A Washington Sketchbook i 69

Book Excerpt

A Washington Sketchbook: Historic Drawings of Washington

Gail Dickersin Spilsbury

n the fall of 1917, a distinguished New sketched. The map also captured a way of life York obstetrician named Robert Latou along the Potomac during a different era, now Dickinson came to Washington, D.C., lost to today’s intense commercial metropo- toI serve on the General Medical Board of the lis. Dickinson’s legacy, through his map and Army’s Council of National Defense, as part drawings, recovers a segment of forgotten his- of the nation’s war effort. Dickinson brought tory in an original way. His charmingly ren- with him another talent—art—and a pas- dered images inspire us to respect nature and sion for nature. In his free time he explored find joy in experiencing the outdoors; they the , sketching its beauty from also remind us to treasure and preserve Wash- Great Falls to the popular recreational sites on ington’s parks and historic landmarks. its and shores. Previously, A Washington Sketchbook presents Dick- he had illustrated The New York Walk Book, inson’s Washington oeuvre with historic an- which is still in print today. As his Washing- notations about the places. While working ton excursions grew, he planned a similar on his walk book sketches, Dickinson made “walk book” for the nation’s capital and made the acquaintance of two local nature aficio- sketches for it. Before he could compile it, nados—“the Rambler,” who wrote excursion the war ended, and Dickinson returned to his pieces for the Evening Star in the early twen- medical career in New York, which included tieth century, and Robert Shosteck, who con- leadership in founding Planned Parenthood tributed hiking expeditions to the Washington with Margaret Sanger. Post in the 1930s. Shosteck’s Sunday hikes en- Several years before his death in 1950 at couraged Washingtonians to explore their en- age eighty-nine, Dickinson donated his three- virons and led to the enduring Wanderbirds ring binder of Washington sketches to the Li- hiking club and the 1935 Potomac Trail Book. brary of Congress, where they sat undisturbed Presented here are selected images from the for sixty years. During the research phase forthcoming A Washington Sketchbook: Draw- for writing a book about Dickinson and his ings by R. L. Dickinson, from 1917–1918,* drawings, A Washington Sketchbook, Dickin- along with excerpts from the book’s four son’s grandsons, Hugh and Ian Barbour, pro- chapters: Great Falls and the C&O , duced their grandfather’s hand-drawn, cultur- River Camps and Cabin John, Washington al-art map of the Potomac. This extraordinary Landmarks, and Maryland and Virginia Sites. map, annotated in the artist’s calligraphic hand, identified the places he visited and *TheC &O Canal Trust, a nonprofit organization working to ensure the park’s natural, historical, and Gail Spilsbury, author of Rock Creek Park recreational potential, is the fiscal sponsor for A (Johns Hopkins Press), founded Bergamot Books Washington Sketchbook. Please contact the Trust to to publish works on Washington, DC. help support its publication: www.canaltrust.org.

69 70 I Washington History 2010

Great Falls and the C&O Canal

Heaps of rocks are scattered about—enormous granite bowlders [sic] and jag- ged reefs of gneiss—as if some Titan of long ago had vented his wrath by up- heaving the crust of the earth itself. The wildness of the place, as waters churn and boil in their never-ending warfare with the rocks, is comparable only to some of the larger mountain canyons of the West, and is hard to conceive as being within a few miles of the Capital City. —Gilbert Grosvenor, President, National Geographic Society, 1928 A Washington Sketchbook i 71

sense of magic permeates the C&O A Canal. Walkers and bikers traveling along the sandy towpath, surrounded by trees and rock, with sublime views of river and reflecting canal, experience the enchant- ment captured in Dickinson’s drawings. Part of the idyllic setting comes from the canal’s unusual history. Its roots date back to Presi- dent ’s Patowmack Canal Company in Great Falls, Virginia, where be- tween the years 1785 and 1802 the company constructed five locks to circumvent the wa- terfalls and enable trade with the Ohio fron- tier and ultimately, lands farther west, up the river. These locks, which handled a seventy- seven-foot drop in the river, operated until 1830. Another three locks had to be built at the far end of the two-mile stretch of canal around Little Falls, to raise and lower boats thirty-eight feet. At Seneca Falls, Virginia, the canal bypassed a mile of rapids with a seven- foot drop. In all, the Patowmack Company waterway carried some ten million dollars’ worth of produce from the Cumberland and Ohio region to Georgetown, but only one dividend of $5.55 was ever paid to its stock- holders; the company ended in bankruptcy, Two views of Widewater along the C&O Canal its rights transferred to the C&O Company in 1828.1 72 I Washington History 2010

short supply, and workers to repair the canal were hard to find—“wages included three- quarters of a pint of rum ev- ery day.”2 A major obstacle to the canal’s success was the river. Floods periodically devastated the canal, locks, and sluices, and droughts made the waterway impass- able. But the factor most re- sponsible for the canal’s fail- ure was the opening of the railroad. On the same day in July 1828 that President John Quincy Adams inaugu- rated the C&O Canal Com- pany by digging a shovelful of earth near Georgetown, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad laid its cornerstone forty miles away, assisted by ninety-year-old Charles Car- roll, the sole surviving signer of the Declaration of Inde- pendence.3 Even so, life along the ca- nal between its inception and decline in the 1880s (al- though it continued to op- erate until final closure in 1924) filled the area with a spirit that lingers as nostal- gia today. Washington—es- tablished in 1800 as the na- tion’s capital—was a new and growing city, and commerce and recreation along the towpath carried a feeling of Although the Patowmack and C&O Canal adventure. Cabin John, Glen Echo, Clara Bar- companies never profited, boat people driving ton’s house, the Bobinger Hotel, Great Falls the commerce made a living for more than Tavern, locks and lockhouses, boats, camping, one hundred years and also left a legacy of canoeing, fishing, and trade all contributed to canal life, which a New Deal initiative in the the towpath’s picturesque appeal. 1930s helped to preserve. While boats and Similar in style to other lockhouses along commerce operated, money was always in the lower Potomac, Great Falls Tavern (also A Washington Sketchbook i 73

Great Falls Tavern, Great Falls, Maryland

called Tavern or Crommelin House) lockkeeper Henry Busey was permitted to re- stood at the hub of canal activity and today open an ordinary (inn), to lodge guests. In serves as the Visitor the same period construction of the Wash- Center and museum. Built between 1828 and ington Aqueduct damaged the building and 1831 for the lockkeeper W. W. Fenlon, who also brought an influx of workers to the area. supervised all six locks close to Great Falls, Later on, one of the aqueduct’s former bar- the Crommelin House (named for a Dutch racks near the present-day park’s traffic circle investor in the canal) was to be a hotel for gained a second life by becoming an infa- travelers as well as the lockkeeper’s home. It mous hotel operated by Richard Jackson from quickly became the nucleus of the local com- the end of the Civil War to 1878. Described munity, a vibrant gathering place for holidays as a “slouchy, shiftless, greasy-haired man, or rendezvous with friends. Nearly twenty whose humor is chiefly an appalling exhibit years later, the Canal Company prohibited of his manifold offenses,” Jackson attracted a the sale of alcohol at the tavern, and a year profligate clientele, for his establishment was later, in 1849, ruled that the building should just beyond the canal’s “dry” boundaries. serve only as a lockhouse, actions probably During one of its incarnations, the pictur- intended to tone down its role as a social esque lockhouse was also a club, and Dickin- gathering place. In 1851 the north wing “Ball son’s drawings suggest that this was its role in Room” became a grocery store, and in 1858 1918, under the name Lock Tavern Club.4 74 I Washington History 2010

he McMillan Commission’s 1902 plan World War II put an end to canal resto- Tfor Washington’s beautification included ration, and after the war the Army Corps an idea for preserving the picturesque riv- of Engineers presented its plan for fourteen erfront through acquisition of the canal as dams on the Potomac that would control National Park land, after which a “Potomac floods and submerge the C&O Canal. Simul- Drive” would be built along it. The commis- taneously a plan circulated for a scenic drive sion’s report stated that “The beauty of the along the riverfront. When the Washington scenery along the route of this proposed no- Post endorsed this plan in 1954, Supreme ble river-side improvement is so rare and, in Court Justice William O. Douglas, a passion- the minds of the Commission, of so great val- ate environmentalist, wrote a letter to the edi- ue not only to Washingtonians, but to all visi- tors, partially quoted below, inviting them to tors . . . that it should be safeguarded in ev- walk the entire towpath with him to witness ery way.”5 The Depression helped the C&O’s its unparalleled value: preservation cause because President Frank- lin D. Roosevelt liked the idea of purchasing The stretch of 185 miles of country the land in order to create jobs for the Civil- from Washington, D.C., to Cumber- ian Conservation Corps (CCC). In 1938 the land, Md., is one of the most fascinat- government purchased most of the land for ing and picturesque in the Nation. two million dollars. Although the Park Ser- The river and its islands are part of vice administered the CCC’s canal repairs the charm. The cliffs, the streams, the from Georgetown to Seneca, the canal prop- draws, the benches and beaches, the erty was “not officially a unit of the national swamps are another part. The birds and park system.”6 Those enrolled in the CCC’s game, and blaze of color in the spring Federal Project 712 were African Americans, and fall, the cattails in the swamp, the and in just three years, they repaired twenty- blush of buds in late winter—these are three locks, the towpath, dikes, and some also some of the glory of the place. . . . lockhouses. They constructed stone retain- It is a refuge, a place of retreat, a long ing walls and dams, water and sewer systems, stretch of quiet and peace at the Capi- parking lots for picnic areas, and concessions tal’s back door—a wilderness area where at Great Falls. The results were so success- we can commune with God and with ful that the National Park Service advocated nature, a place not yet marred by the complete restoration of the canal: roar of wheels and the sound of horns.8

It has been stated that nothing in or The famous hike by Justice Douglas and near Washington can compare in po- canal supporters in March 1954 marked the tential outdoor nature educational op- turning point for making the C&O Canal a portunities with the canal as a whole. National Historical Park; it would take, how- . . . Stopping the geologic, biologic, and ever, sixteen more years to pass the necessary historic stories at Seneca is comparable legislation, as lobbyists for both the dam and to an arbitrary conclusion of a textbook the parkway proposals redoubled their efforts at the end of the first few chapters. The and even succeeded briefly with the razing of upper regions of the canal penetrate life Lock 5 for the Clara Barton Parkway. zones and geologic formations which are needed for the complete under- standing of the area traversed between portions below Seneca.7 A Washington Sketchbook i 75

River Camps and Cabin John

n 1923, only five years after Dickinson’s remembered Washington lawyer Jim Birch’s Isketches of Potomac summer camps, a Na- summer campsite on the Virginia shore. “Jim tional Geographic article described the river paddled his canoe to the Potomac Boat Club as being “flecked with canoes, launches, and in Georgetown, climbed the steps up over the rowboats—literally with thousands of canoes canal, and caught a streetcar to the Invest- if it be a pleasant week-end afternoon. Be- ment Building downtown. Several lawyers did tween the whirlpool of ‘Little Falls’ and the that.” Gilbert Grosvenor’s National Geographic decrepit wharves that betoken the former article of March 1928 corroborates Dusty’s importance of Georgetown as a river port is story, reporting that along the Maryland side Washington’s aquatic playplace supreme.”9 A “Many persons who have to work in Wash- proliferation of refreshment stands and even ington all summer move their whole families floating dance floors added to the resort fla- to tents and shacks on the banks of the river vor on the C&O Canal side. On the steeper, above the city, where they live through the hot Virginia side arose “a veritable city of shacks months. On Sunday mornings they attend and tents, with landings as close as those of a church under the trees.”11 According to the ar- Venetian street. A kindly construction com- ticle, white-collar workers shaved at the river’s pany has allowed campers ‘to pick their sites,’ edge before paddling down to Georgetown to and these ‘squatter rights’ are rigidly regulated catch the streetcar to work. “Few great cities by a sort of town-meeting government impro- are so situated that their people may enjoy the vised each summer by campers themselves.”10 pleasures and benefits of camp life during the Old-timer Dusty Rhodes (born in 1912) summer and still continue to work regularly,” 76 I Washington History 2010 A Washington Sketchbook i 77

Grosvenor wrote with a relish for Washing- of Glen Echo, also rented out campgrounds ton’s unique summer offering.12 with luxury tents and photographed summer Who knows for how long, but probably scenes there. When the C&O Canal closed in for decades, the C&O Canal Company per- 1924, the free camping tradition continued mitted camping on its unused shoreline be- until the Roosevelt administration purchased tween the canal and river. Old-timers believe the bankrupt company in September 1938. that private landowners also invited friends The Depression years brought true squatter to set up camps on their property during settlements to the shoreline, so that part of the summertime. Those who could afford the purchase agreement included removing it, or who didn’t want such a rustic experi- “all occupants of the property other than ex- ence, probably vacationed in riverside lodges isting water leasees,” the latter of whom num- like Trammel’s. The Baltzley family, owners bered about 180 tenants.13 78 I Washington History 2010

Two views of Washington’s famous cherry blossoms A Washington Sketchbook i 79

Washington Landmarks

hen Robert L. Dickinson Wsketched this shrouded view of the Denrike building at the corner of Vermont Avenue and K Street, NW, it housed Justice Department offices, in- cluding their “secret service,” a detective division not affiliated with the Treasury Department’s famous Secret Service. Created in 1908 as the Bureau of Investi- gation, the Justice Department’s secret service grew over the years and in 1935 was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investiga- tion (FBI). Robert L. Dickinson could see the Denrike building from his temporary residence at Fourteenth and K Streets, NW. From its inception in 1789 as the Office of the Attorney General, when it was a one- man, part-time, parsimoniously paid job, the Justice Depart- ment roved without a permanent home until 1934, when it gained its own building on Pennsylva- nia Avenue between Ninth and Tenth Streets, NW, which also housed the FBI until the 1970s. Ulysses S. Grant signed a bill establishing the Department of Justice in 1870, and today this agency is “the largest law firm in the country,” with more than fourteen hundred offices in the and abroad. Under the depart- 1822 – a room on the second floor of the ment’s jurisdiction fall the FBI, the United old War Building States Marshals Service, the Federal Bureau of 1839 – the second floor of the Trea- Prisons, the Drug Enforcement Administra- sury Building, where the office remained for tion, and other offices. sixteen years. 1855 – a yellow brick building on the Locations of the formerly roving Justice southeast corner of Fifteenth and F Streets, Department are: NW, for six years. 80 I Washington History 2010

1861 – a suite of rooms on the first floor Congress appropriated funds to purchase the of the Treasury Building’s south wing for ten building, and for the first time the depart- years; staff was scattered in various locations ment had its own, though short-lived, home. in this period, leading to a Department of 1899 – the Palmer House, later the Baltic Justice in every state. One of the assistant at- Hotel, at 1435 K Street, NW, with other of- torneys general and the solicitor general were fices dispersed in a half-dozen or more build- housed in the Hooe Iron building on F Street ings. Justice vacated this building in 1917. near Fourteenth, NW. 1917 – the Denrike building at the cor- 1871 – the Freedman’s Savings Bank ner of Vermont Avenue and K Street, NW, building on Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, for housed the Bureau of Investigation — Dick- ten years; when the lease expired in 1882, inson’s “secret service” — until 1934.14

Maryland and Virginia Sites

iggs mill may be the oldest and larg- Thomas Sheckels and later his grandson Wil- Rest mill in the Washington area. Built liam H. Freeman ran the mill, so that it was around 1796 by Issachar and Mahlon Schol- sometimes referred to as Freeman’s Mill. field, the mill continued grinding corn and When Dickinson made his drawing, George wheat well into the twentieth century. Today Washington Riggs, founder of Riggs and the restored mill belongs to the Maryland- Company, owned the mill, although the Free- National Capital Park and Planning Com- man family continued to operate it until mission and can be rented for weddings or 1911. The last miller’s daughter, Helen Pow- other events. During the nineteenth century ell, shared memories with a local journalist in

Burnt Mills A Washington Sketchbook i 81

1999, when she was ninety-three years old: mashed up for meal for horses and cows and chickens. . . . It was farm all the I was born there in the miller’s house. way to the District. Oh, there was just . . . My father [Lynn Freeman] run the nothing around here. Riggs Road was mill. . . . On Monday, the [farmers] stone, gravel.15 would come down [to the mill] with wagon loads of grains, corn and wheat. The exterior water wheel seen in Dickin- Then they’d come back at the end of son’s idyllic, pastoral drawing has been re- the week and pick up the ground flour, moved. 82 I Washington History 2010

Mount Vernon’s Gardens A Washington Sketchbook i 83

President George Washington was an avid following the demanding responsibilities of horticulturist and personally designed and public life. His “bountiful hospitality” meant supervised the planting of his gardens. He enlarging the house and raising provisions for divided his 2,700-acre estate (that grew to entertaining on a grand scale. Yet, none of 8,000 acres by the time of his death) into this stimulating, aristocratic lifestyle would five working farms with overseers and slaves have been possible without hundreds of for each. The Mansion House Farm of 500 slaves. Even with slaves, the president found acres was the one surrounding his home, ’s constant social life and hos- and which today more or less comprises the pitality a financial burden, and within fifty historic site, with only 30 acres open to the years of his death, the continued lifestyle vir- public. Washington’s favorite way to spend tually bankrupted his heirs, who “were like his time was managing his plantation, and people living in a museum, which they had he made daily rounds of the farms. When to maintain at their own expense.”17 Visi- away from home for years as commander of tors streamed to visit the popular president’s the Continental Army and as president, he home and tomb, just as they had streamed to corresponded with his manager on a weekly visit the president during his lifetime. “[T] basis. He liked being called the First Farmer he hospitality imposed upon the owners was in America and Farmer Washington, and his a heavy drain on resources . . . they found it estate was considered an agricultural labora- impossible to make even the most necessary tory that employed Britain’s latest “theories of repairs.”18 Fortunately the Mount Vernon La- soil and cultivation and stock breeding. . . . dies’ Association undertook the restoration Plants, seeds, and cuttings were imported and management of the plantation, and to- from Europe, while many more were received day its dual purpose of historic preservation from friends, both at home and abroad.”16 and education flourish. Thousands of visitors Washington freely admitted that his love for come to the site to pay homage to the coun- gentleman farming exceeded his happiness try’s first, revered leader and plantation own- in public life. Although the estate was never er. Touring the rooms and grounds they soon profitable except in its land value, its develop- witness evidence of the cruelest chapter in ment and management refreshed Washington American History—slavery. 84 I Washington History 2010

The Fairfax Courthouse moved three times but has remained in its present Fairfax City location for more than two hundred years. Although Northern Virginia’s sprawl has grown up around it, including a conglomerate of municipal buildings directly surrounding it, its historic building and interior have been remarkably preserved.

Opposite: Dickinson’s self-portrait (inset) and intended title page Dickinson’s self-portrait, and intended title page.

A Washington Sketchbook i 85 86 I Washington History 2010

Dickinson’s hand-drawn map of the Potomac and places he sketched A Washington Sketchbook i 87

j NOTESj

All R. L. Dickinson images courtesy of the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

Great Falls Washington Landmarks

1. Albert W. Atwood, “Potomac River Des- 14. “The Fiftieth Anniversary of the U.S. De- tiny,” National Geographic Magazine, July 1945, partment of Justice Building,” manuscript, 1984, 40; Wilbur E. Garrett, “The Patowmack Canal: U.S. Department of Justice Library; U.S. Depart- Waterway That Led to the Constitution,” National ment of Justice, brochure, (Washington: U.S. De- Geographic, 171:6 (June 1987): 725. partment of Justice, 1998); http://www.fbi.gov/li- 2. “The Patowmack Canal,” 744. bref/historic/histor/earlydays.html; John Fox, FBI 3. Atwood, “Potomac River Destiny,” 49. historian, interview with author, August 3, 2005; 4. Thomas F. “Swiftwater” Hahn, Towpath U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of In- Guide to the C&O Canal (Shepherdstown, W. Va.: vestigation, “Principal Offices of the FBI—Past American Canal and Transportation Center, 1982; and Present,” manuscript, undated. reprint, 1990), 44–46; National Park Service, “Great Falls Tavern,” information sheet (Hager- Maryland, Virginia Sites stown, Md.: U.S. Department of the Interior, Na- tional Park Service, Chesapeake and Ohio Canal 15. “Helen Powell, In Her Own Words,” Prince National Historical Park, October 2002). George’s Exeter, January 27, 1999. 5. Barry Mackintosh, C&O Canal: The Making 16. Worth E. Shoults, “The Home of the First of a Park (Washington: U.S. Department of the Farmer of America,” National Geographic Maga- Interior, National Park Service, 1991), 96. zine, May 1928, 604. 6. Ibid., 18–19, 31, 46. 17. Shoults, “The Home of the First Farmer,” 7. Ibid., 44. 622–23; Gerald Johnson and Epilogue by Ellen 8. Washington Post, January 19, 1954. McCallister, Mount Vernon: The Story of a Shrine (Mount Vernon: Mount Vernon Ladies’ Associa- River Camps tion, 2002), 64. 18. Johnson, Mount Vernon, 64. 9. J. R. Hildebrand, “The Sources of Washing- ton’s Charm,” National Geographic Magazine, June 1923, 671. 10. Ibid. 11. Dusty Rhodes, interview with author, No- vember 16, 2004; Gilbert Grosvenor, “The Great Falls of the Potomac,” National Geographic Maga- zine, March 1928, 396. 12. Grosvenor, “The Great Falls of the Poto- mac,” 396. 13. Mackintosh, C&O Canal.