National Mall


The National Mall is a landscaped park near the downtown area of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. It contains and borders a number of museums of the Smithsonian Institution, art galleries, cultural institutions, and memorials, sculptures, and statues. It is administered by the National Park Service of the United States Department of the Interior as part of the National Mall and Memorial Parks unit of the National Park System. The park receives approximately 24 million visitors each year. Designed by Pierre L'Enfant, the "Grand Avenue" or Mall was to be a democratic and egalitarian space—unlike palace gardens, such as those at Versailles in France, that were paid for by the people but reserved for the use of a privileged few.
The core area of the National Mall extends between the United States Capitol grounds to the east and the Washington Monument to the west and is lined to the north and south by several museums and federal office buildings. The term National Mall may also include areas that are officially part of neighboring West Potomac Park to the south and west and Constitution Gardens to the north, extending to the Lincoln Memorial on the west and Jefferson Memorial to the south.

Landmarks, museums, and other features

Within the National Mall proper

The National Mall proper contains the following landmarks, museums and other features :
Not marked on the above image:
With the exception of the National Gallery of Art, all of the museums on the National Mall proper are part of the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian Gardens maintains a number of gardens and landscapes near its museums. These include:
  • Common Ground: Our American Garden
  • Enid A. Haupt Garden
  • Freer Gallery of Art Courtyard Garden
  • Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
  • Kathrine Dulin Folger Rose Garden
  • Mary Livingston Ripley Garden
  • National Air and Space Museum landscape
  • Native landscape at the National Museum of the American Indian
  • Pollinator Garden
  • Urban Bird Habitat
  • Victory Garden

    East of the National Mall proper

Features east of the National Mall proper include:
  • United States Capitol and its grounds
  • Union Square, containing:
  • Peace Monument
  • United States Botanic Garden
  • James A. Garfield Monument

    West of the National Mall proper and in West Potomac Park

Not included in the above map:

Boundaries and dimensions

Dimensions

  • Between the Capitol steps and the Lincoln Memorial, the Mall spans 1.9 miles.
  • Between the Capitol steps and the Washington Monument, the Mall spans 1.2 miles.
  • Between the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial, the Mall covers 309.2 acres.
  • Between Constitution Avenue NW and Independence Avenue SW at 7th Street, the width of the Mall is.
  • Between Madison Drive NW and Jefferson Drive SW at 7th Street, the width of the Mall's open space is.
  • Between the innermost rows of trees near 7th Street, the width of the Mall's vista is.

    Boundaries

In its 1981 National Register of Historic Places nomination form, the NPS defined the boundaries of the National Mall as Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues on the north, 1st Street NW on the east, Independence and Maryland Avenues on the south, and 14th Street NW on the west, with the exception of the section of land bordered by Jefferson Drive on the north, Independence Avenue on the south, and by 12th and 14th Streets respectively on the east and west, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture administers and which contains the Jamie L. Whitten Building. The 2012–2016 National Park Service index describes the National Mall as being a landscaped park that extends from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, defined as a principal axis in the L'Enfant Plan for the city of Washington.
A 2010 NPS plan for the Mall contains maps that show the Mall's general area to be larger. A document within the plan describes this area as "the grounds of the U.S. Capitol west to the Potomac River, and from the Thomas Jefferson Memorial north to Constitution Avenue". A map within the plan entitled "National Mall Areas" illustrates "The Mall" as being the green space bounded on the east by 3rd Street, on the west by 14th Street, on the north by Jefferson Drive, NW, and on the south by Madison Drive, SW. A Central Intelligence Agency map shows the Mall as occupying the space between the Lincoln Memorial and the United States Capitol.
In 2011, the 112th United States Congress enacted the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2012, which transferred to the Architect of the Capitol the NPS "property which is bounded on the north by Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, on the east by First Street Northwest and First Street Southwest, on the south by Maryland Avenue Southwest, and on the west by Third Street Southwest and Third Street Northwest". This act removed Union Square, the area containing the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial and the Capitol Reflecting Pool, from NPS jurisdiction.

Purposes

The National Park Service states that the purposes of the National Mall are to:
  • Provide a monumental, dignified, and symbolic setting for the governmental structures, museums, and national memorials as first delineated by the L'Enfant plan and further outlined in the McMillan plan.
  • Maintain and provide for the use of the National Mall with its public promenades as a completed work of civic art, a designed historic landscape providing extraordinary vistas to symbols of the nation.
  • Maintain National Mall commemorative works that honor presidential legacies, distinguished public figures, ideas, events, and military and civilian sacrifices and contributions.
  • Forever retain the West Potomac Park section of the National Mall as a public park for the recreation and enjoyment of the people.
  • Maintain the National Mall in the heart of the nation's capital as a stage for national events and a preeminent national civic space for public gatherings because it is here that the constitutional rights of speech and peaceful assembly find their fullest expression.
  • Maintain the National Mall as an area free of commercial advertising while retaining the ability to recognize sponsors."

    History

L'Enfant City Plan

In his 1791 plan for the future city of Washington, D.C., Pierre Charles L'Enfant envisioned a garden-lined "grand avenue" approximately 1 mile in length
and wide, in an area that would lie between the Congress House and an equestrian statue of George Washington. The statue would be placed directly south of the President's House and directly west of the Congress House on the site of the Washington Monument. The grand avenue was to be flanked by gardens and spacious accommodations for foreign ministers.
Mathew Carey's 1802 map is reported to be the first to name the area west of the United States Capitol as the "Mall". The name is derived from that of The Mall in London, which during the 1700s was a fashionable promenade near Buckingham Palace upon which the city's elite strolled.
The Washington City Canal, completed in 1815 in accordance with the L'Enfant Plan, travelled along the former course of Tiber Creek to the Potomac River along B Street Northwest and south along the base of a hill containing the Congress House, thus defining the northern and eastern boundaries of the Mall. Being shallow and often obstructed by silt, the canal served only a limited role and became an open sewer that poured sediment and waste into the Potomac River's flats and shipping channel. The portion of the canal that traveled near the Mall was covered over in 1871 for sanitary reasons.
Some consider a lockkeeper's house constructed in 1837 near the western end of the Washington City Canal for an eastward extension of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal to be the oldest building still standing on the National Mall. The structure, which is located near the southwestern corner of 17th Street NW and Constitution Avenue NW, is west of the National Mall.
The Smithsonian Institution Building, constructed from 1847 to 1855, is the oldest building now present on the National Mall. The Washington Monument, whose construction began in 1848 and reached completion in 1888, stands near the planned site of its namesake's equestrian statue. The Jefferson Pier marks the planned site of the statue.

Downing Plan: Mid-19th century

During the early 1850s, architect and horticulturist Andrew Jackson Downing designed a landscape plan for the Mall. Over the next half century, federal agencies developed several naturalistic parks within the Mall in accordance with Downing's plan. Two such areas were Henry Park and Seaton Park.
During that period, the Mall was subdivided into several areas between B Street Northwest and B Street Southwest :
  • The Public Grounds between 2nd and 6th Streets NW and SW
  • The Armory Grounds between 6th and 7th Streets NW and SW
  • The Smithsonian Grounds between 7th and 12th Streets NW and SW
  • The Agricultural Grounds between 12th and 14th Streets NW and SW
  • The Monument Grounds between 14th and 17th Streets NW and SW
In 1856, the Armory was built at the intersection of B Street SW and 6th Street SW on the Armory Grounds. In 1862, during the American Civil War, the building was converted to a military hospital known as Armory Square Hospital to house Union Army casualties. After the war ended, the Armory building became the home of the United States Fish Commission.
The United States Congress established the United States Department of Agriculture in 1862 during the Civil War. Designed by Adolf Cluss and Joseph von Kammerhueber, the United States Department of Agriculture Building, was constructed in 1867–1868 north of B Street SW within a 35-acre site on the Mall.
After the Civil War ended, the Department of Agriculture started growing experimental crops and demonstration gardens on the Mall. These gardens extended from the department's building near the south side of the Mall to B Street NW. The building was razed in 1930. In addition, greenhouses belonging to the U.S. Botanical Garden appeared near the east end of the Mall between the Washington City Canal and the Capitol.
Originating during the early 1800s as a collection of market stalls immediately north of the Washington City Canal and the Mall, the Center Market, which Adolf Cluss also designed, opened in 1872 soon after the canal closed. Located on the north side of Constitution Avenue NW, the National Archives now occupies the Market's site.
During that period, railroad tracks crossed the Mall on 6th Street, west of the Capitol. Near the tracks, several structures were built over the years. The Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station rose in 1873 on the north side of the Mall at the southwest corner of 6th Street and B Street NW.
In 1881, the Arts and Industries Building, known originally as the National Museum Building, opened on the north side of B Street SW to the east of "The Castle". Designed in 1876 by Adolf Cluss and his associates, the building is the second oldest still standing on the National Mall.
In 1887, the Army Medical Museum and Library, which Adolf Cluss designed in 1885, opened on the Mall at northwest corner of B Street SW and 7th Street SW. The Smithsonian Institution's Hirshhorn Museum now occupies the site of the building, which was demolished in 1968.
Meanwhile, in order to clean up the Potomac Flats and to make the Potomac River more navigable, in 1882 Congress authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the river. The Corps used the sediment removed from the shipping channel to fill in the flats. The work started in 1882 and continued until 1911, creating the Tidal Basin and 628 new acres of land. Part of the new land, which became West Potomac Park, expanded the Mall southward and westward.