Washington’s Changing Face

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31597, 7 February 1968, Page 17

Washington’s Changing Face

(From FRANK OLIVER, N.Z.P.A special correspondent) WASHINGTON, Feb. 6. Washington, the capital of the United States of America, is bursting at the seams.

It will soon have a brand new underground railway system and vastly improved hotel and motel accommodation.

In fact, everything is developing to enable the capital to take care of the millions of visitors who now come here every year; visitors ranging from foreign Prime Ministers and heads of State to the American tourist who comes to “rubberneck” around the seat of the greatest accumulation of power the world has ever seen. Less than 40 years ago, when I first saw it, Washington was a slow-moving country town; a large country town, admittedly, but still a country town, with rather oldfashioned hotels, nothing much in the way of restaurants, a few movies but no theatre worth the name, and the kind of shops you would expect to find in any goodsized town.

It bustled a bit when Congress was in session, but when the summer heat came and Congress gave up, citizens who could afford it went to the seashore and the place became somnolent for a few months.

In those days the Diplomatic Corps staffs of all nations ran to about 300 all told. When I arrived in 1939 the number of resident British correspondents of all newspapers rose from two to three.

Today, with the emergence of so many new nations, the Diplomatic Corps staffs number somewhere in the region of 11,000 and the foreign press corps is enormous. At midday the National Press Club is filled with an army of newsmen from 50 American states and 50 nations overseas.

Washington wears a cosmopolitan air, with hundreds of people in the national costume of their diverse countries; the streets are chock-a-block with cars displaying Diplomatic Corps licence plates. It all began with Pearl Harbour, after which Washington's population began to explode. 1 remember the day when the Government, faced with world war, was hiring stenographers and secretaries at the rate of 300 a day to cope with its rapidly-expand-ing activity. That pace slowed after a while, but the upward movement of Government employees has never stopped. In 1940 the population of the capital was around 650,000. Today it is believed to be about a million, but that does not take into account the sprawling suburbs outside the area called the District of Columbia, where now hundreds of thousands live who work in the capital and think of themselves as Washingtonians. Driving in and around Washington in the early morning and late afternoon is a nightmare not known even in New York, as workers come into and leave the city in a never-ending stream of cars.

From early morning until late evening the sidewalks of the streets are crowded, the shops seem always to be full, and in them one can hear practically every language of the world.

The country town that was is now a vast bustling city,

a "must” for politicians from all over the country, for representatives of big business and corporations, for lobbyists, for trade union representatives, and for representatives of all nations in the world who want to press their countries’ interests. Add to all those the millions of tourist from home and overseas and the crowded state of Washington is easily understandable. Washington has grown In other ways. Some critics now rate it, as far as top restaurants are concerned, on a par with New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Certainly eating out is almost as

cosmopolitan as it is in New York.

Washington, too, has some magnificent galleries and museums, and soon there will be the great cultural centre being built in memory of the late John F. Kennedy. And the city, whose orchestra ranks with some of the best in the country, has nine universities and colleges. Washington is not yet “a night town,” as is New York, where revellers go home at all hours of the early morning: night life is something that has to be sought out. Georgetown remains the elite residential section of the capital, a conglomeration

of eighteenth century bouses and narrow streets which somehow maintains its character and resists the tides of change. Although a town in name it is but a suburb of Washington, albeit a very highclass one. It is still “the” place to live—if you can find a house. Such is the demand that comparatively modest houses, just large enough for a family of four, change hands at better than $lOO,OOO. It remains an island of eighteenth century charm, surrounded by the bustling, burgeoning city that is the capital of the United States.