[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 78 (Tuesday, June 20, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5451-S5452]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


              IN SUPPORT OF UNDERGROUND PARKING FACILITIES

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, today on the East Front of the Capitol 
ground is being broken for the new Capitol Visitor Center, a project 
that will take at least five years and hundreds of millions of dollars 
to complete. Nearly a century ago, in March 1901, the Senate Committee 
on the District of Columbia embarked on another project. The Committee 
was directed by Senate Resolution 139 to ``report to the Senate plans 
for the development and improvement of the entire park system of the 
District of Columbia * * *. (F)or the purpose of preparing such plans 
the committee * * * may secure the services of such experts as may be 
necessary for a proper consideration of the subject.''
  And secure ``such experts'' the committee did. The Committee formed 
what came to be known as the McMillan Commission, named for committee 
chairman, Senator James McMillan of Michigan. The Commission's 
membership was a ``who's who'' of late 19th and early 20th-century 
architecture, landscape design, and art: Daniel Burnham, Frederick Law 
Olmsted, Jr., Charles F. McKim, and Augustus St. Gaudens. The 
commission traveled that summer to Rome, Venice, Vienna, Budapest, 
Paris, and London, studying the landscapes, architecture, and public 
spaces of the grandest cities in the world. The McMillan Commission 
returned and, building on the plan of French Engineer Pierre Charles 
L'Enfant, fashioned the city of Washington as we now know it.
  We are particularly indebted today for the commission's preservation 
of the Mall. When the members left for Europe, the Congress had just 
given the Pennsylvania Railroad a 400-foot wide swath of the Mall for a 
new station and trackage. It is hard to imagine our city without the 
uninterrupted stretch of greenery from the Capitol to the Washington 
Monument, but such would have been the result. Fortunately, when in 
London, Daniel Burnham was able to convince Pennsylvania Railroad 
president Cassatt that a site on Massachusetts Avenue would provide a 
much grander entrance to the city. President Cassatt assented and 
Daniel Burnham gave us Union Station.
  But the focus of the Commission's work was the District's park 
system. The Commission noted in its report:

       Aside from the pleasure and the positive benefits to health 
     that the people derive from public parks, in a capital city 
     like Washington there is a distinct use of public spaces as 
     the indispensable means of giving

[[Page S5452]]

     dignity to Government buildings and of making suitable 
     connections between the great departments . . . (V)istas and 
     axes; sites for monuments and museums; parks and pleasure 
     gardens; fountains and canals; in a word all that goes to 
     make a city a magnificent and consistent work of art were 
     regarded as essential in the plans made by L'Enfant under the 
     direction of the first President and his Secretary of State.
       Washington and Jefferson might be disappointed at the 
     affliction now imposed on much of the Capitol Grounds by the 
     automobile.

  At the foot of Pennsylvania Avenue is a scar of angle-parked cars, in 
parking spaces made available temporarily during construction of the 
Thurgood Marshall Federal Judiciary Building. Once completed, spaces in 
the building's garage would be made available to Senate employees and 
Pennsylvania Avenue would be restored. Not so. Despite the ready and 
convenient availability of the city's Metrorail system, an 
extraordinary number of Capitol Hill employees drive to work. The 
demand for spaces has simply risen to meet the available supply, and 
the unit block of the Nation's main street remains a disaster.
  During the 103rd Congress and thereafter I proposed the ``Arc of 
Park,'' legislation that would almost completely eliminate surface 
parking. Under my proposal the Architect of the Capitol would be 
instructed to eliminate the unsightly lots, and reconstruct them as 
public parks, landscaped in the fashion of the Capitol Grounds. A key 
element of my proposal was that--to the extent we continue to offer 
it--parking must be put underground. I rise today to emphasize the need 
for us to remain focused--as we break ground for the Visitor's Center--
on a project currently being designed: an underground parking 
structure.
  One year ago the Architect of the Capitol received approval from 
Chairman McConnell of the Rules Committee to proceed with preliminary 
design for an underground garage to be located on Square 724, which is 
just North of the Dirksen and Hart buildings. Upon completion it will 
replace the existing lot of surpassing ugliness. By getting cars off 
the streets and underground it will bring us nearer to the pedestrian 
walkways and parks McMillan--and before him L'Enfant--envisioned.
  The final garage will include three levels with capacity for 1210 
parking spaces. The 1981 report on the Master Plan identified Square 
724 as the site for a future Senate office building. Thus the garage 
will be designed and constructed to accommodate an eight story office 
building on top of it, should the need for such building ever arise. 
The current plan, however, would be to top the garage with a simply 
landscaped plaza. Upon approving advancement with the design of the new 
structure, Chairman McConnell stated that, ``Square 724 appears to 
offer the most cost-effective opportunity for phased growth of Senate 
garage parking within the Capitol Complex.'' I understand that this 
time next year, after I have left this Body, the Architect of the 
Capitol will ask Congress to appropriate the funds needed to actually 
build Phase I of the garage, which will accommodate 500 cars. And then 
funding will be crucial--with the Russell garage in dire need of 
renovation and the Capitol Visitor Center expected to displace some 
parking. I urge you to support the Architect in his request.
  Today, as we break ground on a new project, one that will nearly 
double the size of the Capitol, let us not forget the grand vision of 
the McMillan Commission from a century ago. Washington is the capital 
of the most powerful nation on earth, and deserves to look it.

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