| This painting depicts the corner of Fifteenth and G Streets toward the end of the war. The old State Department, built in 1814, just after the British burned Washington, was now a rat trap, the shame of Secretary Seward, when he was visited by foreign diplomats. The Washington Monument was still twenty years from completion. As soon as the Civil War was over, the old State Department building would be torn down and the facade of the U.S. Treasury would be continued on around the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue. Washington's first horsecar is shown at the right loading passengers. Known as a "cathedral car" in design, it ran from Georgetown to the Navy Yard. The intersection is filled with wartime figures: able bodied soldiers, invalids, ladies, laborers, and children. The flags on the Treasury are shown at half-mast because some important personnage has died. Wounded soldiers of the Invalid Corps are at work fixing the quagmires of Fifteenth Street. |
