What to see in America . ountry. Before IXIrs. Madison, thewife of the President, leftthe city, she secured Gil-bert Stuarts celebratedportrait of Washington,and the original draft ofthe Declaration of Inde-pendence to carry with |her. The stone walls of |the Presidents mansion !remained standing, andwhen the building wasrestored the stone waspainted white to obliter-ate the marks of the it acquired the nameby which it is commonlyknown. The city developedslowly. Very little paving had been done by 1860, andmost of the streets were worse than country roads. In sum-mer the dust rose in
What to see in America . ountry. Before IXIrs. Madison, thewife of the President, leftthe city, she secured Gil-bert Stuarts celebratedportrait of Washington,and the original draft ofthe Declaration of Inde-pendence to carry with |her. The stone walls of |the Presidents mansion !remained standing, andwhen the building wasrestored the stone waspainted white to obliter-ate the marks of the it acquired the nameby which it is commonlyknown. The city developedslowly. Very little paving had been done by 1860, andmost of the streets were worse than country roads. In sum-mer the dust rose in clouds, and in winter the streets werewell-nigh impassable with mud. Street railways did notexist until 1862. The Civil War transformed the city intoa vast military camp and hospital. Long trains of armywagons were almost constantly passing through the streets,and at times many churches, public institutions, and theCapitol itself were given up to hospital service. The dome and two wings of the Capitol were built between. Washington Monument 142 What to See in America the years 1851 and 1865. The wings are marble, but themain building is sandstone painted white. The dome isone of the stateliest in the world, and its impressiveness isaided by the admirable situation of the building on a dominat-ing hilltop which rises ninety feet above the level of thePotomac. On the tip of the dome is a bronze statue ofLiberty, sixteen and one half feet high. The building coversthree and one half acres and is in a fifty-acre park. An oddfeature of the interior is a Whispering Gallery in the White House, a trifle over a mile distant, is no lesssatisfying in its statel}^ simplicity, and its generous grounds,seventy-five acres in extent, that sweep down to the PotomacRiver. There, by the waterside, is the Washington Monu-ment, a widely-famed architectural feature of the city,chiefly impressive because of its height, for it is an absolutelyunornamented, tapering marble shaft, more sever
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Keywords: ., bookauthorjohnsonc, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1919
