CHAPTER III THE WHITE HOUSE AS THE EXECUTIVE CENTER The large increase in the number of Government activities and employees following the War with Spain created a demand for new offices. One of the first submissions to the Commission of Fine Arts, made in 1910 by the Secretary of the Treasury, Franklin MacVeagh, was three buildings designed by architects in private practice for the Departments of State, of Justice, and of Commerce and Labor, to be located south of Pennsylvania Avenue between Fourteenth and Fifteenth Streets. The land was purchased, but no appropriations for the buildings were made. In 1916 Congress created its own Public Buildings Commission to consider the entire question of the needs of the Government for office space. It was provided that this commission should have the advice of the Commission of Fine Arts. A comprehensive report was prepared and was submitted to Congress in 1917 but without recommendation by the Public Buildings Commission. The World War brought a sudden demand for temporary wooden office buildings, which were hastily constructed in the Mall, in the Plaza fronting the Union Station, and on lands purchased north of B Street (now Constitution Avenue) and west of Eighteenth Street. Unfortunately, large buildings of temporary design but of concrete construction were built in Potomac Park in proximity to the Lincoln Memorial, and a further large space was taken for automobile parking. Thus about half of Potomac Park was withdrawn from park uses. During the administration of President Wilson the Secretary of the Treasury, William G. McAdoo, secured the purchase of the site and plans of a hotel to be erected on Vermont Avenue and used them for the War Risk Insurance activities; also he had constructed. an annex to the Treasury Department on Pennsylvania Avenue, and Congress authorized, but did not make, appropriations for the purchase of the remaining frontage up to H Street. Both the War Risk and the Treasury Annex Buildings face Lafayette Square and therefore conform to the plan of 1901, which plan proposes the taking of the entire Lafayette Square frontage for buildings to be used for offices of the executive departments. This would make the White House the executive center, as the Capitol is the legislative center of the Government. In furtherance of the plan of 1901, Cass Gilbert, architect of the Treasury Annex, studied the question of an appropriate cornice height for buildings in proximity to the THE WHITE HOUSE AS THE EXECUTIVE CENTER 29 White House. This cornice height he used not only on the Treasury Annex but also on the building for the Chamber of Commerce of the United States also facing Lafayette Square, at Connecticut Avenue. The location of the Department of State building having been forced into the Washington Monument grounds in the scheme of 1910, serious objections to that site arose. The preference was for the block west of Lafayette Square, a site favored tenatively by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when Congress shall provide for such a building. The location of departmental buildings for the War and the Navy has been the subject of frequent discussions covering several years. The Commission of Fine Arts adhere to their original recommendations that the White House be taken as the central or focal point for the executive offices of the Government and that the War and the Navy Buildings should face Pennsylvania Avenue, west of the White House. The frontage on Constitution Avenue west of Seventeenth Street is now occupied by semipublic buildings related to the Lincoln Memorial and Potomac Park. The Pennsylvania Avenue frontage from the old State, War, and Navy Building to Rock Creek is either in poor and deteriorating condition or is being rebuilt with buildings not of high class. This fact throws this area of the city out of balance physically and esthetically. The large majority of the properties in the area between Pennsylvania Avenue and Potomac Park and the Rock Creek Parkway are of the shanty class. The surroundings call for high-grade improvements. The objection as to the high price of land along Pennsylvania Avenue does not seem a valid one when it is considered that already the Government has for years paid rent on three buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue, one long occupied by the Department of Commerce; it is now used by the very important Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Again consider that for both the War and Navy Buildings land and construction together would cost far less than a modern battleship, which would be obsolete in 20 years, whereas the buildings would last many decades. Enlargement of the President's offices.-What was designed as a temporary building for the President's offices was built according to plans prepared by McKim, Mead & White during the restoration of the White House in 1902. Twice these offices had been enlarged before a third enlargement became imperative in 1934, when the available limits of the White House grounds seemingly was reached. President Franklin D. Roosevelt then expressed to the Fine Arts Commission the conviction that the next step would be the transfer of the President's offices to the so-called State, War, |