Official Washington
Local lore has it that no building in Washington, D.C., can be higher than the US Capitol (or is it the Washington Monument?), but the real reason behind the federal Height of Buildings Act (1910) was the reach of fire-fighting equipment at the time the legislation was enacted. Under the Act, the maximum height of buildings in the city is limited to the width of the street plus twenty feet. The long-range effect of this law is that the city has a decidedly horizontal skyline. That in turn means that the two tallest federal structures, the aforementioned Capitol and the Monument, can be seen from many locations around the city, even from miles away.
I had been working at Georgetown University, commuting into the city from suburban Maryland, for eight years before I realized that the people who live and work in Washington have a completely different visual experience of these and the Capital City's many other historic buildings and memorials than do the tourists and other visitors. Postcard images of the these structures isolate them from their surroundings, but those who live here regularly see them surrounded by traffic, poking up above roof lines, and seen at the far end of long avenues. It reminded me of Hokusai's
Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji,
and in 2000 I began photographing these familiar strucrtures in that unfamiliar manner. In the process I revisited over the years some of the same views as the city has changed.
I started photographing "official" Washington at the opposite end of this East/West dividing line, where South Capitol St. crossed the Anacostia River over the old Frederick Douglass Bridge. Here are views I took from that bridge in 1999. They show what a visior to Our Nation's Capital would have first seen while driving into the city from the South 25 years ago:
The Monument can be seen from almost everywhere downtown. Here are some sightings of it, which lead on to views of the Jefferson, Lincoln, and other memorials:
Other views on the National Mall:
