2 D.C. Spots Celebrate Big Birthdays

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THE NATIONAL CATHEDRAL this month is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Sure, the giant stone structure on Mount Saint Alban wasn't completed until 1990, but construction started a century ago on Sept. 29, the feast day of St. Michael, with then-President Theodore Roosevelt present for the momentous occasion. The cathedral kicks off a series of centennial events at the end of the month to celebrate the big anniversary.

But the cathedral isn't the only place in the nation's capital celebrating a big birthday this month — in fact, there's a D.C. landmark that's got 100 years on the massive church. Oft-forgotten Congressional Cemetery, located on the edge of Capitol Hill near the Anacostia River, hit the two-century mark this weekend. It's the final resting place for luminaries such as former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, pictured at right, and his rumored gay paramour.

As The Post's Darragh Johnson wrote on Sunday:

The cemetery boasts such luminaries as Elbridge Gerry, a Declaration of Independence signer and the man for whom "gerrymandering" is named. Plus: Taza, the son of Apache Chief Cochise, and Push-ma-ta-ha, a Choctaw Indian chief who served with Andrew Jackson. Former House majority leader Hale Boggs, who was the father of Washington's Cokie Roberts and is presumed to have died in a 1972 Alaska plane crash in which the wreckage was never found, has a monument in Congressional; and although former House speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill is actually buried in Boston, he's also got a tombstone at Congressional.

» "Cathedral Centennial" [Nat'l Cathedral]
» "On Its 200th, Cemetery Is As Curious As Its Dead" [WaPo]

Photo by Susan Biddle/The Washington Post and James A. Parcell for The Washington Post