My Columbus
July 15, 2005
Union Station stands directly to the north of the Capitol Building. Railway stations will probably never again reach these dimensions or run to this kind of expense. The station was begun and completed in 1907, and the total cost ran to $21,800,000.. which, as can be imagined, was no small figure at the time. Railway stations were the airports of their day, and attracted the same kind of public expenditure. But whereas airports by necessity stand far outside the city, and only rarely help distinguish a city architecturally, a railway station offered a chance to construct a stand-out public building.
I can remember traveling through upstate New York years ago by Greyhound, and since the buses tended to share the railway stations with Amtrak, I got to experience some of those lavish buildings. Often my friend and I sat virtually alone in the empty and echoing stations, sitting on heavy wooden benches. It was obviously too much money to have been spent with us in mind, we had to imagine a these empty floors packed with people.. running for a train.
Union Station ought to share this awkward post-air travel reality.. and the emptiness would be even more glaring since it is so large. Amtrak still runs some crowded passenger trains, and I believe that my friend Nadav goes back and forth to New York from here. But this in itself would not be enough. Planners have also alleviated the emptiness by adding a multi-story mall.. complete with nine-screen movie theater, food court, and clothing stores.. the latter of which we experienced as Emily tried on shoes in several stores. The station also serves as a local transportation hub.. the Metro is connected to the station and some of the sight-seeing tours pick up passengers here.
In front of the station is a monument for Christopher Columbus, and I have been racking my brain trying to figure out the significance of Columbus here. Perhaps someone decided that as this would be for many their first view of Washington, Columbus would orient them into the grand narrative of the new world.. of which Washington is the capital. I wonder too if Columbus went through a period of symbolic popularity a century ago..
Jutting out front of the monument is the prow of a boat fronted by a beautiful angel holding her heart and looking to God. Directly behind her stands Columbus, proudly towering and looking, to me eye, somewhat similar to Rodin’s haughty Balzac. The back of the monument reads: “To the memory of Christopher Columbus whose high faith and indomitable courage gave to mankind a new world.” It is another monument that would be impossible today.. the angel on the front should not so ecstatically give thanks to God, she ought to weep.. knowing the destruction that was coming..
With the uncertainty about the reason for Columbus here, I feel free to take hold of it for my own use. I find in it a monument for exploration. True we live in a vastly different world.. one without giant blank spaces on the map.. but still there is something challenging about Columbus and his exploration. We have thought of exploration as something that can only take place in an uncharted world.. but this Columbus intimates that the world is always blank, no matter how filled-in the maps may appear. It is blank because so few people notice it.. Even in this public and crowded plaza, with its lines of taxis and buses curling round the circle, with its ambling crowds.. there is yet a need for exploration, a need for some of that high faith and indomitable courage which sits on the countenance of this Columbus.. Anyone who sees is an explorer.
