasn't going to be a problem because as it proclaimed, the expressways can be beautiful, as exemplified by this short lived plan for raised expressways along either side of the mall as part of the capital expressway. The 1950, senate park-- the plan for-- conference plan for Washington recapitulates this history and again, you see the prominent little Rock Creek place in it and presents Rock Creek Valley as both an amenity for Washington, and in this part of the larger regional park plan, regional park planning coming to the floor at this point. But the transportation issue continues to pose concerns to get the classic in or and out our loop, and these radials, the classic planning device from the mid 20th century. And again up to the 1950s, we're fighting efforts to put up an expressway through Rock Creek Park. Now, 1961, they developed the 2000-- year 2000 plan was what I guess you would call creative graphics. Speaking of professional training and personal predilections, I'm going to make a wild guess about when Don Hawkins might have gotten his professional training, his emphasis on abstract-- abstractions and-- and you see Rock Creek, I guess we do see it as-- it this green [inaudible] that, you know, through north in this very abstract town rendering of Washington. And again I suppose I-- this is actually those green furrow between the yellow-orange blobs, which you know, we can build a [inaudible], you know, there is a-- build that plan, you know, here's a-- how Rock Creek appears in this 1950s, early '60s of planning documents. And they do actually get down to more of precise plans, with discontinued tension between Rock Creek as park and Rock Creek as an element of the freeway system. I hear you see it mostly getting a glancing blow from the inner loop, but you see these suspicious arrows coming down, they learn not to really show the arrows going through Rock Creek Park at this point, but that's still, you know, up for debate. And you'll also hear at the beginnings of transit, rapid transit being an important role and on, you know, in combination of this [inaudible] will be filled out with these [inaudible] improvements. And again Rock Creek presumably is the middle of there somewhere. Now, as part of reaction to this kind of abstract planning in [inaudible] in 1967 presents to the conference of landscape plan for Washington, DC which is a fundamental building block for his game changing design with nature, where he asserts that one should, you know, look heavily at the-- then that builds out of the natural identity of the place as revealed through physiographic features. So multiple overlays and compiled drawings showing this underground, underlying geography, topography, ecological associations compiled to create this composite landscape identity on the upper left, which is then combined with social, cultural, historic factors to allow the planners to work from the genius loci of the place, which ostensibly gives them rather an imposing a priori, you know, baroque or City Beautiful, or squiggly designs on the landscape to design according from-- to the [inaudible] will have evolved from nature. This actually-- it becomes a little more specific in the 1967 comprehensive plan which come-- again, builds on all these different planning efforts, and is kind of an embodiment, an actual playing out of [inaudible] ideas, where you look at all these basic urban functions. And again Rock Creek, you know, appears significantly in all of them and begin development plans. And here, once again Rock Creek's most prominent roles have to do it now. It's kind of an express parkway and a park system. And of course, I think Iris will get to this, they also talk extensively these projections for the Acostia. And finally, you see in this centennial reproduction, you know, reflection on [inaudible] to the Montgomery Commission Plan. You see Rock Creek again as this-- they're reviving both that kind of turn of the century, you know, [inaudible] kind of imagery, but perhaps a little bit too much of the late great Thomas Kinkade, to create the sort of fanciful romantic vision of Washington. And again, putting towards the next talk, you see now the left side-- the west side is done. We're looking east, and Acostia is the next river to be addressed. And finally by the 18-- 1990s, Rock Creek, Rock Creek Parkway, Rock Creek Park become historicized. They are now historic examples of urban planning, landscape architecture, traffic engineering. They're the subject of national [inaudible] nomination. They have [inaudible] reports, a scholarly book and articles. And then you see this rendition created by [inaudible], which is at the time very state of the art combination of digitized aerial topography with field checking and hand drawing. And finally, I think it's important to remember that, well, there's much to learn from analyzing representations, abstractions. We also need to approach the [inaudible] the role that Rock Creek and its environment play in the everyday lives of Washingtonians and visitors to national capital, the individual geographies, the individual cartographies, people's minds. The ways in which the thing functions as both the physical and a symbolic landscape for a wide variety of users, you know some, the long plan uses, some more serendipitous, subversive, and in some ways antithetical to the disciplinary regimes of designers, cartographers and scholarly investigators. Thank you. [ Applause ] [ Noise ] >> I too want to thank the-- I'm not a [inaudible]. I do want to thank the planners of this conference, and specially Ralph Ehrenberg, and all of the participants, and those of you who have taken the time to come today. As for Don Hawkins, I really had planned to ask him not to mention my name today, but since he did, Don, I'm going to invite you to join me in France in October. And since mainly we agree, we can walk these areas together and determine how things really work. But I did appreciate two things about your presentation, especially the graphics and how you chose to prove your point. And secondly, speaking of [inaudible], and the fact of why he was dismissed because there is the [inaudible] and domain, and it existed in France, as well as in United States. So I appreciated what you said about him. Charlene, you asked me today why and how long I've been involved with rivers because some of you know I'm involved with urban issues and maps, but I was on the George Marshall plan to sponsored by the Embassy of Austria to go to Vienna and study issues of renewable sustainable energies and rivers. That was my issue and afterwards returned and sponsored a conference called Learning from the Danube, Vienna, Washington, clean water, flood control, and recreation. Most of the descriptions today have been related to historical issues. Tomorrow, we will move into some future issues and I would like to do that today as well, moving from some historical issues into some envisioning, particularly with my Urban Institute Studio at Catholic University where we worked with communities, government agencies, private consultants and try to work in the format of a public-private partnership. I suppose I also should thank Ron Grimm and others from geography and map division, who has spent so much time with me over the years teaching me about Washington. Just for a few written comment, actually I can see better without these. Maps together with images tell about patterns of settlement and the focus of society. Often serving as a reflection of community values, they are the collective memory, the polemic choice. They inform the reader pertaining to the dreams and inertia of what the public realm might become. In his book The Next American Metropolis, Peter Calthorpe brought periodically America reinvents itself, simultaneously discovering the best of its past and marrying it to the irresistible forces for change. I believe the time is now. I too today believe the time is now as we move to the 21st century. Our city Washington, DC is our national capital. It is also a primary international capital. It calls up for us to acknowledge this in a treatment in the design of our public realm to commit the funds and the dime to make the improvements and the things we need to do for the future. The urban vitality and viability of our city requires that we think outside the box, that we take off what I call is our visor and open up to new ideas. Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass wrote, "Once I pass through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use, with it shows architecture, customs, traditions. Yet now, of all that city, I remember a woman that I casually met there." A new American urban landscape is emerging, showcasing river fronts of infinite compelling images, often inspired by impressive precedence from cities worldwide. And I don't mean just taking these ideas and implanting. I mean taking these ideas, having the light bulb go off, transforming them to make something new and impressive here, mixed with fantasy and originality. They are the stage set for life, for activity, for memories. They are the background about which what Whitman writes, through maps and drawings, we can learn of both the reality and the vision for these dreams. I want to make another comment related For many years, the improvements in this city have been on the west side of town. We've heard people talk about the need to give equal strength to the east side of town. And I make a plea that we really try to do this. Now, the first set of slides that I have will deal with the first century interest in rivers as industrial, commercial, ports and some boating recreation. And then, I will move toward a developing interest in tourism, the Senate Park Commission or McMillan Commission Plan and City Beautiful Movement, which then begins to create a new thinking and image for the 20th century. And hopefully we can then now begin to rethink for the 21st century. So here we have a series of maps from 1790. The Priggs-Bell [phonetic] map, the [inaudible], Thomas Jefferson's vision and this one from France. Maps from the United States created great interest in Europe. And I found this one when I had a grant from the French government in the early '90s to go to France. This was in the archives of des affaires etrangeres, the archives for foreign affairs. This based on the Ellicott design. All of these maps as you notice have soundings for the depth and channel of the river. Again, here are the Stone [phonetic] and Hilgard [phonetic] maps. Again, focus on the rivers, but primarily for the soundings, the channels and the depths and the [inaudible] view shows a little bit of the Washington Canal and boating on the river. The [inaudible] map of 1855 and this [inaudible] map of 1861 showing a larger image than some of the other maps we've seen, again show the soundings and the depths of the rivers. And then we come to the late 1800s when tourism, for many reasons, some for Christian society organizations, some for growing interest in the city of Washington become important aspects of mapping the city. For those of you that know the book by John Reps, he talks about visitors to this city and they comment on this being a hardship tour, whether they are European visitors or people who are in Congress representing their states and he can't wait to get out of the city. We've heard about some of the first paving of the streets that were wood streets and yet still not satisfactory. It's hard for us to believe to date that our major streets and avenues were paved with wood over a hundred years ago. And then finally, we come to the Senate Park Commission Plan or McMillan Commission Plan of 1901, 1902. Tim showed these images of the civic core and most people tend to remember this commission for the images of the central core. But if you read their very thick book, they dealt with much more than the central core. They dealt with communities, the needs for parks throughout the communities. They dealt with [inaudible] and said we should not build houses and commercial buildings on the creek side. We should allow that creek and the hills to be natural. And any structures that are built should be across the street facing toward the creek but not into the creek. They also showed what might be along the rivers, the Potomac and the Anacostia Rivers, Tim showed some of those images. I will have some images as well, whereby they said it is important to keep the natural landscape. We now talk about sustainability and stewardship. Those are some of the quintessential words of our vocabulary today. But those were things that the McMillan Commission who was advocating back in 1901, 1902. In addition, this map, which is seldom seen, shows the potential for extending the streets and avenues of the L'Enfant plan be on boundary street beyond the in town suburbs. So, you have these for the reddish pink lines that they propose to continue the concept of the L'Enfant plan These two comparative plans, the SPOT satellite map, SPOT being the French satellite company in Western Virginia shows the rivers and the red areas represent greenery, whereas this Google map shows what we're more accustomed to seeing when we look at maps and rivers. And look at what happens at the Anacostia River as the river heads toward the Potomac and the river is silt up and it gets black. And here you see this also in near the tidal basin Comprehensive plan from DC 1985 shows a vision of a lot of greenery in Washington. I'm going to talk now about the visions of my Urban Institute Studio for the lower Georgetown area as seen here. And we can compare the river front from lower Georgetown and the Anacostia near Poplar Point and historic Anacostia which my colleague Gail Lowe will speak about further. These are images of when we begin to think outside the box. Here in Georgetown at Washington Harbor, this central plaza moving toward the river, paving ideas, creating a sense of space. And along the river, both the wood walkway and the paged area where in the summer as, you know, you can hardly get through the space, there is so many people. Boats are docked up, and along the tidal basin, a more traditional classical landscape in Washington with the view of Washington monument. Here we see the Senate Park Commission proposals for Georgetown. Here lower Georgetown with an upper promenade roadway, walkway to separate the industrial commercial areas from the more prominent areas for people. And further up river, a series of terraces that this would be perhaps the equivalent of MacArthur Boulevard. So now how about some precedence. In Paris, the [inaudible] or viaduct, the old viaduct and railroad line where underneath there are cafes, shops, art studios and a wonderful park above. The people come from all over the city to walk on. And the high line in New York, this image was taken before the high line was even built but we were very impressed with the opportunity to create something like that for the Whitehurst Bridge and we call it a bridge because it's not really along freeway and we think it could be wonderful place. And in Portland, Oregon, several places where there are amphitheaters and places together. This one in Osaka, Japan, a walkway along the river and one needs to think about what can be done still a popular point in Anacostia and all of these images were put forth and suggested before the Georgetown waterfront was redesigned. This one in Chicago, along the building edge a more formal promenade and across from it along the Chicago River a more informal landscape. Of course here looking at the early phase of Georgetown waterfront just beginning to be resigned. However, we think they didn't go far enough and here both ideas for Georgetown and for Anacostia and especially for Anacostia, the [inaudible]. If you've heard about this for one month between July and August in Paris, along the same, they closed off the roadway, four lanes of roadway, high speed roadway. Two lanes remain walking lanes and two lanes remain beach and they bring in sand, they bring in places to change, changing rooms with lockers. They bring in benches and chairs, places to sit. Some of these areas are just lawn that all on platforms. They bring in places for children to play, climbing, all kinds of areas, cafes, music, great place. And this place is not just on the river front but above, in front of Hotel de Ville, that great plaza in front of Hotel de Ville where they bring in water for drinking, for changing, for cooling off and fields for volleyball, basketball, and so forth. And here you can see the extent of this river front, the Hotel de Ville and the above places for games and play and gathering and here all along the river front, they've now extended it across the river to where the new library is. They've brought in a huge barge where they have cafes, restaurants, places to sit out in the sun, and also a huge swimming pool. And that's somewhat similar to one they do in Leon, France on the river there. This we proposed both for a concept for Georgetown but most especially for Poplar Point which is still in the process of rethinking it. So, now I mentioned the Whitehurst and this is the Whitehurst. Here is a drawing by one of my graduate students showing ramps down this from Portland Oregon and similar ramps we found in Osaka, Japan and two possibilities for how to handle this. The cheaper way and easier way would be to create only three lanes of moving traffic. And the fourth lane overlooking the river front could be for pedestrians and bicycles with some extensions out. And here you see the concept of three lanes for moving vehicles and the fourth lane for pedestrians underneath new lighting, creating a feeling of an arcade. And in this option 2, personally I don't think we need to have four lanes of traffic but my husband thinks we do. So, it's not only Don and I that have these little nuances but there's also the option of adding another pedestrian and bicycle lane. And here is-- here are some images of how great it could be underneath protected area for markets, restaurants, cafes for the people that love to walk there, particularly the people that live in the nearby neighborhoods. Also, we need to think outside the box. Why can't we get down closer to the water? Particularly in Georgetown and in new areas of the park, the height is at least 15 feet high at the water's edge. And why can't we have walkways closer to the water? And here you see a student drawing and this section, the Whitehurst, the upper walkway and the lower walkway closer to the water. Here, this is in Pittsburgh where Michael Van Valkenburgh, an architect from Harvard working with students at Carnegie Mellon designed this concept to get closer to the water at the Allegheny River. Here in Paris, you'll see many ways to get down to the river front, the possibility of boat docking up and even memorials. We need memorials, why can't we have a memorial somewhere Again, other options on the waterfront Rock Creek, we can't get across the lower part of Rock Creek. We looked at making the canal usable again. Why can't we? In Europe, they've reactivated their canals. They have flash cards to get through the locks. And we've worked with people who were experts on the canals to come up with an idea to reactivate the canal and to open this part of Rock Creek which used to be open for both traffic, a suggestion for a bridge to go across to connect closer to Kennedy Center and the Boathouse. And again, by the canal and the walkway on the canal and the lower towpath, if you look at this picture here, you'll see a wooden walkway that's very difficult to get up for people who are fit. And I am fit, I'm a mountain climber. And I find this an aberration. If you have to get your bicycle from one level to the other, it's horrible. So, we designed a ramp that even a wheelchair could access because we met people along the canal who rode their wheelchairs. And why can't we reactivate the aqueduct bridge with a park on top and perhaps a little cafe on the bottom. Some other maps that this one water veins have been shown. Joe Paseno's [phonetic] map showing green spaces, the need for activating our green spaces. In this 1926 Roger's map, Charlene and I co-wrote the text in my book, Washington in Maps. And this is one of the best maps showing green spaces throughout the Washington area. It's also a map that really disturbed me on one level and on the other level has some sense of hope. Because it shows schools as they were segregated by color in 1926. We've come a long way from that except one of the things you notice is that we were a mixed city and then we moved to become a segregated city in our residential life. So this map has a lot to contemplate. And finally, another SPOT map of the original 10-mile square and a vision for Washington by Leon Krier in 1985, a vision to show a new idea. And while this vision is not a good reality, at least it's a place to start thinking. Quickly, I'm going to just go through several more images for the Anacostia that the Urban Institute Studio also proposed. And here, you'll see the waterfront area preserving a large part of Poplar Point with some development similar to Georgetown and with townhouses close to the existing I-95 Highway but making that highway into a boulevard in the section near historic Anacostia creating a huge block wide bridge from historic Anacostia to Poplar Point over the roadway and over the tracks ending with a plaza of dancing waters and then continuing on pathway with an amphitheater at water's edge and a memorial to Frederick Douglass. At the river front, restoring the wetlands, having a promenade and wetlands restored. And because the Poplar Point floods often five times a year, looking at [inaudible] just south of Vienna, we noticed how they have a temporary barrier wall that can be constructed within half an hour if floods are about to come. This is similar to what the park service just did at Constitution Avenue and 17th Street. And so, I think again, we need to be thinking more about our river fronts and how they can make an important contribution to our future and our youth. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Good afternoon everyone. It's certainly an honor to be here. I have Iris to thank I guess because-- let me issue the disclaimer for this afternoon which is that I'm a newbie at this. I've just-- I've had a personal interest in maps but I haven't really paid attention to them and studied them and tried to tease out all the information from them until about a couple of years ago. So, the comments that I have this afternoon are sort of in the nature of preliminary ruminations. I'd want to tell you a little story about our fair city and a vision for its growth and development to the east. It's a story that ought to be well known but it's often shortchanged and nearly forgotten or at lest misinterpreted for some reason. Following are just a few highlights as well as a few lowlights of the story as illustrated through a small selection of maps of exploration, scientific documentation, and social vision. Study of these maps and plans allows us to assess city and citizen efforts to now re-imagine land use particularly along the Anacostia River. Allows us to restore and recover green space and provides us with new opportunities for citizen engagement with the city's natural and built environment. When-- we've seen this map before of course. Since at least the early 17th century, there seems to have been a constant notion driving human accent on the east-- southern and eastern shores of the Anacostia River. That notion is that that land is empty. Nobody lives over there. There's nothing going on. And so, East of the River would be a right area for settlement and development. European settlers arrived here and found what one explorer described as the most pleasant and helpful place in all this country with fruitful wooded lands and a river teeming with fish and wildlife. It seemed a good place to live with many natural resources to exploit. And yeah, as John Smith's early map shows of, there are lots of folk here already and they have been here for at least 10,000 years. And there is this-- there is this one little [inaudible] folk-- I think I'm in the right spot. Does that [inaudible]? There's one little group of folk who are well known up and down the eastern coast all the way to Canada and far inland as what had-- what became Upstate New York and Pennsylvania. Then the [inaudible] whose main fortified town was near what is now Good Hope. And they have established settlements. They have a thriving quarrying and lithic industry and an active trading relationship, as I say, up and down the eastern seaboard. Conflict with settlers led to land loss by these Native Americans. Disease and warfare all but destroyed them in their way of life. Absentee land grant owners, settlers, and land speculators soon took over the territory because of course no one lived there and the land is empty. Now, other presenters have spoken about the decisions and desires to place the federal city between the Potomac and the Anascostia Rivers. For my discussion today, just suffice it to say that federal decision makers and land speculators expected at first that the city would grow to the southeast, especially after the founding of the Washington Navy Yard in 1798, 1799. However, politics, economics, and the limits of topography quickly turned development to the west. This [inaudible] topographical map published in 1861 may be a bit hard to read at first, and it is for me and for a lot of folk. But if you work at it, eventually such maps give us a sense of time and space. We come to realize that it takes geologic time to carve out regions and valleys, to raise up bluffs and elevations, to channel deep rivers, streams, and creeks. This map compiled from surveys done in the late 1850s shows how settled and regular land use and development were on the Center City side-- oops, I'm sorry-- of the river, whereas here, you see lots of forested areas and all the contours and hatchers that indicate bridges and whatnot. But the Navy Yard and its bridge sit prominently on the river, on the southern north, western side. And the L'Enfant grid of roadways is quite evident. Across the Anacostia, however, only a few roads are laid out. This again is 1850s, 1861. And those roads follow mostly the old Indian trails and transportation routes. Uniontown, historic Anacostia, has recently been subdivided, and new residents are in place. The Saint Elizabeth's [inaudible] has its new center building and community development would take place around this installation. Most of the area moreover is still green. Later maps will show how constant the woodlands remain as part of [inaudible]-- constant the woodlands remain East of the River even with residential development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The river, as a result of dredging, silting and reengineering, is so narrow in its upper ridges that commercial shipping is not possible. And it's important to note that changes in the Anacostia River and impediments to its flow do not always show up graphically in maps of DC. Even the Potomac stresses and challenges are not made visual to the map reader. Unless one looks at naval charts, one misses any clues to the health and well being of our city's rivers except for often representations that are not to scale that show some changes in width and depth. [ Pause ] This is a US Coast and Geodetic Survey map from 1892 and then a detail from an MC [inaudible] map about the same, about the same time. East of the River still indicated as being-- especially in this map as being sparsely settled. But great changes have taken place. The river's natural shoreline has been extended a little bit. And you see that better in this map where this line chases the old shoreline. And so, you see the extension here of all these landfill. A narrowing of the river, the bridge of course, and even a landfill to extend Poplar Point a little bit. Railroads crisscross the shore and governmental installations have increased. New neighborhoods are thriving yet the river itself is narrower. I sort of like the detailed feature shown on this map. There's a nursery near the naval station. You have to get really close up on this to see it. There's a proximity now-- more of a proximity now of Poplar Point to the Navy Yard. And then the, you know, the bridges show up very well. Yet not all of the streets are laid out. Specific buildings may be located, however, and just a few that the map maker has thought were important. Even at this late date, in post reconstruction era, one gleans little information about the robustness and enterprise of residents East of the River. And I started to think, is this lack of detail meant to indicate that East of the Rivers is a land of opportunity open to all or do the map makers not care about what's going on in the eastern third of the city? Is there so much attention on the development of the federal city to the west that folk are just forgetting that all of Washington is not being shown in our favorite and less well known historic maps? The autograph of Washington City 1892, the-- the tourist map in close up and in person is a really beautiful map. It certainly trumpets the first class amenities of the nation's capital. This certainly would entice strangers or tourists to visit the city, especially with its [inaudible] of parks and public spaces. Not all of the city is depicted however. The concentration again is omniscient Center City and development to the west toward the Potomac. This tiny little corner right here is all that you see of the Anacostia River and all that you see There's a highlight of the industry with the Navy Yard, but that's really about all, and some sense of maybe recreational voting because the river at this point is really too shallow because of silting and reengineering to handle commercial traffic. Only Anacostia or Uniontown, Saint Elizabeth's Hospital and Fort Stanton are illustrated on the eastern side as you can see. And, this goes up here. These enclaves look like bold settlements in a green wilderness. Thus, even the smoke of a railroad locomotive you can see rising here along the narrow shoreline. But this is 1892. Other neighborhoods have been carved out along the ridges of far southeast and there's baffling activity East of the River. This area is not merely romantic uncultivated woods, pleasant, calm, and peaceful as that notion might be. Urbanization as shown by permanent roads and highways is advanced once again in the center city, in this view which is a highway map of DC in 1914. One can hardly find parts but large federal and city compounds are easy to spot. East of the River show signs of more regular settlement but roads still bend around topographical features. The upper ridges of the Anacostia are pencil-thin. At this time, Poplar Point is expanded even more. Oddly enough, when I look at this map, I get the impression that East of the River is trying to be even with its distorted street, a mirror of the West side. The thought is let's lay out as much of the suburban grid as possible. It still doesn't appear as though much thought has been given to preserving green space. Also, this map and other maps seem to cut off the eastern edge of the city very abruptly. It seems as though the land just falls off the edge. This may be the boundary of the DC diamond but it looks We've-- I always refer to the Rogers statistical map of 1925, 1926, and I certainly urge you to read the essay that Iris Miller and Charlene Drew Jarvis have written so eloquently in Washington in Maps. But for this discussion, let's just tease out some other information from this map. Yes, it is shocking to see the school system of the nation's capital laid out with such discriminatory precision. Still, we see how important educational institutions are for all segments of our population. And Mr. Rogers shows us some other things. Communities East of the River again still seems sparsely settled and physically separated from each other. To some extent, the communities East of the River, the neighborhoods East of the River are separated physically by topographical features but they're really close to each other and contiguous in their laying out. So, a map like this just doesn't give them-- give those neighborhoods full credit for being close parts-- close to each other and working closely together. In addition, you see extensive tracks of federally and city owned land which occupy a great deal of the territory that could have been devoted to residential use and economic development. After all, nobody lives East of the River, it's open and free, we can do whatever we want with it. The truth is that communities there were active, they were desirable as in city but out of the city suburbs, for city center workers, and for legions of entrepreneurs who exercise their entrepreneurial spirit quite extensively. As like-- as I said, the topography of the area doesn't show, so it's difficult to understand that these neighborhoods nestle at the foot of bluffs and ridges or follow ancient transportation roads along and across bridges. What also joins-- jumps out in comparison with earlier maps of the river and adjacent land is the long swath of landfill along the southern and eastern side of the Anacostia. The buildup of the unnamed on this map Anacostia Park, which was dedicated just 3 years before the map was made and the flaps across from the Navy Yard at around Poplar Point describe not only the narrowing of the river but also the creation of usable land for recreational use and for military installations. For fully nuanced appreciation of the social history and long time settlement patterns of the East of the River neighborhoods, it's important to understand these racial demographics of 1926 DC. The-- some of the neighborhoods here, historic Anacostia, Congress Heights, Good Hope were mostly white but they were settled cheap by [inaudible] with thriving African-American neighborhoods in Barry Farm and Garfield. All of these neighborhoods have long histories and associated historic properties. We lose valuable district city assets when we ignore the existence and contributions of our trans-river quadrants to the east. Now, Iris has told you about her Urban Institute Studio class at Catholic University. In 2006, she and her class undertook a study in urban design initiative focused on enhancements for historic Anacostia that would recapture the early vision of East of the River as an ecologically sound, economically stable and pleasant residential area. The students researched international precedents for highways, parks, transportation centers, and housing, and explored ways to enhance the architecture of Anacostia, and to restore balance to the natural environments. The students drew inspiration from the river itself in the flora and just considering the location of some of the features that they proposed building. They saw patterns for bridge railings, walls, and bicycle paths. There are research on tourist attractions and river amenities, this is in Chicago. And then, the river-- other river uses contributed substance to subsequent plans that were developed by the Anacostia Watershed Society, the National Park Service, and the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative. I particularly like these-- the presence for a sort of a dancing water fountain in a river walk promenade. These kinds of suggestions fired up the imaginations of citizens and activist groups and led folks that consider that as neglected as the East of the River neighborhoods had been as neglected as the Anacostia River had become. Perhaps it-- that it was now time to understand that wherever we live, we all deserve the best and we all have an opportunity to celebrate our daily and community lives. And so, a lot of these features being reintroduced along the river front would help bring-- help communities to understand that they too could have great-- made great contributions to the city. And this is just the compilation of some of the precedents that the students of the Urban Institute Studio and their final recommendations, some of those that they had made. I know we're getting on for time. So, let me just conclude by saying that [inaudible]-- sort of have this thought early this morning around 3 o'clock, which is when I get really good thoughts. Despite the graphic information that we find on any series of DC maps, they-- the land adjacent to and east of the Anacostia River is not empty. People live here, people work here, enterprise goes on along the river and the river on both sides ought to be an integrated part of all of our daily lives. It's incumbent upon us then as mapmakers and map researchers to tease out some other sources of information to include on the maps and plans that we make. We can't fully visualize DC without seeing in full the development of the Anacostia River and its environs. So, when we pay more attention to detailing our maps, when we include all of the city and not just this federal core, when we include features somehow graphically of social and cultural history that we can document in so many different ways, when we change the perspective and centrality of the maps from just the center core to Anacostia and its other 12 named neighborhoods and [inaudible], those changes will help us to encourage ourselves as residents, as researchers, as scholars to envision the East of the River again as a desirable place, the most pleasant and helpful in this country. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Iris, would you-- >> Thank you, thank you. You're very passionate [inaudible]. >> We don't have questions. >> I believe we do have a few minutes for questions. I'm looking at Ralph. Okay. And I have to read the disclaimer again. This event is being videotaped for subsequent broadcast on the library's website and other media. The audience is encouraged to offer comments and raise questions during the formal question and answer period, but please be advised that your voice and/or image may be recorded and later broadcast-- at a later broadcast as a part of this event. By participating in the question and answer period, you are consenting to the library's possible reproduction and transmission of your remarks. May we give our presenters another round of applause? [ Applause ] And may I ask if there are questions? [ Pause ] Or comments? [Inaudible Remark] There is one in-- there is a question or comment in the back. >> Yes ma'am. >> Can you stand for us? >> Sure. I noticed that there was no discussion of the displacement caused by urban renewal in Southwest DC, which I probably have a grossly oversimplified notion of that portion of history but it seem to me that that dumped a huge number of people into Anacostia that doubled or even tripled the population density. And I'm wondering if this isn't just a perpetuation of the themes you talked about as if not being empty it's certainly a lot of space over there and is available as a dumping ground. We have White Plains, we have the population density, we have a number of places that were placed over there in that spirit now. >> Certainly there have been many demographic changes, East of the River as I said, up until just about the time of urban renewal. Most of the neighborhoods East of the River were mixed or white with some defined enclaves and neighborhoods that were mainly African-American. That thought that we can shoehorn huge populations at the drop of a hat into a very narrow space, which is already constrained by topographical features really did upset the balance East of the River. And as you may glean from your-- from listening to the news on television, radio, on reading about it or even doing some historical study, the migration has been and the push has been to the east. Move everybody across the river and it's almost once you're across the river you're out of sight, out of mind. But when if that gets filled up, keep pushing east 'cause DC is carved out of Maryland and Virginia, let's just go send folk back to Maryland. There's-- there has-- we have to be a lot more conscious and a lot more responsible in acknowledging our own history and some of the decisions that we've made and not try to hide that but at least learn from those lessons, and they were hard lessons to learn. >> I just want to add one thing. The other issue that's developing more recent land last several years is the concern about gentrification. And now that a certain population has been moved into Anacostia with the opportunities that may present themselves, there's a concern about gentrification and how to be equitable with the entire population that's there now. >> I just like to add to that that the Rock Creek story I think is really relevant here where the creation, you know, the turning of the creek from a liability to an amenity was good for certain populations. But there has to be great care in revitalizing the area along the Anacostia to see whether continuous gentrification and transformation of DC as you say in [inaudible] County. >> There are also environmental justice issues as well. The Anacostia River is the main river of the Anacostia Watershed and is part of the Potomac Watershed, part of the Chesapeake Watershed and there are issues of upstream, downstream impact. Communities upstream in Montgomery County and Prince George's County sometimes do not understand the impact on populations at the bottom of the drain as we say, at the bottom of the watershed. And so, communities particularly east of the Anacostia River in wards 7 and 8 are unduly affected by irresponsible actions and trash that flows downstream. The river can't handle it and populations can't handle it either. >> Many-- many, many public policy issues here. Yes, a question at the back. [Inaudible Remark] On the left. >> Yes, hi. My name is John Miller. My question is the street grid west of the river is mostly laid out numbered alpha numerically and Uniontown or old Uniontown, historic Anacostia is I guess one of the only parts of East of the River that follows that pattern. I mean there are some certain neighborhoods, but can you talk about how and why that is? >> When Uniontown was laid out-- subdivided in 1854, actually the streets were named for presidents, but overtime that changed. And as I said, the DC grid pattern of numbered streets running north and south and name streets running east and west was somewhat transferred East of the River. The grid falls apart East of the River when streets dead end into bluffs. And you know, so you still have a problem with that but originally a lot of the streets were named for as I say for either presidents or then later generals or famous persons. Martin Luther King Boulevard was originally Asylum Road 'cause it ran to Saint Elizabeth's and then it was named Nichols Avenue after the superintendent of Saint Elizabeth-- the first superintendent. So, there is just some historical precedent, as with many cities for naming streets after famous people. >> Thank you very much. I think we won't take another question or maybe we will take this last question from this gentleman because of course Mayor Williams has come in. >> I just-- excuse me, I just had a historical question about Rock Creek transportation access and the-- I live up near the zoo, I wondered about the Klingle [inaudible] if there were some background on that that you could shed. >> That was-- that wasn't historically-- that was a road that long preceded that. It's one of the few things that actually preceded the park up there. That was an old historic road. Now, as you know, it's a-- it's an issue that-- again, you're looking at both ways and then also in terms of what it does, in terms of allowing or not allowing people access to certain parts of the city or at least in their minds and legal issues about retroceding land-- land that was taken as a public roadway a long, long ago. And then there's a lot of technical and social and there's-- and legal issues surrounding it that probably won't [inaudible] even though the mayor has been working on that for a while, some more than others. It's an issue that's just kind of hanging there. And in a way it's-- it may well prove to be the park equivalent demolition by neglect, is the cost of restoring at that point, at this point is-- would be enormous. And also I think that the-- as the collective memory of that functionality as a part of transportation system fades, also with the changing population of the-- what's east of DC? Well it used-- who used to be east. The parks near [inaudible] to play, it may become less and less of an issue, I would imagine. >> Thank you very much again. [ Applause ] [ Noise ] >> Thank you, Charlene. I'm pleased now to introduce Dr. Douglas Richardson, the Executive Director of the Association of American Geographers who will introduce our keynote speaker. [ Pause ] >> Thank you, Ralph. It's my great pleasure to introduce you-- to you today Tony Williams, the former mayor of Washington, DC and the current Executive Director of the Global Government Practice at the Corporate Executive Board in Arlington, Virginia. He also serves as the William Bloomberg lecturer in public management at the Harvard Kennedy School. During his two terms as mayor, he's widely credited with leading the resurgence of Washington, restoring the finances of our nation's capital and improving the performance of government agencies. All the while, lowering taxes and investing in infrastructure and human services. Before his election as mayor, he was the independent chief financial officer of the district from 1995 to '98, working with and on behalf of local officials, the DC Financial Control Board and the US Congress. Before he served us in local Washington, Tony worked in a variety of positions in federal, state and local government including as the first CFO of the US Department of Agriculture appointed by Bill Clinton and confirmed by the US Senate. In addition to his work on company boards today, Tony devotes his attention also to issues of education in the environment serving on the board of Fight for the Children and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. He holds a BA from Yale, a master's degree from the Kennedy School and a Law degree from Harvard Law School, as well as a number of awards and honorary degrees including Governing Magazines' Public Official of the Year in 1997. He's a fellow of the academy-- National Academy of Public Administration and former president of National League of Cities. The title of Tony's presentation today is the Mayor as City Planner. I contest to the fact that the attention that Tony Williams paid to planning for the needs and future of this city was extraordinary, and his detailed knowledge of our city is encyclopedic. As a planner, Mayor Williams has played a crucial role on shaping Washington's current geography and has left an indelible imprint and it's evolving maps of today. His planning was also guided I think by a geographical vision. So in addition to introducing to you the Mayor as City Planner, I would also like to take the liberty of presenting to you today Mayor Tony Williams, the mayor as urban geographer as well. Tony? [ Applause ] >> So I've been out of office, so I will tell you to continue. No, I'm just kidding. So what I want to do is I want to give you a presentation on one of the roles of big city mayor and a very, very important role, and that is as the city's planner. And I want to first of all thank some people. But before I even do that, I want to caution you-- and that is to say that my remarks are more really personal and emotional and spontaneous, extemporaneous [inaudible] you're academic and meticulous and methodical, which isn't to say they're completely baseless but they just really come from my-- no, they really are how I approach the city. People, you know, literally from all my detractors bear witness from out of town how I approach the city and thought about it. You know, finding myself as one day the mayor of a great iconic city of Washington, DC, the nation's capital. So for those of you who would want something, you know, a little meticulous, a little more footnoted, I would just cite the New Jersey model deal with it. Also, I just thanked some people who really have brought me to this place, clearly I always say the civil rights movement, progressive, thoughtful government which-- as I tour the Library of Congress in the map division, you know, an example of thoughtful government doing the right thing and investing in the right way is our national government investing in the Library of Congress and particularly in the map division which is fabulous, and I urge all of you. I understand the open house is [inaudible] and really take the tour in the open house. It's just-- just it's a wonder and a glory of our nation what is within these walls. So, I want to thank them. I also want to thank the folks who worked on my team, Andrew Waldman [phonetic], Ellen McCarthy [phonetic], some folks who worked with me over the last couple of days in trying to pull this together, so I want to thank all of them. And then all people in the city who are behind me and abided with me like Councilman Charlene Drew Jarvis, herself a great scholar and real citizen of our city who was one of my key colleagues and key partner, so all that are very, very important. This is a-- let's me see this once. Great. This is a bird's eye view of New Haven, Connecticut around 1880s when these bird's eye views were in vogue. Now why do I bring this bird's eye view to you? Well, it turns out that one of my previous incarnations before I was mayor was a proprietor of the map studio-- map studio in Bethany, Connecticut, a little town outside of New Haven. I was a student at Yale. While I was a student, one of the things I kind of wandered into was politics. Another thing I wandered into was being the kind of curator and proprietor of the maps studio where we actually had a huge collection of late 19th century-- everybody knows the FW Beers [phonetic] overview or map people, the FW Beers maps, right in the wall maps, the FW Beers atlases? We had a huge collection of these maps. We went all over the northeast with these maps. We did some swimming, we did some paddling, we had a number of parties, we sold a couple of maps but we had a great-- but we had a great time with our little kind of wandering tribe with the maps and so I from the-- for a long, long time, I really prided myself on a kind of understanding and knowledge, at least a part of the map world and the important lessons that these maps and these bird's eye views tell you about all the history of our city. Also come to appreciation of maps in another way and that is I grew up in Los Angeles, I grew up in the West Adams, a neighborhood of Los Angeles and for all of you who understand urban history, you know about the destruction of the African-American neighborhood in Saint Paul where my dad was from by I-94, a famous African-American neighborhood. I live near in a famous African-American neighborhood of Los Angeles, West Adams, which was obliterated Robert [inaudible] by the Santa Monica Freeway, now I-10. This was a beautiful neighborhood of stately, just magnificent craftsman homes. Go to Torrey Pines, in the Torrey Pines you'll get the kind of feeling of the craftsman home, the craftsman style, obliterated by I-10. So, I remember riding my bike up Cimarron over on Adams and seeing this huge canyon just one day out of the middle of nowhere. And at that time I thought it was neat 'cause I was, you know, I was 8, 9 years old. They were building this huge freeway. But I've come to realize, I mean this happened over the country and they gave me a real acute sensitivity to the negative things, to the horrors that government could do without the right kind of thought for approach and the right kind of appreciation of doing things right. And then, I came to my job as mayor with a kind of appreciation of, you know, and so guys says in London on this-- on the underground, mind the gap. You know, in public life and as a public manager we're minding the gap a lot. What do I mean by the gap? We're minding the gap between the local and the global. So in a city, you're navigating and managing this contrast and this tension if you will between the local city and the global city. So if you go to a national airport, you're in the global city. Basically, an airport should meet international standards, should be, right, a great airport. Get on I-95, get on I-35, get on I-5, get off on any exit on one of these major interstates and I dare you in many instances to tell me where you actually are 'cause you really don't know because what's happened is the leaders of these cities have completely confused the global and the local. They spend all their time, I think a lot of unnecessary time tending to the global in ways that they really ought to be attending to the local, which is to say rather than there we'd go to Pittsburgh or go to Saint Louis, hundreds and hundreds of small little jurisdictions, right? You go to many of these jurisdictions. You don't know which one you're in, right? They're all anonymous, all global this kind of standardization, monotonization taking place. They're all spending time on the standardization, right? And yet each of them have their own payroll and each one have their own back office systems. I would argue, they ought to be spending much more time individualizing their sense of place and much less time on this global, so the global and the local. The short-term and the long-term, you know, people say there's a big difference between business and government and their, you know, hello, obviously there is a lot of similarity though between the, right Charlene, between the short-term hedge investor and the constituent? I mean they all want everything last night, right? They don't want to hear about the long-term. So, what a leader has to do in a city which is a real problem with planning in any city is figuring out a way to keep your constituents happy and planning for the long-term. Needless to say, a big, big part of a city is the local versus the regional. Or I would put it this way, between the sociologic of a city and the economic logic of a region. So the, if you look at a city like Saint Louis, my wife is from Saint Louis, I always mention the city of Saint Louis. Saint Louis is a spectacular example of the decline and fall, and we hope rise again of the American city. In 1904, the celebration of Louis and Clark, the World's Fair, Saint Louis at its head-- at its heyday. Over 800,000 in population, all the suburban counties came to Saint Louis around that time and wanted to become part of Saint Louis. We don't want to be bothered with New Haves, right? Lowly counties, the imperial city wanted nothing to do with them at the height of its power over 800,000 in population, right? The migration from the farms to the city, industrialization, and then what happened? The Great Depression, World War II. In 1950, the beginning of the second phase, and in the second phase, what racial distancing, federal subsidies of housing, federal subsidies in transportation to get people to move from cities, for schools, for management, for schools, more distancing, and what happens? Cities across United States, in Saint Louis for example, over 800,000 in population in 1950, now at around 300,000 in population. So, the question is, how do cities manages [inaudible] between the sociologic populations at many cities that are poor, older, sicker, how do they manage to address the needs of these populations, the sociologic of inclusion right off equality against the tension of the economic logic if you will, of individualism and liberty and freedom of choice and I want to go where the grass is greener, I got to educate my kids. How do cities manage that? Very, very important. So, some of these maps, even though they're not of cities show you this, show you the tensions that mayors are facing in all their different roles, and mayors have a range of different roles. Think about a mayor, think about an eagle. You know, the mayor has a big parade on Broadway for Charles Lindbergh. You know the mayor, you know, strutting his or her stuff, you know big deal, right? You know the-- your team wins the Super Bowl, I would know, you know. You know, that there is a big deal, right? So the mayor is soaring like an eagle, but you have to understand the eagle makes a living eating carrion, rats, robbing the osprey, it's not pretty, it's nitty-gritty. So all these different roles, what are some of these roles? The mayor as a chief constable, the mayor as the chief educator, the mayor as a chief engineer, the mayor as-- all these different roles are played out in some of these views. Here is a-- just a view from the Library of Congress collection. It's actually online in maps and kind of an exhibition of maps in a practical use of ethnic distribution and I talked about poor, sicker populations, of population in Washington, DC, right? We have the wealthiest population in the country. Highest cons-- one of the highest concentrations, at one time the highest concentration of poverty in United States. Well educated, huge amount of illiteracy. So, ethnic distribution and how that maps to that? Hurricanes in the North Atlantic, you are the chief constable, you're the chief emergency manager. I woke up at night thinking about a hurricane coming up to Chesapeake, category four. I rest my case, a nightmare. Think of the levies, you know. Think of the importance of our river systems in Washington, DC. The poor guy, I guess he's probably not employed there anymore. They forgot to put the floodgates up over in Georgetown, right? Here, a map of the city of Washington around the turn of the century and this just to show you some of these. These concerns of mayors are not new. The maps that I'm showing you are maps in 1880 by the chief engineer of Washington who was working for my illustrious predecessor, I'm sure Boss Shepherd [phonetic] who was around the-- who was a territorial governor at the same time. These are maps of everything from public education to gas lamps, to public schools. [ Pause ] -- to telegraphs. Showing you the attention, I'll put it this way, article in the New York Times two or three months ago about a big data mining project, right, by IBM in Rio de Janeiro in preparation for the Olympics. This is to show you that maps is a tool, maps is a-- think about a mayor's job, your job is a set of vision, your job is to track that vision, your job is to police boundaries in the way I just described, and your job is to collect information to feedback into that belief system if you will. And from the very beginning, certainly in the 1880s, maps were part of the dashboard of the territorial governor at that time trying to manage these different roles and manage these issues that I talked about. Now here is where I want to get into trouble because this is just again my view of this and my kind of appreciation of this, and I think it actually has been kind of reinforced by some reading I've done by Alexander Garvin, a Yale planner and writer on these issues, a view of our city, the kind of iconic view of them all. And you think of what's happening here. People say, well, you know, Washington, DC was built after-- it was designed on the basis of Paris and clearly we all know that isn't true because Paris as we know within the [inaudible] and everything was done by Baron Haussmann and Napoleon III. So it couldn't have been, right, the precedent for the L'Enfant design as we know it. So, really what was it? In my view, what was happening here, this is a view of the Forbidden City. Again, I'm not a professional architect, I'm just a mayoral planner, so I can wing it a little bit. To me this is a physical example, both of these, a physical example of what? The power of the emperor and the power of the private realm order in a sea of chaos. That's what the Forbidden City is about. And I think that was picked up-- this rift was picked up by all the Palace of Versailles. This is a view looking out Chateau Versailles and a map of it, right? And showing what, the corridor sweeping out from Le Roi Soleil, right, the power of the Sun King, right? Radiating order and power out in the-- out in the universe. And so what-- what I argue, L'Enfant was doing with a 10 by 10. You know, my constituents would always come a year [inaudible] you know, the capital really isn't in the center-- well, kind of bear with me. In my view, this-- the capital is in the center and the vision here is to show a repudiation of this private realm, Richard II, the scepter'd isle, the isle of the king or the queen. This is a public realm no, a realm of the public, right, a realm of inclusion, a new capital of an empire of liberties stretching coast to coast. This is the public realm. So all these roles that I talk about go into in my mind the different features of the public realm. So what are these-- what are these features of the public realm in my humble estimation? Well, I'm a financial person so I would say the cornerstone of the public realm is public trust of all the hysteria over the dead limit, why? Because it goes to the fundamental confidence in our country in public trust and accountability so in other words, fiscal integrity, paying your bills, accountability. That's public trust. Cornerstone of public realm, public safety, if I can go out in the street and I'm not safe, I'm not safe in the public realm, the public realm is not working. Public services for example, right? Public knowledge, our eduction, our libraries, right, all of these are part of the public realm. You know, public service is a key part of the public realm. I remember people say when-- you know, when the district years ago when DMV really didn't have any planning and their was no real understanding of anything, that's not true. There were actual plans of customer service. I saw one of the plans. It was actually a call sheet for one of the operators at DMV that says, "You have reached DMV. Please leave your name, number and the time you call," and your call will be discarded and the order was received. So you know-- [Laughter] And let's-- so by the way, all these-- all these go-- all these goes into the public realm but my problem was if you look at the public realm and there's also something else going in here. So here I am, I'm the new mayor, I'm taking managing issues, I've got these different realms, okay-- these different roles. Okay, there is this public realm at least in my kind of conception of the public realm, in other words in my view is broader than an architect's notion that it's the public space hard against the [inaudible], against, you know, private space. To me, it's something kind of much-- it's-- it includes that but it's more intangible if you will. But I also realize that we had an 1800 plan here at the Capital, in the center. You know, so Abraham Lincoln [inaudible] parks lie in the center of this realm. And act-- And incidentally, you notice that we no longer have Virginia economic logic, Alexandria pulling away, right, in the early 19th century, economic logic. This is the 1906-- the 1906 version of the McMillan plan, Senator McMillan which got through the Congress disguised as a recreation plan. He was a smart guy. He said, "I'm going to redo Washington, DC," they'd probably still be debating it but it kind of slip through recreation plan for Washington, DC. So all the configuration of the monuments we all know, Mr. McMillan planned and incidentally, I would urge all of you, if you have a moment to go over the building museum and view the models from the 1900 McMillan plan that are in the vault, they're just breathtaking to see. And you-- common, how many mayors are going to the vault to look at the McMillan plan models right, [laughter] come on. And then moving on into different versions of this 1900 plan until we get to 1996 around the time I'm arriving and I notice 2 things, I noticed we had an 1800 plan, a 1900 plan, I'm like, "Duh, Mayor it' 2000, you know, we should have a plan." And he said, "Oh, you know, you really shouldn't have a plan because it's really not the mayor's role." I said, "What do you mean?" And says, "It's not mayor's role. We got-- first of all, we have many other pressing things to do and besides, it's a federal government's job," and I just begged to differ. I know I'm standing on federal property in the Library of Congress but I just beg to differ. I think within the federal enclave and clearly because of-- because we're the National Capital, the federal government has a preeminent role. No question about that. None of us would argue that and I actually think the NCPC can play a powerful role in that as well as trying to act as a lever, a vehicle for more regional approaches of thing, but-- things, but as I always told my people, and surely which I always told our constituents was, you know, how can a self-respecting city not develop its own plan. It's like your identity, is how you think about yourself, it's how you present your self to the world, right? How can you not have your own plan, right? This is who we are and what we aspire to be. So we need to have our own plan. It needs to be inclusive, can't be just an exclusive group of white guys doing the plan, no offense. And it also has to be more inclusive geographically because one of the things you notice is that our city is a divided city. Some of the views of this overtime, you know, this is kind of [inaudible] and his kind of view of, you know, the city as it's expressed in Washington, DC. Another issue that I face, I just spoke at a new cities conference in Paris and oh my God, great conference. But oh my God, it was in this place called La Defense, you know, it's kind of like, if you want to go to Tyson's [phonetic] without going to Tyson's but go to Paris to go to Tysons, go to La Defense. [Laughter] Okay, you know, neglected neighbors, you know, this while notion of the divide in our city. Here's a great example. Here's Anacostia, different-- here's-- and this is-- mixed this up and I-- excuse me. Here's a view of the-- yeah, here's a view of-- [Laughter] Hey, you know, here's a view of the-- here's a view of the Potomac and a view of the-- view of the Capitol from the Potomac, a view of the Capitol from the Anacostia, so clearly there's a part of our city that's neglected economically. I felt also neglected from a planning point of view. Here's a view looking at the Anacostia basin. I remember driving around the Anacostia basin in the area of the Frederick A. Douglass Bridge, the present side of-- you know, Florida cement, present side of the stadium and I couldn't believe that this was the capital of the United States. Here's an example of how the -- geographically and kind of the way we conceive our city is very, very exclusive. If you look at this post card of Washington, DC, you really don't see anything about the Anacostia or anything about a big, big part of Washington, DC. So one of the things we said about doing was to try to be more inclusive into widening the scope, right, of our vision. Involve more people, widen the scope of our vision, provide more inclusiveness along a number of different lines, economics, social and political. And this actually became the antecedent-- the work that we did on the Anacostia actually is the antecedent for the work that's being done by Andrew now as the head of the Olympic Legacy in East London where this-- the UK and the city of London is attempting to do on the Thames in East London what we're attempting to do and have been doing on the Anacostia. And I'm very, very proud of that because, you know, for the UK and for London to be looking at Washington, DC as a precedent, we should be proud of that. So this is-- the divided city that I talk about, this is an example of some of the issues in using maps to show some of these issues. Poverty, adults without college degrees, unemployment, one of the issues in planning, you know, to share with you that's a really important issue and it's very, very difficult issue is not just a long-term, short-term, the regional versus the local, federal local all these issues. Another issue is an issue of prioritization, a spectacular-- a failure prioritization in urban planning recently was in New Orleans where ULI, a fantastic group, but ULI down the-- and more recently the Rockefeller Foundation trying to work with the City of New Orleans to rebuild New Orleans after Katrina. So one of the major messages from the ULI was that New Orleans has to prioritize but the way in which all of us would agree, right, as planners, part of planning is focusing and prioritizing. This came out, right, through the funnel and the mouthpiece and the communication, some kind of [inaudible] communications device. It came out, we're going to basically invest in part of the city and ignore part of the city, horrible, right? In fact, what we try to do in Washington, DC is we try to take the city as we broaden the scope of the city, include more of the city. At the same time, we try to prioritize what we were doing in the city and now it can be said, now that I'm out of office, I actually did prioritize what we did in the city. So for example in the northwest part of the city, really northwest part of the city provides services and don't build anything. It's basically what people in northwest want, right? It's kind of like maintain, right? The poorest parts of the city, east to the river, require major intervention that builds from strength, hence the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative to make in-roads into these neighborhoods. And then the transitional neighborhoods are the neighborhoods where you don't have major projects but where you can take particular measures to try to turn around neighborhoods. An example of a transitional neighborhood that worked out beautifully was Columbia Heights. The targeting Columbia Heights, those of you who worked with us on that, we went through hell to build that target. That target was like the Bataan Death March, [laughter] but is now one of the highest grossing targets in the Eastern United States, an example of prioritizing and planning but very, very difficult to do in an urban setting. And here, another part of the planning initiative to share with you, you know, Mayor Gray had a Citizens Summit and Washington Post reporters were saying-- I think it was Washington Post, one of the papers were saying, "Well, Mayor Williams had this summits because he was emotionally deficient or, you know, nerdy and this was his way to show that he was connecting with the people now." My idea was that a strong leadership is humility and fears resolved. Part of being a good mayor and hence part of being a good planner is basically exposing yourself to abuse, right? You basically want to sit down and listen to people even if you know they disagree with you, even if-- even if you know they're going to basically criticize you to set and listen to them and to do what? To make a major kind of a portion which is kind of the job of urban planning in my mind from a political point of view and what is that? So we had the Citizens Summit. This was a-- people say [inaudible] there. Nobody comes to the Citizens Summits, you know, 4000 people came to these things 4 times, right, they spent 8 hours talking about a view of the city. The third summit was around the time we were closing the hospital and I did a poll with the summit and I said, "How many people think we got to close a hospital?" Basically, everybody said, "No." And I said, "Okay." [Inaudible] the democratic convention and the opinion of the chairs, the ayes have it, we're going to close a hospital. People say, "You're crazy." I said, "Well, look you elected me to lead, 70 percent of the time we're going to basically listen to what you're saying, 30 percent of the time we're going to use the tools that are disposal can actually make a long-term planning effort." Now, I have some other slides but I want to confuse what were-- what I'm saying to you because I want to make one more point. Along with the Anacostia Revitalization agenda, there were something else that we did that I hope will stand the test of time and that is in my final days as we were waiting to escape the city into exile-- no, I'm just kidding. But my final-- [Laughter] They were the things I like about Boss Shepherd is, you know, I mentioned him in the 1880s and he left to go to Mexico. I don't [inaudible] is very romantic, why did he go to Mexico? But, anyway-- [Laughter] So actually, you know, when I-- actually when Adrian Fenty was-- well, this is actually a true story. When Adrian Fenty was sworn in, I thought it would be romantic to go to Argentina 'cause it would look like I had been deposed and I was in Argentina. [Laughter]. I'll wait by the phone for my call, please. But one of the things we're doing in our final moments-- so, but seriously, one of the things we wanted to do was, if you think about Paris, and again, I'm not a professional architect, just a mayor, but I think of Paris and I say, "You know, look there's no-- I mean there is some beautiful buildings in Paris but we don't think Paris is a beautiful city because of some 1 or 2 buildings. We think it's a beautiful city because of the overall effect of the city and why is that? Because over eons, it seems like now there's been very consistent planning that's very sustained and very, very painstaking-- very, very methodical that goes to land use in Paris and one of the things I wanted to do, Charlene, while no one was really paying attention was really put in place a good comprehensive plan for Washington, DC and it's my dream and my ambition that 40, 50 years ago-- 40, 50 years from now, when I'm long gone, my granddaughterNaya [phonetic] is mayor I hope that-- no, that we'll look at what's happened in 2040 or 2050 or 2060 a restored Anacostia River that really brings our people together in a vibrant, robust way. A comprehensive plan that really shapes the destiny of our city is a true nation's capital that's a real-- not just ensemble of monuments but a real living, breathing example of democracy in a vibrant city. I think we'll really be able to say that in 2040 or 2050, the job of one mayor at one time as an urban planner was a job pretty well done. That's my ambition, thank you all very much. [ Applause ] >> We will take some questions. We will take some questions for the mayor if you have any. [Inaudible Remark] >> No, no, no. [Applause] [Laughter] I'm really excited about taking this job but the Federal City Council were really trying to do some exciting work with the Federal City Council working with colleagues like Charlene Drew Jarvis, I see Richard Levy, others of you who are on that panel. So I'm looking forward to that in supporting our mayor. >> I have a question. I'm up here. Ooh, sorry. One, I want to thank you, Mayor Will-- over her, up here. >> Oh okay, yes hi. [Laughter] >> In the pin-- I want to thank you for all that you did for this city and for-- personally, my daughter was on the council that you had for the youth, I think that was you. She's 28 now and it really set the stage for her as being able to serve and she was involved not just peripherally, but she was really involved in a lot of activities that she wouldn't have had an opportunity to do going to a private school and I wanted to thank you for that. But I also wanted to ask, is there something that you see that we can do within this community of, you know, lovers of the city as we go leave this building, that you would like to carried forth that we could carry forth for your vision for the city in that 40 or 50 years 'cause I think that you have set the stage quite a bit and I appreciate it. So, just want to know what you'd like us to do. >> I would respect-- no, I would just-- all of you, I would just keep in mind this notion of the public realm and the key parts of it. So for example, this is my editorial opinion. So, number 1, public accountability, I would say, now we're getting in a-- this is really about maps but I would-- you know, I'm big behind that [inaudible] continuing because I think we need continuity in terms of public trust and faith in our government. Public safety, I think, you know, Cathy Lanier, fantastic job. Public knowledge and education, we often talk about the schools, we just think about continuing education as part of that education matrix and very importantly, continue the work we've started very, very powerfully with the libraries and get around like every other major iconic city and have a first class central library, I think as an important part of our city. And then lastly, and this is true to form here and I think this is so important. You know, keep a strong important planning office and a preeminent planner in Washington, DC. Washington, DC is a kind of city that should have a star planner. I think we have one right now and we need to continue to have one. >> Mayor. >> Yeah. >> As the former mayor, would you explain the rationale of why you wanted to close the University of the District of Columbia in the grand scheme of planning for the city? >> Oh, that's old news. I didn't ever wanted to close the University of the District of Columbia. I don't know where you got that. What I wanted to do was I wanted to in a way that turned out to be not very practical and well thought out, reenforced the University of District of Columbia. So that's not true. I never wanted to close the University, yeah. [ Pause ] >> Do you have any opinion on the current attempt to revisit the height limit and to allow buildings to go beyond the 1910 building height limit? >> Well, all of us-- you know, in this business we all know that at the time of the founding of our city, there really were a couple of differences it was Carlsberg, right, then we started Washington up, we already hit Georgetown, we hit Alexandria, then pardon me. >> Hamburg. >> Hamburg, right. As we-- as the city started going though really the city-- the ancient city was below Florida Avenue. So if anything, I would always want to keep height limitation within the ancient city if you will, right. Whether you do something beyond that, let's say east of the river or farther out there in the outskirts to me would be open to the bay but in the center of the city, I think the height limitation has worked very, very well. Another reason why I always supported the height limitation was I actually thought it was good for development because it's non-economical for a developer, right? But it squished the development out. Now that we're, you know, second or third way the center of real estate development in the universe. I'm not sure if that's true anymore but I'm still basically a fan of the height limitation. [ Pause ] [ Inaudible Remark ] I think that's actually a good point because you don't have the magic-- you know, when I look at the city, you know, I talked about-- we talk about maps as a dashboard and other dashboard that you have is obviously your financial statement and you look at your income and your income is coming prime-- where is it most likely to grow is most likely to grow in the income tax level and that's going to grow because of new residence. And I was [inaudible] people and people disagree with me, I'm sure some of you disagree with me. You know, you need new residence to help provide the revenue to provide the services that people would need, demand and rightly so from their government, right? So how do you try to balance that? What we tried to do was make a heavy emphasis on a couple of things and one was a lot of projects were going to what's called or expiring use-- no, not-- you know, their contracts were expiring they were subject to prepayment, you were subject to losing all these low-income units, I can tell your people spent enormous amount of time saving some of these projects, some of them right around the Columbia Heights around the target. Another example on Steve Green who was my development director is here, can attest to this and we started the HOPE VI which is a mix use, low-income housing project developed by Henry Cisneros and Jack Kemp back in the day. When we first started these, yes, there was a displacement 'cause there was very little replacement of low-income units and I'm proud to say the last projects we did, there was basically one for one replacement of all the low-income units in those projects and I'm proud of that. But it is very, very difficult to do. >> Thank you Mr. Mayor. >> Thank you. I appreciate it, okay. Thanks everybody. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> We have a recess set in room 119, I hope you can join us and then you maybe have a chance to answer and talk with more of the person-- people in the auditorium. Our next session tomorrow-- will continue tomorrow morning at 9:30 in the Montpelier Room located on the 6th floor of the Library's James Memorial Building. Again, I hope you can join us in room 19-- 119, one floor up and our staff will direct you to that. Thank you. [ Noise] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.