3 After the Civil War, city leaders were determined to make Washington a capital worthy of the unified and expanding nation An enormous public works program begun in the 1870s installed public buildings, water and sewer mains, gas lighting, and paved streets Streets and avenues were extended from the early downtown in accordance with L’Enfant’s grand design Congress, which in effect ran the city, made Washington a self- governing territory in 1871 with a governor and a Board of Public Works Alexander (“Boss”) Shepherd, a booster and businessman who was part of President Ulysses S Grant’s inner circle, was the Board’s vice president and moving force Shepherd’s brief, energetic reign modernized the city’s infrastructure and endowed its streets with some 60,000 trees The ouster of Shepherd and his cronies in 1874 due to corruption scandals did not, however, endanger the capital’s tree program Congress decided the city would be governed by three presidentially appointed commissioners One of these, the Engineer Commissioner, would be a very influential post, since the Army Corps of Engineers was put in charge of utilities, streets and parks 5 Starting in 1871, a Parking Commission of three professional horticulturalists chose tree species for the city’s streets and parks and advised the city nursery The Engineers and Parking Commission’s yearly reports and maps show how Washington’s streets, avenues and parks came to rival those of Paris and Berlin The three first Parking Commissioners served until the end of their lives— two into the 20th century6 “Parking” the 160-foot-wide avenues with rows of same-type shade trees was suggested by Washington’s mayors in 1865 and 1869 One idea favored tree rows down the center with roadways on each side Also considered were groves of trees in the middle of busy intersections After the Engineers visited Paris, which was considered the most modern city of the day, they decided that Washington’s important avenues should have a paved central roadway with park-like strips of green along each side 7 Fig. 2 Schematic diagrams of how L’Enfant laid out grand avenues to connect high points of ground, forming “pauses.”
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