• U.S.

The Capital: Ring in the New

5 minute read
TIME

The mood of expectancy swept through Washington. It lurked in the crowded corridors of the Capitol Building, where returning Congressmen jostled painters touching up the Brumidi frescoes, buzzed through the downtown Democratic clubs and patronage offices, rang out in the lilt of High Hopes and Walking Down to Washington among the New Year’s Eve dancers at Chevy Chase Club and in the jammed hotel ballrooms. Along Pennsylvania Avenue, workmen rushed new tiers of spectator stands for John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s inaugural parade, and the requests for tickets reached blizzard stage.

A team of workers prowled the parade route atop a mobile boom, spraying the sycamores with a bird-repellent, Roost-No-More, which is hopefully expected—at a cost of $10,000 to the inaugural committee—to keep the top-hatted politicians and a million spectators safe from Washington’s plague of starlings (it worked fine in 1957).

Beaming Dome. Focal point of all the bustle, and of the inauguration itself, is Capitol Hill. Chandeliers were being polished. The old Senate Office Building gleamed after a scrubdown. The $10 million whim of House Speaker Sam Rayburn —the two-year job of moving the Capitol’s east front 32½ feet forward—was a gleaming reality (although the new inte rior space will be useless until another $3,000,000 is sunk in remodeling). The outdoor platform where Kennedy will take the oath of office was in readiness, facing a jungle gym of stands for the press (more than 600 reporters—a record —have applied for credentials, including 75 foreign correspondents from as far away as Viet Nam, Malta and Indonesia).

At night the Capitol dome, which has just had a dazzling, million-dollar facial, beamed down on the city.

The House Office Buildings were warrens of chaos, as defeated Congressmen took their time about moving out and their successors queued up impatiently to move in. Last week 55 Congressmen-elect drew lots for new office suites (Pennsylvania Republican Dick Schweiker, drawing Lot No. 55, found there was no more space available, will have to wait until an office can be found). The quest for jobs on the Hill was becoming frantic. Surprisingly, many of the most anxious Capitol job seekers were Democrats: with 45 new Republican representatives, and only 18 new Democrats, a few secretaries of outgoing Democratic Congressmen were wringing their hands. The U.S. Employment Service’s Capitol Hill office reported that, out of some 400 applications received, fewer than 40 persons had been placed. The House Education and Labor Committee screened 125 applicants to fill the twelve positions it has to offer.

Nowhere was the search for jobs more frenzied than in the noontime babble at the National Capital Democratic Club, a luncheon club that suddenly found itself doing a land office business. Initiation fees leaped from $30 to $50, and the board of governors was seeking a larger clubhouse to replace its outgrown quarters in the Sheraton-Carlton dining room. The new elite were greeted effusively at the club: Labor Secretary-designate Arthur Goldberg, dropping in for lunch with Michigan’s Senator Pat McNamara, was welcomed by kisses from female members, wrenching handshakes from the men.

The table hopping was livelier, and the members seemed happier (the club, founded in 1955 with the motto “Out but Happy,” has changed its slogan to “In and Very Happy”). And through it all ran the insistent obbligato of job seekers on the make (“I hear there’s an opening in Frank’s office . . . What else ya got . . . ? When can we start . . . ? How about that guy . . . ?”).

In the Connecticut Avenue office of Larry O’Brien, Kennedy’s patronage dispenser, the traffic in job seekers, from state bosses to ordinary citizens who “just come in off the streets, introduce themselves and ask what’s available,” was like Dupont Circle at rush hour. “I haven’t had a day here that’s been less than 16 hours,” sighed O’Brien wearily.

Booming Homes. Almost as intensive as the search for jobs was the search for homes—especially in stately old Georgetown, where an outlandish real estate boom was well under way. The big attraction was proximity to the Kennedys’ home on N Street—even though the Kennedys will soon be moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Home sellers take delight in burbling that their little gem is “just nine blocks from the Kennedys,” and the closer the address, the higher the price. One brick row house across the street from the Kennedy home—in a bad state of disrepair—is priced at $69,500.

Its twin, a few blocks away, is being sold for an overpriced $55,000.

Michigan’s Soapy Williams, newly appointed Assistant Secretary of State, paid a reported $100,000 for his chic Georgetown address (1401 31st Street), and a well-heeled Eastern Congressman put up a whopping $165,000 for his.

The housing problem was complicated by the fact that many Republicans (e.g., the Christian Herters, the Cabot Lodges) are keeping their Georgetown properties, further reducing—and inflating—the market. One eager home owner breathlessly told prospective buyers that she had “flown right back from Nassau in the middle of my vacation when I heard that Georgetown prices were getting higher and higher.” Hammers & Hats. Along with the harbingers of the new Administration, there were signs of the passing of the old. Vice President Nixon, who had, by his own wish, plummeted from public view “for a while,” begged off from appearing on a TV testimonial to President Eisenhower.

(Among those accepting: Jack Kennedy.) Amid the clamor of hammers as workmen put up the viewing stands for the Kennedy inaugural parade near the Treasury, other workmen quietly dismantled the lights and ornaments from the 70-ft. fir tree on the White House lawn—President Eisenhower’s last Christmas tree as Chief Executive. And in the stores of F Street and Connecticut Avenue, salesmen reported with satisfaction that sales of top hats (at $40 and up), in conformity with Jack Kennedy’s plans, had outstripped the black Homburg, an inaugural innovation that came with Dwight Eisenhower and, apparently, will end with his Administration.

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com