The Old Post Office, center, blocked a planned circular court centered on 12th St.
Senator James McMillan formed the Senate Park Commission to redesign the city’s monumental center and parks. Eminent American architects appointed to the commission included Daniel Burnham, the creative force behind Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Nicknamed the White City for its gleaming white Beaux-Arts style buildings, the exposition awed its 27 million visitors and inspired the City Beautiful movement in the United States. One of many late 19th-century civic reform movements, City Beautiful advocated order, beauty, and monumental grandeur in urban planning to improve the functioning and quality of cities. The Senate Park Commission’s plan revived and expanded elements of L’Enfant’s original 1791 vision for Washington. Known as the McMillan Plan for the senator who organized the commission, it proposed that the area bounded by 15th and Sixth Streets, B Street (now Constitution Avenue), and Pennsylvania Avenue be set aside for offices for the expanding federal government. Design competitions produced plans for new structures, but only one was realized before World War I: the 1908 District Building (now the John A. Wilson Building). It was not until 1926 that Congress authorized a massive building program based on the McMillan Plan. President Calvin Coolidge assigned Treasury
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