Reading for comprehension

Read the text and pay attention to the following words and word combinations: to authorize the selection of a site trouble was brewing oblivious to all private considerations to comply with the request to reprimand sb to condone to demolish the belated honor to affect the destinies of the land Try to guess their meaning without using a dictionary.

In Washington, more than anywhere else, the Visitor is amidst history. The city was created for a definite person – to provide a permanent seat of national government.

During the revolutionary period several cities were the seat of the Continental Congress at different times. The need for a permanent seat of national government becoming imperative, the Congress considered propositions from various sections, but so many were made, and such rivalry was shown, that prudent Congressmen began to see in the "Federal Town" question a major source of conflicts between North and South.

After years of bitter conflict, the Residence Bill, 1790, authorized the selection of a site somewhere in the Potomac region, and the establishment therein of the permanent seat of government.

By the beginning of the 18^th century most of the lands on the Potomac had been taken up and peopled by some of the most aristocratic families of the South. Tobacco had brought vast wealth to the planters of Virginia and Maryland, and the abundance of slaves had given them ample time for leisure: card parties, hunting meets, horse races, shooting matches, athletic sports. General Washington recollects that his family did not once sit down to dinner alone for 20 years.

But these landowners by no means comprised the whole of humanity in Colonial Virginia and Maryland. There were many small planters who worked the less fertile lands themselves. They could not, like the rich planters, deliver their crops to English agents. The large landowners, therefore, became traders, buying the tobacco of their poorer neighbours and opening stores in which the small farmers bought necessary merchandise. There was also a rather considerable artisan, mechanical and labor class, mostly persons sent over from England who had to serve Colonial employers for 3-5 years, as recompense for the cost of their passage. But no path of escape in any direction stood open to the holders of Negro slaves, who constituted by far the largest population group in the region, and upon whose labour the plantators' property was chiefly built.

This was the region in which President Washington decided to set the national capital. Congress had no money to invest in such a project. In 1790, the President met local landowners and persuaded them to sell any land the Nation might need as sites for public buildings and to permit the remainder of the proposed city to be divided into lots and sold.

It was about that time that a new and important figure appeared upon the scene. Pierre Charles L'Enfant of French birth and military training had followed Lafayette to America and won repute as an engineer in the Revolution. Civil work in the post-war years brought him closer to General Washington, who thought well of him. He wrote to President Washington begging for a "share in the undertaking". His offer of assistance in creating the capital was accepted. The Frenchman saw deeply and clearly into the future. In planning a city of American Government he planned also a great community which he knew would develop here since the government was here. The original design is still visible in the plan which he inscribed upon the woods and marshes of the region.

All seemed well. But as the Frenchman proceeded with his planning, the landowners began to open their eyes in amazement. Streets 100-110 feet wide, avenues 160 feet wide, one grand avenue 400 feet wide and a mile long. This crazy Frenchman was throwing away land that should come into the market as city lots. Trouble was brewing, but the agent let L'Enfant go. This the latter did, oblivious to all private consideration. The commissioners appointed by the President asked for a copy of his plan, to be used in connection with a public sale of the city lots. L'Enfant indignantly refused to comply with the request. He would do nothing to aid "speculators to purchase the best locations in his vistas and squares and raise huddles of shanties which would disfigure" his creation.

The Commissioners blamed L'Enfant but the President did not reprimand him.

Soon, however, an accident occurred which Washington felt he could not condone. Daniel Carrol, the largest landowner of the Federal region, had begun to build a new manor house. Unfortunately, it obstructed one of L'Enfant's vistas, and the indignant planner ordered the Squire to demolish it. He would not, so L'Enfant did. The Commissioners complained to the President. The planner was dismissed, and surveyor Andrew Ellicot was asked to complete his work. For his services in planning the city L'Enfant was offered 2500 dollars and a lot near the White House, both of which he refused. He died, impoverished and broken-spirited, in 1825. 84 years later his body was removed from an obscure grave and given the belated honor of military burial in Arlington Cemetery.

Little progress was made during the course of years that followed L'Enfant dismissal. Throughout at least the first half-century of its existence, Washington was but little more than a southern village with scarce houses, most of them miserable huts and muddy streets.

To Charles Dickens, Washington in 1842 consisted of "spacious avenues that begin in nothing and lead nowhere; streets a mile long that only want houses, roads, and inhabitants' public buildings that need but a public to be complete … One might fancy that the season over, and most of the houses gone out of town for ever with their masters."

Only by the middle of the 20^th century it had become an important world capital.

In 1793 the cornerstone of the Capitol was laid by the President amid great pomp. Music sounded and artillery fired salutes as George Washington, wearing an apron embroidered by Mme Lafayette, declared the stone "well and truly laid."

In 1800 the building was partly complete, and Congress, removing from Philadelphia, met here, for the first time in the new capital. Here with but one brief interruption since 1800, has been the seat of the Congress of the United States. Here the manifold political forces affecting the destinies of the land met in dramatic conflicts.

The Capitol Building dominates all Washington. It stands on the crest of a hill rising above the Potomac River. The site was chosen by L'Enfant when he sought to lay out the capital. The great central dome appears too heavy for the low façade. Atop the lantern surmounting the dome stands the bronze statue of Freedom by Thomas Crawford. The statue is stiff and conventional. Some of the things done in the Capitol have been pretty bad in art as in politics. Too often political considerations carried weight.

Jefferson Davis, who as Secretary of War was in charge of the construction of the Capitol, compelled Crawford to alter the headgear on the statue, lest there be raised above the Capitol a Phrygian or liberty cap, the symbol of liberated slaves. Crawford substituted a crested helmet.

She watches, calm and unruffled, over all the things that are done in her name in the building below. Inside the capitol, among the most precious relics of the past, the original of the Declaration of Independence may be seen. The names of those who had signed it are hardly visible except John Hancock's bold signature, written so that the King of England might read it without spectacles.

The oldest public structure in the city is the white House – the dwelling place of the president and his family.

The cornerstone was laid in 1792, on the three-hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s Landing at San Salvador. It was in the same year that James Hoban, an Irish American, won a prize of 500 dollars offered for the best design of the "President's House" according to L'Enfant's designation.

During the war of 1812-14 (which is sometimes called "The Second War for Independence" because since that war England has stopped regarding America as her colony) the British burned most of the public buildings in Washington, including the White House. The walls of the President's palace were still standing, but the sandstone was so streaked with water and smoke that it seemed best to paint it white. That done, it began to be called the "white house". One hundred years later "White House" became its official name.

CHECK YOUR COMPREHENSION

Exercise 9. Answer the questions to the text:

1) For what reason was Washington created?

2) What did President Washington ask the local landowners about?

3) Who was chosen to plan the city project?

4) Why did the landowners begin to open their eyes in amazement at the sight of the city plan?

5) Which incident caused the dismissal of L'Enfant? What was the life of the engineer afterwards?

6) What happened in 1793? Describe the event. What was the building created for?

7) Describe the site chosen for the construction of the Capitol?

8) What was the destiny of the statue of Freedom?

9) What is one of the precious relics of the capitol?

10) When was the cornerstone of the White House laid? What happened to the building during the war of 1812-14?

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16