In which we wish the MPDC a happy anniversary
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MPDC Crest,
based on the 1861 badge |
When Abraham Lincoln stepped off the train into the nation's capital the city was different. First of all, stately Union Station wouldn't be completed until 1908. Lincoln arrived in the middle of the night at the
old Baltimore & Ohio rail station in the same location. Lincoln was there early to prepare for his inauguration on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol without a complete dome, facing a quarter-built Washington Monument at the end of the rather scrubby National Mall (the land that is now the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial wouldn't be reclaimed from the Potomac River until the end of the 19th Century). After he was sworn in he would travel back to the the Executive Mansion ("White House" was just a popular nickname that wouldn't become official until 1911), avoiding B Street, next to the stinking, festering canal, not much used except as a garbage dump (today both are incorporated into Constitution Avenue).
A great deal of the Washington we know today has its roots in the transformation unleashed by the American Civil War, and on August 6, 1861, on the last day of session before August recess, Congress authorized a little transformation that helped make DC what it is today -- it authorized the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, the first District-wide, non-Congressional authority.
