The Fight Over Washington's Capitol: A Governor, a Professor and a Press War
As the state's new capitol building is designed, Seattle and Tacoma papers pound the selection commission with charges of favoritism — and Gov. McGraw's defenders fire back.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
THE CAPITOL PLANS. The legal question before the supreme court raised by Hon. John McKeavy may safely be left to that august tribunal, and no man in the state of Washington is too exalted or too humble to disregard its decision. Entirely apart from that, however, is the subject of the course to be pursued by the capitol commission when its membership is placed beyond controversy. Gov. McGraw has already, in a frank and manly letter to the Seattle Telegraph, explained the status of the competitive plans. He cannot descend to the level of his unscrupulous detractors and excuse his actions. Nevertheless, the vicious attacks continue in the columns of the Tacoma Ledger and the Seattle Telegraph with persistent malice. The Telegraph again urges the ridiculous proposition that every plan selected by Prof. Ware should be cast aside, and the public invited to join in a scramble of selection. If there were no other man on the commission than Hon. Thomas Burke, the people of the state could feel perfectly confident that the final selection would be made with strict integrity and good judgment. Of the six plans selected by Prof. Ware the names of four of the architects are as yet unknown. It would be a gross injustice to those six architects to arbitrarily cast aside their plans, merely because they had been approved by the greatest authority on architectural designs in the country. Prof. W. R. Ware is the professor of architecture at Columbia College. He has long been recognized as a man of exceptional ability and unimpeachable integrity. He no longer practices his profession and is, therefore, entirely free from suspicion of interested motives. He was president of the board of architects appointed to select the best plan for the New York city hall building to cost $8,000,000. He had just completed the selection of a plan for the public library at Milwaukee when he was summoned to Olympia. No architect has ever publicly questioned Prof. Ware's judgment except one, and the official report of the capitol commissioners of Texas on the conduct of that critic in connection with the state building at Austin is a sufficient comment on both. The attempt to cast discredit on the commission is but a part of the political endeavor to harass him, and will only result in the discomfiture of his detractors. The best plan, all things considered, will be honestly and impartially selected — of that the people may rest assured.
“The attempt to cast discredit on the commission is but a part of the political endeavor to harass him, and will only result in the discomfiture of his detractors.”
Before the Olympia capitol's dome rose, the state's very first capitol-design fight was already a partisan brawl — a governor under fire, architects chosen behind closed doors, and rival newspapers alleging favoritism. The argument over who selects designers for public buildings, and whether the process is transparent, is one Seattle and Washington still have every legislative session.
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