Moynihan looks forward to Newseum neighbor on Pennsylvania Ave.

By Maurice Fliess
freedomforum.org

09.27.01

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Daniel Patrick Moynihan

ARLINGTON, Va. — When it opens on Pennsylvania Avenue later this decade, the new Newseum will further enliven the once-neglected corridor between the U.S. Capitol and the White House, former U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said last night.

The site at the northeast corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 6th Street — acquired by The Freedom Forum for $100 million for its headquarters and for the Newseum — is the last part of the avenue to be redeveloped, Moynihan told a dinner attended by trustees of The Freedom Forum, Newseum and First Amendment Center as well as guests from the Washington, D.C., area.

"You're going to bring so many people" to the neighborhood, said Moynihan, who lives in a condominium residence overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue. He quipped, "Some of them, by golly, might cross over" the street and visit the National Gallery of Art and other museums on the National Mall.

On a serious note, Moynihan pointed to the First Amendment Center's role in educating the public about the freedoms guaranteed by that constitutional amendment. "In this particular time, and for all time, there is no more important purpose," he said. "You serve it, and we are in your debt."

Charles L. Overby, chairman and chief executive officer of The Freedom Forum, praised Moynihan for his visionary work on behalf of Pennsylvania Avenue. "One of his enduring passions has been [its] revival," Overby said. When The Freedom Forum disclosed it was considering a move of its popular Newseum to Pennsylvania Avenue from Arlington, "the very first person to call and to write was Senator Moynihan, and he said, 'Anything I can do to be helpful, let me know.' "

Moynihan, 74, a New York Democrat who left the U.S. Senate at the beginning of this year after serving four terms, said The Freedom Forum and Newseum project would be in keeping with Pierre L'Enfant's plan for Washington. In 1791 President George Washington chose military engineer L'Enfant to design the capital city, Moynihan said, and L'Enfant laid out Pennsylvania Avenue as "the central radial avenue" linking the Capitol and the White House — "signifying the separation of powers that the Constitution provides and the connection between the two."

Until President John F. Kennedy took note of the dreary streetscape as he rode from the Capitol to the White House in his 1961 inaugural parade, the idea of Pennsylvania Avenue as "a great thoroughfare" had been lost, Moynihan said. He added that Kennedy subsequently defined a redevelopment goal: Pennsylvania Avenue "should be lively, friendly and inviting as well as dignified and impressive." That let to a redevelopment plan that has been implemented, "little by little, piece by piece," over the last four decades.

"Now you're going to be there as well," he said of The Freedom Forum and Newseum, in a multipurpose building being designed by New York architect James Stewart Polshek and his partners. "You're going to be surrounded by great architecture," Moynihan observed, including the east and west wings of the National Gallery of Art designed by I.M. Pei and John Russell Pope, respectively, and the next-door Canadian Embassy by Arthur Erickson.

In a brief question-and-answer period, Moynihan was asked by CNN news anchor and Freedom Forum trustee Judy Woodruff how the United States had changed since the terrorist attacks on American soil on Sept. 11.

"For the better and for the worse," he replied. "We are so much more a united people than we were, and we are engaged in an exercise abroad that no one can define, and we won't ever know for many, many years how it worked out." But "before this is over," he said, "there will be a price to pay, and pay, and pay."

Moynihan closed by quoting from Rudyard Kipling:

"And the end of the fight is a tombstone white
          with the name of the late deceased.
And the epitaph drear: 'A Fool lies here who
          tried to hustle the East.' "

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