text: Plan The Senate Park Commission, also known as the McMillan Commission, was formed by the United States Congress in 1900 to reconcile competing visions for the development of Washington, D.C., and especially the National Mall and nearby areas. The commission's plan for development, the McMillan Plan, proposed to replace the residences and other buildings on Lafayette Square with tall, Neoclassical office buildings with facades of white marble for executive branch offices. Demolition proceeded on some nearby buildings: notably, the Hay-Adams Houses, Corcoran House, and a portion of the Decatur House grounds. But the rapid expansion in the size and number of executive-branch agencies in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s made the McMillan Plan's development of Lafayette Square impractical, and Congressional and local support for the project waned.
  Over the next few years, the president and Congress established several agencies to supervise the approval, design, and construction of new buildings in the District of Columbia: The Commission of Fine Arts in 1910 to approve designs, the Public Buildings Commission in 1916 to make recommendations about the housing of federal agencies and offices, and the National Capital Parks and Planning Commission in 1924 to oversee planning. In the mid-1910s, Congress appropriated and the government spent $7 million to acquire land on Pennsylvania Avenue NW between 14th and 15th Streets NW and several blocks south. No demolition or construction took place during that period, and the government merely collected rent from the tenants in the area. In 1924, the Public Buildings Commission recommended that a new series of federal office buildings be built near the White House. The plan called for a complex of buildings to be built at Murder Bay, a muddy, flood-prone, malaria-ridden, poverty-stricken region lacking in paved roads, sewer system, and running water and almost exclusively home to numerous brothels and an extensive criminal underclass.