by Steve Vogel
Roosevelt treated McShain warmly, the president lighting cigarette after cigarette as he gossiped about presidential politics and fretted over developments in Europe, speaking as if the builder were a trusted confidant rather than a hired contractor. Roosevelt quickly gleaned that the way to McShain’s heart was through a promise of glory. When McShain approached him with a plan for presenting him with an engraved silver trowel to lay the cornerstone at the library, Roosevelt was enthusiastic and assured McShain that for “the next two centuries, people would view this trowel with great interest and that everyone that did so, would see my name inscribed thereon,” a pleased McShain wrote afterward.
Accordingly, Roosevelt invited McShain to speak at the handover of the Roosevelt Library to the federal government on July 4, 1940. The proud builder sailed with his family up the Hudson River from New York City aboard his power boat, Poll-O-Mine, named after his daughter. With the handsome stonework of the library as a backdrop for the ceremony, McShain assured the president the building would last for many centuries and then turned over the keys. Roosevelt pronounced himself delighted with the final product.
McShain sealed Roosevelt’s affection with a final gesture a year later, at the building’s formal dedication on June 30, 1941. “After viewing the Library I was convinced that there was still something lacking in order to make a perfect layout,” McShain wrote to Roosevelt on July 8, 1941. The builder enclosed several sketches showing a little stone guardhouse, to be constructed at the gate leading to the library, “which I would like the privilege of building for you at this time.
“Of course, I am aware that you have already given the new Library to the Government and in view of this action I would be delighted to erect this new structure for the large sum of One ($1.00) Dollar,” McShain continued.
Roosevelt—who had previously bemoaned the lack of funds to build a guardhouse—immediately accepted. “You are not only a grand fellow but you are a real friend in time of need!” the president wrote back July 12. “I am thrilled by your splendid offer to build us a Guard House…” There was nothing surreptitious about the matter—Roosevelt publicly acknowledged McShain’s gift in remarks to a Hyde Park audience—but it all served to deepen the ties between the builder and the president.
As work commenced on the $18,000 guardhouse, Roosevelt boarded his special presidential train on the night of July 24 and retired to his comfortable sleeping compartment for the overnight trip to Hyde Park, where he planned to spend a long weekend. Earlier that day, at the cabinet meeting, the president had given his approval for the new War Department building in Arlington. Arriving in Hyde Park the following morning, Roosevelt at some point spoke to McShain and confided that a big project was brewing back in the capital. “During our conversation he told me that they were planning to build the largest building in the world in Washington and it was a great secret,” McShain later wrote. “He also told me that he would have no influence in making the selection of the contractor but he was hopeful our firm would be given every consideration.”
Roosevelt, apparently unaware that Washingtonians were waking up the morning of July 25 to word of the building in their newspapers, was wrong about the matter still being secret. In any event, though he said nothing about it to the president, McShain already knew all about the new building. He had already been tapped by Somervell to build it.
No greater worlds to conquer
Somervell had started selecting a contractor on July 22, the same day that Stimson approved the new War Department building. The size, complexity, and financing demands of such a huge project meant that more than one contractor would be needed. That day, Brigadier General Wilhelm “Fat” Styer, Somervell’s deputy, instructed the department’s Construction Advisory Committee to recommend contractors who could build a new headquarters at “the utmost speed.”
McShain, well plugged in to Washington, had been tipped by a friend in the government that “the largest building in the world” was in the works even before Somervell or Roosevelt said anything to him. “Naturally I was quite interested,” he wrote. McShain made inquiries around town, filed all the necessary papers with the War Department, and learned that his firm was one of twenty being considered for the job. “The rumors circulated that the building would cost approximately forty million dollars and would be required to be completed within a year,” McShain wrote. His appetite was further whetted by word that the job would be awarded on a cost-plus basis, meaning that the contractor would get a set fee over and above the final construction cost and thus be guaranteed a profit—making “the proposition much more attractive,” McShain wrote.
The Construction Advisory Committee, made up of civilians prominent in the industry, had the task of selecting builders for cost-plus contracts, which could not be put out to the low bidder because the fees were fixed. The committee had been established by Hartman, Somervell’s predecessor, as a way of making sure contractors were chosen by merit and not by influence-peddling. Somervell found this annoying. “The board was in Somervell’s way,” committee member Ferdinand J. C. Dresser, director of the American Construction Council, later told Army historians. Hartman had resolutely guarded against allowing politics to interfere with the process, but Somervell believed he had a God-given right to keep the politicians happy. “It didn’t take the boys on the Hill long to catch on that Somervell was more easy to get to than Hartman,” Dresser said. The huge amount of building contracts being signed by the War Department “was too big a thing for the politicians not to get mixed up in it,” Dresser added. “They were on our necks. Believe me, the heat was terrific.”
On July 24, the committee recommended to Somervell that the new headquarters be built by three firms: John McShain, Inc., of Philadelphia, Turner Construction Co. of New York, and the George A. Fuller Co., also of New York. McShain’s credentials for the job were unquestionable. So were those of Turner and Fuller, both titans of the construction industry. Turner had a strong presence in Washington and was considered a pioneer in building concrete structures. Fuller was in the midst of compiling a construction record in Washington that rivaled McShain’s, building the Lincoln Memorial, the Department of Justice, the National Archives, the Supreme Court, and Washington National Cathedral. When McShain’s firm was at the height of its success, the only larger contractors in the country were Fuller and Turner.
Somervell heartily endorsed the recommendation for McShain, noting his record of completing War Department projects “in a highly satisfactory manner and well within the time allowed for construction.” But Somervell immediately telephoned Under Secretary of War Patterson and pressed him to substitute Turner and Fuller with two far smaller firms. “As was explained to you in our phone conversation of July 24, it is my opinion that the following combination of firms is best qualified to handle construction of this important project,” Somervell wrote to Patterson the following day. The general listed three contractors: John McShain, Inc., of Philadelphia, Doyle & Russell of Richmond, Virginia, and Wise Contracting Company, Inc., also of Richmond.
War Department policy was that, all other criteria being equal, a contractor from the region where a project was being built would receive preference. However, Doyle & Russell and Wise were not remotely in the same league as the big New York firms. The two Virginia firms had recently built Camp Lee, a quartermaster training center near Petersburg, Virginia, but the project was nothing close to what was envisioned in Arlington. However, they offered something that Fuller and Turner could not: Both were based in Virginia, Clifton Woodrum’s home state. By happy coincidence, Virginia was also the home of Senator Carter Glass, the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which would soon be considering the proposed building in Arlington.
Patterson was usually reluctant to deviate from the recommendations of the Construction Advisory Committee, but this time he approved Somervell’s request. Committee member Dresser, for one, was under no illusions as to why the general insisted on the switch.
It was done at the behest of Woodrum, who “put together” the Virginia firms, Dresser said.
As to why Somervell chose to keep McShain over Fuller or Turner among the recommended out-of-state firms, the general, beyond his respect for McShain’s capabilities, was doubtless aware of Roosevelt’s affinity for the builder and may well have seen it as a way to keep the president happy. Indeed, Roosevelt’s reaction when Somervell informed him of McShain’s selection “was very favourable,” the general told McShain. The president “assured them he was delighted we did receive the contract and authorised them to make the award immediately,” McShain wrote.
Dick Groves saw “political reasons” behind the selection of the Virginia companies, but he approved of the choice of McShain, whom he admired as “a tough little Irishman who would do a good job.”
Whatever the reasons, the selection of McShain would prove inspired. In McShain, Somervell and Groves had a contractor who could rise to meet their quite unreasonable demands for speed and scale. The Virginia firms, in contrast, would lend little more than their names and financial support to the construction, while reaping easy profits.
Principals of the three companies unanimously agreed to name McShain general contractor. Given charge of constructing the largest office building on earth, McShain believed he had reached “the pinnacle” of his life. “I felt, at that stage, there were no greater worlds to conquer,” McShain later wrote.
Just as losing money on the Jefferson Memorial had proven a good investment for McShain, taking a bath on the Roosevelt Library paid off. McShain certainly saw it that way, according to his friend and business associate, Atlantic City attorney Thomas Munyan. “He was a smart fellow,” Munyan recalled more than sixty years later. He may have lost more than $100,000 building the library, McShain once told Munyan, but he got the Pentagon.
Map depicting the original site proposed for the War Department building near the foot of Memorial Bridge.
The resurrection of Pierre L’Enfant
The men digging up the grave at the old Digges farm in Maryland worked in silence, stopping only for a short time when a thunderstorm passed through on that April day in 1909. The grave was unmarked, except by a tall, slender red cedar tree planted eighty-four years earlier, at the same time as the body for which they searched. The men dug down about four feet before their spades reached any trace of the remains, a layer of discolored mold about three inches thick. That soil, along with two bones and a tooth, were all that remained of Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the designer of Washington.
The Paris-born architect and engineer had served as a major in the Continental Army under George Washington during the Revolutionary War. At Washington’s request, L’Enfant rode to the port of Georgetown on the Potomac River in March 1791, arriving alone on horseback on a rainy evening. Washington wanted him to survey the surrounding untamed countryside, where Congress had agreed to establish a new capital for the United States. But in typical grand fashion the Frenchman opted to do much more than a topographical survey. “Through days of almost incessant rain he crisscrossed the woods and fields between the Eastern Branch and the Potomac, glimpsing through fog and mist, pleasant landscapes, splendid views, bubbling springs and splashing creeks, and visualizing a stately city in that setting,” according to one account. The city L’Enfant laid out in the following months was magnificent, one of grand avenues, beautiful open expanses, and stirring views. The plan received a positive, though subdued, reception.
L’Enfant, however, managed to alienate all sides with his capricious ways and refusal to observe deadlines. Washington dismissed the Frenchman in February 1792. Among many other insults, L’Enfant was never paid for his services designing the capital. He lived out his last years at the farm of his friend, Thomas Digges, in Prince George’s County a few miles south of the new capital, and died a pauper in 1825, unnoticed and forgotten.
But no more. After being pulled from the grave on April 22, 1909, L’Enfant’s scant remains were placed in a casket and wrapped in an American flag. Escorted by a military honor guard, the casket was taken five days later to the Capitol Rotunda to lie in state. There, as throngs of citizens paid their respects, President William Howard Taft presided over a memorial ceremony attended by senators, diplomats, and Supreme Court justices. “He whose mortal remains—a few scattered bones—we today transfer from the obscure resting place of nearly a century to live with the nation’s great, served us in arms and civil life with rare and masterful genius,” declared Vice President James “Sunny Jim” Sherman.
It was not just L’Enfant’s body that had been resurrected. L’Enfant’s plan for Washington had been rehabilitated. The builders of the federal city had followed the general layout drawn by the French engineer, but over the course of the nineteenth century much of the grandeur envisioned in the plan was marred by a hodgepodge of buildings, depots, carriageways, and clusters of trees that filled in open spaces and destroyed vistas. Celebrations of Washington’s centennial in 1900 triggered a rediscovery of L’Enfant and his vision for a monumental city. L’Enfant’s champions were inspired by the burgeoning “City Beautiful” movement then coming into fashion in architectural and civic circles around the country, the notion that the beautification of a city could boost personal morals, cultural values, and economic growth. In this vein, the Senate created the McMillan Commission, an illustrious committee including architectural luminaries such as Daniel Burnham and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. The commission issued a momentous report in 1902 that recommended Washington be restored in accordance with L’Enfant’s vision. The commission recorded many triumphs, none bigger than persuading the Pennsylvania Railroad to move its train depot off the great National Mall, freeing it of unsightly train tracks, sheds, and smoke that had long spoiled the view. Commissioners even extended the grand sweep of the L’Enfant plan, proposing to push the monumental core farther west and south by filling in swampland, building a memorial to Abraham Lincoln along the Potomac, and connecting it with a bridge across the river to Arlington National Cemetery.
It was to Arlington that L’Enfant was taken at the conclusion of the April 28, 1909, ceremony in his honor at the Capitol Rotunda. L’Enfant’s casket was placed on a caisson and drawn by six bay horses down Pennsylvania Avenue, across the Potomac to the cemetery, and then carried to his new burial place, high on a hill looking back to Washington. “His last resting place…is a tribute to the memory of the man who above all others President Washington selected to plan the site of the Capital,” The Washington Post noted. “It is directly in front of the historic old Lee mansion and in full view of the fruits of his labors.”
Arlington Cemetery by then was the most hallowed burial ground in all the land, with a noble history that added to its mystique. The Greek Revival hillside mansion that capped the grounds had been built beginning in 1802 by George Washington Parke Custis, the first president’s adopted grandson. Custis wanted to build a great stone home on the wooded 1,100-acre estate as a memorial to Washington, but, short on cash, he settled for a brick-and-wood structure with a faux marble and sandstone finish. It looked grand, at least from a distance, and from the portico visitors gazing back toward Washington enjoyed what the Marquis de Lafayette proclaimed in 1824 to be “the finest view in the world.”
Custis’s daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis, was married under the arches of the drawing room in 1831 to a dashing young Army lieutenant named Robert E. Lee. There the couple lived for a happy thirty years and raised seven children, though Lee was absent for extended periods with Army duty. The Lees left Arlington forever in the spring of 1861, when Colonel Lee, after a long night of pacing on squeaking floorboards in his upstairs bedroom, declined command of the Federal Army and instead accepted that of the seceding state of Virginia’s forces. Union troops soon crossed the river to occupy Arlington’s high ground, creating a vast military encampment on the land and using the house as headquarters for the Army of the Potomac. In the beginning, the home was treated respect
fully, but as hopes for a quick victory faded after the First Battle of Manassas and the war turned into an awful and bloody ordeal, bitter feelings arose. The house was looted and great stands of virgin oak that covered the grounds were cut for timber and firewood. In 1864, with the Union Army in need of a new location to bury its ever-increasing numbers of dead, the federal government designated the Arlington grounds as a cemetery. At the order of Brigadier General Montgomery Meigs, commander of the Union garrison at Arlington, some of the first bodies were planted next to the mansion in a semicircle around Mary Lee’s beloved flower garden, a message of cold reproach to the Lee family. General Lee had long since accepted that Arlington was lost. “They cannot take away the remembrances of the spot, & the memories of those that to us render it sacred,” he wrote his wife on Christmas Day 1861. “That will remain to us as long as life will last, & that we can preserve.”
At first the cemetery was little more than a potter’s field, a place to bury Union soldiers whose families could not afford to ship their bodies home; their sad number reached sixteen thousand by war’s end. But the burial in subsequent years of some of the giants of the Civil War—particularly General Philip Sheridan in 1888—greatly increased Arlington’s national stature. A crowd of 25,000 attended the burial of 163 crew members killed when the USS Maine blew up in Havana harbor in 1898. But nothing could compare to Armistice Day in 1921, when the burial of an unknown soldier felled in the Great War sparked the greatest traffic jam Washington had ever known.
