Characature DC Heraldry, 1902 ...

Guy Power

Total Posts: 1576

Joined 05-01-2006

Sr. Member

Total Posts: 1576

Joined 05-01-2006

Posted: 16 July 2012 20:04

I found this amusing drawing while researching some pavillions in D.C.

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/ncr/designing-capital/images/plate21.jpg
Quote:

Plate XXI. Alfred Githens’ humorous "Coat of Arms" of the Senate Park Commission, and Olmsted’s recollection of how it happened, as well as an account of some parts of the plan that, because of the rush to meet the exhibition deadline, were "unavoidably hurried to a finish." See also William T. Partridge’s comments in his "Personal Recollections" under topic F. "Final Days of Preparation," in Kurt Helfrich’s essay in this volume. Collection: Commission of Fine Arts

NOTES ON GITHENS’ CARICATURE COAT OF ARMS FOR THE SO-CALLED "SENATE PARK COMMISSION OF 1901"

My recollection of the story as McKim told it to me is as follows:

When the bunch of draughtsmen, under W.T. Partridge as head draughtsman, were working under great pressure to finish the drawings for the "Central Area" of the Plan of Washington in 1902 in the office set up for that purpose on the floor above McKim, Mead & White’s office in New York, Mr. McKim on coming in one day saw Githens surreptitiously cover up a drawing he was working at, and went and uncovered it. McKim was so amused by the caricature that he had it reproduced and sent several copies to members of the Commission and other friends.

There had been endless discussion especially by me and by McKim, about "typical elms", and of course about the "Dome" and the "Monument", and about Guerins technique in the drawings made by him. The hydra heads of the Commission are, from top to bottom, those of McKim, Saint-Gaudens, Burnham and myself; all amusingly recognizable caricatures except perhaps Burnham’s. The most amusing touches in the sketch, we all thought, lay in the symbolic representation of the pressure under which all hands were then working to get the drawings completed on time—driven to death with the pressure and the mercilessness of the Commission in "socking it to ‘em".

It was in that eleventh-hour rush to finish the drawings that some parts of the plans had to go through without the same deliberate study and unanimous unqualified approval by the Commission as a whole which was given to the major decisions. Among the parts thus unavoidably hurried to a finish were the designs for the eastern end of the Mall vista, from the Capitol to and including "Union Square"; those for the rearrangement of the Tidal Basin area; and those for some of the details of the Washington Monument Gardens: by way of distinction from the major and earlier decisions dealing with the width and character of the main Mall vista and its enclosing rows of elms; the framing of the Washington Monument by an orderly expansion of the frame of elms flanking the Mall, first devised in plan by McKim and me on a piece of quadrille paper in a train en route from Budapest to Paris in 1901; the development, on the site afterwards assigned to the Lincoln Memorial, of a great terminal monument of a form non-competitive with the Capitol Dome and the Washington Monument; the introduction west of the Monument Grounds of a long reflecting basin; the opening through of the White House axis to the southward, at a relatively low elevation, past the west side of the Washington Monument; and the development of a southern monumental focal point on the White House axis at its intersection with the line of Maryland Avenue in such a way as to leave the axial view from the White House down the river unobstructed by any bulky monument on the axis itself.

Frederick Law Olmsted

November 1935

Source: http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/ncr/designing-capital/plates.html

Note: See Perdix in Greek mythology and how he was changed into a partridge ... in this case, a the crest blazon refers to a (wishful thinkingly) dead Partridge.