His opposition to the monopolistic Baltimore & Ohio Railroad led him to participate in organizing several local railroads: the Metropolitan Railroad Company,20 National Junction Railroad,21 as well as the stillborn New York and Washington Railway Company, which proposed to construct a rail line from Washington to New York and on to Cincinnati.22 A supporter of expanded and improved regional shipping, Shepherd was an organizer of the New York and Washington Steamship Company, intended to strengthen shipping between the two cities.23 Through it all, his flagship plumbing and gas fitting firm, Alex. R. Shepherd and Bros., remained the basis for his fortune, and Shepherd used his wealth to take advantage of Washington’s dramatic growth in the post–Civil War period by building one thousand homes for wealthy as well as middle-class residents.24 In 1868 Shepherd owned 182 residential lots in Washington.25
L’Enfant’s Washington City Canal, which virtually split the capital down the middle, was to play a major role in Shepherd’s later public improvements program, but at this point it became a target for privatization. Shepherd and his colleagues organized the Washington City Canal Company, and Noyes introduced a bill in the Board of Aldermen to sell the canal to a consortium of local businessmen.26 The sale, which required congressional approval, would have required the new owners to develop a sixty-foot-wide canal in which four feet of water would be maintained at all times; the City Council declined to endorse it.27 The project failed to gain congressional support, perhaps because the existing canal was seen as an integral part of the capital’s infrastructure.
Corruption?
In light of later allegations of corruption, several of Shepherd’s involvements in the postwar years were to raise questions about his colleagues’, if not his own, conduct. The most notorious connection was the Mary land Freestone Mining and Manufacturing Company, better known as the Seneca Sandstone Company, organized in 1867 by Shepherd supporters, including Senator William Stewart of Nevada and General Ulysses S. Grant. Shepherd joined the board of the company in 1868, along with local investors Henry D. Cooke, Lewis Clephane, and William Huntington.28 Seneca Sandstone was accused on numerous occasions of using political influence to gain government contracts, and as a senior officer of the Freedman’s Bank, Huntington was shown to have approved loans to the company in exchange for stock that became worthless.29 Shepherd was also a player in the Portland Stone Company (Lewis Clephane, Hallet Kilbourn, publisher William Murtagh) and the Metropolis Paving Company, which later became a center of attention over charges of a “paving ring” intended to monopolize street paving during the territorial government. Shepherd sold his stock in Metropolis Paving when he became a public official, although allegations of conflict of interest were to surface later. Shepherd sent contracts in the direction of the firm, and it was revealed that representatives of two Washington newspapers were among the stockholders, despite having paid nothing for their shares.30
Another of Shepherd’s business ventures that raised questions of conflict of interest was the Vaux Anti-Freezing Pipe and Roofing Company, headed by Ethan P. Vaux, a talented but alcoholic craftsman. Vaux obtained contracts for roofing federal buildings in a number of cities thanks to his friendship with Alfred B. Mullett, supervising architect of the Treasury Department and a close associate of Shepherd. Mullett was for several years secretary and treasurer of the Vaux firm.31 Shepherd directed the teams of workmen, including Vaux, who were dispatched across the country to replace iron roofs with Vaux’s patented copper roof. Mullett’s control over lucrative government contracts for local construction projects proved irresistible to President Grant’s inner circle, which pressured Mullett to favor particular localities with projects.32
Developing Social and Cultural Connections
Shepherd’s involvement in organizing social and cultural activities in Washington was as wide and eclectic as his business ventures. Such connections—not counting special events such as the 1871 Pennsylvania Avenue gala, presidential inaugurations, and charity balls—numbered more than twenty, albeit not all at the same time and not all continuous. From his youthful association with the Undine Boat Club, the Metropolitan Literary Association, and the Washington Library Company, Shepherd significantly broadened the range of his involvements as he matured. He remained a longtime lay leader in the Presbyterian Church, initially at Fourth Presbyterian and later at New York Avenue Presbyterian. He was also a force in New York Avenue’s outreach program, having provided a chapel for the Gurley Mission School, named after his religious mentor, Dr. Phineas Gurley, and served as chairman of the Northern Presbyterian Mission.33
Being an intensely social—and sociable—person, Shepherd was drawn to men’s club life. Always desirous of acceptance by the Georgetown social set, Shepherd, sponsored by Lewis Clephane, joined the recently established Metropolitan Club a few months after stepping down as president of the Common Council in 1864.34 The Metropolitan Club, then, as now, drew on Washington’s governmental, military, commercial, and social elites. Riggs was the club’s first treasurer, and Corcoran became president when the club resumed operations in 1872 after a five-year hiatus.35 Uncharacteristically, there is no mention of participation by Shepherd in Metropolitan Club records from 1864 to 1867, whereas in every other activity with which he was associated, he was among the most active members. It is possible that having just lost his bid for a seat on the Washington City Board of Aldermen, Shepherd chose to take a lower profile in the Metropolitan Club.
Shepherd’s charitable activities in this period included leading roles in the Provident Aid Society, formed to meet the needs of Washington’s poorest residents through soup kitchens and donations of firewood; he moved on to become president of the newly formed Association for the Poor, whose officers were higher up the social ladder and included Supreme Court justice Salmon P. Chase, Riggs, Corcoran, and Cooke.36 Shepherd’s social and humanitarian work included directorships of the YMCA, the Humane Society, Columbia Hospital, the American Printing House/National University for the Blind, the Washington National Monument Society, plus a brief stint as a director of Corcoran’s Oak Hill Cemetery.37
In 1870, the Jefferson Baseball Club, an amateur Washington team, elected Shepherd as its nonplaying president; other wise, the youthful sportsman of the Undine Boat Club participated little in organized sports in these years. It is likely that the election had followed a generous financial contribution, based on a letter from the team secretary noting, “I am instructed also, to say the club fully appreciates your kindness.”38
Spring 1867 brought significant personal and professional change for Shepherd when he was approved by Congress for the Levy Court, the governing body for Washington County. The county was not a corporation like Washington City and Georgetown, and the Levy Court was based on a law inherited from the original Mary land land grant to the national government. The court, composed of nine judges appointed by the president for three-year terms, governed a large, thinly populated area consisting of farms and occasional grand houses. Shepherd was one of the three judges appointed from Washington City.39 His duties no doubt brought back memories of living on the farm next to Rock Creek Church before his father died. If, perhaps, the affairs of Washington County seemed far removed from the concerns of Washington City and Georgetown, development was pushing out into the county. The Levy Court experience was useful for Shepherd in working closely with men whom he would encounter professionally in the future, as well as providing a complement to his earlier work with the Washington City Common Council.
In 1867, when Alexander and Mary Shepherd decided to build an out-of-town home for their growing family, they returned to the vicinity of the old family farm in the county north of Rock Creek Cemetery. Consistent with his new wealth and embrace of conspicuous consumption, Shepherd built an elegant house that the family named “Bleak House” from the title of the Charles Dickens novel the children were reading at the time. A family account described the approximately 260 acres as the highest spot in the District, with old apple trees, meadows, and woodland running back to Rock Creek.40 The Second Empire–style wooden
