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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 list co-editor, web editor dc-edit@mail.h-net.msu.edu http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~dclist/ [list website] http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/lists/subscribe.cgi?list=H-DC [subscribe to H-DC] Remember to check http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lm&list=h-dc for past list messages.
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