Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/162

158 as originally planned was one of the chief problems of the commission.

Again, the reclamation of the Potomac flats, prosecuted since 1882, has added to the monument grounds an area about one mile in length from east to west; so that where L'Enfant dealt with a composition one and a half miles in length, the commission is called upon to deal with an area two and a half miles long, with a maximum breadth of about one mile.

By the inclusion of the space between Pennsylvania and New York avenues on the north, and Maryland avenue and the Potomac River on the south, the new composition becomes a symmetrical, polygonal or

kite-shaped figure bisected from east to west by the axis of the Capitol and from north to south by the White House axis. Regarding the Monument as the center, the Capitol as the base, and the White House as the extremity of one arm of a Latin cross, we have at the head of the composition on the banks of the Potomac a memorial site of the greatest possible dignity, with a second and only less commanding site at the extremity of the second arm.

So extensive a composition, and one containing such important elements, does not exist elsewhere; and it is essential that the plan for its treatment shall combine simplicity with dignity.