28 October 2007

Big Pink Likes Ike


First Speech: Milestone Zero, Route 50, Washington, DC

I had intended to be further along in the saga of Big Pink and the grand history of the Buckingham neighborhood this morning, but football and baseball issues intruded on my schedule. I am completely confident that Ike Eisenhower would agree with my priorities, since he was a man who liked his sports, and he enjoyed a lark. In the summer of 1919, the young Lieutenant Colonel was just back from France, and he jumped at the chance to join the first Army motor convoy across the country.

It was an impressive stunt, and one that was needed by the War Department. America at that moment was not sure that it needed much of a standing army, and a demonstration of capability had to be a good thing when the Armed Services Committee met on the Hill.

The convoy consisted of eighty-one motorized Army vehicles that would cross the United States from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco, a venture covering a distance of 3,251 miles in just over two months. A speech was made at each stop, which was at least as important as the trip itself.

Ike hated that part of it, and when he finally got a chance to control when and where the speeches were made, he kept them short and business-like.

The last time I crossed the country by car, sixty-five years later, the trip from ocean to ocean took not quite four days. I was not pushing it and no one interested particularly in what I said when I periodically emerged from my car.

The convoy left the Zero Milestone in Washington, DC, and headed north and west through Arlington to cross the Potomac near the Point of Rocks, the place where the Confederate armies had passed north into Maryland on their way to Shiloh, and to Gettysburg.

Young Colonel Eisenhower joined the convoy in Frederick, Maryland, the night of the first encampment. He was along mostly for the adventure, since the expedition was a demonstration of the phenomina that career military officers know well. The war was over, there was excess capacity in the force, and there was a clear and present need to preserve resources.

Dwight knew the area well, and I consider him an Arlingtonian as much as I am. Although his wife Mamie later recalled that she unpacked the household twenty-seven times while Ike was off doing something important, they lived on post at Fort Myer, which overlooks Route 50 twice, the first time in Quarters #7, and the second time in Quarters #1, where the Chief of Staff resides.

He also played golf at the Army-Navy Country Club on Glebe Road, at least until he became President and got a complementary membership at Burning Tree, a much nicer deal at a much better facility.

The transcontinental convoy was something that echoes down through the years, deeply affecting the nation, but Big Pink and the Buckingham neighborhood in particular. Lt. Col. Eisenhower learned first-hand of the difficulties faced in traveling great distances on roads that were impassable. One of the matter-of-fact lessons he learned was that the nation needed a good and uniform system of roads, and that a high speed network of them was a matter of national security.

Whether Ike actually noticed Big Pink is a matter of conjecture. He certainly traveled Route Fifty after it was constructed in 1964, and who would not look up from the back seat of a black limo to observe a building of that peculiar color?

This is something of a complex romp through local history, which reflects the larger ponderous changes of the 20th century, and into the post-modern age. Big Pink actually may be the pivot point on which it all turns. Certainly Buckingham, and Fort Myer and Route 50 play a huge role in some of the events that changed us all.

It all happened around Big Pink. Union forces flew observation balloons from the heights overlooking Severn Corners, just up Arlington Boulevard from Big Pink, and the first heavier-than-air flight in Virginia, and the first military flight of any kind in the world, was made by Orville Wright at Fort Myer in 1908.
 
The Navy erected the Three Sisters radio towers just across from Fort Myer, and made the first trans-atlantic radio communication with Paris and Honolulu.

After the publicity surrounding the 1919 Transcontinental Convoy, the Lee Highway Association agreed to support the establishment of a National Boulevard from Washington through Fort Myer to Fairfax Court House, thence to Middleburg, Aldie, and Boyce to Winchester, where it would turn south on the Valley Pike through the Shenandoah, eventually to link up with the Sante Fe Trail and terminate in the Pacific surf.

The Association agreed to work to secure funding for a bridge on a line connecting the Lincoln Memorial with the Lee Mansion (the Custis-Lee Mansion, where General Lee and his family lived before the Civil War) in Arlington National Cemetery. Money was authorized by Congress in 1913, and $25,000 was finally appropriated in 1920 to establish the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission. The prestigious New York architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White was enlisted to create the majestic structure that carries the road west from the Zero Milestone on the Ellipse to Big Pink.

It was the beginning of something so profound as to defy easy description. Arlington in those days was served by several light rail and trolley lines; The Washington-Arlington and Falls Church railroad operated northern, southern and Fairfax lines across the county. It was an efficient system, and being electric, produced no harmful emissions.

The Washington & Old Dominion came north along the Four Mile Run. The South Arlington Line was the closest to the Buckingham area, and generally followed Washington Boulevard, and many residents of the District maintained summer cottages on the cooler highlands of the District.

The cottages in Lyon Park, just east of the Buckingham neighborhood, are remnants of the resort areas that grew up around the stations that traversed the farmland.

With the good roads movement, the development of the auto and the byways on which it was appearing in increasing numbers gained momentum. A commission in 1926 designated names for all federal highways in the forty-eight states. Highways going east to west were given even numbers, and highways going north and south were given odd numbers. Major coast-to-coast highways were assigned numbers ending with zero.

The road that cut along the base of the Cathcart Farm was called Route 50, and The National Boulevard. got a number to go with its name.

In 1931, ground was broken for the great road in Falls Church. Unrepentant Virginians campaigned successfully to have it re-named Lee Boulevard, in honor of their greatest hero. it caused endless confusion with the other major street to the north named Lee Drive. Calvary from Fort Meyer exercised on the gravel, and local residents thrilled to see them ride by.

By 1932, concrete was reaching the edge of Swidells Junior College, a school for young women with a grand central building vaguely resembling George Washington's homestead at Mount Vernon. It was re-named Arlington Hall.

In 1935, the Cathcart Subdivision was founded to take advantage of the new line of transportation, just to the north and west of Arlington Hall, and small boxy brick homes began to rise from the fields. The farms all along Route 50 began to transform into housing developments. That same year Allie Freed founded the Paramount Communities Corporation, and began to investigate available properties in Arlington for the development of a large garden apartment complex.

Four years later, construction commenced on the Buckingham neighborhood, which would provide affordable homes for the burgeoning crowds of Federal Workers in the New Deal. The type of workers was about to change radically. With construction nearly complete, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The War Department immediately made plans to invade North Africa to confuse them.

In 1942, the Spooks arrived in Buckingham. Arlington Hall was appropriated by Army Signals establishment, and hundreds of code-breakers and their families moved into the Buckingham neighborhood. By that year, the project was largely completed; the Henderson Mansion on the western end of Buckingham was appropriated by the Army as the Officers Club for personnel assigned to Arlington Hall.

Victory over Germany and Japan opened the floodgates on consumer demand for automobiles and new tract housing. Shortly thereafter, Frances Freed began plans to complete Allie's vision, and by 1953 the Army was out of Henderson Mansion and Buckingham Village I-III, the last of the major garden apartment blocks, was complete. Arlington Hall and the battalions of cryptanalysts were still hard at work. They broke some of the Soviet diplomatic codes that identified senior US government officials as spies for the Soviet Union, and identified the Rosenbergs as couriers in the theft of the atomic secrets.

The great garden apartment complex stood as a beacon of vision of the New Deal, even though there were still some issues to be addressed. The leases specified that only whites could apply for residence.

Ike assumed the Presidency in 1952. On June 29th, 1956, he signed the Interstate Highway Act, which was effectively going to kill the downtown district of every big city. The last trolly had ceased operations in 1939, and the only public transportation was now the bus.

The roads must roll, you know.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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