Washington — so dignified, different

Press, 5 June 1982, Page 15

Washington — so dignified, different

By

ALEX MENZIES,

assistant editor of “The

Press,” who visited parts of the United States as guest of the commercial section of the United States Embassy in New Zealand, and state and city visitor and tourist bureaux in the United States.

A traveller landing at Dulles International Airport. Virginia, after a flight from Los Angeles. California, could be forgiven for thinking he was in a different world, even though he was in the same country.

After he had been driven into Washington D.C. by treefringed roads, farmlands, and along the Potomac River by the George Washington Memorial Parkway. he would have to be forgiven even more.

After staying a few days and savouring 'the history, the atmosphere of presentday politics and worid affairs. the cherry blossom, the charm, the culture, the dignity ... How far can this go?

to a first-time visitor Washington becomes something other than the Washington line he sees at the top of a report in a newspaper or the credit given in a radio report of the latest political decision.

For such a pleasant

city not all the associations the' visitor will have will be pleasant. Driving in from the airport he will pass Langley, the site of the headquarters of the C.1.A.; he will see Watergate, the impressivelooking curved apartment buildings that produced such sensational news: he will look down the river to the National Airport which had the nasty accident in the middle of the recent drastic winter.

"They used to say National was so dangerous it was safe." a local told us.

When the spot where President Reagan was shot and the nearby George Washington University Memorial Hospital where he

was taken are pointed out more locations of world events become realities. Another contrast, certainly for a New r Zealander arriv-. ing in Washington after spending a few’ days in California, the land of the car. is the sight of plenty of pedestrians in the streets — suited men with furled umbrellas and well-groomed women. Snatches of conversation overheard in the streets or in hotel foyers have political flavour — from civil servants, politicians, lobbyists from other states. Washingtonians refer to the three As — associations, attorneys, accountants. A city with all the hallmarks of a seat of governent, Washington D.C. (Dis-

trict of Columbia) is just over 60 square'miles and has a population of about 650.000. Metropolitan Washington is a different matter,- extending into the states of Virgina and Maryland with a total population of more than three million, and Virginia and Maryland originally contributed the ground for the establishment of Washington D.C. It is all so different from every mans view of United States cities. Washington D.C. was once described as "an island surrounded on all four sides by reality” — formal, classical street plan, monuments. and white marble buildings. It can look like something from the paintings of the eighteenth century

Italian masters whose works hang in the National Gallery in Washington. Washington is certainly a planned city, planned with typical French symmetry; by a Frenchman. Major Pierre Charles L’Enfant. The tidiness of the. plan can be appreciated by any visitor, numbered streets going one way, alphabetical streets another, ’ and the famous avenues such as Pennsylvania, Independence. Constitution, Maryland. Massachusetts, cutting across them sometimes diagonally. The whole is four quadrants. But what makes Washington so attractive is a combination of height restriction — no building is to be built higher than the Capitol on its hill, or about 12 storeys, depending on the width of the street — no overhead wiring, no heavy manufacturing within the confines of Washington D.C.. some beautiful buildings, especially in the older parts of the city such as Georgetown, sidewalk cafes, townhouses with original facades, and the trees. More than 100.000

trees line the streets in the District of Columbia alone.

Because Washington D.C. does not have heavy industry — .there is a lot of light industry-in the surrounding areas — it is one of the cleanest cities in the United States. Government is the major industry and tourism the major private industry. Twelve to 14 million visitors a year stay in the elegant hotels such as the old but beautifully refurbished Shoreham, the Sheraton Washington, or the Ramada Renaissance, all equipped for big conferences and conventions.

The most important part of Washington is the Mall. We may often see photographs of the White House, the Capitol, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. What

we may not realise is that they are connected and it's the mall that connects them from the dome of the Capitol to the great shaft of the monument.

All of Washington radiates from the Capitol so that the north-west, north-east, southeast. and south-west quadrants all fan out from its dome. Along the mall and on the nearby streets are many of the most fascinating Government buildings and. of course, the famous Smithsonian Institution, "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

It is perhaps quite frightening to think that so much of the world's welfare depends on what is going on in the area of the Mall — and the Pentagon on the other side of the river. Arlington

National Cemetery stretching out near the' Pentagon carries the constant reminders of some of the people who have shaped history in the past. A tour of Arlington Cemetery encompasses so much of American history through the graves of the known and the unknown from the Revolutionary War. the War of 1812. the Mexican War, the Civil War. Spanish-American War. World Wars I and 11, and the Korean and Vietnam wars. Two Presidents. William Howard Taft and John F. Kennedy, are buried there, and the Kennedy grave is surrounded almost continuously by visitors with clicking cameras. The grave of Rear-Admiral Richard E. Byrd, the Antarctic flyer, is one of particular interest to New Zealanders.

However, Washington is certainly not all connected with the history of conflicts or the seriousness of Government. The Smithsonian Institution helps see to that. The magnificent National Air and Space Museum offers a dazzling array of flying

machines and spacecraft ranging from the Wright Brothers’ original 1903 Flyer and Lindbergh's Spirit of St Louis to touchable moon rock, the Apollo 11 command module, and a Skylab orbital workshop. I could find no mention of Richard Pearse.

Nearby is the National Gallery of Art, just another of the Smithsonian's many attractions. It is rich in Italian painting and sculpture. Rembrandt, the French Impressionists, and American. British. Flemish, and Spanish art. Washingtonians may be very proud of-their Mall and all that it contains and signifies; they are also very proud of their subway system. Metrorail, a comparatively recent addition to the city but one which makes other subway systems look tatty. With blinking footlights to mark the approach of trains, vaulted ceilings, quarry-tile floors, and free-floating'mez-zanines, it is a masterpiece of design and is still being extended. The system is built in such a way that the walls cannot

be reached and so the graffiti that decorates so many transport systems is absent, A simple fare card system means that one ticket can provide many rides. If you get on at a station with the delightful name of Foggy Bottom — an area named in the days when it was a swamp — you can be under the Potomac and at Arlington or further on to the Pentagon in just a few minutes. The system also boasts, according to a bright and knowledgeable young guide from Potomac’ Tours, the longest escalator in the world — well “the Western world." the "Free world." There's a longer one in Leningrad. And if you happen to be with the guide you might in the evening look forward to a visit to the well-known Blues Alley in Georgetown. If you were lucky you would be able to spend a wonderful intimate night in an old room with a low ceiling listening to the blind British pianist. George Shearing, and his young bass player, Brian Torff, and even buy one of his records to take away with autograph. As George said, the proceeds would go to a very worthy cause — the blind — but only a very small proportion of them'.