Quote:
Originally Posted by Coldrsx
Must get back there one of these days...
This is unreal!
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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.