National Mall Informations

The National Mall is a landscaped park within the National Mall and Memorial Parks, an official unit of the United States National Park System. It is located near the downtown area of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States, and is administered by the National Park Service (NPS) of the United States Department of the Interior.

The term National Mall commonly includes areas that are also officially part of neighboring West Potomac Park and Constitution Gardens to the southwest. The term is often taken to refer to the entire area between the Lincoln Memorial on the west and east to the United States Capitol grounds, with the Washington Monument dividing the area slightly west of its midpoint. A smaller designation sometimes referred to as the National Mall (proper) excludes both the Capitol grounds and the Washington Monument grounds, applying only to an area between them.

The National Mall contains and borders a number of museums of the Smithsonian Institution, art galleries, cultural institutions, and various memorials, sculptures, and statues. The park receives approximately 24 million visitors each year.

In his 1791 plan for the future city of Washington, D.C., Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant envisioned a garden-lined "grand avenue" approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) in lengthand 400 feet (120 m) wide, in an area that would lie between the Congress House (now the Capitol Building) and an equestrian statue of George Washington. The statue would be placed directly south of the President's House (now the White House) (see L'Enfant Plan). The National Mall (proper) occupies the site of this planned "grand avenue", which was never constructed.

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 the present line of Constitution Avenue, NW (formerly B Street, NW) and south around 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 and 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 (proper).

The Smithsonian Institution Building ("The Castle"), constructed from 1847 to 1855, is the oldest building now present on the National Mall (proper). The Washington Monument, whose construction began in 1848 and reached completion in 1888, stands near the planned site of its namesake's equestrian statue.

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 along B Street NW:

In 1856, the Armory (No. 27 on the 1893 map of the Mall) 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 (No. 25 on the map), was constructed in 1867–1868 on 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 on the south side of the Mall to B Street NW (the northern boundary of the Mall). The building was razed in 1930. In addition, greenhouses belonging to the U.S. Botanical Garden (No. 16 on the map) appeared near the east end of the Mall between the Washington City Canal and the Capitol (later between 1st and 3rd Streets).

Originating during the early 1800s as a collection of market stalls immediately north of the Washington City Canal and the Mall, the Center Market (No. 19 on the map), which Adolf Cluss also designed, opened in 1872 soon after the canal closed. Located on the north side of Constitution Avenue NW (formerly B Street 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 (B on the map) rose in 1873 on the north side of the Mall at the southwest corner of 6th Street and B Street NW (now the site of the west building of the National Gallery of Art).

In 1887, the Army Medical Museum and Library, which Adolph Class designed in 1885, opened on the Mall at northwest corner of B Street SW (now Independence Avenue 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 628 new acres of land. Part of the new land, which become West Potomac Park, expanded the Mall southward and westward (see 1893 map above).

In 1902, the McMillan Commission's plan, which was partially inspired by the City Beautiful Movement and which purportedly extended L'Enfant's plan, called for a radical redesign of the Mall that would replace its greenhouses, gardens, trees, and commercial/industrial facilities with an open space. The plan differed from L'Enfant's by replacing the 400 feet (120 m) wide "grand avenue" with a 300 feet (91 m) wide vista containing a long and broad expanse of grass. Four rows of American elm (Ulmus americana) trees planted fifty feet apart between two paths or streets would line each side of the vista. Buildings housing cultural and educational institutions constructed in the Beaux-Arts style would line each outer path or street, on the opposite side of the path or street from the elms.

In subsequent years, the vision of the McMillan plan was generally followed with the planting of American elms and the layout of four boulevards down the Mall, two on either side of a wide lawn. In accordance with a plan that it completed in 1976, the NPS converted the two innermost boulevards (Washington and Adams Drives) into gravel walking paths. The two outermost boulevards (Jefferson Drive Southwest (SW) and Madison Drive Northwest (NW)) remain paved and open to vehicular traffic.

In 1918 contractors for the United States Navy's Bureau of Yards and Docks constructed the "Main Navy" and "Munitions" Buildings along nearly a third of a mile of the south side of Constitution Avenue (then known as B Street), from 17th Street NW to 21st Street NW. Although the Navy intended the buildings to provide temporary quarters for the United States military during World War I, the reinforced concrete structures remained in place until 1970. Much of the buildings' area then became Constitution Gardens, which was dedicated in 1976.

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