Scoping Out New Digs In D.C.

(AP)

What a picture! That's the Capitol Dome President Lincoln had built during the Civil War, he thought it an important symbol replacing the "hat box" that was once there. It was made and assembled by the Bronx, NY firm of Janes and Kirtland for little over $1 million, once "removed" from Manhattan in the vicinity of the new National Monument African Burial Ground, (to the "south Bronx") which is also part of the historic City Commons and City Hall Park historic district, newly renovated in 1999, and Nathan Hale's statue has been moved to the front (he regretted having "only one life to lose for his country" then hung, after being brought from the British Fort Golgotha in the Huntington, NY cemetery on Long Island. I worked on the archaeology of that cemetery and at the "first almshouse" one in City Hall Park next to what the NY Times once called the British prison next door "blacker than any black hole of Calcutta." (1903)) Janes and Kirtland in the 1960s made the ubiquitous steel kitchen cabinets found in many places in NYC, and last had an office in the South Street Seaport, once a "showroom" of stoves and other early appliances.

I hope the 110th Congress gets past what "Rolling Stone" called the worst Congress ever, the 109th. Couric & Co.