Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 118, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 September 1903 — TO IMPROVE WASHINGTON. [ARTICLE]

TO IMPROVE WASHINGTON.

Ambitious Fcheme to Make the City the Grandest in the World.

It is the intention to make Washington both the Paris and Berlin of America. Plans which have been considered by Congress for making the nation’s capital grander, more beautiful and 'more splendid in every respect, call for the expenditure of millions upon millions. The first step in this long-looked-for aggrandizement will be taken in earnest when the work on the Union Railway station is under way. This great building alone will cost $20,000;000. Several years will be occupied in its construction. The station will excel in size ami magnificence any tiling of its class in the woTld. No railway can be burred from its facilities. The mileage represented will be about 41,000. In keeping with this colossal undertaking will be the homos of the States on National avenue. The idea is for the United States to give a tract of land 5,000 feet in length by 250 in breadth, the frontage to bo allotted' proportionately to the population of the different States, and in the order of their admission into the Union. Here each State is to erect a building. Speaker Reed thought the idea a fine one. Presently there will be fifty States in the Union. The fifty State homes along National avenue will provide fifty reading rooms, fifty writing rooms, fifty sets of home newspapers, fifty bureaus of information, fifty halls of social converse, fifty place's for business apjiointonents, fifty trysting places for sweethearts, fifty public comforts. There will be 250 seats in each home, accommodating all told 12,500 visitors at a time. Ka6h home will be provided with spacious galleries, or balconies, from which great public functions mny be viewed. These will give ample room for 50.000 visitors from all over the country to Witness tho inauguration in comfort —to see it, so to speak, from their own doors. There would be eome fifty acres in galleries and open codrtk. . Designs hare already been submitted to Congress for a National Pa\Jlion. adjacent to tte homes of the States in National avenue, to contain open-air and covered halls, restaurants, apartments and a roof garden. It is largely of glass, with casements to be closed for warmth in winter and open for pure air in summer through Venetian blinds. Other proposed improvements contemplate a new park, a new White Houre and terrace gardens and* broad boulevards along the Potomac. A national Hall of Fame is also among the pi\yposed changes.