When architects, developers, and laborers set about transforming the former Columbia Hospital for Women into the massive Columbia Residences complex at the intersection of 25th Street, L Street, and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, they placed the area within a protective cocoon of chain-link fences. Inside the fences, just across L Street from the back door of Marcel’s restaurant, went a little-known monument commemorating a joint international agreement to reduce military forces patrolling the Great Lakes. With renovations nearly complete (and the Trader Joe’s grocery store on the 25th Street side now open), the fences have disappeared, and the monument to the Rush-Bagot Treaty is again visible to the public. And in light of some very recent events, it’s high time you take a look.
You’re not familiar with the Rush-Bagot Treaty? Guess you slacked off in your grad-level diplomatic history seminar. Ratified in 1818 by the United States and the United Kingdom on Canada’s behalf (Canada didn’t become self-governing until 1867), the Rush-Bagot Treaty ensured the demilitarization of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain in the aftermath of the War of 1812. The Rush of Rush-Bagot was Richard Rush — the acting Secretary of State and the son of Revolutionary War-era doc Benjamin Rush. The Bagot of Rush-Bagot was Sir Charles Bagot — then the British Minister to Washington and later the Governor General of Canada.
Rush and Bagot negotiated the treaty during 1817 in a house built by Georgetown leather-maker Tench Ringgold in 1812 at the corner of 25th and L streets NW. Bagot had rented the house from Ringgold — who also served as a U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia and built the renowned Dacor Bacon House — for the British Legation. In 1935, Kiwanis International commissioned a monument for the site. The District’s Inventory of Historic Sites reports that a sculptor named Benjamin Johnson created the bronze plaque affixed to the concrete monument.
The Rush-Bagot Treaty has popped into the news repeatedly in the years following September 11, 2001 — and indeed again in the past month. The U.S. State Department interpreted the treaty not to prohibit the U.S. Coast Guard from outfitting its vessels patrolling the Great Lakes with machine guns, largely to address perceived increases in terrorist threats and illegal smuggling operations. The Coast Guard then quietly developed a plan to conduct live-fire target practice in 34 hilariously named “safety zones” in the Great Lakes — including one just a few miles off Chicago’s North Shore. When the public found out about the possibility that the Great Lakes would become a giant nautical shooting range, they flipped out. The Coast Guard withdrew the ill-fated proposal on December 18, 2006.
Photo by Michael Mugmon
