generated interest among many of the individuals active in the City Beautiful movement, Colonial Revival architecture movement, and groups dedicated to promoting local and national history. Soon, the idea of a roadway became a call for a grandiose, monumental avenue lined with Beaux-Arts memorials, tombs, and roadside attractions. The idea received even more impetus when the Daughters of the American Revolution took up the cause. In 1902, the McMillan Plan endorsed a road along the Virginia side of the Potomac River shoreline. Although Virginia was outside the plan's scope, the Senate Park Commission (which drafted the plan) saw a Mount Vernon avenue as an extension of the DC park system as well as a means of protecting the Great Falls of the Potomac River and the Potomac Palisades. The McMillan Plan, however, focused not on a monumental avenue but on tree-lined boulevards and quiet carriage paths designed to relax and calm. First efforts by Bureau of Public Roads The Mount Vernon Avenue Association disbanded some time during World War I, but the concept of a Mount Vernon roadway was now championed by the federal Bureau of Public Roads (BPR). The BPR seized on the idea in the 1920s as a means of demonstrating the latest highway construction technology. Its first proposals were merely to upgrade the existing roads in the area and perhaps add a tree-lined boulevard, with formal, uninspired masonry bridges. But the BPR's proposals quickly evolved into much more. The agency hired Gilmore David Clarke and Jay Downer, who had designed the highly celebrated Central Westchester Parkway in New York, as consultants. They quickly proposed a more elaborate system of plantings, historic roadside pullouts, and scenic overlooks, and a more sinuous road design. The BPR began calling the road a "highway" rather than a parkway to de-emphasize its commemorative nature in the hope that Congress would fund its construction. As the bicentennial anniversary of the birth of George Washington approached in 1932, the BPR took advantage of the national interest in the nation's first president to push its idea for a Mount Vernon roadway. It changed its approach, now re-emphasizing the commemorative nature of the road. It also began publishing books, pamphlets, and technical drawings; printing photographs; displaying models in the Capitol Rotunda; and exhibiting Washingtoniana alongside its materials in a well-organized public relations push designed to build public support for the project and win congressional approval. It