LBJ, Ike to Be Memorial Neighbors in Southwest

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FEDERAL BUILDING NO. 6: If you've driven by it on Independence Avenue across from the Air and Space Museum, you probably don't remember it — it blends all too well into the blandness that is Federal Center SW.

The building, which houses the Education Department, has now been officially named in honor of former President Lyndon Johnson, who doesn't enjoy too much recognition in the nation's capital besides a memorial grove off the George Washington Memorial Parkway and a room in the Senate where cots were rolled out during this summer's all-night session on the Iraq war.

But Johnson will have to share the neighborhood with another president, Dwight D. Eisenhower. A planned memorial will eventually rise from the plaza outside, where Maryland Avenue meets Independence Avenue at 4th Street SW.

The LJB-Ike pairing is a telling bipartisan throwback in our bitterly divided capital. When Eisenhower, a Republican, was president, he often found that working with Johnson, the Democratic Senate majority leader, to be far easier than with the Republican minority leader.

» "Department of Education Building Renamed to Honor Lyndon Baines Johnson at Ceremony in Washington, D.C." [DOE]
» "It's Time to Build a National Memorial to Dwight D. Eisenhower" [Eisenhower Mem'l Commission]