Grandeur for the People

The National Archives occupies a site halfway between the Capitol and the White House, bringing together the nation’s founding documents and most important federal records after those records had long been scattered across the city; the first archivist began centralizing them there in 1935. After the United States won the Spanish-American War in 1898, national leaders questioned whether Washington reflected the country’s new importance in world affairs, and that concern, together with the 1900 centennial of the federal government’s arrival in Washington in 1800 and the efforts of leading architects, led the Senate Park Commission under Senator James McMillan to create a new city plan. The McMillan Plan revived and expanded elements of Pierre L’Enfant’s 1791 vision for the capital and also drew on the Beaux-Arts architecture of the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, whose impact helped launch the City Beautiful movement favoring classically inspired groups of public buildings. The plan redesigned the National Mall and set aside this seventy-acre triangle for new government offices, but before World War One intervened only the John A. Wilson Building, Washington, D.C.’s city hall, was built there in 1908 at 13th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. In 1926 President Calvin Coolidge signed the Public Buildings Act, revived the McMillan Plan, and assigned Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon to work with leading American architects on the Federal Triangle, which became the nation’s largest great public project combining classical architecture and sculpture. Across the street, the U.S. Navy Memorial was dedicated in 1987 on the Navy’s 212th anniversary.

Washington, District of Columbia · United States