1791 to 1850 1850 to 1900 1900 to 1950 1950 to 2000 2000 to present
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 e White U.S. Old Canal Smithsonian Sidney R. Smithsonian Washington Jamie L. National Lincoln Freer District of U.S. National omas National Hirshhorn National National Vietnam Arthur M. National Enid A. S. Dillon U.S. Korean War Franklin National National World Martin National House Capitol Lockkeeper’s “Castle” Yates Arts and Monument Whitten Museum Memorial Gallery Columbia Botanic Gallery of Je erson Museum of Museum Air and Gallery of Veterans Sackler Museum of Haupt Ripley Holocaust Veterans Delano Gallery Museum War II Luther Museum of 1800 1829 House 1855 Federal Industries 1884 Federal of Natural 1922 of Art War Garden Art West Memorial American and Space Art East Memorial Gallery African Art Garden Center Memorial Memorial Roosevelt of Art of the Memorial King Jr. African (Year (Year it was 1833 Building Building (Construction Building History 1923 Memorial 1933 Building 1943 History Sculpture Museum Building 1982 1987 1987 1987 1987 Museum 1995 Memorial Sculpture American 2004 Memorial American President originally 1880 1881 began 1908 1910 1931 1941 1964 Garden 1976 1978 1993 1997 Garden Indian 2011 History and Adams considered in 1848.) 1974 1999 2004 Culture moved in.) finished.) 2016
Three-tiered corona Newest addition The National Museum of African American History and Culture 200-YEAR doesn’t look like anything else on the Mall. Nearly every design detail was inspired by something in African Porch (main entrance) Kennedy American culture, from its external latticework “corona” that is transformation Center shaped like Yoruban wood carvings to the shaded entrance porch that is meant to evoke family gathering and storytelling spots.
e centerpiece of the e iconic Reflecting Pool e Old Canal Lockkeeper’s When builders were excavating the site, they found gate pieces Vietnam Veterans Memorial, was constructed in 1922. House was built along the from the old canal that crossed the area in the 19th century. from MARSH to MALL finished in 1982, is not a When viewed at certain Washington City Canal, soaring building but a solemn, angles, the pool reflects which ran through the Mall Gaithersburg sunken, black marble wall images of the Lincoln in the 1800s and linked to Lafayette that lists more than 58,000 Memorial or the Theodore that lists more than 58,000 Memorial or the the Chesapeake and Ohio Park B A S , P K A B B Sandy Highland Roosevelt names of those who died. Washington Monument. Canal. President Spring Memorial Washington hoped the 1 Rockville Bridge District would be a major port, but it was not to Great 270 Falls Potomac Burtonsville 95 be. e city canal was Jessup e Washington Monument Reston Savage filled in in the 1870s. was built near the spot where Looking to the future The Mall as it is today CONSTITUTION AVENUE L’Enfant had envisioned a statue In 2003, in response to concerns that the Mall was becoming overstu ed with Cabin Severn The original idea for the John Bethesda Fort of Washington on a horse. But buildings and monuments, Congress declared that it was “a substantially completed 95 Meade the soil wasn’t stable enough work of civic art.” But advocates of new memorials and museums still covet a spot Mall — a grand, tree-lined Beltsville 20 MARYLAND for the giant obelisk, so it was on the nation’s most symbolically powerful open space. A new visitors center for 495 10 495 relocated well east and slightly the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is coming, and the Smithsonian plans to radically avenue flanked by imposing66 WASHINGTON Gambrills south of the third point of reconfigure its south Mall campus. Pressure could build to place a planned Latin buildings — goes back to 50 D.C. Glenn L’Enfant’s triangle — an Fairfax American museum on the Mall as well. WASHINGTON Lanham Dale Ellipse the very originsStation of the imperfection that has vexed AnnandaleVIRGINIA 3 city planners ever since. Burke 50 Arlington capital city, Pierre 395 MAP DETAIL MemorialBowie Constitution L’Enfant’s plan conceived Bridge Gardens 17TH STREET 95 Alexandria for George Washington. But N 495 26
in Washington, plans rarely go 495 INDEPENDENCE AVENUE 30 95 5 MILES 301 7 1 Andrews Air 32 Shops and a financial e Capitol and the Force Base as planned, so the Mall has been 12 district sprouted along White House were the maps4news.com/©HERE Fort Pennsylvania Avenue, but District’s first major a work in progressWoodbridge for more than 200 years. 31 15TH STREET 16 95 Belvoir in the late 1800s and into public buildings, and At times, in the 19th century, it was a free-for-all of mixed uses, and far the 1900s it became a both would need to West Potomac PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE tawdry eyesore lined with be rebuilt a er the from a civic showplace. Later, it hostedAccokeek elegant parks, a market and a Park Brandywine 9 tattoo parlors and cheap British burned the Bryans 301 train station. In the 20th century,Road it was cleared — though this took a hotels. city in 1814. long time — to make the space we know now. But today, there are fears 28 5 that it has become too full, dilapidated, and needs more care, more 8 Waldorf e Martin Luther In 1912, the first 3,020 money, better governance and perhaps a new plan for a new century. King Jr. Memorial was of Washington’s cherry 14 dedicated on Aug. 28, trees arrived from Japan 24 4 2mi 2011, the 48th and were planted in and 25 11 Cherry 19 anniversary of the around the Mall a er a 27 Blossoms March on Washington previous batch of unhealthy 6 for Jobs and Freedom ones had to be destroyed. The Mall 17 Union Defining the Mall and his “I Have a Station Dream” speech. 21 Plaza The Mall is a loose term for the public lands around and between the Lincoln Memorial 22 18 and the Capitol. Here are three di erent ways the National Park Service defines the area. Tidal 23 15 Basin 29 Capitol 2 e Franklin Reflecting Delano Roosevelt Pool Potomac Memorial is a series River George Mason of open, granite Memorial 13 rooms representing Capitol themes from his four Visitor terms in oce. Center
“ e Mall” “ e National Mall” “Reserve” 14th Street e imposing, red-brick e curved limestone Generally considered Includes the Lincoln and Also includes the Bridge Army Medical Museum and facade of the National the green space Je erson memorials, the White House and Library building stood here Museum of the American between the Washington Washington Monument the Capitol building. from the 1880s until 1969, Indian is meant to evoke e U.S. Botanic Monument and the as well as the “Mall” when it was razed to make wind-swept rock formations, Garden dates to Capitol building. green space. Washington way for the Hirshhorn part of the natural world the 1820s but Channel Museum and Sculpture that is so prominent in moved to its current Garden. Native American culture. location in 1933.
How the area evolved How the area looked before 1800 ... in 1800 ... in 1860 ... in 1900 ... in 1940
Native Americans hunted and gathered Pennsylvania Avenue, named by Political squabbling halted Railroad tracks ran in and out of a station, “Temporary” war buildings lasted food from the estuary area around Tiber omas Je erson in 1791, would become construction of the Washington which sat where the National Gallery of Art until 1971, when they were razed to Creek, which was also called Goose or Washington’s first downtown street. L’Enfant Monument in 1858. For decades, West Building is now. make way for Constitution Gardens. Original Tuber Creek. intended it to connect the Capitol to the it was merely a stump. shoreline White House. President’s Palace (White House)
PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE West Potomac Lincoln Park Memorial Tiber Creek Canal Future site of Washington the Washington Monument Smithsonian Tidal Congress House Je erson Monument Castle Basin Current (north wing of future Memorial shoreline Capitol building)
Current Mall footprint L’Enfant chose to put the Capitol building on Jenkins Hill, Construction on the which he called “a pedestal Smithsonian Castle began In the late 1800s, a dredging Builders moved a sea wall and filled waiting for a monument.” in 1847, a year a er the project created land that in land to align the Je erson Memorial President Washington laid Smithsonian Institution would become West with the White House. e unstable the cornerstone in 1793. was established. Potomac Park. ground has been a problem ever since.
Before the capital city L’Enfant creates a plan (1791-1860) A war brings clarity (1860-1900) A new direction (1900-1940) e modern Mall arises (1940-present) In the beginning, before Washington had been designated the nation’s capital, The idea for the Mall came from L’Enfant, a French engineer commissioned Through much of the 19th century, the city’s canal was e ectively a sewer, and In 1902, a Senate commission issued the McMillan Plan, which reimagined the Not everything in the McMillan Plan came to pass. The postwar decades much of the Mall was an empty lowland along the Potomac, made yet marshier by President Washington in 1791 to develop a plan for the country’s seat of the Mall was a chaotic hodgepodge. Its first major building, the Smithsonian Mall as the centerpiece of a larger, grander federal district. The Mall was conceived became a period of increasingly contentious argument about the design, by the Tiber Creek, which flowed into the river not far from where the government. L’Enfant imagined something more like a grand, tree-lined “Castle,” was a Romanesque pastiche style design, and for a while, it seemed as a symbolic memorial to the Civil War and reconciliation, with the Lincoln meaning and purpose of the Mall. Maya Lin’s evocative-but-radical design Washington Monument stands today. In the early 17th century, the most likely avenue, flanked by embassies and gardens. He also envisioned a canal as if the architecture of the city and the Mall might lean toward brick, color, Memorial at one end, a memorial to Grant at the Capitol and Arlington Memorial for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial sparked furious debate and eventually inhabitants of the land were members of the Nacotchtank tribe, but the incursion running along its north side, crossing south in front of the Capitol, and Northern European styles. The Civil War transformed Washington from a Bridge linking the North to the South. The plan got rid of gardens, trees, old changed the meaning of the Mall and memorialization. The grand, of European settlers into the area greatly depleted them. At the time Washington connecting to the Anacostia River. Few of the details of L’Enfant’s plan were muddy group of villages to a bustling national center. The Mall became a more buildings and railroad tracks and extended the vast esplanade to the west. In the celebratory and mainly classical style was no longer the reflexive was chosen as the capital, and for long after, the whole area was prone to realized, although the canal was finished by 1815, making much of this part established space, though it lacked the open, axial clarity L’Enfant had following decades, the major classical-inflected federal buildings we know today architectural response, though it would recur in the design of the National flooding, and was mainly used for grazing. of the city an island. originally planned. were built, and the east end of the Mall emerged as a center for cultural buildings. World War II Memorial in the new century.
Sources: “AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C.” by G. Martin Moeller Jr.; “Monument Wars,” by Kirk Savage; “Washington through Two Centuries: A History in Maps and Images,” by Joseph R. Passonneau; Architect of the Capitol; National Gallery of Art; National Park Service; U.S. Forest Service; Smithsonian Institution archives; individual museum websites