![]() Stevens insisted that the beach be free and open to everyone, and the District government committed to that policy for the next three decades. The facility’s 18-acre expanse offered a sandy beach and separate but equal white and “colored” bath houses and staff. With the blessing of the Secretary of War, who had authority over the basin, the beach opened in 1891 ‒ swimsuits mandatory ‒ on land that would later be home to the Jefferson Memorial. They also drowned in significant numbers.Īt Stevens’ urging, the District government and Congress allocated part of the made land for a public bathing beach. Boys of all ages, regarding bathing suits as an unnecessary expense, skinny-dipped in fairly public settings. ![]() Until then, Washingtonians endured the hot summer days by leaving town, if they could afford it, or jumping into a local creek or the Potomac. Stevens, a patent lawyer and ardent swimmer, who considered the made land ideal as a bathing beach. A truck garden for growing vegetables, suggested President Grover Cleveland.Ī swimming hole, said W.X. A beautiful park adorned with monuments to the Founding Fathers, declared local patriots. Photo: Library of Congressīaseball fields, said some. The bath house is at the upper right, and behind it is the Bureau of Engraving and Printing building. Most DC residents wanted to devote it to public use. Cost-conscious officials suggested selling it to private developers to pay for the expense of dredging and reclamation. The next issue was what to do with all that made land. The surge of impounded water would carry silt down the Washington Channel and out past Hains Point at the tip of East Potomac Park. As the river neared its low-tide level, the pressure differential would force open another gate located opposite the Washington Channel. After the tide peaked and began falling, the outflow would push the doors shut, holding the water above the river’s level. When the river rose, the waters would fill the basin through inward-swinging gates under today’s Ohio Drive. The Army’s plan was to cut two openings into the Tidal Basin and fit them with gates to regulate the flow. The Potomac’s waters connect with the Atlantic Ocean via Chesapeake Bay, some 100 miles away, and rise and fall twice daily (more or less), about four feet up and down (approximately). Why tidal? Because, in a bit of inspired green engineering the basin used the power of the river’s daily tides to flush out the Washington Channel’s silt. Their plan included extending the made land northward, past 14th Street SW, creating West Potomac Park, and then looping it around to the river’s shore above 17th Street to enclose a big lagoon, the Tidal Basin. What would prevent the dredged channel from filling up with muck again? The resulting East Potomac Park is visible from any vantage point along The Wharf.īut a problem remained. Peter Hains, and largely finished it by 1890s. The corps began this process in 1882, under the direction of Col. Simply getting in and out of the harbor demanded a succession of little jigs and jags forward and backward, then out of a mud bank.Īt the request of Congress, Army engineers devised a plan to deepen and widen the channel and use the dredged mud to create made land that would separate the harbor channel from the Potomac’s broad stream. Steamboats serving Washington’s waterfront in Southwest had to negotiate the Potomac’s Washington Channel, narrow and prone to silting up. Before anyone dreamed of planting cherry trees in Southwest DC, Washingtonians saw the need for a bigger and deeper harbor for the steamboats and sloops that were supplying their city with necessities like oysters, firewood and politicians. The basin was created as an aid to river navigation. But the District’s schizoid nature, both local and national, edged much of the fun aside in favor of a different vision. ![]() Quickly evolving from an oversized puddle into DC’s public recreation center, it buzzed with activity, spring through winter, often expressing life’s lighter side. In fact, the Tidal Basin appeared generations later, created for mundane, utilitarian reasons long before the advent of the cherry trees in 1912 or the Jefferson Memorial in 1943. Someone must have imagined it, maybe Pierre L’Enfant himself when he drew up the plan of Washington City, back in the 1790s. It’s easy to imagine that such an inspiring tableau could not have been an accident. ![]() Nothing says Washington like a photo of Jefferson’s neoclassical memorial sitting majestically on the basin’s low shore, framed by a wreath of cherry blossoms. With spring’s warmth come the tourist crowds to admire the Tidal Basin’s iconic monuments and cherry blossoms. These gates let Potomac River water into the Tidal Basin.
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