23
Maintenance Under the National Park Service
 
_____________
24
The old gas-pipe fence was considered "neither artistic in character nor valuable from a utilitarian viewpoint," 75 and was considered expendable during the National Park Service's initial "beautification" programs for the park and cemetery. It is doubtful whether the Park Service considered the "open fence" stipulation guaranteed to Evergreen Cemetery when they determined the fate of the gas-pipe fence. However, the National Park Service fulfilled the verbal stipulation (intentionally or unintentionally) when it proposed to relocate the Lafayette Square iron fence from East Cemetery Hill to the National Cemetery in its stead. _____________
25
after April of 1890 by the firm of Gilbert and Smith. It was envisioned that three gates would be placed along the Baltimore Pike and one along Slocum Avenue (where it joined Wainwright Avenue or Brickyard Lane at the base of East Cemetery Hill).78 _____________ entranceways were coated with "bronze paint,"81 but no mention was made of applying black paint to the remainder of the gates or fencing. For the 1938 fiscal year, the superintendent could report that the walls and the fencing were "in very good condition" and needed very little maintenance, but no mention was made in any reports of any kind of routine maintenance which would have included cyclical repainting. _____________ by welding.85 No further mention was made in existing records of Park maintenance to the Baltimore Pike fencing and entranceway, except that the brick sidewalk at the entrance was reconstructed with a concrete base on a sand cushion from July to October 1939 by the Works Progress Administration. 86 This work was necessary to conform to the alteration in widening the gates. _____________ 86 Ibid., July-October 1939.

87 Weekly Summaries (early version of Cannon's Roar), October 22, 1962.

of water seeping into the exposed joints and freezing) whole sections of this wall will collapse. Already, since the 1973 10-238, four sections of the wall have collapsed, and at least ten times that many sections have bulged severely, threatening collapse.