A long-simmering battle for supremacy is being waged by two Capitol Hill newspapers — no, not the Post and the Times. Nor is it Express and the Examiner.

While subscription dailies bemoan the loss of readers and whine about circulation, free newspapers seem to be going great guns — at least on the Hill.

The Voice of the Hill recently announced its plan to go twice a month with its free, tabloid-size newsmagazine. Its rival, Hill Rag, has gone a different route, expanding its issues geographically to the east and north.

The financial secrets of the two papers are likely to remain just that — secret — as both are privately owned. Also, both are free, both are home-delivered to Hill neighborhoods and both are freely available at what the industry ungraciously calls “dumps” at high-traffic locations such as the central entrance to the Eastern Market and large restaurants and shops.

And neither local paper will admit it’s engaged in the time-honored business of trying to wipe out its rival.

The Voice of the Hill is the newcomer to the local free-newspaper business. It’s owned by Bruce and Adele Robey and was piloted by founding editor Stephanie Cavanaugh six years ago. Publisher Jean-Keith Fagon started Hill Rag 29 years ago and expanded it with East of the River and DC North editions in the past two years.

Seismic change came to the Voice this year when it “merged” (to use the agreed upon euphemism for a buyout) with the Currant Newspapers owned by David Kennedy, an experienced newsman with a trail through local newspaperdom including the Gazette papers, the Alexandria Port Packet and the Baltimore Sun. He also owns the Northwest Current and Georgetown Current, both weeklies since 1997. The Voice is now The Capitol Hill Current Voice of the Hill.

Kennedy’s plan, he said, it to take the Voice of the Hill weekly “eventually.”

“We have found that twice a month is old news. Real-estate advertisements in monthlies are institutional. We want to list houses for sale,” he said. Kennedy plans to use hard news rather than features to lead the paper and has already made changes in that direction.

Editor Patti Shea says the move to two, and eventually four, editions or more per month is in keeping with the amount of news the Hill generates. “There’s just so much going on on Capitol Hill,” she said.

Over at the Rag, where the stock in trade is upbeat features with seldom a dark note, Executive Editor Melissa Ashabranner is in denial about the rivalry.

“We focus on the needs of our customers and on improving our publications,” she said. “Since our revenues and the number of our advertisers have more than doubled in the five years since the Voice began publishing, it’s clearly a strategy that works.”

But longtime readers of the Rag’s uncritical articles notice a harder edge, brought in by the astute Peter Waldron, a former Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6B chairman who penned a highly critical assessment of rising Hill political star Tommy Wells (D).

Ashabranner and Fagon also have a strong card in their free yearly Fagon Community Guide to Capitol Hill, an ad-saturated listing of businesses, services, schools, churches etc. It hangs near the kitchen telephone in thousands of Hill homes.

Executives at both publications believe the two free papers may complement one another.

Fountain repair to cost $4.3 million

The famed Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi fountain at the western foot of Capitol Hill is tottering, attached to its base by only one 80-percent-corroded bolt — despite an expensive 1986 overhaul by the architect of the Capitol.

A recent test of the fountain’s supports showed two of the three massive bolts holding the 40-ton landmark on its base to have rusted through and the third nearly so, according to a Bartholdi Park worker.

Flaws in the plumbing have forced the U.S. Botanical Garden to turn off the water. The famed naked sea nymphs, whose apparent job is to support a cascade, now glare at a scummy pond.

Bartholdi also sculpted the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor; D.C.’s fountain cost only $6,000 to buy after the 1876 centennial exhibition in Philadelphia. It came here at the suggestion of Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect of the Capitol, and except for the years 1927-1932, spent in storage, it has remained in place on Independence Avenue S.W.

Bartholdi considered the fountain a masterwork suitable for cities all over the world, but only Reims, France, the capital of champagne country, agreed with him and bought one. The casting has disappeared.

A 1986 restoration replaced plumbing and support bolts, restored the surface finish and renewed the wiring; but that job was not long lasting. Architect of the Capitol Alan Hantman, pleading with Congress for $4.3 million to restore the fountain last year, said the ‘86 repair was only expected to last for 10 years, though he gave no explanation as to why.

Cluss celebration masks shoddy reality

If you want to see how the city cares for its buildings, go first to the perfect halls of the Wilson Building (formerly the District Building) at 13th Street and Independence Avenue S.W. Or to 1 Judiciary Square, where the top bureaucrats hang out.

There you find the marble, the granite, the quiet air conditioning and the clean corridors, the luxurious suites and walnut meeting tables with leather seats attendant. But of course this is where public servants spend their working days (before driving off, most of them, to the suburbs).

Then go to Eastern Market, where the taxpayers shop and meet. See the peeling paint, the faded windows, the worn doors, the dirty corners, the restroom that would shame a run-down motel. You can almost sense the rats in the cellar. That contrast is increased this week as the city observes the 100th anniversary of the death of Adolf Cluss, Eastern Market’s great architect.

Saturday at 10 a.m., Mayor Anthony Williams (D) will be there with other notables, including the lord mayor of Heilbronn, the German city Cluss left to make his way to America. A German-American band will perform.

The fanfare covers up reality — that the city has done a miserable job of preserving, much less improving, this urban treasure, the only original Civil War-era food market still operating. The walls of the market seep with moisture; the place swelters and stinks through the summer, shrinks and shivers through the winter. Yet the latest “improvement” to be suggested for the market is the ridiculous suggestion that a sprinkler system be installed at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The blame does not lie with Eastern Market Manager Stuart Smith, who may attend the unveiling of a modest plaque to Cluss, and it certainly doesn’t lie with the thousands of citizen-hours spent on meetings, letter writing, phone calls, reports, plans, etc., etc. to save the building as a food market.

The blame lies squarely with the bureaucrats of the D.C. Office of Property Management who have delayed and derailed, deceived and betrayed this important building simply because of their own ineptitude and sloth. They are paid the same, do nothing or do something. That is why the new posters, proclaiming Cluss, are the only fresh and pleasant thing about this “celebration” in the city of waste.

The city’s attitude showed clearly after 1975, when $700,000 was given through an Interior Department grant to restore the building. In return was a city promise to “maintain the improvements.” D.C. reneged on the promise, broke its word, lifted not a finger.

METRO

• Barry Watch: Marion Barry (D), the former mayor and current councilman for Ward 8, struck a high note after troubling reports he’s paid no taxes for the past seven years, introducing a bill to subsidize the financially troubled Center for Mental Health in Anacostia, which treats high-risk children and their parents. ...

• Hill history buff Nelson Rimensnyder, the man who saved the Boss Shepherd statue from ignominy this year, is back on a case: He wants a quarter minted for D.C., just like the other states. And he has a design and a theme. On one side the image of Benjamin Banneker; on the other the image of the Frederick Douglass home in Anacostia. Congress has thrice added the city to the quarter-program list but has failed to fund the coins. ...

• Embarrassing gaffe during the filming of the “The Good Shepherd” last week at 6th and A streets N.E. The film depicts the life of famed CIA spook James Jesus Angleton during the 1950s; a neighborhood scene featured school kids. Then someone remembered that in 1950 Hill schools were segregated. Black extras, dressed for the job, were whisked away, to be replaced by white faces. ...

• The Capitol Hill Arts Workshop holds its annual dress/fundraising ball Nov. 4, with ticket info at www.chaw.org, but here’s the new twist: the popular arts organization at 545 7th St. S.E. is offering “brush up” courses in ballroom dancing every Friday from 7 to 8:30 p.m. for a $10 “suggested” donation. ...

• The vision of baseball and the Nationals remaining at RFK Stadium on the Hill got a big boost from mayoral candidate and City Council Chairwoman Linda Cropp. The sensible solution to the whole stadium issue has always loomed along the Anacostia, either to enlarge RFK or build anew there on land the city already controls. Cropp said $200 million could be saved. ...

• Hill rowers at Capital Rowing Club burned with envy as they watched “Commander in Chief,” the new presidential series starring Geena Davis. The opener showed Davis working out in a single scull (and managing quite well) while in the background was the unmistakable red dock of rival Potomac Boat Club, the senior rowing institution in town.