This latest entry in our occasional series, Double Take, where we look more closely at images from our collections and the stories they tell, was prompted by this dramatic action shot in which a smokestack is midway through collapse. You can see the bricks beginning to separate as gravity takes over. The plume coming out of the top is likely the dust and soot being expelled by the small explosion at the base used to topple it.
Few buildings are visible to give context, so I turned to the original caption, which reads in full:
Don’t want smokestacks, Wash. D.C. These two 150-foot tall brick smokestacks on the mall in Washington, D.C. were considered an eye sore and ordered demolished. This picture shows one toppling. The other fell shortly thereafter. They first were erected when a central heating plant occupied the site.
Now I’m extra intrigued, and these monoliths look more familiar! They stood tall in the middle of the Mall for decades before their demolition.
Today’s Mall is a long open greenway lined with stately museums, stretching from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, and then beyond all the way to the Lincoln Memorial. But the Mall has changed in ways large and small throughout its history, which started with the original 1791 plan for the capital city by Pierre L’Enfant. The 1902 McMillan Plan, created by the Senate Park Commission, sought to restore L’Enfant’s original vision for the city. Part of this plan was to open up the National Mall and reinforce its east-west axis by essentially decluttering it of buildings, trees, and other structures that had filled it over the course of the 19th century.
The smokestacks were part of a central heating plant constructed right in the center of the Mall, near 7th Street. It was part of a complex of temporary buildings that filled an urgent need for U.S. government office space to support the war effort during World War I. However, these “temporary” buildings lingered long past the war’s conclusion. The McMillan Plan was put on pause.
The photo below, looking east to the U.S. Capitol from the top of the Washington Monument, provides a view of the Mall not long after the temporary buildings’ construction. Take a minute to look at the photo and try to identify some of the differences with what you know of today’s Mall.
The smokestacks in question are dead center, and the three sets of long, low buildings to the left and right are the aforementioned temporary buildings. In the midground, we can see two examples of buildings that remain in place today: the Smithsonian Institution (The Castle) on the right and the National Museum of Natural History on the left, which was the U.S. National Museum at the time. There are many differences as well. In the immediate foreground, we see the formal gardens and rectangular brick building that housed the Department of Agriculture. Even in this wintry view, the winding paths and trees that fill the mall all the way to the Capitol building offer a sharp contrast to today’s tidy greenspace, which is lined with trees and straight pathways. And of course, many of the familiar museums that now welcome visitors from around the world were not yet built.
Below we have the same view from a few decades later, in 1945. The mall is looking more familiar. The National Gallery of Art has appeared on the left side, closer to the Capitol. Both the old Department of Agriculture and the smokestacks with their corresponding plant are demolished. If you look closely, you can see multiple telltale low structures built for temporary government use, some remaining from World War I and new ones added during World War II. It would take until 1971 for the last of these not-so-temporary buildings to be removed. The final removal made way for the National Air & Space Museum.
The Smithsonian Institution (The Castle) is the only building that was allowed to “break” into the formal plans for the Mall, sitting as it does in the path of Jefferson Drive SW. In this case, the road yields and curves around the building, leaving the landmark structure in place. You can see the red brick of the Castle more easily in this 2010 color photo:
Learn More:
- View over 1,000 digitized stereographs of Washington, D.C. through the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog.
- Revisit previous entries in the Double Take series, where we take a closer look at images in our collections.
- Explore photos of the construction of additional temporary buildings in Washington, D.C. during World War II.