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Show "i. I Washington Most Beautiful of Capitals LT By WILLIAM C. UTLEY WHEN the Supreme Court of tlie United States. ended end-ed its last session in the Capitol building in tlie early days of June, the event wan an Important one in the history of American government. The nation's highest judicial body, "than whom there Is none whom-er" whom-er" when It comes to Interpreting the law of tlie land, performed Its Inst official function In tlie "borrowed" "bor-rowed" quarters It had occupied for three-fourths of a century. When the October session begins Mr. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and his eight associates will move Into the magnificent $10,000,000 edifice edi-fice of white marble that has v '1 By WILLIAM C. UTLEY t -rrwj . , ! v.:''"W".'WMM1UMJ,im .1 y 1M.,.t WHEN the Supreme Court , t sT . - . of the United States end- ; t V Xl ed Its last session in the V - miV?tu . ' , j , Capitol building in the t f t early days of June, the event wan J v -TV " " 6- . Sf"4, an Important one in the history of $ " I ' " x American government. " x, ' "V-. The nation's highest judicial body, v V,t "4. ' "than whom there is none whom- ; ,V s$ h x'stl J . i"H '- . S er" when it comes to Interpreting St,' T J u r, ' - V 5 V- the law of the land, performed its r C ? t1T - rf-i .V4 last onicial function In the "bor- f , . fH . st I rowed" quarters It had occupied for "XtT" " - three-fourths of a century. When , A - v j S Hv I? T" ?V the October session begins- Mr. l A1 i'jfA.'vf uVf V' Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes ?T t T Hi il and his eight associates will move L . Vy-& .'v ' J V C Into the magnificent $10,000,000 edi- ! JiT t . WtT - V ,, "VC v - - If 1 tx&z&SzA-x z It tfcf nn hX ;V ? :4 Aerial View Showing the New Buildings Recently Erected in Washington. Inset, New Supreme Court Building. been built for them and them alone In the shadow of Capitol hill. It will mark the first time that we have ever seen all three departments depart-ments of our government legislative, legisla-tive, executive and judicial in homes of their own. It will be the climax to the far-flung far-flung architectural and building pro-" pro-" - gram that is making has made Washington, D. C, the real show place among world capitals. The new Supreme court building, the additions to the Library of Congress, Con-gress, the new and already famous Washington triangle and other building projects will, when all of them are completed, make the beautiful beau-tiful city on the banks of the Potomac Poto-mac unique. The Supreme court went about Its business of getting ready to move In a manner unceremonious, to say the least. Although a large crowd filled the old chamber In the Capitol building on that final day, - there were no trumpet blasts and ) no weeps. Perhaps that was because be-cause the court Is not unaccustomed unaccus-tomed to moving, having been sort of kicked around from pillar to post, from cellar to sitting room, since the nation was born. Deciding to move, the court opened up the family bureau In fact quite a few bureaus and threw out a few things It allowed might Just as well be kissed good-by. Nobody No-body In the family wanted them all nine justices turned thumbs down. NRA, they felt, was bad for their Constitution. As Breckinridge Said. Right there would have been a great spot for the words that Vice President John Cabell Breckinridge spoke as the thirty-fifth senate moved out of these same quarters to let the Supreme court come In on January 4, 1S59: "We leave this chamber, bearing with ns, unimpaired, the Constitution Constitu-tion we received from our forefathers," forefa-thers," he said. The Supreme coiyt bore away the Constitution in just that state, but made no speeches about it. The court had preserved the Constitution Constitu-tion after sitting In many places. It had been In Philadelphia's Independence Inde-pendence hall. It first moved into thte Capitol building In 1800. It was in the basement then, and there John Marshall established the right of the court to void all laws passed by congress which do not abide by the Constitution. It was there that Justice Taney delivered the court's opinion In the famed Dred Scott case. The recent decision against the New Deal has been regarded quite as Important. When the British burned the Capitol Cap-itol building in 1S14, the Supreme court was obliged to meet In the home or the clerk of the court at 200 Pennsylvania avenue, S. E. In IS10 It moved Into a room on the ground floor, vacated by the senate, which took up quarters directly above this room. The Supreme court again followed the senate In 1ST9, when that body moved again. The court retained those quarters nntll the end of this last session. Worth Waiting For. If the court had to wait a long time for a home of its own, its members mem-bers will tell you the wait was worth It, The majestic columns of its new white marble building rise against tlie green background and trees In an arcliltectnr.il beauty surpassed nowhere In the wonder Capital city of the world. Facing the Capitol, It occupies a site that has been, In the order named, that of a hotel for the men who earlier governed the nation, the Library of Congress, and a Civil war prison. Solidarity and security are the Immediate Impressions the visitor pleans from tlie building. Sentinels at the head of the steps are two )"- ton marble blocks, among the largest larg-est ever brought to Washington. Beyond the eight Corinthian columns, col-umns, 51 feet high, are great, bronze doors which weigh 3,000 pounds each. A hall lined by 30 columns, each hewn from a single block of stone, leads to the justices' chamber which, at their own request, re-quest, was made only 60 per cent larger than the old chamber in the Capitol. Still further on are the private offices of the justices, paneled in oak. There are also offices for the attorney general and solicitor general. gen-eral. In the courtyards are garages, and elsewhere are the air-conditioning plant which keeps the brow of justice cool, dining rooms and library li-brary space for the 379,726 volumes of the law. Also facing the Capitol and across the street from the Supreme court excavations are under way for an addition which will nearly double its size. It is already the largest library in the world, by far, with nearly 10,000,000 pieces. The Federal Triangle. But below Capitol hill, half way along Pennsylvania avenue from the Capitol to the White House Is the most ambitious part of the new Washington. It Is the Federal Triangle, Tri-angle, built on the former site of the old Central Market ground which in the early days wasTtierely a swamp. On the tip of the triangle, which Is eight blocks long and 'through whose 20 miles of corridors 17,700 government workers already pass in the administration of their daily duties, is the National Archives building, a man-Yuade Gibraltar designed de-signed to withstand the ravages of time. It is the first safe and fitting fit-ting citadel to hold the records of the nation, many of them yellowed with the centuries that have passed.-It passed.-It was built "to last forever." Its foundation Is a "scow" of reinforced re-inforced concrete, five feet thick. This is set on 5,000 concrete piles which vary In length from 15 to 35 feet. Should the waters of the Potomac Po-tomac swell with flood, the scow would not go sailing, for down In its center are two electric pumps and a steam turbine which automatically auto-matically keep the water at a constant con-stant level. In the most severe emergency Imaginable, the steam turbine would go to work with nl-most nl-most power enough to pump out the whole Potomac river. To find the eternal stone to protect pro-tect the documents of our patriots, the builders of the National Archives Ar-chives building went to the granite quarries of Chelmsford, Mass., and opened up an entirely new and gigantic gi-gantic bed of limestone near Bedford, Bed-ford, Ind. From Bedford they cut two great limestone blocks of 120 tons apiece and, finding they would have to reinforce bridges and enlarge en-large tunnels nil the way to Washington, Wash-ington, they cut them down to 90 tons each. When they arrived at the Capital there was no conveyance big and strong enough to transport them to their destination, so they were shaved down again to CO tons each. The two blocks now stand guard at the main entrance. On one of them has been sculptured the figure of a Roman gladiator standing sentry, sen-try, on the other a mother and her child with a sheaf of wheat in the background. All documents which enter here get their last glimpse of sunlight and their last breath of "outside" air as the doors close upon them. Inside they are fumigated: there are no windows In tlie building; nil lilit is nrtinri.nl and all air is mechanically me-chanically conditioned to preserve the life of the archives. As slick and severely molded as the department it houses is the new building of the Department of Justice Jus-tice across from tlie National Archives Ar-chives biddings. It Is a temple of , aluminum. Nearly $150,000 worth of the lightweight metal has been used In its construction. This same metal would have cost $8,500,000 In the days when the aluminum cap was placed on the Washington monument In 1S81. Doors, elevators, bas-relief casts, stair railings, window win-dow frames and lighting fixtures are of aluminum, and there is a large fountain of the same metal. Home of the "G" Men. The building Is of limestone and granite, and the architectural keynote key-note is Greek. Visitors in throngs already are ogling through its two miles of corridors, for the recent nation-wide drive against crime has publicized the "G" men as tough gentlemen who don't stop to fool, but shoot criminals first and ask questions afterward. The "G" man is rapidly usurping the gangster's place as a romantic figure and his headquarters are a Mecca for the curious. Across the street, where the Harvey Har-vey Oyster house used to tickle Abraham Lincoln's prairie appetite, is the new home of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, one of the largest of them all, aud nearlng completion. comple-tion. Other members of the new Triangle Tri-angle are the Post Office department building, which Is headquarters for the activities of a personnel that has expanded from 32,320 to 237,-G00 237,-G00 and the Labor department building, build-ing, enriched by the artistic fruits of the Public Works of Art subjects. At the base of the Triangle Is the colossus of them all, the new Commerce Department building. Into it went 2,000 carloads of Hoosier limestone, 150 tons of Connecticut Con-necticut granite, 1,400 tons of marble mar-ble from Missouri and Vermont, and more stone from Minnesota, Colorado Colo-rado and Georgia. The 13,000 concrete con-crete piles used to support tlie structure struc-ture would almost stretch from Chicago Chi-cago to Milwaukee. In this giant edifice are stored and compiled all of the endless records rec-ords the Department of Commerce keeps, and constantly renews, concerning con-cerning almost anything you could possibly think of travel, Invention, harbors, trade statistics and a host of other and related subjects. Also here Is the world's largest camera for reproducing maps and the records of the millions of patents that have been Issued. There are no furnaces or boilers In any of these Washington buildings, build-ings, for they are heated by a central cen-tral plant. All of them are kept cool and pleasant in the summer time by air-conditioning equipment such, ns we find In the modern metropolitan theaters. The central heating plant keeps 71 buildings, with a total of 380 acres of floor space, warm and comfortable. com-fortable. It Is the largest plant In tlie world used solely for the production pro-duction of heat. Into Its six boilers, boil-ers, each five stories high, pour 27 tons of coal an hour. Yet there Is no smoke to deface the gleaming white city that is our Capital; the dirt Is removed from It by electricity. elec-tricity. The hungry boilers on a cold day eat up nearly OK3 tons of coal. Andj one man stokes all tlie boilers. His effort Is not much more than ynu would exert In keeping tlie home! fires burning, for tlie machinery' does bis bidding. Jets of water j under great pressure swish nil thp ashes away to a grinder which re-1 duces them. About 14 loads are carried away for use In parks, cln-; dcr paths and fill-in Jobs every day.' Tiiese are only the Important few of the many new buildings which are transforming Washington int" a modern Rome find Athens com bined with many new wonders nn! beauties that are not even hintr-u. at In classic history. e!ern NW.;:.;; t'r.lcn. 1 |