A Walker in the City

The title belongs to Alfred Kazin; I just borrowed it for this posting.

Yesterday morning, I took a walk. It is one of a series I have been taking over the past year or so with my Canon PowerShot S400 to document the public sculpture in the city. Of which there is an unbelievable amount, and which has not yet been, as far as I know, comprehensibly documented.

I started at about 8 in the morning at Union Station. Inside there is a bust of A. Phillip Randolph, former president of the Sleeping Car Porters Union. The statute was the gift of the AFL-CIO, and the inscription on the base says that Randolph had the idea for the 1963 civil rights March on Washington.

This got me thinking. How many statues are there of African Americans in Washington? Not many that I recall seeing.

Strange event #1. A 40-ish white male, 5' 10" or so, wearing white shorts and a pullover shirt, weighing about 300 pounds, walks by the bust of Randolph, stops, looks, carefully reads the inscription, moves three steps back to get a better look, moves three steps forward, reaches up and touches Randolph's hands gracefully, and the moves on.

Randolph stands in the back part of the station, where you buy coffee and newspaper and wait for your train. Moving towards the front, past the ticket takers into the great hall, I noticed that the great hall is ringed, just below ceiling level, with statues of crusader-looking men. Not quite carytids, because they do not hold anything up, but they look like they could, if asked. Life size or bigger, maybe 50 of them. I didn't count them.

I decided that they did not fit the category of sculpture and went on. Perhaps I was wrong.

In front of Union Station, after you cross three or four separate automobile tracks, you get to the statue (and its meagre fountain pool) of Christopher Columbus. In white stone, and not exactly what you would call a piece of art.

Why is he here? There is an inscription that credits him with having the vision and courage to found a New World. I guess that is part of the reason.

This is not the only statute of Columbus in Washington (read on), and is hardly a great work of art. On the back, facing the station, is a cameo of Ferdinand and Isabella (there is another statue of Isabella in front of the Organization of American States building on 17th street), there is the prow of a boat in front of the standing Columbus, and more.

As Columbus and Washington have so little to do with each other, I would rather there be something else in front of the station. The replica of the Liberty Bell, which stands between the Columbus statue and the station looks equally out of place.

Union Station is located a bit uncomfortably. Ringed by streets such as New Jersey and Lousiana, it is difficult to tell north from south, or east from west. Perhaps that makes for a good metaphor. I don't know.

But basically, if you head directly south (which you cannot do by car) you wind up first in the Senate office complex, then the Capitol, then the site of the proposed new ball-park, and pretty soon, you are in Key West (if not Cuba). But between the station and the Senate are several city blocks of parkland. You sort of know this is there, but you never actually set foot on this space expect in those rare instances when you have to go from the station to the Senate. And, if you are not a Senator who commutes by train, how often can this be?

It turns out that there are trees and flowers and mowed grass and winding paths and benches and in fact a very comfortable small park (and it is not so small that you don't think you are in a park; you definitely do). While there is no immediate sculpture in the park, there is a marker reminding everyone that all of this land was ceded from the state of Maryland in 1790 (hardly a man is now alive, who remembers that fateful day and year) to form, along with land ceded by, and later retroceded to, Virginia, the District of Columbia. (Aye, there's the rub. That is why Columbus is there. We are in the District of Columbia!! Now, I got it.)

In addition, a number of trees in this park were donated by Maryland (I cannot figure this out; were they planted later? Were they already there?), and each is marked. They seem either to be Northern Oak or Scarlet Oak. The leaves on the Scarlet Oak are narrower and, as you might by now have guessed, the leaves on the Northern Oak wider.

If you cross the park, and then bear to the southwest (as if you wanted to pass in front of the Senate office buildings, rather than wind up at them), you cross to another small, but not too small park, this one bearing the monument to Robert Taft, formerly Senator from Ohio.

This is an extraordinary monument for a number of reasons. Taft, for those you who do not remember, was the son of President William Howard Taft (where is his statue???), and a Senator from Ohio, who was known as Mr. Republican. I believe he was minority leader for a number of years and, had Eisenhower declined to run for president as a Republican in 1952, would undoubtedly had been the party's candidate that year (so much for dynasties).

The statue itself is a bigger than life full length bronze, that sits on a walk-up pedestal in front of a rectangular concrete (marble?) stele that is very tall. I mean very tall. A couple of hundred feet tall, perhaps? And, atop this stele, is a bell carillon. Whether they ever ring the bells, I am not sure. [I cheated: 115 feet high/27 bells/wrung when Congress is in session]

Because of all of the tall trees (I assume they are more Northern and Scarlet oaks), you cannot get a feel for the size of this monument as you drive nearby streets. But take my word for it. This is one tall piece.

If you keep walking in a southwesterly direction, you will find yourself out of the park, and approximately where Pennsylvania Avenue crosses Constitution. In other words, accross two very wide, and not normally heavily trafficked streets from the East Building of the National Gallery of Art.

As you would expect, there are some statues that encircle the building. The first one that you see is a terrific piece by Frank Stella that looks like some enormous insect from another planet and which has the unlikely name: "Prinz Friedrich von Homburg - ein Schauspiel".

As you go around the building counter clockwise, you then pass an untitled painted set of aluminum boxes by James Rosatti, a large black spider-like creature by Alexander Calder, called "Tom's" (again mysteriously), the two piece brown and off-yellow "Knife Edge Mirror" by Henry Moore, that stands in front of the entrance to the museum, a stark black grouping of rectangles that also could be alive by Tony Smith called something like "The Snake is One', and a misshapen, sliced bagel like sculpture (actually halfway between a bagel and Robert Indiana's well know "Love" design) called "Oriforma" by Jean Arp. There construction going on around about 30% of the building's periphery, so other sculpture is not visable (and probably not there) for now.

Crossing back over Pennsylvania and Constitution (but this time not veering eastward, but heading due north), you come to the Courthouse for the District Court of the District of Columbia, where all of the base line federal trials are held. The building, now named after E. Barrett Prettyman, is a plain-Jane affair, with a large annex being completed on its east side, which doesn't quite belong, but which by itself is a better design (if less monumental) than the Courthouse proper. (Why do I capitalize "Courthouse"?). In front of this building is a large full length statue of, of all people, General George Meade, the commander of the Union troops at Gettysburg, surrounded by a group of proud and supportive men.

Between General Meade and the Courthouse (as you head up the steps), you come to a large stone stele, with various scenes engraved on it including a man looking at a large cross. (So, there, Judge Roy Moore!!).

Walking by the courthouse (there, I have stopped using capital letters) to the north on its west side, you go through a park like square separating the courthouse from the Canadian embassy, where the are the usual benches for reading, and so forth. On one of the ledges, is a terrific statue of two men playing chess, very life-like and life-size. As you walk on, you come to a seated statue of John Marshall, who was the chief justice of the Supreme Court even longer than Rumsfeld, and you see a small plaque that tells you that Marshall lived in a house on this very site. And, that you are in John Marshall Park.

If you walk north past (or around) Marshall, you get to a broad set of stairs leading to the street that has the city's courts, some local governmental buildings, and straight ahead, across the next street, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. There are two friezes surrounding the steps that are decorative enough, although I am not sure what they represent. On the grounds of the Court of Appeals is an unprepossing statue of Abraham Lincoln, which is inaccessible for now because of reconstruction work going on. On the grounds of that building, but on the east side, near 4th Street NW, there is another sculpture, a large black one, that I have admired before, but is also out of view. I am not certain at all what it is.

Crossing the street, heading back south but a little to the east, you cross between a District government building (where the Department of Motor Vehicles, among other things, resides), and a building of the United States Department of Labor. Located between these two buildings is a very impressive statue of Albert Pike, who is stated to be an author, scholar, soldier, philanthropist, philosopher, and poet, but who in fact is best known as a Freemason and author of many of the classic masonic texts. No one knows this is here, but it has been here since 1901, when it was placed there by the Scottish Rite Masons.

If you go south past Mr. Pike, you come to another small park, this one housing the memorial to fallen law enforcement officers, with all of their names being engraved on a short, but long, wall, reminiscent, but not exactly, of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The names are guarded by several well placed lions, of various sexes and ages, and in various positions of repose.

To the east, again on 4th Street, is the Holy Rosary Church, the only (I am sure) Catholic church in the city to offer mass every Sunday in Italian. Next to it, you find another, smaller but better, statue of Columbus, to add to the one in front of Union Station.

If you walk south from there, you again cross Pennsylvania and Constitution and wind up in front of the Capitol (west side), at the big reflecting pool. In this area, as well, you find statuary, including a monument to Naval losses during the Civil War, which stands in a small round-a-bout that makes it hard to get to (without really trying), a large and impressive statue of General Grant, flanked by bronzes of soldiers in battle, and a statute of someone whom I assume is Neptune, also flanked by other statues of mythogical creatures, in front of the fountain in front of the Capitol.

There you have it. The sculpture I saw on my walk. One of many such walks I have taken.