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I was asked a question about Green's description... here are some
excerpts...
In Green's book "Washington: Village and Capital 1800-1878," in the chapter
on the "Jacksonian 'Revolution' and After," Green writes about growing
health problems associated with faulty drainage and the muggy heat of summer
... she wrote, "The swampy stretches along the Washington Canal had become
such an obvious menace to health in the 1820's that the city fathers begged
the federal government to let them use any money derived from sales of
publicly owned lots to drain the area. Congress ignored the plea. In the
summer of 1832 an epidemic of Asiatic cholera took heavy toll, first among
workmen on the C&O Canal and the laborers engaged in laying the water mains
for government buildings and then among citizens generally. The board of
health did what it could, forbidding the importation of fresh fruits and
vegetables, 'abolishing' hog sties within the city limits during the
emergency, prohibiting public entertainments, and annulling licenses to sell
liquor for ninety days. The only treatment physicians prescribed was
bleeding, doses of calomel, and abstention from all stimulants. City funds
and private subscriptions provided a staff of doctors and three temporary
hospitals in rented houses, but for weeks the 'dead carts' made the rounds
every morning while the mournful sound of drivers' horns and the call 'Bring
out the dead' echoed in the streets."
Later in the chapter "The City and the Hill," she writes, "While looking
forward to the introduction of acqueduct water, officials made no
preparations for a city-wide system of sanitary sewers. Certainly the
scheme the federal government had introduced provided no useful model. The
sewers from the Capitol emptied underground near the brow of the Hill and
from there drained harmlessly down toward the Mall, but the sewage from the
White House and the departmental offices nearby debouched in the low-lying
ground between the Executive Mansion and the canal; what is today the
Ellipse thus became a fetid marsh. The later extension of the pipes to
discharge into the canal was a very minor improvement. From the Patent
Office and Post Office the sewers fed into a branch of the Tiber Creek that
cut between 9th and 10th Streets and emptied into the canal. In that
shallow waterway the sewage which had been carried out into the river at ebb
tide was washed back in at high. Accumulated sediment at times stopped the
flow altogether and turned the canal into a stagnating open cesspool." ...
Alexander "Boss" Shepherd took care of the problem once and for all after
the Civil War ... :) Speaking of which, the remnants of the canal (stone
pillars) that are along Constitution Avenue don't look terribly durable...
hope we don't let these decay too much.
Mark Richards
-----Original Message-----
From: H-Net Network on History of the District of Columbia
[mailto:H-DC@H-NET.MSU.EDU]On Behalf Of H-DC Editor
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 2:58 PM
To: H-DC@H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: Re: Swamps ... (fwd)
From: Mark David Richards <mark@bisconti.com>
Tobias Lear wrote "Observations on the River Potomack, the Country Adjacent,
and the City of Washington," published by Samuel Aloudon and Son, NY, 1793,
reprinted in the Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Vol. 8, 1905,
pps. 117-140.
He wrote, "... the President fixed upon the spot upon which the city has
since been laid out, as the most proper for erecting the public buildings
which are authorized to be prepared by the foregoing act. ...The whole area
of the City consists of upwards of four thousand acres. -The ground, on an
average, is about forty feet above the water of the river. Although the
whole, when taken together, appears to be nearly a level spot, yet it is
found to consist of what may be called wavy land; and is sufficiently uneven
to give many very extensive and beautiful views from various parts of it, as
well as to effectually answer every purpose of cleaning and draining the
city. Two creeks enter the City, one from the eastern branch, the other
from the Potomack, and take such directions as to be made to communicate
with each other by a short canal. -By this means a water transportation, for
heavy articles, is opened into the heart of the City. No place has greater
advantages of water, either for the supply of the City or for cleansing the
streets, than this ground. The most obvious force is from the head waters
of a creek which separates the City from George-Town. -This creek takes its
rise in ground higher than the City, and can readily be conveyed to every
part of it. -But the grand object for this purpose, which has been
contemplated by those best acquainted with the country hearabouts, and the
circumstances attending it, and which has been examined with an eye to this
purpose, by good judges, is the Potomack. The water of this river above the
Great Falls, 14 miles from the city, is one hundred and eight feet higher
than the tide-water. ..."
Perhaps Lear was exaggerating the benefits of the area for the federal city
to drum up support, but he obviously didn't focus the least bit of attention
on problems associated with standing water, rotting trees, or swamps that
would need to be filled to make the venture successful. To say the capital
was built on a swamp is a very different statement than to say the capital
was built in an area with many advantages related to water ...
Lear predicted that the arrangement made with local landowners for
establishing the federal city in this area would make Washington residents
"forever free from a heavy tax, which is unavoidable in other large cities"
The landowners early on felt there would be significant benefits also, such
as never having to pay for street maintenance since those lands were given
to the feds ("public"), so he wasn't the only one to be so optimistic!
Constance McLaughlin Green's description of the canal linking the Potomac to
the Eastern Branch (Congressional sewers draining into it, etc.) causes me
to think maybe "the swamp" was created after Congress arrived !?! The swamp
imagery may also have related to "stigma effects" put on locals by those
coming from other areas ("this area was NOTHING until the federal government
made it into something valuable!"). I'll admit that on some hot humid
summer days when the air is so thick I can see it, I feel I am living in a
swamp!
Cheers, Mark Richards
-----Original Message-----
From: H-Net Network on History of the District of Columbia
[mailto:H-DC@H-NET.MSU.EDU]On Behalf Of H-DC Editor
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 2:02 PM
To: H-DC@H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: Re: Swamps ... (fwd)
From: tony.simon@ncpc.gov
To: H-DC@H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: RE: Swamps ...
One strand of the "swamp" correspondence discusses Rep. Cannon's reference
to the Lincoln Memorial site as a swamp, with the suggestion that this
early-20th-Century comment tells us something about the original conditions
of the area (more than we'd sense from looking today).
But I'd note that the conditions of this area changed very much between
L'Enfant's time and Cannon's time. In addition to ongoing silting that
another writer mentioned, there was also the river dredging in the late 19th
Century , which dumped much river-bottom mud in this area. This newly-made
land wasn't really shaped (or built upon with temporary buildings) until the
1910s. So in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, the harsh descriptions
may well have been justified -- but this doesn't tell us the area's
character in the 1790s.
-----Original Message-----
From: H-DC Editor [mailto:dc-edit@mail.h-net.msu.edu]
Sent: Friday, June 22, 2001 12:38 PM
To: H-DC@H-NET.MSU.EDU
Subject: Swamps and Washington x-post from H-Urban (3)
[...]
Date Posted: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 07:59:21 -0500
Posted by Kenneth Terry Jackson <ktj1@columbia.edu>
I do not remember if I remember correctly, but did not the powerful speaker
of the house, Joseph Cannon of Illinois, or something to that effect, say
that he would die and go to hell before he would allow a monument to the
Great Emancipator be built in that "God-Damned Swamp."
[Ed: See
the Washington Post January 4, 1991 article "How 1902's City of Tomorrow
Became the Capital of Today" (by Benjamin Forgey) at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/2000/city0104.htm
the Newshouse News Service story "Memorial Sprawl Spurs Ban on More
Construction on National Mall" at
http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/story1c011801.html
and PRESERVATION's "The Brawl on the Mall" (January, February, 2001) at
http://www.savethemall.org/media/brawl.html
with accounts of House Speaker Cannon's opposition to the placement of the
Lincoln Memorial on the Washington mall.
See also the National Park Service's history of the Lincoln Memorial at
http://www.nps.gov/linc/memorial/construct.htm
with reference to the "swampy area along the Potomac River" filled to create
Potomac Park. ]
In other words, the association of DC with a swamp is not recent. And the
mall seems almost below the level of the Potomoc. And isn't the term swamp
associated with the water table and humidity rather than the proximity to a
river?
I have heard New York and Philadelphia called many things over the years,
but never swamps. New Orleans and Houston are also said to be built in
swampy country. I say this by way of a question and not as an indication
that I know what I am talking about.
Ken Jackson
Columbia University
Matthew Gilmore
H-DC
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