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Slush Funds: a History of D.C. Snow Management

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Slush Funds: a History of D.C. Snow Management Washington History in the Classroom This article, © the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., is provided free of charge to educators, parents, and students engaged in remote learning activities. It has been chosen to complement the DC Public Schools curriculum during this time of sheltering at home in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Washington History magazine is an essential teaching tool,” says Bill Stevens, a D.C. public charter school teacher. “In the 19 years I’ve been teaching D.C. history to high school students, my scholars have used Washington History to investigate their neighborhoods, compete in National History Day, and write plays based on historical characters. They’ve grappled with concepts such as compensated emancipation, the 1919 riots, school integration, and the evolution of the built environment of Washington, D.C. I could not teach courses on Washington, D.C. Bill Stevens engages with his SEED Public Charter School history without Washington History.” students in the Historical Society’s Kiplinger Research Library, 2016. Washington History is the only scholarly journal devoted exclusively to the history of our nation’s capital. It succeeds the Records of the Columbia Historical Society, first published in 1897. Washington History is filled with scholarly articles, reviews, and a rich array of images and is written and edited by distinguished historians and journalists. Washington History authors explore D.C. from the earliest days of the city to 20 years ago, covering neighborhoods, heroes and she-roes, businesses, health, arts and culture, architecture, immigration, city planning, and compelling issues that unite us and divide us. The full runs of Washington History (1989-present) and its predecessor publication the Records of the Columbia Historical Society (1897-1988) are available through JSTOR, an online archive to which many institutions subscribe. It’s easy to set up a personal JSTOR account, which allows for free online reading of six articles per month in any of their journals, or join the Historical Society at the Membership Plus level for unlimited free access to our publications. Residents of Floral Street, N.W., dig out after the storm of February 18-19, 1979, which added 18.7 inches of snow to the 5 already on the ground. Such city -stopping storms defy technological solutions and reduce cities to earlier historical times. Courtesy, Washingtoniana Division, D.C. Public Library, © Washington Post. 4 Slush Funds A History of D.C. Snow Management By Bernard Mergen the talk is about weather, the Even 17 inches of snow falling over three District of Columbia is usually months in a dozen storms can significantly vilified for its heat and humidity affect people's lives. The failure of Con- and its abrupt seasonal change from gress, city administrators, and residents spring to summer. While it is true that the themselves to recognize the effects of snow city of Washington is often uncomfortable offers an interesting case study of environ- in the summer because of its "humiture," mental naivete. As the geographer John mechanical air conditioning in homes, Rooney, Jr., has pointed out, it is cities that automobiles, and offices has become fail to confront the "urban snow hazard" almost universal since the 1960s, enabling that suffer more than cities with greater its residents and visitors to live, work, andsnowfall but that are well prepared.2 play without great discomfort. Winter, the An examination of the history of snow in Blizzard of 1996 notwithstanding, is Washingtonthe also provides a number of forgotten season, perhaps because techno- insights into issues of current interest. logical control of winter weather is lessFirst, it reveals the changing relationships successful. between urban populations and nature. With an average of less than 17 inches of Too often our concept of the natural envi- snow annually, Washingtonians might well ronment is limited to parks and wilderness ignore winter. Cities such as Buffalo, areas, obscuring the fact that even in the Rochester, and Syracuse, New York, aver- "deseasonalized" city, climate, geography, age more than five times this amount, and biology play important roles.3 Second, Boston triple, New York, and Philadelphia once snow is perceived as a hazard in a double.1 Yet snow is important to everyday city, it requires legal, political, and admin- life in the nation's capital and to its image. istrative responses. The removal of snow from sidewalks and streets involves count- less decisions about how, when, where, Notes begin on page 89. and who, decisions that rest on deeply 5 Washington History, Spring/ Summer 1996 held beliefs about technology, time, space, slush is at the cost of much sickness, and and quality of life. Finally, snow manage- probably many lives, each winter."5 He ment is part of the ongoing debates over achieved his goal of removing more snow cost-benefit analysis and risk assessment. for less money by instituting a system in Snow management, like the concept of which contractors hired their own shovel- urban snow hazard, is largely the creation ers and cartmen, allowing city workers to of those involved in the technological concentrate on crosswalk and gutter changes in transportation and the growth cleanup. City Hall patronage was abol- of cities in the late nineteenth century. In ished, and street railway companies were the years before streetcars and automo- required by ordinance to haul away all biles, snow in cities was an inconvenience, snow piled up by the sweeping machines. but residents were accustomed to walking Stidham also introduced horse-drawn or hitching their horses to a sleigh. In cities plows and the Hudson River ice-scraper served by electricity,, telephones, mass on asphalt streets. transit, and the daily delivery of such sta- Washingtonians may have been studying ples as bread, milk, and newspapers, snow Stidham's recommendations when the was a threat to civilization, an enemy Valentine's Day snowstorm struck the cap- invader to be fought with all available ital in 1899, bringing more than a foot of machines and organizational power. new snow to the record-breaking amount The blizzard of March 11-14, 1888, which already on the ground. As in New York a left snow accumulations of one to four feet decade earlier, all traffic came to a halt. The throughout the Northeast, remains the Washington Post ran stories of suffering benchmark for all snowstorms because it throughout the city, but there were no fatal- demonstrated the vulnerability of overhead ities. Forty-five passengers and employees wires and urban transit to wet, heavy snow.were trapped by fifteen-foot drifts on the Newspaper editors in New York and other electric railway at Four Mile Run, and food cities were quick to observe that the snowshortages and price gouging were report- had "overcome the boasted triumph of ed.civ- A front-page cartoon showed a woman ilization . our superior means of inter- waving a flag of surrender from the top of communication."4 In the aftermath of the the Washington Monument, the tip of blizzard the cities were quiet, a phenome- which emerged from the snow.6 non that still has the power to astonish. The Senate quickly responded to the One response to the blizzard of 1888 was urgent request from the District Commis- ^the reorganization of New York's snow sioners, appropriating $20,000 to pay for removal system. George E. Waring, Jr., the 2,000 men and 500 carts needed to dynamic commissioner of street cleaning remove the snow. The House took another who had created a new image for sanita- day to follow suit, many members com- tion workers in the early 1890s by putting plaining that their constituents should not the crews in uniform and dubbing them have to help pay for cleaning Washing- "White Wings," appointed H. L. Stidham ton's streets. The responsibilities of the pri- "snow-inspector." In good Progressive vate streetcar lines and homeowners to reformer fashion, Stidham linked snow remove snow from their properties were removal to public health, especially for the left unresolved.7 The problems associated tenement population of Manhattan's with urban snow removal were not, of Lower East Side. "Whether it be winter or course, unique to Washington, but ques- summer," Stidham observed, "the people tions about who was responsible and who must have this additional room opened shouldup pay were complicated by the feder- for them, and a delay in the removal of al-citythe relationship. As Howard Gillette almost-knee deep snow and befouled has made clear in his recent analysis of 6 Slush Funds In 1867 snow and ice made the official list of nuisances, or health hazards, published by the local Board of Health. HSW 7 Washington History, Spring/ Summer 1996 urban policy in the District of Columbia, In the late 1890s, laborers on Pennsylvania the commission form of government never Avenue at 15th Street shovel snow into horse- kept pace with the city's physical growth, drawn carts for hauling to less-traveled areas. and Congress continued to dole out inade- Courtesy, Robert A. Truax. quate amounts of money for emergencies such as snow removal.8 In 1895 Congress passed an act that prising. Many cities faced opposition from required "the owner or tenant of each property owners when they tried to legis- house or other building, or lot or lots of late snow removal ordinances using their ground in the cities of Washington and police powers. Most state courts upheld the Georgetown" to remove, "within the first local laws, but some
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