Posts about Lafayette Park

In contrast to Vonier stood Ward, who turned to the Washington Monument as an ideal example of a minimalist solution to security concerns. The Monument received a security facelift in 2003 with the addition of sunken walls that naturally curve around the base of the hill on which the Monument stands, providing additional security without encroaching upon visitors' privacy.

Unlike Vonier, Ward seemed more inclined to respect historical precedents and maintain the natural order of a space to the greatest extent possible. He lamented the 18-foot descent that pedestrians endure when approaching the Capitol Visitor Center, a sensation he described as the antithesis to the entry experience one expects of such a grand building.

Jenkins and Vonier both suggested civic authorities reduce security risks from vehicles by creating pedestrian roadways with reduced or no car and truck access. London developed the "Ring of Steel" after a series of IRA attacks. This is a perimeter of Closed-captioned Television (CCTV), police, and bollards within the City of London, Greater London's financial district. According to Jenkins, as a result of the "Ring of Steel," the streets have been "pedestrianized," and commerce is thriving.

Ward, however, disagreed with adopting a similar approach. "We don't have the density of pedestrians" to eliminate cars from certain roads, he said. Ward also suggested that the economy would not support such changes in traffic patterns, which could "kill businesses."

The panelists bandied about a number of solutions to the question of how to simultaneously provide both security and amenity. Vonier referred to the classic necessity of more eyes on the street to increase vigilance against threats. He suggested that police and civic authorities encourage proprietors to take ownership of the sidewalks and streets in front of their businesses, creating a "defensible space."

During the question and answer session, Jenkins suggested that in order to make the public more accountable for security, governments must improve education and communication, helping individuals to better understand policy decisions and security protocol while empowering them to be more vigilant.

Disappointingly, some of the pricklier subjects, such as congestion pricing, closed circuit surveillance, and defense against airborne security threats were mentioned in brief but not explored much further.

Many questions still remained unanswered. How can design engage the public in the provision of their own security? At what point did Americans become passive potential victims, as many of the latest security measures suggest? Which works better: the prototypical Parisian cafe-style of surveillance, or the large setbacks and empty spaces prevalent in front of federal buildings?

Nobody seemed fully equipped to provide answers, largely because the issue frequently turns into a matter of subjective opinion, as the talks showed. At the very least, however, the panelists could all agree that many existing security features around DC, like the Jersey barriers outside of the Federal Aviation Administration's building, can and should be improved to reflect stronger urban design and a better connection to the pedestrian experience.

Decatur was a rock star in his day, universally celebrated for his daring naval exploits. He was fortunate to be a great naval commander during the relatively brief period in the early 19th century when military prowess at sea fired the imagination of the public as little else did. After the War of 1812, at the second inaugural ball of President James Madison, Decatur laid the battle flag of a British ship he had vanquished at the feet of Dolley Madison, another idol of the day.

Having at last been appointed to Washington as a commissioner of the Navy, Decatur decided it was time to build a show house for himself and his wife Susan with the prize money he had received for his naval conquests. He bought a prominent lot on the west side of what would become Lafayette Park and commissioned architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1764-1820) to design an appropriately prominent mansion. He is said to have asked for a house that would be "sturdy as a ship."

The Decatur House, as designed by Latrobe, is an architectural conundrum, both sophisticated and problematic. Latrobe is now universally acclaimed as America's first great architect, a brilliant contributor to the U.S. Capitol and the White House as well as designer of other innovative and influential buildings, including nearby St. John's Church and many private residences.

Decatur House is the only residence designed by Latrobe that is still standing in Washington. As W. Brown Morton of the National Park Service has pointed out in the building's National Register listing, the exterior of the house is actually somewhat flawed, particularly on the H Street side, where six "blind" (bricked-up) windows look so awkward that through the years people have felt the need to make up stories about why they are there (more about that later).

Nevertheless, the rooms are masterfully laid out and demonstrate Latrobe's extraordinary skill at creating flowing, elegant interior spaces. A striking, lozenge-shaped front entrance vestibule leads to a graceful staircase at the rear of the house that brings guests up to grand parlors on the second floor. As a vehicle for social levees in 1819, this place was second to none.

Decatur would have little more than a year to live in this beautiful new house, for he had become entangled in a fatal dispute with a fellow commander, James Barron (1768-1851). Barron had had the bad luck back in 1807 to be captain of the frigate Chesapeake when it was attacked and boarded by the British, who seized four of its American crew who were allegedly British deserters. The incident was deeply humiliating to Americans, and Barron was faulted for being unprepared to respond to it more forcefully.

Decatur, no great friend of Barron's to begin with, served as a member of the board of inquiry that suspended Barron from naval service for five years as punishment for mishandling the encounter. Barron then went off to Europe to wait out his exile, which happened to finish in 1813, right in the middle of the War of 1812. At that time he was summoned back urgently to active duty but failed to return to the States until after the war had ended. It was only then that he requested his old job back, much to the irritation of his former colleagues, including Decatur, who had fought so valiantly against the British.

Decatur badmouthed Barron, who caught wind of it from a colleague eager to fan the flames of enmity between them, and Barron then confronted Decatur in a series of letters beginning in June 1819. At first Barron didn't directly challenge Decatur to a duel but tried to provoke him more subtly. Decatur resisted, stating in October that, "I do not think that fighting duels, under any circumstances, can raise the reputation of any man."

Still, in January 1820 Decatur accepted a direct challenge from Barron, brushing off pleas from his close friends to decline. Both men appointed seconds to make formal arrangements on their behalf, and the duel was set for the morning of March 22, 1820.

Even in those early days, the District of Columbia had a law aimed at curtailing handgun violence: dueling was illegal. People got around it by taking their fights to Maryland or Virginia. One of the few roads out of town led northeast to the small village of Bladensburg, just across the Maryland line, where the British had routed American troops in 1814.

A creek-side clearing had become a favorite spot for dueling, and Decatur and Barron met there on a cold, damp March morning. As they were preparing for the showdown, Barron reportedly called out, "Now Decatur, if we meet in another world, let us hope that we will be better friends," to which Decatur replied, "I was never your enemy."

The seconds, if they had wanted to avoid the duel, could have taken this as an opening for reconciliation and called off the whole sordid business, but instead the two antagonists were called to take their positions. At a short 8 paces, both fired simultaneously; both hit each other in the hip.

Decatur's shot deflected off Barron's femur and left him with a very painful wound. More seriously, Barron's shot deflected inward from Decatur's hip to his abdomen, a fatal injury in those days. Decatur was taken back to a first-floor room in his house on Lafayette Square where he died in great pain the next day.

Susan Decatur, a "dainty little woman with large, dark eyes," was deeply committed to her husband and suffered enormously when he died. The daughter of a prominent Norfolk, Virginia, merchant, Mrs. Decatur had been a sophisticated and popular hostess. "To be admitted into her set is a favor granted to comparatively few, and, of course, desired by all," remarked Mrs. Edward Livingston, who would later host soirees at Decatur House as well.

Susan had undoubtedly endured much anxiety through the years that Decatur was fighting at sea, and it was a cruel irony that he should lose his life in a duel. Inconsolable after his death, she soon moved out of Decatur House, which she then rented out for many years. She used what powers she had to punish Barron and the two seconds who had facilitated the duel, refusing to attend any social event where there was a chance of encountering any of the three and reiterating her objections whenever she received an invitation.

Her campaign was effective; Barron was kept from gaining a position on the naval board of commissioners, and one of the seconds, Jesse Elliott, was court-martialed and kicked out of the Navy. Susan converted to Catholicism in 1828 and in later years lived in a small house near Georgetown University, where she was known as "a venerable and stately lady."

After Susan Decatur left, the house was occupied by a succession of distinguished tenants, many of them members of the diplomatic community, including ministers from France, Russia, and Great Britain. The house was strategically located for a diplomatic role, with both the White House and the State Department being only a block to the south. From 1827 to 1833, the house became the unofficial residence of the Secretary of State, being occupied successively by Henry Clay (1777-1852), Martin Van Buren (1782-1862), and Edward Livingston (1764-1836).

In 1836, Decatur House was purchased for $12,000 by John Gadsby (1766-1844), an entrepreneurial innkeeper said to be the richest man in Washington. In addition to previously running Gadsby's Tavern in Alexandria, Virginia, Gadsby made lots of money in the slave trade and came to Washington when he decided to invest in a new hotel, which he opened on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1827.

Gadsby's Hotel would become well-known as the National Hotel. Gadsby represented a shift from the house's previous upper-class tenants with diplomatic connections to a nouveau-riche mercantile man with distinctly less-refined tastes. The French minister commented on a party of Gadsby's held at Decatur House:

Some days ago I went to an evening party at Mr. Gadsby's, proprietor of the hotel where I stayed on my arrival here. He is an old wretch who has made a fortune in the slave trade, which does not prevent Washington society from rushing to his house, and I should make my government very unpopular if I refused to associate with his kind of people. This gentleman's house is the most beautiful in the city, very well furnished, and perfect in the distribution of the rooms, but the society, my God!

Gadsby built a low addition behind the house on H Street. He used the bottom floor for a kitchen, freeing up the previous kitchen space on the first floor of the main house. Above the kitchen were quarters for as many as 20 slaves, possibly including some that worked at the National Hotel. Gadsby also reportedly conducted slave auctions in the courtyard behind the house. Thankfully, this ignominious chapter in the history of the house lasted only a few years.

During the Civil War, the federal government took over Decatur House for offices, as it did many properties on Lafayette Square. The house became rather rundown.

Then in 1871, Gen. Edward Fitzgerald Beale (1822-1893) bought the house for $60,000. Beale, famous for exploring and taming the West, had made lots of money from ranching and gold-mining in California. Nevertheless, he had been born and grew up in Washington at his father's estate, Bloomingdale, in the neighborhood that now bears the same name, and he was happy to return to his native city.

Beale immediately began making extensive renovations to Decatur House to create once more an elegant social venue. He had the front windows on the first floor lengthened and fashionable Victorian sandstone trim applied over the windows and front entrance. Inside, intricate parquet flooring was laid over the original floorboards, and the second floor was elaborately redecorated, with the state seal of California created out of inlaid exotic woods in the center of the drawing room floor. The house once more became an important social venue, with Beale's good friend Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885) often dropping by to visit.

Beale's son Truxton (1856-1936) inherited the house from his father. He married Marie Oge in 1903. As its longest inhabitant, Marie Oge Beale (1880-1956) carried on the grand tradition of entertaining at Decatur House. Along with Mildred Bliss of Dumbarton Oaks and Virginia Bacon of the John Marshall House, she was one of the "3 Mrs. B's" who took delight in entertaining high society at their historic houses in the early decades of the 20th century.

Also in keeping with Decatur House's tradition, many of Mrs. Beale's receptions catered to the diplomatic corps. Her husband had served in important diplomatic roles, and it became a tradition that after the annual White House reception for the diplomatic corps, the guests went over to Decatur House for a supper party. Even during Prohibition years, when the White House served no alcohol, Decatur House always had champagne on hand, its wine cellar supposedly having been really well stocked before the ban on sales of spirits kicked in.

Perhaps most importantly for us, Marie Beale was an early and ardent advocate of historic preservation. As early as 1902, the Senate Park Commission (the McMillan Commission) proposed "unifying" Lafayette Square by demolishing all the buildings around it, including Decatur House, and replacing them with ponderous, white-marble, neoclassical temples.

Mrs. Beale lobbied her government connections to ensure Decatur House would be protected whenever proposals were floated that suggested it be razed. In 1944, she commissioned architect Thomas T. Waterman (1900-1951), an authority on colonial architecture, to restore the building's facade by removing the Victorian sandstone trim and recreating, as closely as possible, the original Latrobe appearance.

Upon her death in 1956, Marie Beale bequeathed the house to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which opened it as a museum in the 1960s. Most recently, in 2009, the National Trust inked an agreement to allow the White House Historical Association to use the facility as the National Center for White House History. The Association is currently drafting a master plan and historic structure report to help guide restoration work on the house as it assumes its new role.

One of the first things the Association did was to reinstall shutters over the blind windows on H Street. Waterman had had these shutters made in 1944, arguing that Latrobe would certainly have wanted them installed. They certainly can keep people from wondering why the blind windows exist on such a stately and historic house inventing explanations.

The classic story, as recounted in the Washington Post at Halloween in 1969, goes back to the time of the Decatur-Barron duel:

It is said that the night before the duel, a troubled Decatur stood at the window on the H Street side, looking out, lost in deep thought. After his death, people claimed they could still see him standing there by the window. Finally to stop the stories, the window was walled up. Even then, the spectre of a worried young man could be seen before daybreak, slipping out the Decatur House with a long black box of pistols.

Of course, the windows (at least six of them) were never actually not walled up. A drawing by Latrobe shows how a complicated system of chimney flues in the H Street wall prevented real windows from ever being installed on much of that side of the house. Perhaps with the shutters newly re-installed tour guides won't be telling that tall tale quite as often.

Sources for this article included: John Alexander, Ghosts: Washington Revisited (1998); Marie Beale, Decatur House and Its Inhabitants (1954); Harold D. Eberlein and Cortlandt V. Hubbard, Historic Houses of George-town & Washington City (1958); Jeanne Fogle, Proximity To Power: Neighbors to the President near Lafayette Square (1999); Historic American Buildings Survey, Decatur House (1945); Diane Maddex, Historic Buildings of Washington, D.C. (1973); National Register of Historic Places, Decatur House (1971); National Trust for Historic Preservation, Decatur House (1967); John H. Schroeder, Commodore John Rodgers: Paragon of the Early American Navy (2006); Pamela Scott and Antoinette J. Lee, Buildings of the District of Columbia (1993); Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, Our Neighbors on Lafayette Square (1872, reprinted 1982); and numerous newspaper articles. Additional information was graciously provided by Maria Downs of the White House Historical Association.

Cross-posted at Streets Of Washington.

The house was built in 1820 by former Massachusetts congressman Richard Cutts (1771-1845), then serving as Comptroller of the Treasury, and his wife Anna (1779-1832), Dolley Madison's younger sister. At the time there were few buildings on the "President's Square," which would later be called Lafayette Square. In fact, it had been a great open common, stretching from 15th Street to 17th Street, that was used for mustering the local militia, according to Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, an early resident.

The Cutts house was one of the first to break up the open space and the first to be built on the east side of the square. Opposite it on the west side was Decatur House, which had been built in 1819. Some time after these two houses were completed, roads were cut north-south from H Street to Pennsylvania Avenue to form the smaller park in the center that is now Lafayette Square. Additional houses then began lining either side.

The Cutts house originally faced Lafayette Park and stood out prominently as a sturdy two-story house with a gabled roof and large gardens in the rear (extending along H Street) and on the south side. Unfortunately, though he was a high official of the U.S. Treasury, Cutts was apparently not very good at balancing his own books and was thrown in debtors' prison in 1828.

To clear himself, he agreed to sell his house to former President James Madison (1751-1836), his brother-in law, for its assessed value of $5,750. The Madisons allowed the Cutts family to continue living in the house until Anna Cutts died in 1832.

Dolley moved in five years later, after James Madison had died. She was an extraordinary and immensely popular individual whose house on Lafayette Square was known far and wide. It became a New Year's Day tradition for Washingtonians of any social standing to call first at the President's House and then cross Lafayette Park to pay respects to Dolley.

Her impact on Washington society, beginning in the Jefferson administration and continuing through her husband's, had been profound. Despite an austere Quaker upbringing, Dolley had spearheaded something of a social awakening in Washington through her gracious hosting of everything from informal "levees" to formal White House dinners. Through her social connections she gained such political influence that in 1808, James Madison's rival for the presidency, Charles C. Pinckney, complained that he "was beaten by Mr. and Mrs. Madison. I might have had a better chance had I faced Mr. Madison alone."

Dolley Madison may be best known today for her heroism during the War of 1812, specifically her valiant efforts (as she reported in a letter to Anna Cutts) to save the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington from falling into British hands on August 24, 1814, when the British army captured Washington and burned public buildings, including the White House and the Capitol. She also packed important government papers into trunks for safekeeping.

More than 30 years later, in May 1848, Dolley similarly saved her husband's important papers, which she kept in an upstairs trunk, from imminent destruction. She was then spending her last years in her house on Lafayette Square, and the house caught fire, perhaps from arson. Dolley refused to be rescued from the top floor unless the trunk of papers was safely removed with her.

Nearly as well known as Dolley's heroism were her personal foibles. She loved to dress well and had a famous predilection for extravagant turbans. When fleeing the White House in 1814, along with the Stuart portrait of Washington, she tellingly saved a set of red velvet drapes from the oval drawing room. Some have argued that her choice of these drapes when so much else had to be abandoned was reasonable given their high cost in those days, but the fact remains that the woman really loved red.

Perhaps most poignant of Dolley's foibles was her unwavering and truly blind devotion to her ever-dissolute son, John Payne Todd (1792-1852), who contributed mightily to her ultimate financial ruination. Payne was Dolley's son by her first marriage to John Todd, who died in a devastating cholera epidemic in 1793. Payne had been coddled by his adoring mother since birth—overly much, it would seem.

As described by Richard Côté in his biography of Dolley, Payne was nothing but trouble. At the age of 13, he was sent to Baltimore to attend school and live with Dolley's friend Betsy Patterson Bonaparte, who had married Napoleon's younger brother. The young and attractive Mrs. Bonaparte, who had a habit of scandalizing society with her revealing clothing, taught Payne "French, dancing, etiquette, and self-indulgences," according to Côt&eaacute;. He never looked back. Handsome and adept at society airs, he spent his life gambling and otherwise frittering away the family fortune on women and extravagant entertainment. Plagued by alcoholism, he ultimately dying penniless and shunned by all who knew him.

Throughout her life, Dolley would never see anything but good in her son, despite the calamitous effects of his spending and, after James had died, his destructive meddling in her affairs. The Madisons had owned a beautiful plantation estate in central Virginia, called Montpelier, where they retired at the end of Madison's presidency, but Dolley was forced to sell it and move back to the Cutts house in Washington when she could no longer afford to keep Montpelier. Production problems on the farm contributed to her financial difficulties, but much of the blame must go to her son, whose constant debts she (and James before her) had always reliably paid.

After Dolley's death, Payne sold the Dolley Madison House to Captain (later Admiral) Charles Wilkes (1798-1877), best known for commanding a grand expedition to explore the South Seas from 1838 to 1842. Wilkes was the first to undertake significant alterations to the house, including moving the main entrance to the H Street side, adding a bay window on the south side, cutting the first-floor windows down to the floor, and installing the ornamental wrought-iron porch on the Madison Place side of the house that remains there today.

Wilkes and his heirs owned the house for 35 years and leased it at various times to a number of important persons. One of these was General George B. McClellan (1826-1885), head of the Union Army at the outset of the Civil War. McClellan, or "Little Mac" as he was known, was perhaps the most exasperating of Abraham Lincoln's many commanders-in-chief and reportedly referred to him as "nothing more than a well-meaning baboon."

On the evening of November 13, 1861, Lincoln came to call on Little Mac at the Dolley Madison House to discuss the progress of the war. Adding insult to insubordination, McClellan made Lincoln wait for 30 minutes downstairs before being told that the general had gone to bed and could not see him. After that, Lincoln insisted that McClellan visit him at the White House—at least for a few more months until he got completely fed up and fired him altogether.

In the early 1880s, the Wilkes family first leased and then sold the Dolley Madison House to the Cosmos Club, a social club founded by scientists and intellectuals, including John Wesley Powell and Clarence King. The Club embarked on extensive modifications and additions to the already Wilkes-modified house, including building out a full third floor and expanding the house significantly to the south and east at the first floor level to create large assembly rooms.

Further additions were made to the east along H Street in 1894, along with plumbing and electrical upgrades, including an elevator. The club then bought and razed the next two houses to the south (known as the Ingersoll and Windom houses) and constructed a rather bland five-story residential building in their place. Finally the club completed its conquest of the northern half of Madison Place by purchasing the historic Benjamin Ogle Tayloe House in 1917. The Tayloe House, which adjoined the club's new residential building to the south, had been built in 1828.

The indignity of all these expansions and modifications to Dolley's house was nothing compared to the threat of razing it altogether, which hung over the house for the first half of the 20th century. As early as 1902, the McMillan Commission had proposed ruthlessly obliterating virtually all of the existing structures around Lafayette Square and replacing them with a suffocating expanse of leaden, neoclassical, white-marble government buildings.

And, for many years, everyone was just fine with this. Fortunately, only slight progress was made towards this ham-handed vision: the ponderous Treasury Annex, designed by Cass Gilbert, was completed at the southeast corner of the square in 1917, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, also designed by Gilbert, was constructed on H Street just above the park in 1929.

Although the focus of government construction shifted to the massive Federal Triangle project in the 1930s, the plan to redevelop Lafayette Square persisted, and the federal government finally bought the Cosmos Club properties, including the Dolley Madison House, for $1 million in 1940. The club was allowed to lease the building back from the government for another 12 years because funds were not yet available to undertake new construction.

After the club moved out, the Dolley Madison House hosted two federal agencies: the National Science Foundation, from 1952 to 1958, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, from 1958 until 1964. In April 1959, NASA presented its first class of astronauts, known as the Mercury 7, to the world in the assembly room built by the Cosmos Club on the south side of the house.

By the late 1950s, the concept of historic preservation was starting to gain traction just as the government's plans for replacing Lafayette Square's houses were also finally being readied. The Committee of 100 on the Federal City, among others, opposed a large executive office building planned on the west side of the park.

As this opposition was voiced, Congress delayed funding, but the development process proceeded. Soon designs were being presented to the Commission of Fine Arts for an executive building on the west side of the park and a courts building on the east side, replacing the Dolley Madison House and others.

As described by Kurt Helfrich in a 1996 article in Washington History magazine, the commission was split over the advisability of these plans. Some, including chairman David Finley, wanted to preserve the old buildings and put up new, contextually-sensitive ones alongside them, while others wanted to make bold, modernistic architectural statements free of the encumbrance of the old structures.

Much of the debate up until this point had been in "either/or" terms: either save the old buildings or construct new ones. But the Committee of 100 worked to advance a new idea, originally suggested by philanthropist Charles Glover, Jr., and sketched by architect Grosvenor Chapman, of building the larger new structures behind the existing historic ones, connecting to them at the rear, and integrating the entire complex.

Chapman made a sketch of how this might look on the west side of the square, and the sketch was passed on to President Kennedy. Soon the Kennedys—particularly Mrs. Kennedy—were making a full-court press to preserve as much of Lafayette Square's heritage as possible. Despite an estimated $4 million that, according to the Washington Post, had already been spent on planning replacement buildings, the project was re-worked.

Architect John Carl Warnecke, who had personal connections with the Kennedys, developed new designs based on the Glover/Chapman vision, and these were implemented in the 1960s. The Dolley Madison House is now part of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

While it may seem strange now, Warnecke's work was dismissed by some, and the "meddling" of the First Lady in the plans for the square derided. For example, Ralph Walker, a member of the Commission of Fine Arts, complained in 1962 that "...we live in an age of bigness. We don't live in an age of tiny little things put together—this is one opportunity that we had of making [Lafayette Square] one of the most important squares in the whole world.... What we have done is frivolously piddled it away in the restoration of unimportant buildings." Fortunately, he was out-voted, and the Dolley Madison House is still with us.

As, perhaps, is the spirit of Dolley herself, which is said to still linger around her house. Tour guides like to pass on the story that late at night men leaving the Washington Club, which was several doors down in the late 19th century, would tip their hats to the ghost of Dolley, seen gently rocking in her favorite chair on the porch of her house.

John Alexander's Ghosts: Washington Revisited mentions the story and includes a picture of the porch. Only trouble is, the porch wasn't added to the house until after Dolley had died. Actually, another trouble is that this particular ornamental porch could scarcely accommodate a rocking chair; it's too shallow. But I suppose if you're a gentle ghost and you want to sit rocking late at night, you'll just do it wherever you please...

Sources for this article included: John Alexander, Ghosts: Washington Revisited (1998); Michael Bednar, L'Enfant's Legacy: Public Open Spaces in Washington, D.C. (2006); Richard N. Côté, Strength and Honor: The Life of Dolley Madison (2005); Harold D. Eberlein and Cortlandt V. Hubbard, Historic Houses of George-town & Washington City (1958); Kurt Helfrich, "Modernism for Washington: The Kennedys and the Redesign of Lafayette Square" in Washington History (Vol. 8, No. 1, 1996); Historic American Buildings Survey, Richard Cutts House (1958); Charles Moore, Washington Past and Present (1929); Thomas M. Spaulding, The Cosmos Club on Lafayette Square (1949); Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, Our Neighbors on Lafayette Square (1872, reprinted 1982); United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Dolley Madison House and The Tayloe House (undated pamphlets), and numerous newspaper articles.

Cross-posted at Streets Of Washington.

When we last reported on the lanes, NCPC had held off on approving that section until DDOT could work out any issues with the Secret Service and the Park Service. DDOT bike head Jim Sebastian said that they are still finalizing approvals with those agencies, but they are confident they will be able to resolve any remaining questions.

They were confident enough to finish the engineering drawings for the lanes to include this route. Those plans, which could still change call for small curb ramps for cyclists to surmount the curb at the guardhouse at Madison Place and H Street.

The Park Service asked DDOT not to use any signs or pavement markings directing cyclists along Lafayette Park, based on a feeling that the area is a "historic resource" without signs. DDOT officials pointed out, however, that there are existing "no littering" signs, and security measures have had no trouble modifying the historic appearance. A small sign or two or a marking on the roadway showing cyclists where to turn between Madison and Pennsylvania shouldn't disturb the historic feel of Lafayette Park.

DDOT is also working with the Secret Service to address traffic around the E Street entrance to the White House secure area. Today, many cars and trucks waiting to go through security queue up in the rightmost travel lane on 15th, even though that's a general travel lane.

Some cyclists have expressed concern that the 2-way lane will get too crowded and that drivers will become more hostile to them riding in regular traffic lanes. Cyclists are still free to ride like vehicles, in a general-purpose lane and in the direction of traffic. For experienced cyclists, this is often the best approach as long as they follow the same rules as cars (including stopping at traffic lights) and take the entire lane instead of squeezing to the right.

Drivers need to respect cyclists' right to choose either mode of operation. DDOT will remove the current sharrows and signs reminding drivers cyclists can use the full lane, but sharrows and signs aren't necessary since cyclists have those rights on any roadway. Sebastian said DDOT will keep an eye on whether drivers start to act belligerently toward cyclists riding legally.

Sluggers who travel the I-95/395 corridor and the Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commission (PRTC) have also been talking with DDOT to figure out the best places for sluggers to wait for shared rides and commuter buses to pick up riders. Riders want PRTC commuter bus stops in the same area so they can choose between slugging and the bus.

Some options included moving the slugs and bus stops to 15th, but unless they can fit into the area between McPherson Square and Pennsylvania Avenue, this lane likely makes that impossible. Hopefully DDOT can find a suitable location back on 14th or elsewhere, since slugging is a valuable element of our region's transportation as well.

This lane will give cyclists a safe and, more importantly, safe-feeling route between neighborhoods in the 14th Street corridor and downtown. Many people say they'd be interested in cycling to work but don't because of the harrowing feel of riding on downtown streets. This lane should give those commuters and other residents even more choices for getting downtown.