DCRA “Customers” Say Bad Service Continues Even After Decades of Promised Relief; Officials Say No

By Larry Ray*

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better.

—18th century German scientist Georg C. Lichtenberg

Four former may-ors — Marion

Barry, Anthony Williams, Adrian Fenty, Vincent Gray — all declared the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) as the most ineffective agency in the city and, more-over, the most vital to the city’s econom-ic development.

DCRA employees regulate food and beverage outlets, issue professional and occupation-al licenses, approve construction and inspect new buildings.

Barry believed that the District’s regu-latory functions were so mismanaged that he re-organized them into DCRA, but — ultimately — to no avail.

One business owner interviewed by The InTowner related this recent episode: “I arrived at DCRA at 8:30. There was a long line at 9:00 a.m. with no one being helped; there was [still] a long line at 10 a.m. with no one being helped. [With people] tired of waiting, the line was dis-sipating at 11 a.m. — with still no one being assisted.”

Another business owner declared, “Yes, DCRA has improved from being very corrupt to corrupt. [Employees there] seem to have the attitude that ‘I have it and you want it. What are you going to do for me.’”

And another blames the issues on the employees: “They don’t seem to understand or comprehend the forms and paperwork. All of the declarations of the mayors and DCRA directors are not reaching [them].”

Yet another we interviewed said, “It took us four months to get our permits approved. There seem to be no time-lines. It is like a roller coaster ride.” (He is correct; the average time in the U.S. is 51 days, not the 120 in DC.)

Finally, another business owner inter-viewed reported that “DCRA noted five problems with my application but they noted these five different times consum-ing five different mornings. There was no comprehensive approach.”

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☞ Reader Comments & Submissionsn CareFirst: Two Big to Regulate?

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17th Street High Heel Race Fun Festivities 2016

Click here to enjoy the photos, courtesy Phil Carney

image—Google Street View, Oct. 2016.

DCRA occupies this modern building at 1100 4th Street, SW.

Cont., DCRA, p. 3

Art and CulturePenn. Academy of

Fine Arts

“World War I and American Art

View of the historic building on Broad

Street.

Page 6

Phot

o—Ph

il C

arne

y.

photo—photo—Larry Ray—The InTowner.

How many delays did the owner of this prop-erty in 3500 block of 11th Street, NW.? were all of those permits necessary for a small resi-dential redevelopment project?

Legality of Redevelopment Plans for Historic McMillan Park Called into Question by Just Revealed Covenant

By William G. Schulz*

In their quest to radically redevelop the city’s historic, 25-acre McMillan Park

reservoir site, contractor Vision McMillan Partners (VMP) and DC city officials have prepared and approved plans that appear to violate covenants that are part of the city’s

own 1987 purchase agreement with the federal government for the land. That is the only plausible conclusion from a read of the purchase agreement— signed by federal and District of Columbia government offi-cials at the time of the sale.

The InTowner was not able, by deadline, to reach city officials or VMP for a response to the recently surfaced documents, but wel-comes and will continue to seek their responses to the facts now surfacing nearly 30 years later.

And the facts are these:Four binding covenants —

explained in detail under the headings “nondiscrimination,” “excess profits,” “FAA clause,” and “historic resources” — were attached to the $9,300,000 sale of the park by the federal government’s General Services Administration to the District of Columbia. The covenants,

photo—William G. Schulz—The InTowner.

Signs like the one shown here have been placed all around the park by VMP, and apparenttly with no objection by DC officials notwithstanding that this is not private property but in fact is DC-owned public land. Cont., McMILLAN PARK, p. 5

Christmas Decorating Spurred on by Dupont and Adams Morgan Betterment Organizations

By P.L. Wolff

Once again this past holiday season, Historic Dupont

Circle Main Streets encour-aged all retailers to install sea-sonal window or out-front dis-plays not only to help “brand” Dupont as a shopping and din-ing destination but also to bring cheer to the area’s commercial strips. And with the organized competition as an inducement for participation, there was much to admire — and three winners: in the restaurant cat-egory, Floriana’s; in the retail category, Dupont Optical; and in the services category, SpaLogic.

CLICK HERE to continue

photo—courtesy Historic Dupont Circle Main Streets

Floriana’s spectacular patio tree was a standout at 17th & Q Streets, NW.

Page 2 • The InTowner • January 2017

NEXT ISSUE—FEBRUARY 11Submisions Deadline: Friday, February 4

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From the Publisher’s Desk...By P.L. Wolff

Is DC Prepared for Federal Funding Cutbacks?

Back on December 2nd we came across a story in the New York Times with the very disturbing headline, “Fearing Loss of U.S. Money Under Trump, New York Begins

Urgent Review.”Disturbing on a number of fronts, first because of its mention about Trump and sanctuary

cities (ours is one of quite a few): “Mr. Trump has said he will cut financing to so-called sanctuary cities that move to protect undocumented immigrants or refuse to cooperate with federal deportation efforts.”

Secondly, when we read the next paragraph — “In response, Mayor Bill de Blasio . . . and the mayors of many other cities have adopted a defiant stance, saying they will not comply with demands to help identify or round up immigrants in this country illegally” — we real-ized that we had not yet then, nor even up to now, heard anything from our mayor about this gauntlet thrown down by Trump.

Are we simply to remain passive and let the feds send in their enforcers? Now, we do rec-ognize the delicate position the District probably is in; after all, given that the Congress gave us Home Rule, it can just as easily take it away — especially this Republican-dominated one which has large numbers of members who despise us citizens anyway. (Unfortunately, we don’t see much hope for rapprochement, especially since the feeling is for the most part seemingly mutual.)

Nevertheless, we thought it important to at least get some assurances that steps might even then, as in New York, were being taken to prepare for retribution in the form of a funds cut off or severe curtailment. On December 6th we did try to find out through the Council’s Committee on Finance and Revenue if the offices of the Mayor and of the Chief Financial Officer were on the case, as it were. Unfortunately we had no response then or even when we most recently renewed our request.

If no advance contingency planning has yet to be undertaken, we urge that relevant officials get cracking asap!

We also would like to know if DC finance officials have by now considered what steps they will take to mitigate the not improbable loss of revenue that supports expanded Medicaid in DC if Trump has his way and the Republican Congress gleefully proceeds with its pledge to “improve” (meaning gut) the program by repealing the Affordable Care Act — already underway as we type in these words.

How will the City Council ensure substitute funding is another question we have posed to the Council’s finance and revenue committee chairman, Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans. He has assured us he will respond and we will share his response with our readers.

As we were wrapping up our commentary we couldn’t stop thinking about the probability of how badly DC is likely to be treated by the Trump Administration and its fellow travel-ers, the Republicans in Congress, when we received word that the DC National Guard’s long-serving and by all accounts very able commander who served both through the Bush and Obama years, has been informed that as of 12:01 p.m. on Inauguration Day, he is fired!

Apparently, neither Trump nor his transition people seem to understand that Maj. Gen. Errol R. Schwartz will be dead center in command of a major military component of the security apparatus for the Inauguration — in addition to the thousands of his own troops on the streets, until 12 noon he will be commanding another 5,000 troops detailed from other National Guard units elsewhere in the U.S., plus being responsible for coordinating air support protecting the District. But, heck, guess the Trump people who are supposed to be involved with the security planning haven’t a clue about the stupidity of interfering in an on-going military deployment.

Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, whose ward includes the Capitol, reacted much as we have (though more diplomatically): “I struggle to understand the benefit of remov-ing a commanding officer while his troops are deployed throughout the District protecting the hundreds of thousands of residents and visitors. This serves only as a distraction to the men and women of the D.C. National Guard as they ramp up their preparations for the Inauguration.”

Copyright © 2017 InTowner Publishing Corp. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited, except as provided by 17 U.S.C. §107 & 108 (“fair use”).

DC Historic Designs, LLC provides a wide range of historic preservation and architectural services for owners and caretakers of historic properties.

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Page 3 • The InTowner • January 2017

So, based on what we heard from these independent neighborhood business own-ers, the question seems to be, what should the District’s elected representatives do with DCRA?

1983 might be a good place to start. Former Mayor Marion Barry declared that DC’s economic regulatory agencies were chaotic and ineffective. That assessment is what brought about Barry creating DCRA — a one-stop place to take care of busi-ness. Regrettably, the chaos and ineptitude continued.

DCRA was only one reason for Congress to appoint the DC Financial Control Board in 1995 to rescue the city from the brink of bankruptcy. The Board discovered that DCRA had created an unquantifiable amount of taxpayer ill will as a result of the department’s reputation for incompetence and indifference.

Control Board Chairman Andrew F. Brimmer demanded that DCRA provide “more courteous “services. Did Brimmer capture the real issue; what about services generally?

At that time, business owners were wan-dering about the 11-story 614 H Street, NW headquarters building looking for DCRA employees and any service. Then acting DCRA David Watts supported Brimmer by telling 150 DCRA employees that “bad service will not be tolerated.”

Did Watts capture the problem; what about service? What about corruption; what about the requests for “lunch” DCRA inspectors were known to ask of business per-sons? What about the half-dozen employees checking over a permit to build a fence; did it really require so many for a fence?

Washington Post reporter Hamil Harris’ August 27, 1997 story wrote of the dark mood among employees following control having been stripped from the mayor by the Congress with this quote from a 25-year city inspector: “There is an attitude of terror here. . . . Everybody in my office is afraid of losing their job.”

DCRA’s Interim Director Lloyd J. Jordan summed it up accurately in his July 29/1998 testimony to the DC Council Committee of the Whole:

“The success of DCRA affects the District

more than any other department in the District of Columbia government. Delays and inefficiency at DCRA cause businesses and residents to conclude that the District is not the place to do business, live, work and raise families. In turn, this perception can contribute to the overall downturn in residential and commercial populations.”

Further, he stated that some people decide to disobey the regulations rather than be caught in the DCRA runaround. He wanted the department to develop stra-tegic directions and performance measures for employees.

Unfortunately, only succeeded in leaving a legacy of moving DCRA to 941 North Capitol Street, NE in 1999 and authoriz-ing the purchase of three Mercury Grand Marquis luxury sedans at DC taxpayers’ expense.

Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly, an Outsider

In 1991, voters elected Kelly as the reform mayor, the one who would “clean house.” But, alas, her grassroots approach met resis-tance from the entrenched Barry loyal-ists. DCRA’s Aubrey Edwards resigned for unknown reasons, though it was speculated that she was frustrated with agency employ-ees thwarting her on reforms. (Kelly badly lost her bid for re-election four years later.)

Has anything change some two decades later?

A No Nonsense Mayor, Anthony A. Williams

Williams sought to revolutionize DC government, including DCRA. His man-agement seemed to be what the city’s then 30,000 employees needed (down from 40,000 in 1994.) In his administration, they set deadlines to be adhered to, such as reviewing plans for non-complex buildings within 30 days. DCRA’s director was proud of the department’s progress, although busi-ness people and others interacting with the employees did not discern much improve-ment. The “one-stop shopping” idea was a great one, but the delays continued.

The Get Things Done Mayor, Adrian M. Fenty

Along comes Mayor Fenty who declared that “everything is wrong” at DCRA and placed DCRA’s reform and rebuilding as one of his top priorities. On June 16, 2007, he celebrated a “grand opening” of the rede-signed Permit Center where he declared, “I believe we are making significant strides to improving DCRA’s operations.” His pledge sounded familiar, though this time persons interacting with the department did say that now they could find employees and could actually leave messages for them.

Long-time City Official, Mayor Vincent C. Gray

Mayor Gray also declared DCRA needed drastic changes and established a task force which included former DCRA Director Nicholas Majett. “I believe that the District can be the most business-friendly city in the country, and I created this task force to make that vision a reality,” said Mayor Gray. “I can promise you that this report will not just sit on a shelf; we’ve already begun to imple-ment its recommendations. This report will help us create jobs and grow and diversify the District economy.”

One of the report’s most significant rec-ommendations was for the creation of a single-access Web portal, where businesses and individuals could access all govern-ment permitting, licensing and other ser-vices from one place — and do so remotely. Mayor Gray’s proposed fiscal year 2015 budget would allocate $5 million for the development of the site, to be called the One City Business Portal.

Now it’s Mayor Muriel Bowser’s DCRA Opportunity

Most in and around city government believe that DCRA is “impervious to change.” In August, Bowser went deep into the DCRA weeds and spent a week trying to understand this $44 million, 350 employee agency. She wants to turn it around with a special emphasis on vacant and blighted properties. The backdrop for this is the FBI having negotiated two plea deals with a permit expediter and permit clerk who admitted to giving and receiving of bribes in exchange for construction permits.

It is challenging to get an accurate read-ing on DCRA. GlassDoor’s survey by DCRA employees rates it with a mediocre two stars out of five. recently, the City Administrator’s Office of Performance Management rated DCRA’s fully achieved measures at 33 percent, and with a report card rating of A-minus.

(Even though this initiative, as described in the City Administrator’s website as being “charged with monitoring agency perfor-mance and facilitating the effective and effi-cient implementation of the Mayor’s poli-cies by providing leadership, support and oversight of District government agencies . . . [and] with the goal of improving . . . perfor-mance and . . . transparency and account-ability, there are those who have expressed doubts about the scoring given that the pro-gram is administered by the Mayor’s office and that most agencies are rated in the A to

B range. Surely, the business people inter-viewed for this report would be surprised by DCRA’s A-minus rating.)

Some good news: In August of 2016, DC opened its $4 million Business Center, the promised one-stop portal through which the 56,000 active city-licensed businesses can accomplish much entirely online, includ-ing obtaining documents and making pay-ments electronically.

Joaquin McPeek, Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, has stated that “[w]e recognize the chal-lenges some residents and businesses have historically experienced when interacting with DCRA. It’s why the Mayor spent a week at the agency with the leadership and staff identifying ways to make policies and processes more streamlined, efficient and consumer-friendly. We look forward to announcing new programs in 2017 aimed at improving DCRA and raising its level of customer service to all DC residents.”

McPeek has been on staff with Bowser since January, 2015. His role includes inter-nal and external communications.

Continuing, according to McPeek, “[d]uring the past two years of the Bowser Administration, DCRA has done consider-able work to improve service to business and residents. The agency launched our new business portal, which allows users to skip the trip to the agency and obtain busi-ness licenses online. In just FY-’15 alone, DCRA’s Small Business Resource Center conducted nearly 700 one-on-one counsel-ing sessions with local entrepreneurs and offered more than 70 workshops or sympo-siums — all at no cost to participants.”

Further, McPeek tells of how in early 2016 DCRA began performing construction inspections on weekends to help deter scoff-laws from doing illegal, after-hours work. Moreover, he says, DCRA is meeting its goal to perform first reviews of permit appli-cations within its 30-day time window more than 90 percent of time, which is as good or better than many surrounding jurisdictions.

Referring to that week when the Mayor was at DCRA “getting into the weeds,” in responsie to The InTowner asking if any progress resulted from that week’s visit, McPeek stated:

“Yes. On the heels of the Mayor’s visit, DCRA launched the new business portal, which offers local entrepreneurs increased flexibility in obtaining licensure. Mayor Bowser then joined DCRA at our Entrée DC event, where the agency provided a free half-symposium aimed at assisting entrepre-neurs in the food-service industry. DCRA will also be announcing a number of new service enhancements in the new year.”

And in response to the question of how the business portal initiative is working out, McPeek said, “We’re seeing tremendous

Celebrating 35 years

DCRAFrom p. 1

Cont., DCRA, p. 4

screen shot image—dcra.dc.gov.

DCRA website’s home page.

screen shot image—dcra.dc.gov.

DCRA website’s Business Center portal page.

Page 4 • The InTowner • January 2017

progress. The new business portal is sav-ing entrepreneurs trips to DC government offices. In October 2016, walk-in customers seeking a business license dropped 19 per-cent from October 2015.”

Further, McPeek asserted, “Administration understands the frustration from business

owners and has taken steps to improve the way we do business. Long-term we are working to ensure we are more customer service driven and look forward to making continued progress in that direction. The agency continues to make progress toward offering improved service to residents and businesses.”

At-Large Councilmember Elissa Silverman who, as a member of the

Committee of the Whole which now has DCRA oversight jurisdiction, has stated her impressions as follows:

“DCRA is an agency that touches nearly every District resident at some point, in some way. When there’s an agency of that size and scope, addressing procedural prob-lems and improving workplace culture can be challenging — and it doesn’t happen overnight.

“Ideally, DCRA would be the perfect balance between government efficiency and enforcement. District residents should expect a professional and consumer-friendly approach in all aspects of service, while knowing that violations of District law will be fully enforced. In working over the last two years with Director [Melinda M.] Bolling, I believe she echoes this perspec-tive and is working toward making this a reality.”

[Editor’s Note: The World Bank pub-lishes an annual survey that scores and ranks countries according to the ease of doing business. Is it a surprise to have learned that the U.S. ranks number eight after Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway and New Zealand.]

*Larry Ray, a resident of Columbia Heights, is Senior Adjunct Professor at The George Washington University School of Law. He has served as a former multi-term Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in both Dupont Circle and later in Columbia Heights and has also served as President of the North Columbia Heights Civic Association.

Copyright © 2017 InTowner Publishing Corp. & Larry Ray. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited, except as provided by 17 U.S.C. §§107 & 108 (“fair use”).

See pdf archive on home page for 14 years of past issues

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DCRAFrom p. 3

Reader CommentsLetters must be mailed, faxed, or delivered to our office or sent via e-mail to: letters@intowner.com. All correspondents MUST supply a home address AND both day and evening telephone numbers for verification purposes. Persons employed by or volunteering with entities that are the subject of their letters MUST reveal their positions with same so as to avoid misleading the readers as to their special interest. In appropriate instances, if so requested, letters may be printed on a “name withheld by request” basis. We reserve the right to edit for propriety, clarity, and to fit the available space. Identifiers below writers’ names are inserted at the editor’s discretion. Special Note: Only envelopes from government agencies, recognized civic groups and other organizations, or mail from individuals in envelopes bearing verifiable return addresses that include sender’s full name will be opened; any other postal or hand-delivered mail will be either returned to sender or destroyed.

Readers Comment on Our McMillan Park Editorial

This well-crafted piece [From the Publisher’s Desk] underscores the power and need for the Fourth Estate -- more today than ever before in my lifetime. The current Mayor’s administration has ampli-fied and elevated the imbedded pay-to-play nature of the District. Without the press, the power of the [McMillan Park development] story would not be widely known. Most of the close to 8,000 signatures opposing the destruction of the caverns and dense devel-opment of the park were affixed following one-on-one informative conversations. To stop the insidious actions of the Mayor’s office, and to wake up a disinterested District Council, we need to inform the people that we are not being told the truth about the development; that our tax dollars are being used to fight the people and mis-inform the people; that the very process is rife with conflict of interest and developer gain; and, that the project plan and construction is not imbued with sustainable values.

Carole Lewis AndersonGeorgetown

[Editor’s Note: the writer is an active member of the grassroots Friends of McMillan Park organization.]

✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵

This is a remarkably comprehensive story covering the extreme irony of the Mayor’s groundbreaking ceremony for McMillan, not 24 hours before the DC Court of Appeals rendered its stern decision that there are severe flaws with how the District

approached its zoning and preservation decisions.

But the editorial also provides a bit of the political context, noting that for years the city has been saying this is a “done deal” and asked that the good people of Washington please get out of the way. The DC Court of Appeals is the first institution outside the Wilson Building to take a look at this project and its response was perhaps a shock the the Mayor. But it shouldn’t have been, given the surveys and petitions and testimony concerning this project for years.

We in the Friends of McMillan Park have for years been seeking — and still seek — an open design competition (in the form of a Request for Proposals) to compare plans for revitalization of our park consistent with the Comprehensive Plan recommen-dations, the historic designation of the site, and thoughtful community opinion.

While we may be no closer to achieving that goal, the current plan before the city, that would preclude all that, is stopped for the moment.

Thank you for bringing this issue and a helpful context before your readership!

Kirby ViningTreasurer,

Friends of McMillan Park Bloomingdale

✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵ ✵

[Editor’s Note: Along with the reader comments above, the following mes-sage was received from a Huffington Post reporter: “Just wanted to let you know that I quoted from the excellent Intowner edito-rial on McMillan Park. Here’s the piece.]

Page 5 • The InTowner • January 2017

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the documents make clear, convey to any future purchasers or developers of the land — such as VMP.

The historic resources covenant is key: “Any and all rehabilitation and renova-tion work at the parcel will be under-taken in accordance with ‘The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation and Guidelines for Rehabilitating Historic Building’ (Standards),” the covenant reads.

McMillan Park Reservoir’s historic char-acter and importance are without question. The site is listed on the  National Register of Historic Places as well as the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sites.

In addition, The  National Capital Planning Commission  has designated the McMillan Park Sand Filtration Site as one for a National Monument or Museum, and the site has also been listed four times on the  DC Preservation League’s list of most endangered historic places.

The Department of the Interior’s stan-dards and guidelines have four main com-ponents: preservation,  rehabilitation,  resto-ration, and reconstruction.

While the standards are not meant to prohibit development, and are not regula-tions per se, the clear intent is that they are to be recognized and followed. The historic resources covenant attached to McMillan Park Reservoir and Sand Filtration Unit says they must be followed.

For a site such as McMillan Park, the Interior Department recommends the fol-lowing:

“Inventorying the building site to deter-mine the existence of aboveground remains and subsurface archeological materials, then using this evidence as corroborating documentation for the reconstruction of related site features. These may include walks, paths, roads, and parking; trees, shrubs, fields or herbaceous plant material; terracing, berms, or grading; lights, fences, or benches; sculpture, statuary, or monu-ments; fountains, streams, pools, or lakes.”

VMP’s elaborate redevelopment plan, in the partnership’s own words, “will create a large public park, community center with water recreation features, neighborhood-serving retail, housing for all income levels, and state-of-the-art healthcare facilities.”

The plans, as The InTowner has previ-ously reported, would preserve less than half of McMillan Park’s historic berm and walkway, and create cutouts for new public entrances that never existed before. The housing, retail, and healthcare facilities all would obviously and substantially change, if not nearly obliterate, the site’s historic

character and appearance.The smallest details in the VMP plan

are off. A fountain that was once part of the original park and that could be reconstruct-ed in accord with the Interior’s guidelines, for example, in the developer’s plan is either deleted or moved and turned into part of a “healing garden” for the medical offices complex — an addition the historic preser-vation guidelines would expressly prohibit.

And despite the developer’s explanation about their plans to create a city park, VMP’s design subdivides McMillan Park, leaving DC citizens with less than half of the parkland that currently exists. The VMP plan would dismantle and remove nearly all of the above and below ground historic sand filtration structures, leaving just enough of the structures to result in what Interior rec-ommends against:

“Giving the building’s site a false appear-ance by basing the reconstruction on con-jectural designs or the availability of fea-tures from other nearby sites; Changing the historic spatial relationship between the building and historic site features, or recon-structing some site features, but not others, thus creating a false appearance.”

Furthermore, the guidelines list 10 gener-al “Standards for Rehabilitation” of historic properties and the first three, alone, demon-strate just how far removed the VMP plans are with the McMillan purchase agree-ment’s covenant for historic preservation:

“1. A property will be used as it was his-torically or be given a new use that requires minimal change to its distinctive materials, features, spaces, and spatial relationships.

“2. The historic character of a property will be retained and preserved. The removal of distinctive materials or alteration of fea-

tures, spaces, and spatial relationships that characterize a property will be avoided.

“3. Each property will be recognized as a physical record of its time, place, and use. Changes that create a false sense of histori-cal development, such as adding conjectur-al features or elements from other historic properties, will not be undertaken.”

On Dec. 8th, just one day after a cel-ebratory groundbreaking ceremony at the McMillan site, The DC Court of Appeals issued a stunning rebuke to Mayor Muriel Bowser, the DC Zoning Commission, and VMP. A three-judge panel vacated the Zoning Commission rulings governing McMillan redevelopment, key decisions that allowed the contractors to proceed with their plans.

Mayor Bowser’s office has yet to respond to The InTowner’s request back in October for comments on the appeals court review which at that time was still pending. How the zoning commission will respond to the court ruling will likely be decided at the commissioners’ closed session on January 23rd, a regular monthly meeting in which the panel seeks legal advice and conducts other nonbinding deliberations.

In a posting on its website following the ruling, VMP stated, “We are disappointed with some aspects of the Court’s ruling for the McMillan site, yet significantly encour-aged by its agreement with the Zoning Commission that our project is consistent with the District’s Comprehensive Plan and

the Future Land Use Map.”But VMP, Mayor Bowser’s office, and

City Council, had better take a good look at what the District purchased from the fed-eral government in 1987 — especially what responsibilities and restrictions city officials agreed to abide by when taking ownership of historic McMillan Park Reservoir site.

[Editor’s Note: As we were finalizing this story for publication, the following notice was received by email: “In response to the remand of this proceeding by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in its opinion Friends of McMillan Park v. District of Columbia Zoning Commission . . . issued on December 8, 2016, the Mayor’s Agent Hearing Officer hereby gives notice of an additional public hearing to be held on March 10, 2017 at 10:00 a.m., at 1100 4th Street SW, Room 650. The full Notice is posted on the Office of Planning website.”]

*Associate Editor William G. Schulz, a resident of Dupont Circle since the 1980s, has been a journalist specializing in science and investiga-tive reporting for over 30 years.

Copyright © 2017 InTowner Publishing Corp. & William G. Schulz. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited, except as provided by 17 U.S.C. §§107 & 108 (“fair use”).

McMILLAN PARKFrom p. 1

photo—William G. Schulz—The InTowner.

View showing one line of the original sand filtration towers, many of which are to be demolished.

photo—courtesy Friends of McMillan Park.

Inside the original underground water storage caverns.

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Page 6 • The InTowner • January 2017

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts 118-128 North Broad Street

(215 ) 972-7600 / www.pafa.org Tue., Thu., Fri. 10am-5pm;

Wed. to 9pm; Sat. & Sun. 11am-5pm

By Joseph R. Phelan*

The Forgotten War through American Eyes: “World War I and American Art”

While the First World War (1914-1918) is sometimes called the “forgotten” war,

its literary legacy has certainly not been over-looked. It is impossible to think about British poetry without Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, and Robert Graves or American prose without John Dos Passos, Gertrude Stein or Ernest Hemingway.

But what about our visual culture? The conventional wisdom has been that the long, terrible war had little or no impact. The curators of this exhibition, “World War I and American Art,” at the Pennsylvania Academy aim to test this assumption by selecting over 150 works by some 80 artists. While many are well known names — Childe Hassam, George Bellows, Georgia O’Keefe, Horace Pippin, John Curry, and John Singer Sargent among others — their war art has either rarely been seen or shown in context. Some unfa-miliar figures, such as Claggett Wilson, are stunningly resurrection in this superb show.

The exhibition, which will remain on view through April 9, 2017, begins with the response to the sinking of the Lusitania by a German Submarine. Enlist (1915) by Fred Spear depicts a mother and child as though in sleep, but both are dead and falling to the bottom of the ocean. “Eloquent in its brev-ity,” art historian David Lubin comments, “a single standalone word has been ‘enlisted’ to drive home the poster’s message: Enlist in the armed forces to help prevent further crimes of this order.”

Thousands of Americans saw the poster plastered on walls across the land in the late spring and summer of 1915. While many art-ists created poster imagery expressing grief and anger over this destruction, Enlist may have been the most powerful of all war posters.

Yet not far behind, at least by my lights, would be Joseph Pennell’s That Liberty Shall Not Perish from the Earth (1918), used as part of a Liberty Bond campaign. The poster and original painting present an apocalyptic image of New York City under enemy attack, with a headless Statue of Liberty silhouetted against flames that engulf the city. Message: the U.S. was in peril if it did not put all its resources into the war effort. As the wall text points out, the parallels with 9/11 are striking.

Beginning with America’s entry in 1917, artists tossed out an unprecedented number of posters aimed at motivating the public to par-ticipate in the war, whether by enlisting or by contributing actively to the aid of European and American troops. There are appeals to moral indignation or shame as in Enlist - On Which Side of the Window Are You On?, to persuade men to enlist. On the other side of the political divide, left-wing artists such as John Sloan also appealed to these emotions as they produced courageous and devastating illustrations such as After the War, a Medal and Maybe a Job for the radical magazine The Masses, critiquing America’s interventionist policies — including conscription.

Another Masses contributor, the Ashcan school painter George Bellows initially took a strong pacifist antiwar stand. But after reading reports of the atrocities inflicted on civilians in Belgium, he produced an ambitious series of prints, drawings and monumental paint-ings. Taking Rembrandt’s Three Crosses along with Goya’s Disasters of War series as models, Bellows imagined the brutality and inhuman-ity of the German troops.

One of the glorious discoveries of the show is Gifford Beal’s On the Hudson at Newburgh

recently found underneath another Beal painting at the Phillips Collection. This is a dazzlingly bright impressionist landscape in which an attractive young woman with an infant in her arms and a little girl by her side watches a distant parade of soldiers march-ing beneath a pageant of flag toward a wait-ing locomotive. The painting dramatizes the separation of wives and children from their enlisted husbands and fathers as American troops prepared to relieve the spent allies. Along with five of Childe Hassam’s Flag paintings in a nearby gallery, we see a most subtle use of impressionist tech-nique to shape patri-otic sentiments.

Few American art-ists witnessed combat firsthand, but those who did left mesmer-izing accounts of what they observed on the edge of the no-man’s-land. Shortly after the Armistice, the painter Claggett Wilson, a marine lieutenant who was wounded by poi-son gas in the Battle of Belleau Wood, began a series of harrowing and sometimes hallucina-tory watercolors such as Flower of Death-The Bursting of a Heavy Shell-Not as it Looks, but as it Feels and Sounds and Smells. Wilson also called attention to the loneliness and despair of the soldiers on the front line; as often as not, he depicted former adversaries, German foot soldiers, as fellow victims of the insanities of war.

Horace Pippin, a member of the Harlem Hellfighters suffered combat injuries that damaged his right arm, and he first began making art as a means of physical reha-bilitation. A handmade memoir filled with

sketches details his wartime experience from deployment to demobilization. In the 1930s he would return to this pivotal moment in his life to express both traumatic and mun-dane aspects of military service such as The Barracks. Romaine Brooks’ heroic The French Cross and Wilson’s Underground Dressing Station honor the dedication that nurses, doc-tors and recovery crews brought to the field.

But the “Big Bertha” of the show has to be John Singer Sargent’s tremendous Gassed. This painter, who became world-famous and very rich for his society portraits was also considered over the hill by this time. Yet this monumental canvas with its echoes of Peter Bruegel’s The Blind Leading the Blind shows what a master can achieve by depicting the waste and tragedy of war in the “Grand Manner.” The frieze derives from a scene the artist witnessed and that haunted him: rows of British soldiers at an evacuation checkpoint, their heads wrapped in the gauze to protect their eyes temporarily blinded by mustard gas, being led by orderlies to a dressing station.

Gassed, rarely seen in the United States, usually hangs in London’s Imperial War Museum, so seeing it in America along with many other pictures of war makes a trip to Philadelphia a must before its April 9th clos-ing.

The catalogue combines accessible scholar-ship by the curators Robert Cozzolino, Anne Knutson, and David Lubin with lavish full-page reproductions of every work in the show. Best of all, the works by Spear, Sloan, Bellows, Wilson, Pippin, and Brooks, mentioned in this review are drawn from Washington, DC collections — National Gallery, Philips

Collection, Library of Congress, Smithsonian Museum of American Art — and are fully accessible to view the websites of those muse-ums.

Copyright © 2017 InTowner Publishing Corp. & Joseph R. Phelan. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited, except as provided by 17 U.S.C. §107 (“fair use”).

Art & Culture

*Joseph R. Phelan is a Washington based author and teacher. He is the founding edi-tor of Artcyclopedia.com, the fine art search engine. He has taught at the Catholic University of America and the University of Maryland University College.

Gifford Beal, On the Hudson at Newburgh (1918). [Courtesy, The Phillips Coll.]

Joseph Pennell, That Liberty Shall Not Perish from the Earth—Buy Liberty Bonds—Fourth Liberty Loan (1918). [Courtesy Boston Museum of Fine Arts.]

Man Ray, A.D. 1914 (1914). [Courtesy Phila. Museum of Art.]

George Bellows, The Germans Arrive (1918). [Courtesy Ian M. Cumming.]

John Singer Sargent, Gassed (1919). [Courtesy Imperial War Museum.]