Category Archives: Washington, D.C.

Happy Easter

21 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by in Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George Washington's Mount Vernon, Monuments and Statuary, Washington, D.C.

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Contralto Marian Anderson performed at the Lincoln Memorial on 9 April 1939, Easter Sunday, after First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, among others, stepped in. Those on the improvised stage included Ickes, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., U.S. Senator Robert F. Wagner Sr. (D-NY), Senate Majority Leader Alben W. Barkley (D-KY), and Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black.

Happy Easter, everyone. We’re out the door in a few minutes here to go to Mount Vernon.

It has turned into a beautiful weekend here in the Washington D.C. area after the hard rain and tornado that touched down in our vicinity Friday night. Yesterday I ventured to the National Portrait Gallery, one of my favorite cultural institutions. They had a stunning painting of “negro contralto,” as she was called in her time, Marian Anderson. Seeing the portrait reminded me that Ms. Anderson’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial was Easter Sunday 1939. Someone at the Portrait Gallery knew what they were doing; adjacent to her likeness was one of Eleanor Roosevelt, who helped arrange Ms. Anderson’s appearance on the National Mall after a local high school and the Daughters of the American Revolution both turned the singer’s representatives down.

Constitution Hall itself dated back a decade. First Lady Grace Coolidge used the same trowel that George Washington used to lay the cornerstone for the U.S. Capitol in 1793. Her successor, First Lady Lou Henry Hoover, opened DAR Constitution Hall when it opened a year later on April 19, 1929, ninety years ago this week. Now, ten years later, the organization was embroiled in controversy for turning Anderson away. That’s when Eleanor Roosevelt and Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes stepped in. Terrible as the episode was it was just as well in one respect: Constitution Hall has a capacity of 3,702, and the high school that turned her away only 1,000; a crowd of 75,000 turned out to see Ms. Anderson when she took the stage at 5:00 pm. Millions more listened on their radios.

An Easter performance at the Lincoln Memorial was appropriate, even poetic, for another reason: Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated on Good Friday 1865, something that more Americans would have realized in 1939 than probably do today. The Sunday after his mortal wounding was Easter Sunday, and religious leaders throughout the Union states worked his death and apotheosis as our nation’s secular saint into their Easter sermons.

(image/Library of Congress)

 

Armistice Day 2018

11 Sunday Nov 2018

Posted by in Great War centennial, Memory, Ulysses S. Grant (General and President), Washington, D.C.

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Wall Street, Armistice Day 1918

It is hard to believe that the 100th anniversary of the Armistice is here. It seems like yesterday that I attended the WW1 Centennial Commission Trade Show in Washington. It is amazing what can change in four years, for good and ill. I thoroughly intend to carry on covering the Great War. As I said to someone earlier today, the fighting of did not end at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. Civil war raged in what was once Czarist Russia and small but equally intense conflicts erupted between Greece and the Ottoman Turkey, to give but two examples. These and other conflicts had enormous consequences and came with enormous costs. Putting the world back together at Versailles would prove a daunting task. We would do well to view the officials charged with that undertaking with humility and understanding. Theirs was no easy assignment.

I have been surprised at the wistfulness I have felt over the past few days. These anniversary observations are an interesting thing. For years, from 2009 (the anniversary of John Brown’s Raid) through 2015 with the 150th observation of Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox, many of us followed along and even visited the places where these things happened. For much of the rest of the world though, they were barely a thought. The same proved true from 2014-2018 Great War Centennial. I have met many interesting people who have enriched my life over these past few years. I had some ideas for various projects. Many of them came to fruition and others did not pan out as hoped. That’s the way it is with things. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Taking down the WW1 exhibit acquired on loan from The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, October 2018

There are many memories I will always cherish, such as one steamy August Saturday a few years ago when my uncle took me around suburban Boston so we could photograph and record well over a dozen WW1 memorials, the freezing film excursion to Yonkers in March 2017, meeting and befriending the film editor who saved the day on that project, the screenings themselves later that year at my college and in Yonkers a few weeks later, Camp Doughboy at Governors Island, the exhibits that colleagues and I acquired on loan from the Embassy of Belgium & The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and so much else besides.

Regarding Armistice Day 2018 itself, there is so much coverage to watch, read, and contemplate that I will leave it up to you to discover it. I will however share one item: a friend sent me this article from The New York Review of Books written by historian Patrick Chovanec in which he ruminates on what he learned while tweeting the war in historical “real time.” That’s the thing about history: you and I know the outcome. We would do well to humble ourselves and remember that the people of the past lived just the way we do today: unaware of what the future holds and how it would all turn out.

(top image/New York Times Archive via Wikimedia Commons)

 

The 1902 Rochambeau Delegation

13 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by in Antietam, General Grant National Memorial (NPS), Henry Cabot Lodge, Horace Porter, Monuments and Statuary, New York City, Spanish-American War, Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Ulysses S. Grant (General and President), Washington, D.C., William McKinley

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One of the most famous moments in American diplomatic history was the Viviani-Joffre Mission to the United States in April-May 1917. This was when the French politician René Viviani and Field Marshal Joseph Joffre, among others, came to America to discuss military and diplomatic details after the United States declared war on Germany that spring. Viviani, Joffre and officials from other Allied governments toured the entire United States for several weeks to meet the American people, many of whom, especially in the South and Midwest, were suspicious of European leaders’ intentions. Fifteen years earlier there was a lesser known diplomatic mission: the 1902 Rochambeau Delegation.

The British Museum acquired this painting of General Joseph Brugère in 1902, the same year this French military leader led a goodwill tour to the United States solidifying Franco-American relations. Many of the individuals involved would go on tour serve in the Great War.

The event was so-called because the central moment of the mission was the May 24, 1902 dedication in Washington D.C.’s Lafayette Park of a memorial to Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau, the French military leader who had fought with George Washington during the American Revolution. The early 1900s were an interesting moment in diplomatic relations. The United States had recently won the Spanish-American War and was becoming a true world power; the brutal Philippine Insurrection, the final phase in the Spanish-American War, ended on June 2, 1902. One month earlier, on May 6, General Joseph Brugère boarded Vice Admiral Ernest François Fournier’s Gaulois in Toulon and sailed for Washington. One of the driving forces of this mission was Horace Porter, the United States ambassador to France.

Porter had served under Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War and went on to serve in various capacities over the next several decades. He was the driving force to fund and build Grant’s Tomb, which finally came to fruition on April 27, 1897 when William McKinley dedicated his predecessor’s final resting place. Several weeks after that dedication Porter was off to Paris, where he would be President McKinley’s representative to France. Civil War veterans were still very much running American life; the president himself had been in the Battle of Antietam; his Secretary of State, John Hay, had been one of Lincoln’s personal secretaries; and right then in 1902 Secretary of War Elihu Root was putting Ambassador Porter in for the Congressional Medial of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Chickamauga.

Brugère, Fournier and a sizable contingent visited George Washington’s resting place at Mount Vernon on the afternoon of May 22 and were hosted that evening by Theodore Roosevelt at the White House. The big event came two days later when Ambassador Porter, President Roosevelt, General Brugère, Vice Admiral Fournier, scores of dignitaries, and thousands of others turned out at Lafayette Square Park for the Rochambeau statue dedication. Henry Cabot Lodge was the featured speaker. It was all a huge success.

A few days later the Brugère/Fournier contingent would be fêted across New York City. Among other things they got a look at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, dined with mayor Seth Low, and received a tour of Columbia University from college president Nicholas Murray Butler. Columbia is conveniently located next to Grant’s Tomb and on May 28 Ambassador Porter took Brugère, Fournier and the rest of the French delegates to the mausoleum that he had done so much to build. At the time the general public could not walk down to the sarcophagi as one can today. As leader of the Grant Monument Association however Porter was naturally able to take the Rochambeau delegates down the marble steps, where they all stood in hushed stillness for ten minutes. (At the time it was still only Ulysses; Julia passed away seven months later in December 1902.) After the visit, the delegation walked north of the tomb to the Claremont Inn, where several dozen people had a sumptuous meal.

(image/The British Museum)

 

 

Merry Christmas

25 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by in Eleanor Roosevelt, Film, Sound, & Photography, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Washington, D.C.

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Merry Christmas, everyone. I saw this 1942 Christmas card from Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and fell in love with it for so many reasons. Judging by his white suit and her white dress the image would have been taken in that summer of 1942, seventy-five years ago. Franklin and Eleanor spent the Great War years in Washington and now here they are back in the District of Columbia as President and First Lady with the world at war a second time. One can only imagine the burden. In this image they seem to be trying to project an air of calm and tranquility in a troubled world. The white card stock is perfect for the photograph of two solitary figures sitting in white clothes on a veranda of the White House. There is no clutter on the table. Visually the picture is in balance with the concise message in simple black lettering on the right. Note that the card wishes the beholder a “happier” New Year, a subtle but telling word choice. The Roosevelts’ Christmas card went out to about 400 individuals.

Enjoy your day, all.

(image/White House)

The Ladies of the Senate

15 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in Vietnam War, Washington, D.C.

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In the year of Sgt Pepper the Ladies of the Senate in dress whites rolled bandages for the wounded in Vietnam. The group was founded half a century earlier during the First Wold War for the same purpose.

I came across this fascinating photo not long ago and wanted to share. It shows the Ladies of the Senate, a volunteer organization founded in 1917 to help the Red Cross during the Great War. Here are members of that organization doing that same work in June 1967 during the Vietnam War. The image is so striking not least because it was taken in what we now call the Summer of Love. The year this photo was taken young people were listening to The Beatles’s Sgt. Pepper, The Rolling Stones’s Between the Buttons, Jimi Hendrix’s Are Your Experienced?, The Doors’s first two albums, Janis Joplin’s nascent stirrings with Big Brother and the Holding Company, Cream’s Disraeli Gears, Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow and so much more than time permits me to document here. With Psychedelia in full plumage, these volunteer bandage rollers are wearing the same white dresses and head coverings as their forbears had half a century earlier.

As mentioned, the Ladies of the Senate came into being when the United States entered the First World War. Their proper name was the Senate Ladies Red Cross Unit. During the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and other campaigns, Senate wives rolled bandages in the basement of what is now the Russell Building. The group turned into a more general charity group in the interwar years but recommitted to rolling bandages during the Second World War. Eleanor Roosevelt was an ally. Here are striking images of Jacqueline Kennedy with the group in April 1961. Some, such as Marion Ann Borris Javits, wife on New York Senator Jacob K. Javits, believed the group had become anachronistic by the late 1940s and 1950s. Most critics, including Mrs. Javits, changed their minds however by the time of the Vietnam escalation in 1965. By Vietnam the process of manufacturing bandages could have been done completely through mechanization. Some insisted however that the hand-rolled versions were more absorbent and thus helped save blood and lives. The Ladies of the Senate became the Senate Spouses Membership in the 1990s.

(image/New York Times)

 

Roosevelt passes through Washington

03 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by in Theodore Roosevelt Jr (President), Washington, D.C., Woodrow Wilson

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Theodore Roosevelt and Russell J. Coles in Florida, March 1917. This Library of Congress image is misdated 16 March 1917 in the LOC record. Roosevelt however did not leave for Florida until the 23rd of that month.

Theodore Roosevelt was at the White House briefly on this date one hundred years ago. He was trying to gain an audience with President Wilson, who intentionally or not snubbed his predecessor by claiming to be too busy with Cabinet meetings in the wake of his speech to Congress the afternoon before. Wilson likely knew what Roosevelt was there to propose: that he, Roosevelt, be allowed to raise a division and then fight in France in the war. The Colonel had been talking about it ever since diplomatic relations had been severed with Germany some week before. Roosevelt had made plans in late winter to travel to Florida with scientist Russell J. Coles and fish for shark and devilfish. When Wilson called for Congress to convene a special session for April 2 Roosevelt felt no reason to revise his plans, reasoning that there was little he could do in the meantime. And so Roosevelt boarded a train on March 23 and traveled south to fish both the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of Florida. Roosevelt harpooned two large devilfish, one of them nearly a seventeen footer that was the second largest ever caught.

Like much of America Roosevelt was watching the news intently in those late March and early April days. Roosevelt did not gain an audience with Wilson on April 3, and he missed seeing his friend and confidante Henry Cabot Lodge as well. Roosevelt’s DC excursion must have caught official Washington off guard; Lodge certainly would have made himself available had he known Roosevelt was to be in town. At the White House Roosevelt left a flattering note for Wilson, which may or may not have been genuine, The 26th president had certainly campaigned for Preparedness and war since 1914 and so would have approved of Wilson’s call to arms; on the other hand both he and Lodge disliked Wilson intensely and the note may have been little more than an attempt to get on the president’s good side pending any decision on Roosevelt’s desire to fight in the war. Either way, Roosevelt left Washington in the late afternoon and was back in New York City by 9:00 pm, eager to see his sons and discuss the matters at hand.

(image/Library of Congress)

Private Herman Ruth

03 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in Baseball, Governors Island, Washington, D.C.

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General Pershing and Private Ruth exchange salutes, 28 May 1924

General Pershing and Private Ruth exchange salutes, 28 May 1924

The above photo came through my in-box today and I thought that with the baseball post-season beginning this week it would be apropos to share. This is Babe Ruth saluting General John Pershing outside the State, War and Navy Building in Washington D.C. Ruth had recently joined 104th Field Artillery of the New York National Guard at Pershing’s request as a way to generate interest in the Citizens’ Military Training Camps. The Army needed all the help it could get half a decade after the Treaty of Versailles; the military drawback of the early 1920s meant that the United States again had a small fighting force.

A little digging shows that Ruth had sought a khaki uniform in New York but could not find one for his large frame. It is interesting to note that by today’s he is not that large. This is 1924 and he actually looks relatively slim, certainly slimmer than we came to know him as he grew older and stouter due to his excesses. It says something that a man of this physical stature would be considered stout for his time, and that a uniform could not be found in his size in all of New York. Ruth reported to the Quartermaster General’s office in Washington to be fitted early on May 28 and reported to Pershing for this photo op after that. Photo op is the right phrase: a basic search reveals several outtakes of the two men saluting, smiling, and/or shaking hands.

The Yankees were in Washington to play the Senators in on odd two-game road trip that lasted all one day. The Yankees and Senators split a double-header at Griffith Stadium. The Bambino went 3 for 8 in the two games. Ruth visited numerous Citizens’ Military Training Camps in the years after this photo was taken. By the endow the decade Ruth had apparently had enough; in April 1930 he informed Major General Hanson E. Ely, commander of the Second Corps Area at Fort Jay on Governors Island, that he was stepping down. Though again a “civilian” Ruth continued making a contribution, signing bats and balls to be given as trophies at CMTC athletic events until at least the mid-1930s.

Olmsted’s Civil War

27 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by in New York City, Washington, D.C.

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Olmsted in 1857

Olmsted in 1857 around the time he was to begin constructing New York City’s Central Park

Today marks a unique moment in Civil War and American history: Frederick Law Olmsted arrived in Washington D.C. from New York City on this date 155 years ago today. It is interesting to note that while he was one of the few predicting a long war and not the ninety day fight many forecast, he thought his own work with The Sanitary was only going to take six weeks or so. After that he would,he believed, go back and finish Central Park. The timing, for the country if not Olmsted, could not have been better; the Central Park commissioners had just significantly cut back his authority, which subsequently freed him total on the job of the Sanitary Commission secretary. Olmsted passionately believed in Union and an end to slavery, and I have a feeling the USSC secretaryship was not the means by which he most wanted to serve in putting down the rebellion. Had his health issues not been a hindrance,he might well have served in uniform.

Olmsted stayed on with the Sanitary Commission for two years and eventually left due to burnout and endless squabbles with his superiors, something that was a pattern with the intense landscaper artist. Still in those two years he set many of the procedures and precedents that carried on through the Great War via the Red Cross, the Second World War with the USO, and really on to the present day, albeit in different ways. It all began less than a month before the First Battle of Bull Run when Olmsted stepped off that train on June 27, 1861.

May

02 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Washington, D.C., William Howard Taft

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IMG_3129Good morning, all. It’s hard to believe it is May. I got back from Virginia last night. I went there for a long weekend over spring break. I spent a good part of Saturday in Arlington Cemetery, touring the Lee Mansion and taking photos of headstones for a series I will be doing in the lead-up to the start of the Governors Island season later this month. From what I understand some of the seasonals are returning to work today. Our school semester ends in three weeks. When I was in Arlington I came William Howard Taft’s headstone. I had a good conversation here with a guy from Illinois who is visiting and photographing the graves of every Congressional Medal of Honor recipient. He said he’s been at it for fifteen years now. Meeting folks like that is always special. It was a nice overcast day, perfect for being outside for an extended period.

U.S. president and Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Taft rests today in Arlington National Cemetery.

U.S. president and Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Taft rests today in Arlington National Cemetery.

Countdown to the WW1 Memorial selection

29 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by in Great War centennial, Monuments and Statuary, Washington, D.C.

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New York State doughboys retuning home, August 1919

Empire State doughboys retuning home: Oriskany Falls, August 1919

Blake Seitz of the Washington Free Beacon has written an informative piece about the ongoing project to build a national First World War memorial in Washington D.C. Some readers may know that the WW1 Centennial Commission has been working on this endeavor for some time now, and that the competition is now down to five selections. A winner will be chosen in January. Whichever design wins, there will undoubtedly be a few bugs and details to be worked out. Still, the process has gone fairly well so far. Seitz captures well the purposes of U.S. war memorials, especially how the ones in our nation’s capital reflect the times in which they were built and the individual conflicts they commemorate. There is a reason Lincoln is etched larger than life in granite and the Vietnam Wall stretches semi-below ground with its fatalities listed one-by-one in chronological order. As Centennial Commission Ed Fountain points out in the article, the Great War’s ambiguity has been one of the major reasons it has taken so long to build a national World War 1 memorial in Washington.

It was not always this way. In the 1920s and 30s Americans built approximately 10,000 tablets, memorials and statues across the country. D.C. itself had its own memorial, commissioned in 1924 and finished in 1931 in honor of the men from Washington City who served and died Over There. These were all locals projects however. The Depression and rise of Hitler eventually took away whatever enthusiasm there was to remember the events of 1914-18. I strongly urge you to read Seitz’s article.

(image/Oneida County Historical Society)