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Show 0 CAPITAL CITY Four or five years ago new Government buildings began to climb into the horizon along Pennsylvania Avenue and it was the proud boast of the National Capital that the United States would stop paying rent and have its own buildings for all its Departments and Bureaus. In the plans of Washington and L'Enfant the mile area from the White House to the Capitol along Pennsylvania Avenue was to be built up "some day," and that very old dream of the first President has come true. Now most of these buildings are occupied filled to over-flowing. Even the Commerce buildding, largest public office building in the world, no longer houses all of its own activities. Perhaps 100,000 positions and "places" have been added to the official set-ups in Washington. The result is that big-stores big-stores have moved out and the Government has moved in ; the closed palace of former mining king Walsh of Colorado, and the McLean mansion, and the old James G. Blaine home are occupied by new government agencies. These were swanky swan-ky high-spots in former days. Vacant space in all the office buildings has been taken over, and even the Arlington hotel, one of the largest in the city, is being turned into government govern-ment offices. Apparently the Government cannot build fast enough to keep up with the new deal, so millions of dollars are being paid out for rent. The rest of the narrative, that will be skipped, concerns intolerable over-crowding of housing conditions in the Capital, Capi-tal, and the building of millions of dollars of new houses and apartments with government loans, of course. The vacant spaces of the District of Columbia are not enough, and for miles around in every direction through Maryland and Virginia Vir-ginia new habitations for the population are going up by the wholesale. In wartime the influxes of population were "crowded in," but now they are being spread out. And what a spread. |