Feature

The Don of the District Boss Shepherd’s is a rags-to-riches story of a man who modernized Washington, D.C.

By Donna Evers

January 2010

The next time you are in front of the District Building, notice the statue of Alexander Robey “Boss” Shepherd, whose role as territorial governor of the District in the 1870s was as controversial as the placement of his statue. The statue commemorating this colorful figure has been moved many times, including into storage for years, and its history pretty well matches Boss Shepherd’s checkered career.
 
His story is a genuine rags-to-riches saga. He was born to a poor family in Southwest Washington in 1835, quit school at the age of 13 to become a pipe fitter, ended up buying the plumbing company he worked for, and then went on to amass a fortune buying and developing real estate. He had a mansion on K Street (now torn down) and a country home in Shepherd Park (named after him), where he wined and dined power players in the nation’s capital. He got Congress to make the District a territory, had himself appointed to the Board of Public Works and quickly took over its operations to build infrastructure for a city which had doubled in size by the end of the Civil War. At the same time, the so-called roads were mud ruts, there was no running water or sewers and few street lights. The place was such a mess that Congress was seriously considering moving the capital to St. Louis!
 
In came Boss Shepherd to save the day. He placed 157 miles of paved roads and sidewalks, 39 miles of gas mains, 123 miles of sewers and 30 miles of water mains. He planted 60,000 trees, built the city’s first horse-drawn trolley system and installed city street lights. He and his favorite architect, Adolf Cluss, built some of the most beautiful Victorian public buildings in the country, including the Eastern Market on Capitol Hill.
 
But the Boss didn’t get his nickname for nothing. He had no patience for committee meetings, and his dictatorial style became legendary. When he decided he didn’t like the unsightly railroad tracks that crisscrossed the Mall and he knew the railroad company wouldn’t allow him to remove them, he took a crew of 200 men to the Mall after dark one night and tore them out. The railroad owner was so amazed at the sheer audacity of the move, that he offered the Boss a job.
 
Boss Shepherd reached the pinnacle of his power when he was appointed territorial governor in 1873, but the glory didn’t last long. An audit of the city’s books showed that Shepherd overran the budget by $13,000,000, an enormous sum at the time, and the city had to declare bankruptcy. It was also discovered that he rewarded his cronies with government contracts and favored improvements in areas where he and his friends owned property.

In hindsight, he still gets credit for the mammoth achievement of modernizing Washington, which ensured that the District would remain the home of the nation’s capital. But he was still fired, left Washington in disgrace and moved to Mexico, where he struck it rich with a silver mine and made a second fortune. When he died, his body was brought back to Washington to be buried in Rock Creek Park. Four years ago, his statue was moved back into its rightful place in the middle of the city he single-handedly ushered into the 20th century.

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