Washington by Design

...Is the Jefferson Memorial “stranded,” somehow, or cut off from the life of the Mall...

...After noting the “bitter debate” about John Russell Pope’s design—which drew the ire of militant modernists—Moeller seems to side with the detractors...

...This is a book by a man who truly knows and loves Washington...

...Many parts of this book make excellent reading...

...No, the proclamation’s language forbade any further settlement beyond the line “for the present,” according to the Richard Striner, professor of history at Washington College, is the author, most recently, of Father Abraham: Lincoln’s Relentless Struggle to End Slavery...

...McGregor also lapses into unsustainable generalizations...

...The descriptions of the buildings, consisting of one or more paragraphs, are short essays that synthesize architectural analysis, historical commentary, and design criticism...

...At last, the book reaches outlying precincts and neighborhoods...

...But as everyone knows who has the slightest familiarity with Thomas Jefferson, the third president, together with most of the Founders, embraced the world of classical design, which he found to be compatible with (if not deeply expressive of) Enlightenment “progressivism,” and he used the Pantheon form both at Monticello and the University of Virginia—hence Pope’s design, which saluted the taste of Thomas Jefferson...

...Such is not the case with Martin Moeller’s AIA Guide: The typography scans very easily and the high resolution of the black-and-white photographs enables the images to hold their own within dimensions that are almost as small as (or smaller than) the ones in McGregor’s book...

...the chapter on Pierre L’Enfant and early Washington is especially good, and the chapter on the local and social history of Washington is outstanding...

...BY RICHARD STRINER The architecture of our nation’s capital will never stop fascinating people, as two recent books about the city attest...

...Moeller writes in a captivating manner that makes his work entertaining...

...Some of the errors appear to be typos: He writes, for example, when discussing the colonial history of the mid-Atlantic region, that “Virginia colonists shipped some twenty pounds of tobacco to England” in 1620...

...Defi nitive judgments on the buildings of the city will never be delivered by critics...

...Other errors appear to be Freudian slips: He refers to a Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington that “duplicates one that has hung in the White House since the beginning of the eighteenth century...

...Moeller is the senior vice president and curator of the National Building Museum...

...Every one of these pronouncements could be challenged or turned on its head...

...Other errors are scattered through the volume, and it’s a pity...

...Perhaps the problem is mostly with the quality (digital or otherwise) of the images themselves...

...Such problems are a shame, since McGregor has produced a fi ne volume...

...The typography, though, is rather hard on the eyes and the stingy dimensions of the well-chosen illustrations (with the exception of some full-page maps, architectural plans, and urban prospects that form an appendix at the back) make the color photography less successful than it should have been...

...Capitol building alone—admittedly a very interesting story— consume a quarter of the book...

...The book’s physical character, however, is another matter...

...The overall comparison here should be an object lesson to book designers...

...His judgments on matters of aesthetics are debatable—endlessly debatable—as is usually the case with the pronouncements of architecture critics...

...Who knows...

...Washington from the Ground Up is part of a series of books about cities of the world by a scholar who writes about urban history...

...Let him speak for himself: Frank Lloyd Wright and other prominent architects were scandalized by the retrograde design, and argued that the famously erudite and progressive Jefferson would have preferred a memorial that refl ected the technology and ethos of the era in which it was to be built...

...Capitol to Capitol Hill, from the White House to Lafayette Square, then Federal Triangle, Foggy Bottom, the Mall...

...McGregor is principally concerned with the evolution of the city (both planned and haphazard) and the growth of its federal component, its “monumental core...

...The mind reels: How hasty can analysis become...

...The architectural history, as such, is often technical...

...In any case, perusal is a squinty experience...

...It is up to preservationists to see that the changes are guided in a way that is enlightened...

...In other words, the building can be said to have “attitude,” which the taste of the moment tends to favor...

...The AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C...

...McGregor’s strategy is to start with iconic federal buildings, then write about the precincts surrounding them...

...readers at ease with architectural terminology will follow the descriptions of buildings more easily than others...

...Two chapters on the U.S...

...President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed the scheme through, however, and the result is a neo-Pantheon that is stranded on the far shore of the Tidal Basin, cut off from the life of the Mall itself...

...The numbers correspond to locations in the walking-tour maps...

...His historical sense can embrace the ironic...

...This commentary is interwoven with summaries of historical trends and events that illuminate the cultural landscape of Washington...

...writing of the building that sits just west of the White House—known successively as the State, War, and Navy Building, the Old Executive Offi ce Building, and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Offi ce Building—he notes that while the building was “widely reviled as a symbol of Gilded Age excess” for years, it is “now, at long last, widely beloved as a welcome exception to the sedate architecture more typical of the nation’s capital...

...A few of the errors appear to have been caused by simple haste: The fi rst capital of the Confederacy was not “Mobile, Alabama” but Montgomery...

...Granted, this is a compact production and not a coffee table showpiece...

...Referring to the British Proclamation of 1763, which halted colonial settlement at the Appalachian mountain line, McGregor writes that “everything west of this line would remain Indian land in perpetuity...

...These two books are new grist for the mill...

...His new iteration (the fourth edition) of the AIA Guide uses walking-tour coverage of city precincts to handle the issues of geography...

...The city as a work-in-progress will change, and then go on changing...

...From the ground up,” the author discusses Washington’s terrain and topography as they relate to its urban development...

...Surely the march of the Bonus Army in 1932, and Franklin Roosevelt’s inauguration in 1933, brought the force of great historical events to the nation’s capital...

...Where McGregor’s book features chapter-length essays, Moeller has followed the guidebook formula with separate individual descriptions of buildings below each numbered photograph...

...Writing of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, he cites the infl uence of modernist “brutalism,” a style that, he notes, “has been widely praised and widely criticized...

...Taste polemics can be perilous business, and McGregor has a light touch when it comes to these matters...

...James McGregor’s Washington from the Ground Up is a fi ne undertaking, a concise account of the city that integrates geography, history, and design...

...In covering architecture, McGregor handles the issues of aesthetic judgment and subjective taste fairly well...

...The best aspect of the reactionary structure is the glimpse of Jefferson’s statue through one of the side openings...

...Compare this treatment to Moeller’s dismissive account of the Jefferson Memorial...

...The historical treatment throughout the book is good, but McGregor— a professor of comparative literature at the University of Georgia—would have managed to avoid some mistakes if he had circulated his manuscript to a wider network of scholars, especially historians...

...But even casual readers will be captivated by McGregor’s commentary on the European precedents that guided so many of the architects, artists, and planners who shaped the city...

...And many more examples could be given, including the examples from the War of 1812 that McGregor himself includes in the early chapters...

...is the latest in a series of highly selective guidebooks produced since the 1960s by the Washington chapter of the American Institute of Architects...

...Tell that to the visitors who fl ock to the Tidal Basin at cherry blossom time and rent paddle boats from which to gaze upon the Jefferson Memorial...

...He means the 19th century, of course...

...In this way the book expands its geographical coverage: from the U.S...

...For example: Would Jefferson have scorned Pope’s classical design, his reuse of the Pantheon form...

...In fact, they sent in the neighborhood of 20 tons in 1620, according to historian Alden T. Vaughan...

...By turns, he is both judicious— deferential to the “judgment of the ages”—and assertive in rating the “success” or “failure” of buildings...

...The defi nitive book about Washington will never be written, and this is exactly as it should be...

...A number of the errors seem to fl ow from unexamined premises...

...British historian Ian R. Christie...

...Perhaps the mistakes can be corrected in a second (or the paperback) edition...

...Toward the end of the book, he states that “with the exception of a few days during the Civil War when the capital threatened to become a battleground, and a long weekend in the 1960s when riots tore through its central neighborhoods, the city has scarcely felt the exhilaration of great national movements or the cold breath of disaster...