This is an appeal from the supreme court of the District of Columbia. The railroad company has constructed its road from Baltimore, through the District of Columbia and through the city of Washington, to the Potomac river at Long Bridge, on which it crosses that river to the Virginia side. It has done this by virtue of several acts of congress granting the necessary authority to do so. At the Washington end of the bridge it has purchased and now owns one of the squares of the city and part of another, numbered, in the division of the city into streets, squares, and lots, squares 233, and 267. These squares are divided by Fourteenth street, running north and south, and square 267, on its south side, abuts on Maryland avenue, one of the streets of the city. At the junction of Maryland avenue, whose course is nearly east and west, and Fourteenth street, there is a considerable space of ground made by Water street, which follows the bank of the river, and the other two streets, which is a public highway made by the union of all three streets at that point. A map or diagram found in the record, and which the reporter will copy, is necessary to a clear understanding of the controversy.
The railroad company alleges that its increased traffic requires, in the city of Washington, additional accommodations for receiving, storing, and transferring freight, and that it has purchased the two squares mentioned for that reason, and that it intends to build a freight depot on square 233, as being at once convenient for the company and more out of the way of the travel, current business, and residences of the citizens than any point within reasonable distance of the line of the road. As their road is at present located lawfully on Maryland avenue, along which it touches the city end of the bridge, this allegation is probably true.
In order, however, to reach square 233 with its trains, they must depart from Maryland avenue and cross square 267 and Fourteenth street, which lies between the two squares, or they must make a curve from the avenue around the south end of square 267, and reach square 233 by the use of the public highway made by the junction of Maryland avenue, Water street, and Fourteenth street, and, in so doing, depart from Maryland avenue. The company gave notice, as required by law, to appellants, who, as commissioners of the District of Columbia, are charged with the care and protection of the streets and other highways of the city, that it intended to construct a lateral track, which, leaving its main track on Maryland avenue at a point near its intersection with Thirteenth street, should cross square 267 from its east to its west side, and then crossing Fourteenth street, would reach its projected depot on square 233. The commissioners refused consent to this, and, fearing it would be attempted without such consent, they guarded the way across the street by police force for some time. In this condition of affairs, the railroad company filed it bill in chancery in the supreme court of the District of Columbia, praying an injunction against the commissioners, to prevent them from interfering with the exercise of the right which the company claimed of laying its track across Fourteenth street, and that court granted the injunction as prayed.
The appeal of the commissioners from this decree brings the matter in issue before us for review. Neither the pleadings in the case, nor the relief sought by the bill, nor the decree of the court, bring into question the right of the company to purchase squares 233 and 267, nor the right to erect on either of these a warehouse for the storage of freight. Nor does the question arise of their right to locate at that place such a depot as their business requires, nor to use it as such, if they have the right of access to it by using the streets and highways of the city for that purpose. This court does not, therefore, consider those questions, because the only point raised by the record is the right of the company to lay in or across the streets of the city their railroad track, and use it as a means of transit for its locomotives and cars, without any express authorization by act of congress, or the consent of any authority representing the city of Washington or the District of Columbia.