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Nice photos!

I don't see the resemblance to Rome, but DC did always remind me in many ways of Berlin.

Well, let's just take a look at Pantheon, for a comparison in architecture:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...nRomeModel.jpg

:)

Quote:

Originally Posted by detroitmetro101 (Post 5204199)

by the way i love this particular building.

http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/j...e/IMG_6378.jpg

FYI: That's the Archives. It's where the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are kept.

Yes, it was prominently featured in that National Treasure movie.

I don't understand all the grief about DC not being Rome. It is obvious that Cass Gilbert was referencing the ever present 'temples' in DC. DC nods it hat at many great cities, such as Rome & Paris. Yet, DC is it's own fabulous beast.

Quote:

Originally Posted by detroitmetro101 (Post 5204196)

kool maudit, rome wasnt orderly? what part of roman history did you study. greek cities were known not to have been orderly, but roman. lmfao, re-read roman history, roman cities were so orderly they were dublicated across the roman empire.

roman colonial cities were orderly, but the metropolis itself was a tangle of narrow streets and towering (some up to 10 stories) insulae.

martial has some good lines about the chaos of roman life.

in any case, this is a distraction, and wasn't meant as a slight. dc is amazing, and it does have some of the finest neoclassical structures in the world.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Coldrsx (Post 5204048)

Must get back there one of these days...

This is unreal!

http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/j...o/IMG_6231.jpg

The Old Executive Office Building (to distinguish it from the New Executive Office Building just up the street) actually gives a good example of the differing visions for the capital over its relatively brief history.

When it was conceived by L'Enfant in the 18th Century, I doubt that the architect had Paris or Rome in mind. Paris was more than half-a-century away from the boulevards of Haussmann and the "Roman" portions of Rome were either buried or had been converted into churches or housing (e.g. Trajan's markets which had become apartments). I think if you want a visualization of what L'Enfant had in mind, you might want to look to Karlsruhe, Germany.

As the city developed, although there was the Capitol (definitely Graeco-Roman inspired) and the Executive Mansion (inspired by 18th Century English mansion designs; the north and south porticoes were later additions), for the most part, the city looked more like Georgetown or Alexandria (Old Town) across the river. It was mostly built of red brick and was decidedly not monumental in scale. The building that houses the National Portrait Gallery today (which I believe was built to house the Customs Department) came along in the first third of the 19th Century, as did the Graeco-Roman Treasury Department. But if you want examples of what caught the fancy of architects, look at the original Smithsonian building (the castle) or the Pension Building (red brick and somewhat Romanesque, but inspired by the ruins of the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine in Rome; the frieze around the outside of the building alone is worth a trip to see it). The OEOB is an example of late Victorian taste in public buildings - tons of columns clustered under Mansard roofs and it was such an architectural mish-mash it was nearly torn down in the middle of the 20th Century. Its layout is similar to the Treasury on the opposite end of the White House (as it came to be called by Theodore Roosevelt's time) but its architecture had become abhorrent by 1960. Fortunately, it survived and is much-loved today, sort of like an elderly relative. The Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Ave. is another example of the late-19th Century fondness for vaguely "medieval" architecture, and is built out of gray stone (granite?), but the houses along the city's residential streets continued to be built out of red brick. The fondness for Beaux-Arts-style residences built out of limestone came in the late 19th-early 20th Century. If you want an idea of what residential streets in fashionable Washington before the Beaux-Arts craze hit looked like, visualize the James G. Blaine Mansion just west of Dupont Circle on Massachusetts Ave. NW. Across Mass. Ave. is the former home of Alice Roosevelt Longworth (Theodore's daughter), an example of how dramatically tastes had changed by the early 20th Century. And at the corner of Massachusetts Ave. and 21st St. NW is the apotheosis of the Beaux-Arts/"Parisian" craze, the former home of Evalyn Walsh McLean (owner of the Hope Diamond), now the Indonesian Embassy. Also in the vicinity is the headquarters of the Society of the Cincinnati (descendants of Revolutionary War soldiers), another "Parisian" limestone palace.

Most of what makes people associate Washington with a vision of ancient Rome is the Federal Triangle complex (including the National Gallery of Art, across Constitution Ave.), which was begun in the late 20s (replacing a slum) and only completed with the completion of the Reagan Building (early 21st Century?). The Supreme Court building (1930s) is a prime example as well, all marble and modeled on the design of the Temple of Concord in the Roman Forum.

I think what most associates Washington with Europe in the minds of many Americans is the street layout as much as anything else.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kool maudit (Post 5204680)

Rome itself was anything but orderly. Think Mexico City or Calcutta, not Washington DC or even Paris.

If you look at how Romans designed things, their buildings - fora, public homes, etc. - were all designed to be inward-looking. It was about enclosing space and remaking that, not about presenting a dramatic face to the street. The prime example of this tendency is found in the Pantheon. It looked different when it was built (or rebuilt; the building we know today was a rebuilding of two earlier structures, one built by Domitian and the original by Agrippa and neither one resembled the version we have now). For one thing, the area before the entrance (then enclosed by porticoes) was a good ten feet lower than today's surface, making the "porch" seem to loom over the person approaching it. Had it been completed as designed, that effect would have been exaggerated by even taller columns, which were not able to be produced, thus the clear lowering of the height of the porch. But the impact was not intended to be the porch. It simply sheltered the doors, which opened into a space which must have astonished Romans at the time - a perfect sphere of space, free of columns, with a roof made in a rough image of the heavens (those coffers all had rosettes inside them, probably gilded, if not brightly painted, resembling stars) and a huge opening in the roof, imitating the light of the sun. It was the architect's attempt to represent the universe and it is awe-inspiring, even today.

But Rome itself was a warren of narrow, dirty streets; huge apartment blocks; the walls of privately owned town homes punctuated by ground-floor shops, but precious few windows; magnificent, but enclosed public spaces, and everywhere, "shops" consisting of trestle tables sometimes shielded from the glare of the sun by makeshift awnings. It was loud, dirty, smelly, and crowded and we would be appalled by it.

L'Enfant never said much about architecture. His focus was much more concerned with planning and layout. And as far as that goes, he was definitely heavily influenced by Versailles, and other baroque planning principles.

Meanwhile, the neo-classical architectural leanings of Jefferson are well document, and had a profound effect on early post-revolutionary architecture. Jefferson wanted government buildings to be neo-classical as an homage to the Greeks for inventing democracy.

Jefferson hated baroque city planning though. He wanted the capital to be a plain grid.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cirrus (Post 5205276)

And we got both!

narrow streets... of course there were narrow streets, there was no need for wide streets when theres no cars. but anyways, yeah rome was dense, but it was certianly orderly, no quastion about it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by detroitmetro101 (Post 5205789)

narrow streets... of course there were narrow streets, there was no need for wide streets when theres no cars. but anyways, yeah rome was dense, but it was certianly orderly, no quastion about it.

The streets were unlit and it was unsafe to walk around at night without armed escort. Not only were the streets narrow, they were winding and dirty. There were lean-to merchants' stands everywhere. As I said, think Mexico City or Calcutta.

Quote:

there was no need for wide streets when theres no cars.

Washington has some of the widest streets in the US, and they were planned long before cars were invented.

rome was akin to today's third world cities in everything but height. calcutta's poor districts are not 6-10 story warrens. they're flatter. scale-wise, rome probably looked like the lower east side.

I did not anticipate a lengthy discussion following my little comment. Thanks for all the input!

^Ha ha! Well that happens on here a lot. Anyway, nice shots! I especially liked the first bunch with the office buildings. I've seen all the monuments of course, and thanks to Cirrus and others I've seen a lot of the amazing residential streets. But I haven't seen much of the CBD-type streets of DC.

Quote:

Originally Posted by CassGilbert (Post 5202532)

If there is a city resembling ancient Rome, it is Washington.

Ha, or an empire so resembling ancient Rome. If only you weren't so right.