HOLD OLD CAPITOL BUILDING GENUINE
Association of Oldest Inhabitants Offers Vigorous Defense at Meeting.
Vigorous defense of the genuineness of the old brick Capitol, which is being torn down on Capitol Hill to make way for the new Supreme Court Building, featured a meeting of the Association of Oldest Inhabitants of District of Columbia last night.
John R. Mahoney, Artemas C. Harmon and John Clagett Proctor all came forward with testimony to the fact that the old building, about which they said there had been some dispute, really was the old brick Capitol.
Mahoney said that in the hearings for condemnation of the property a Government witness had claimed that all the old building had been torn down, and that this was a different building, but Mahoney said he had refuted this testimony, declaring that he knew the original old building still stood, but had been remodeled.
Court Records Produced.
All three speakers referred to the old “Flemish bond” construction of the original building, which had been covered over by later construction, but which was revealed when the old building was torn down. Harmon brought to the association a number of records he said he had obtained from court records to show that the building in reality was the old brick Capitol. He said he talked to an old man on Capitol Hill who said he saw a hanging of soldiers there when the place was used as a prison.
Attention was called to the ill health of Mas. S. Willard Saxton of 1347 Harvard street, a vice president of the association and the oldest member, who will be 101 years old next Wednesday. In this connection James F. Duhamel, vice president of the society, expressed doubt that a Turk who has come to this country claiming 154 years of age was anything but a “fake.”
Praise Dr. Tindall.
John Clagett Proctor, who presided over the session, gave a report of the reception to Dr. William Tindall, a vice president of the association, who was continued in the District of Columbia government by act of Congress. Mr. Proctor praised Dr. Tindall, saying that all the tributes bestowed upon him at the reception did not turn his head, but that he had seemed to “appreciate it all most keenly.”
Mr. Mahoney also related of standing at Fifteenth and Pennsylvania avenue in front of the building then used as the State Department when President Buchanan was inaugurated.
New members elected last night included Isaac Gans, Henry A. Johnson, Orlando G. Hall, Henry T. Wallace, J. B. Rutherford.