Funkstown – The Titanic, William Jennings Bryan, and Foggy Bottom
By Frank Leone
The area that now includes the Kennedy Center once hosted two notable DC monuments – one honoring the men who perished on the Titanic and the other honoring three-time Democratic Presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan. Erected in the 1930s, these memorials were removed to make way for the Kennedy Center, Theodore Roosevelt Bridge, and Potomac River Freeway Construction in the 1960s. The Titanic Memorial stayed in D.C. but was moved down the Potomac River front to Southwest Waterfront Park (4th & P Streets SW). Bryan made his way to his birthplace of Salem, Illinois.
On the night of April 15, 1912, the “unsinkable” R.M.S. Titanic hit an iceberg and sank, resulting in the deaths of 1,517 of the 2,223 passengers on board. It was reported that men gave seats on the lifeboats to woman and children; in fact, of the 531 women and children on board, 70% were rescued, compared to only 20% of the men. Within days of the disaster, prominent women leaders organized to create a memorial in Washington, D.C., to honor those men who gave up their chances on the lifeboats. The competition for designing the memorial was only open to women artists.
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875-1942) submitted the winning design, completed in 1916. The memorial consists of a 12-foot-high pink granite statue, showing a partially clothed man (originally envisioned as nude) with arms outstretched, in a pose suggesting the crucifixion. The statue overlooks a 30-foot granite platform with dolphins at each end, designed by Henry Bacon, the architect of the Lincoln Memorial.
Two other Whitney works exist in D.C. (both in Foggy Bottom): the Aztec Fountain in the central courtyard of the Organization of American States and the Founders of the Daughters of the American Revolution monument at the DAR building. Whitney went on to found the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (containing art that the Eurocentric Metropolitan Museum of Art had rejected).
The Titanic Memorial originally was erected at the intersection of Rock Creek Parkway and New Hampshire Ave in 1930 and dedicated in 1931. It was removed in 1966 when the parkway was re-routed to the west to make room for Kennedy Center construction. It was stored for two years and then erected in Southwest in 1968 - its National Register nomination accurately notes that “[t]he new setting is much less successful because the memorial was placed next to perimeter wall and gable-roof structures of Fort McNair (and a mod lamppost in the park) creating a jarring contrast.”
Although the Memorial has moved, Foggy Bottom retains a Titanic connection. Presidential aid Major Archibald Butt and painter/architect Francis Millett –lived at 20th and G Streets (now part of GWU Law School). They died when the Titanic sank and have their own memorial on the Ellipse (more HERE).
William Jennings Brian (1860-1925) was an orator, lawyer, colonel in the Spanish-American War, congressman from Nebraska, newspaper editor, lecturer, unsuccessful Democratic presidential nominee (1896, 1900, 1908), and Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1915). A leading progressive populist, was known as "The Great Commoner." He crusaded for prohibition and women’s voting rights, and against the teaching of evolution. He served as a prosecutor and an expert witness in the “Scopes Monkey Trial” shortly before his death in 1925. Bryan is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
The Bryan statue was created by Gutzon Borglum, sculptor of Mt. Rushmore. It originally stood at Constitution Avenue, Riverside Drive, and 26th Street. It was dedicated by President Franklin Roosevelt May 3, 1934. The 2,700-pound bronze statue stood on a 29,300-pound marble base.
In 1961, the statue was removed to facilitate access for the new Theodore Roosevelt Bridge. It lay in a vacant lot until Illinois politicians campaigned to obtain the statue. Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall (who thought Washington, D.C. had too many statutes) agreed to loan the statue to Salem. According to Salem’s website, “’Billy left Washington on May 22, 1961. During the journey home, the truck had a flat tire, brakes on the truck caught fire in the mountains, and the load shifted so severely that Billy nearly toppled off the flatbed.” In 1975, Congress enacted legislation giving Salem title to the statue (so D.C. is not getting it back).
Although the Foggy Bottom statue left town, a statue of Bryan remained in the Capitol statuary hall as one of two Nebraska state statutes (installed in 1937). In 2019, however, Nebraska moved Bryan to its National Guard Museum and replaced with a statute of Native American civil rights leader Chief Standing Bear.
Sources: James Goode, The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington, DC, Smithsonian Inst. Press, 1974; Eve L. Barsoum, Titanic Memorial, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form, May 2006 (approved 2007); U.S. Commission on Fine Arts, Titanic Memorial; National Park Service, Titanic Memorial; City of Salem, Illinois, William Jennings Bryan; William Jennings Bryan Memorial Ceremonies Program, US GPO, 1934; “Bill Bryan Would Approve,” Foggy Bottom News, Nov. 1958; PBS, American Experience, William Jennings Bryan.
HAPPY HALOWEEN! Check out our prior Funkstown posts for stories of ghosts and ghouls right here in Foggy Bottom: The Boogeyman of Foggy Bottom; Foggy Bottom Ghosts and Graveyards; The Body Snatcher of Foggy Bottom; and Haunted Foggy Bottom. And thanks to our FBWE neighbors for their scary decorations!
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