'We Try to Use Dictatorial Powers Only as a Last Resort'
Shapiro, Walter
‘WeTry to Use Dictatorial Poms Only As a Last Resort’ by Walter Shapiro The cab ride was by now quite familiar, but on that early March afternoon I instinctively put down my paper and...
...Although these original arguments of scale and aesthetics are extremely valid, they are also exceedingly personal and likely to be unpersuasive in public debate...
...A little-known government agency, which likes to fancy itself as the Federal Reserve of the savings and loan industry, the Bank Board believes that moving to a prestige location just a block from the White House would rescue it from bureaucratic obscurity...
...On the following day, February 27, the staff of the Advisory Council met with GSA in a futile attempt to resolve the dispute...
...Established in 1966, the Councilmidway between an independent agency and a division of the National Park Service-has a staff of 27 (24 in Washington and three in a regional office in Denver) and an annual budget of less than $500,000...
...At this point, neither the Winder Annex, the Riggs Bank, nor Nichols Cafe were on the National Register...
...In The Washington Star-News Stephen Aug detailed how cash-starved Amtrak will have to spend between $1 and $2 million to restore a roadbed that was recently uprooted by the Penn Central if it is to reestablish passenger service between Boston and Chicago...
...In its criteria for site selection, the Bank Board gave top priority to a location in the “immediate vicinity of sister financial institutions” like the Federal Reserve, the Council of Economic Advisors, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (whose own box-like headquarters began the erosion of the charm and scale of 17th Street...
...In terms of size and power, the Advisory Council is to the U. S. government what Andorra is to Europe...
...Although it is difficult to imagine how I was not aware...
...It is significant to note that Sampson and Roush differ on whether they were aware that GSA staff members had made any verbal commitments that the National Register properties would not be torn down...
...A simple explanation might be that Art Sampson had just finished reading Plain Speaking and decided to refashion the GSA in Truman’s image...
...Robert Garvey, executive director of the Council, noted in a letter to GSA on March 1 that at the February 27 meeting it had been agreed that “there will be no further demolition of buildings in the site area pending comments by the Council...
...Late that afternoon Roush met with Arthur Sampson, who ordered demolition for that weekend...
...Although not visible from the street, the wrecking crews had also started work on the roof of the Winder Annex, an 1880’s structure which adjoins its more famous namesake...
...The importance of the February 27 meeting lies in the conviction universally shared by the Advisory Council (and disputed by GSA) that the agency had pledged to halt demolition until the May meeting...
...But unlike such activities as the secret bombing of Cambodia, here the lawlessness has been reduced to a comprehensible scale...
...Moreover, Interior concluded that the Winder Annex “is an integral part of the Winder Building itself’ and consequently was already listed on the National Register...
...Just one week later, Interior ruled that “both the Nichols Cafe and the Riggs Bank appear to meet the criteria for inclusion in the National Register”-a finding that has the same legal effect as actual listing...
...On Friday morning, Jim Stewart called George Oram, the chief executive officer of the Bank Board, to inform him that demolition was planned for the weekend...
...Let us learn a lesson from all this...
...Once the cab made the turn, my attention, as always, focused on the Executive Office Building (EOB to those close to the seat of power), whose highly ornamental style is Washington’s most lasting legacy of the age of Louis Napoleon...
...I knew it was not an easy decision for me...
...It is seductively easy to wax sentimental over the destruction of historic structures and to denounce their replacement by cement and glass office buildings as symbolic of the decline of taste in America...
...Sampson acknowledges these assurances, but dismisses their importance, saying, “I was told there were some problems...
...We have almost dictatorial powers,” he said recently when asked about the demolition...
...The stuff of the Council did...
...We try to use dictatorial powers only as a last resort...
...However, a 1971 Executive Order had directed all federal agencies to survey the properties they own for those likely to be eligible for the National Register, and pass on questionable cases to the Interior Department for final determination...
...I guess some of the staff assumed I knew things I did not...
...Leading the opposition to the Bank Board and the GSA, was the Advisory Council on Historical Preservation...
...The Council’s own regulations state that if no agreement can be reached at the staff level with another federal agency, “the agency official must delay further processing of the undertaking until the Advisory Council has submitted its comments...
...Even more graphic is Morton Mintz’s account in The Washington Post of the way in which General Motors conspired illegally with Standard Oil of California and Firestone Tire in the late 1940s to pave over Southern California’s famed inter-urban street railway and replace it with a fleet of buses...
...Ruttenbaum argued that GSA retains the right to nominate properties to the National Register and Interior can only affirm or deny these recommendations...
...At that point the staff had the power to control and/or influence the Council, the National Park Service, and high officials of the Department of the Interior...
...As a consequence, when negotiations with the GSA began in earnest, the Advisory Council turned to the more clearcut argument of the historic and architectural importance of the existing buildings on the site...
...Steve Ruttenbaum, who heads GSA’s two-man office of historic preservation, refused to nominate these properties for the National Register...
...That’s why due process is even more important in a question like this than it is in resolving more abstract contitutional issues like impoundment...
...But I knew the Council could react negatively, and take some adverse action...
...So, on February 13 the Advisory Councfi (in a rather unusual move) asked Interior to make a determination of the historical values of the three properties...
...Robert Rice, a GSA attorney, assured Macrory that there was no need to go into court, since there would be no further demolition until consultation with the Advisory Council had been completed...
...The Advisory Council staff, as was noted in the beginning, had only the law on its side, which really doesn’t do you much good when the building has been knocked down, the tracks ripped up, or the bomb dropped...
...And this is important to think about...
...Fortney Stark, the most vigorous congressional opponent of the Bank Board’s move, Stewart made a similar statement during a February 28 phone call...
...Meanwhile GSA was moving quickly...
...On the following Monday the remnants of the Riggs Bank and the Winder Annex were saved, for the moment, by a temporary restraining order obtained by attorneys for a local preservation gro UP...
...The Eggs Bank building (an almost classic example of the solidity that was derigueur for financial buildings during the‘ 1920s) fared a little better-most of its facade remained, but the rear of the building had been demolished...
...But rather than testing this doubtful contention in court, GSA avoided a judicial judgment with its “demolish first, ask questions later” methods...
...Sadly, in recent years this has become an all-too-familiar problem...
...It is this power to make irreversible decisions that undermines the comforting notion that “we have a government of laws, not men...
...While hardly comparable to General Motors, the ultimate beneficiary of the demolition is the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, which coveted the site for its new offices...
...The answer to that question is simple...
...In an interview in late March, Sampson said, “My strong feeling is that the future of the Advisory Council depends on their decision-making process...
...Oram says that he informed Stewart that they “would have preferred to cover our congressional bases before the buildings came down,” but stresses that it was only a problem of timing, “not that we thought it was incorrect to tear down the buildings.’’ The GSA had a sound reason for wanting to move ahead-because of escalating building costs, delay was raising the price of the building by $10,000 a day...
...Why did the GSA decide to take the law into its own hands...
...After the Advisory Council met to consider (and, under some political pressure, approve) the Bank Board project in early April, Sampson recounted, “I told them that if you don’t want me to do it again, I’ll need some changes in your procedures that relate to how long you can delay a project...
...Especially since Sampson was so proud of them that he dispatched a copy to me via courier within one hour after the closed-door session ended: In my opinion, the credibility of the Council and its ultimate clout is at stake today...
...This “you good guys have to shape up or else” attitude is becoming so prevalent these days that Sampson’s exact words to the executive session are worth examining...
...The other side of 17th Street has always been far more modest in scale, as if, almost providentially, it had been designed to complement the EOB...
...This prompted Patrick Macrory, an attorney retained by a local preservation group, to call GSA to determine their intentions...
...There were some agreements that were not necessarily valid...
...Destroying a building is, in its own way, as permanent a solution as hanging a murderer...
...There are those who feel that GSA must be taught a lesson in this case to prevent another episode of this type...
...I knew the Council could go one of two ways...
...Two recent news stones illustrate the consequences of such irreversible actions...
...In the best “the buck stops here” style, Sampson says of the demolition, “It’s a fact that I did it...
...Roush, on the other hand, denies that he knew anything of these assurances until Robert Garvey visited him on Monday, March 4, to complain about the weekend’s activities...
...When the Advisory Council was first officially informed of the planned Bank Board building, in September, 1973, they were primarily concerned with the new structure’s visual impact on two National Register propertiesthe Winder Building, which would adjoin the Bank Board, and the Executive Office Building across the street...
...a reasonable opportunity to comment” on any undertaking that affects any “building, structure or object that is included in the National Register”- an index of historic and architecturally significant properties maintained by the National Park Service...
...At this point you may wonder why I did not attempt to call a meeting of the Council, or meet with the Council staff, or Secretary Morton, or somebody-before ordering demolition...
...According to David Julyan, an assistant to Rep...
...All the Advisory Council had on its side was the law, specifically Section 106 of its enabling legislation, which states that any agency contemplating building or demolition “shall afford the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation...
...What we need to do is to resolve this issue affirmatively...
...Where once stood the Nichols Cafe building, a three-story, 1830s townhouse, there now was only rubble...
...Having worked with Council staff on other projects and knowing their activities on this project-I knew that further consultation would be both futile and very timeconsuming...
...Sampson is far from unaware of GSA’s unique position in the federal hierarchy...
...And the staff was not about to become objective overnight...
...The villain this time is Arthur Sampson, head of the General Services Administration (GSA), the independent agency that supplies the government with everythmg from paper clips to the mausoleum-style architecture of so many new government buildings...
...Their only agreement was to place the issue on the agenda for the next meeting of the Advisory Council (then scheduled for May 1...
...The role of staff must be defined if the Council is to succeed...
...And this is somewhat unfortunate because the Council membership did not put itself in this position...
...But that isn’t the point of this story, that isn’t why the gutted buildings on 17th Street are worth considering...
...The wreckers were dispatched virtually in secret, although GSA had pledged (or, at least, gone to great pains to give the impression that they had pledged) to take no action until all historic preservation questions were resolved...
...This is the wrong approach-let me assure you of that...
...GSA had a barely plausible legal argument: as agent for the Bank Board, under an obscure statute they were exempt from Advisory Board scrutiny...
...After the meeting, Ernie Holz, the Advisory Council city planner who had done most of the work on the Bank Board issue, asked Jim Stewart, GSA’s project manager, “Are we to understand that demolition won’t go any further...
...During the last week in February, GSA embarked on a policy of either deliberate lying or willful deception regarding its plans for these three National Register properties...
...It was at this point that the GSA began taking the law into its own hands...
...Let us prevent this from happening again...
...WeTry to Use Dictatorial Poms Only As a Last Resort’ by Walter Shapiro The cab ride was by now quite familiar, but on that early March afternoon I instinctively put down my paper and turned to stare as the taxi ducked behind the Treasury Building, arced around the rear lawn a? the White House, drove past the heavily guarded automobile entrance to the Executive Office Building, and swung onto 17th Street...
...Our policy is to try to fulfill all regulations, to try to cooperate...
...The now-vacant lot near the White House is symbolic of what happens when the government breaks the law...
...It could evaluate the action I took and find, based upon my past performance in historic preservation, that my action was not hasty and that it was justified...
...On the weekend of March 2, the three buildings on 17th Street suffered the consequences of Sampson’s concept of due process...
...The effect of all these assurances was to prevent anyone from going into court to guard against any further GSA demolitions...
...Because almost everyone in government needs something from GSA, Sampson has the kind of power within the federal government that the custodians of pork barrel have on Capitol Hill...
...Pennsylvania Avenue, I was confronted with the work of a wrecking crew, the debris of a bulldozer...
...I weighed carefully the impact of my decision on our relationship with the Council...
...If they remain purists and idealists, they won’t be around very long...
...Roush, obviously taking a cue from the President, said, “I was not aware of any of these commitments...
...The most memorable structure is the five-story Winder Building, which dates from the 1840s and has ho~sed government agencies from Abraham Lincoln’s War Department to such modern bureaucratic wastelands as the Office of Emergency Preparedness...
...On Tuesday, February 26, GSA began demolition of a non-controversial structure on another portion of the Bank Board site...
...But that afternoon, instead of seeing the row of small, pleasing structures that extended from the Winder Building most of the rest of the way to Walter Shapiro is an editor of The Washingion Monthly...
...On Thursday February 28, Larry Roush, the head of the Public Buildings Service in GSA, consulted by telephone with several staff members who had been at the February 27 meeting...
...I guessed that the latter would be true knowing then that the staff of the Council has great influence...
...According to Holz, Stewart answered: “Yes, yes, I will make that statement for you...
...After examining what Arthur Sampson has said since the extra-legal demolitions, it becomes apparent that he was primarily motivated by a desire to limit the ability of the Advisory Council staff to delay future GSA projects...
Vol. 6 • May 1974 • No. 3
