IV.

ON CAPITOL HILL.

The plateau east of the Capitol was considered by the founders of the city the most desirable region for residence, and truly it was in those days, as compared with the hills and swamps of the northwestern quarter or the lowlands along the river. The principal owner was Daniel Carroll, and when the alternate

Early

city lots were sold for the benefit of the public funds, higher prices were Expectations. paid for them here than elsewhere. Carroll considered himself sure to be a millionaire, but died poor at last; Robert Morris of Philadelphia, the financier of the Revolution, invested heavily here and lost accordingly; and the two lots which Washington himself bought cost him about $1,000.

Daniel Carroll built for himself what was then considered a very fine mansion, styled Duddington Manor; and that it really was a spacious, comfortable, and elegant

house can be seen by anyone who will walk down New Jersey Avenue, three blocks southeast of the Capitol, and then a block east on E Street, which will bring him in sight of the old house upon its tree-shaded knoll, surrounded by a high wall, and desolate amid modern improvements." Upon the personal history of the men who have dined beneath its roof, and the stories its walls might repeat, Mrs. Lockwood has

expatiated pleasantly in her valuable book, "Historic Homes in Washington," to which everyone must be indebted who discourses upon the social chronicles of the capital.

Old Capitol
Prison.

A more famous building was the old Capitol Prison, as it came to be called during the Civil War, whose walls still stand upon the block facing the Capitol grounds at the intersection of Maryland Avenue with First and A streets, N. E., enclosing the residences called Lanier Place. This was a spacious brick building hastily erected by the citizens of Washington after the destruction of the Capitol by the British in 1814, to accommodate Congress and hold the national capital here against the renewed assaults of those who wished to move the seat of government elsewhere. While it was building, Congress held one session in Blodgett's "great hotel," which stood on the site of the former General Post Office, and then sat in this building until the restored Capitol was ready for them, in 1827. It was a big, plain, warehouse-like structure, which was turned into a boarding-house after Congress abandoned it, and there Senator John C. Calhoun died in 1850. When the Civil War broke out this building became a military prison for persons suspected or convicted of aiding and abetting the secession treason to which his influence had so powerfully contributed. Washington was full of Southern sympathizers and spies, and many are the traditions in the old families of days and weeks spent by overzealous members in “durance vile" within its walls, guarded by the "law-and-order brigade" of the Provost Marshal's office, which formed the police of the capital in those days. Here Wirz, the brutal keeper of Andersonville prison, was executed, as well as several other victims of the war. Several years ago it was remodeled into handsome residences, one of which was the home of Mr. Justice Field until his death in 1899.

The tall brick Maltby Building, directly north of the Capitol, originally a hotel, is now occupied by congressional committees, and is called the Senate Annex.

Coast
Survey.

The Coast and Geodetic Survey, a scientific branch of the Treasury Department to map the coast, chart the waters, and investigate and publish movements of tides,. currents, etc., for the benefit of navigation, is domiciled in a brick building on New Jersey Avenue, south of the Capitol, immediately in the rear of the great stone house built long ago by Benjamin F. Butler as a residence, and which is now principally occupied by the Marine Hospital Service. New Jersey Avenue leads in that direction to Garfield Park, which is too new to be of interest, and beyond that to the shore of the Anacostia, near the Navy Yard. Just west of it Delaware Avenue forms a perfectly straight street to Washington Barracks.

Capitol Hill, as the plateau of the Capitol is popularly called, can yet show many fine, old-fashioned homes, though some formerly notable have disappeared. It has its

Greene
Statue.

own shady avenues, quiet cross streets, and pretty parks, In Stanton Square (three and one-half acres), half a mile northeast out Maryland Avenue, is H. K. Brown's bronze statue of Major-General Nathanael Greene, who distinguished himself at Eutaw Spring and elsewhere in the South during the Revolution, and to whom a statue was voted by the Continental Congress. This statue, which was cast in Philadelphia, and cost, with its pedestal of New England granite, $50,000, is one of the most life-like figures in Washington, the modeling of the horse being particularly admirable. The Peabody School confronts this neat square. A farther walk of half a mile down Massachusetts Avenue takes one to Lincoln Square a beautifully shaded tract of six and one-quarter acres, just a mile east of the Capitol. Here Tennessee and Kentucky avenues branch off northward and southward, the former leading to Graceland and Mount Olivet cemeteries, and the latter to the Congressional Cemetery, and to the bridge (over the Anacostia to Twining) at the foot of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Christ Church (Protestant Episcopal) on G Street, S. E., between Sixth and Seventh, is the oldest church in the city. It was erected in 1795, and was attended by Presidents Jefferson and Madison. Services are still held there. Christ Church Cemetery, more popularly known as the Congressional Burial Ground, adjoins the grounds of the workhouse on the south, and occupies a spacious tract on the bank of the Anacostia. It contains the graves and cenotaphs, formerly erected by Congress, of many persons once prominent in official life.

Christ Church.

Congressional

Cemetery.

This cemetery was the principal, if not the only place of interment at the beginning of civilization here; and many officials who died at the capital were buried there, and the practice continues, Congress contributing toward the support of the cemetery in consideration of this fact. Among the notable men buried here are: Vice-President George Clinton of New York; Signer and Vice-President Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, whose name gave us the verb "to gerrymander"; William West, born in Bladensburg in 1772, a distinguished essayist and jurist, and finally Attorney General under Monroe ; Alexander Macomb, hero of Plattsburg and General of the army preceding Scott, who has a fine military monument; his predecessor, Gen. Jacob Brown, resting under a broken column; Tobias Lear, Washington's private secretary; A. D. Bache, the organizer of the coast survey, and several distinguished officers of the old army and navy. A public vault, erected by Congress, stands near the center of the grounds. The nearest street cars are on F Street, S. E.

All this old-settled and no longer fashionable region, near the Anacostia, is spoken of rather contemptuously as “the navy yard," and it supplies a fair share of work for the police courts; but it is greatly beloved of soldiers and sailors on leave.

Monument.

In Lincoln Square, the most beautiful thing is the lofty, symmetrical sycamore tree in the center; but the most noted object is the Statue Monument to the Emancipation of the Slaves. This is a bronze group, erected by contributions from the colored freedmen of the United States, many of whom were set free by Emancipation the proclamation which is represented in the hand of the great benefactor of American slaves, one of whom is kneeling, unshackeled, at his feet.^ One of the inscribed tablets upon the pedestal informs us that the first contribution was the first free earnings of Charlotte Scott, a freed woman of Virginia, at whose suggestion, on the day of Lincoln's death, this monument fund was begun. This statue, twelve feet high, was cast in Munich at an expense of $17,000, and was unveiled on April 14, 1876, the eleventh anniversary of Lincoln's assassination, Frederick Douglass making the oration.

District

East Capitol Street is a wide avenue running straight, one mile, from this park to the Capitol, between rows of elms and poplars, and continuing onward to the Eastern Branch through scanty and low-lying suburbs. On the same river bank, at the eastern terminus of Massachusetts Avenue, occupying a reservation called Hospital Square, are the District Almshouse, Workhouse (or Asylum for Institutions. the Indigent), and the stone jail, costing $40,000, in which several murderers, including Garfield's assailant, Guiteau, have been confined and executed. Some distance away, on the Bladensburg Road, can be seen the buildings of the Boys' Reform School. All these institutions are well worth inspection by those especially interested; but the view of them obtained from passing trains of the Pennsylvania Railroad will satisfy most persons.

The Navy Yard is one of the places which visitors to Washington Navy Yard. are usually most anxious to see, but it usually offers little to reward

their curiosity outside of the gunshop, museum, and trophies. It stands on the banks

of the broad tidal estuary of the Anacostia River, at the foot of Eighth Street, S. E., and is the terminus of the cars from Georgetown along Pennsylvania Avenue. The Anacostia line of street cars along M Street, S. E., also passes the gate.

This navy yard was established (1804) as soon as the Government came here, and was an object of destruction by the British, who claim, however, that it was set on fire by the Americans. It was restored, and "for more than half a century many of the largest and finest ships of war possessed by the United States were constructed in this yard." Two spacious ship houses remain, but the yard is now almost entirely given up to the manufacture of naval guns and ammunition and the storage of equipments. It often happens that not a ship of any sort is at the wharves (though a receiving ship is usually moored there), and the sentry at the gate is almost the only sign of military occupation about the place.

Ordnance
Factories.

The first great building on the right, the Gun Shop, at the foot of the stone stairs, is the most interesting place in the yard. It is filled with the most powerful and approved machinery for turning, boring, rifling, jacketing, and otherwise finishing ready for work the immense rifles required for modern battleships, as well as the smaller rapid-fire guns forming the supplementary batteries of the cruisers and other vessels of war. The great guns are mainly cast at Bethlehem, Pa., and brought here rough. Observing carefully the posted regulations, the visitor may walk where he pleases through these magnificent factories and watch the extremely interesting process, and should it happen that any vessels of war are in the harbor, permission to go on board of them may usually be obtained.

The office of the commandant of the yard is at the foot of the main walk near the wharf, and there application should be made for permission to go anywhere not open

Trophies.

to the public. A large number of guns, showing types used in the past, are lying near the office, and a series of very interesting cannon captured from the Tripolitan, British, Mexican, or Confederate enemies whom the navy has had to fight, are mounted before the office. Among them is the famous 42pounder, Long Tom, cast in 1786 in France, captured from the frigate Noche by the British in 1798, and then sold to us. Later it was struck by a shot, condemned, and sold to Haiti, then at war with France. This over, the cannon had various owners until 1814, when it formed the main reliance in the battery of the privateer General Armstrong, which, by pluckily fighting three British war-ships off Fayal, in the Azores, so crippled them that the squadron was unable to reach New Orleans, whither it was bound, in time to help the land forces there against the victorious Jackson. The brig was afterward sunk to prevent her capture by the British, but the Portuguese authorities had so greatly admired the little ship's action that they saved this gun as a trophy, and sent it as a present to the United States.

A museum near the gate is worth visiting, as it contains many pieces of old-fashioned ordnance and ammunition, and many relics of historical or legendary interest, of which

Navy
Museum.

the most popular, perhaps, is the stern-post of the original Kearsarge, still containing a shell received during her fight with the Alabama. The door of the museum is shaded by a willow grown from a twig cut above the grave of Napoleon at St. Helena. The residences of officers on duty at the yard are near the gate, which was built from designs by Latrobe. The marine barracks, three squares above the Navy Yard, on Eighth Street, S. E., occupy a square surrounded by brick buildings painted yellow, according to naval cus

tom, and are the home station and headquarters of the Marine Corps; Marine Corps. but, except that here is the residence of the famous Marine Band, they

contain nothing of interest to the visitor, unless he likes to watch guardmounting every morning at 9, or the formal inspection on Mondays at 10 A. M. The