This is a seriously old project, but it is of sentimental value. In 6^th grade, our maths teacher gave us a truly integrated assignment. The idea was to bring together skills from our various subjects into one multimedia project:

• Maths & art by making a model of a building in Washington DC;
• Science by building a lighting circuit to go inside the model;
• English by writing an essay about a topic related to the building.

I picked the Watergate complex—all of it. The model of Watergate East photographed on this page is but one of the five models I constructed, wrested from the larger construction. I had a great time building my model; I had to figure out how to represent Luigi Moretti's sweeping concrete balconies, how to illuminate the models from within, et cetera. I solved the problem by building basswood columns on my foamcore site (but it was that gross kind of foamcore that's actually entirely plastic and doesn't cut very easily). Translucency came from making the walls from projector transparencies backed with tissue paper, and the concrete was represented by (mostly) parallel basswood strips stuck to the outside of the model. I realized early on that basswood doesn't bend very well when dry so I soaked the strips, bent them, painted them and, finally, glued them. A very complicated and gratifying solution for an eleven-year-old!

The lighting was a doozy. The assignment said the circuit had to be made from scratch, and my parents took this very much to heart. I built sockets for the bulbs from balsa wood, tinfoil and paperclips all held together with electrical tape because tinfoil doesn't solder well. It was incredibly fiddly and finicky, but it worked in the end.

My essay was, naturally, a summary of the Watergate scandal that resulted in Richard Nixon's resignation and Ford's pardon. It was hardly a groundbreaking contribution to the fields of history or historiography, but it was what a kid can do.

At the end of it all we laid all the models out on desks in our classrooms and had an open house for us to see our classmates' projects and for parents to appreciate the hard work we had all put in. I'm still fond of this funny little collection of buildings on Virginia Avenue; whenever I see a show at the Kennedy Center I like to take a detour through the fountain courtyard hidden inside Watergate East and marvel at its sweeping concrete lines.