Pierre Charles L'Enfant designed Washington in 1791 with a specific contrast in mind. In Paris, where he had grown up as the son of a court painter, the Gardens of Versailles spread out behind a palace - paid for by the people of France but reserved for the use of a privileged few. L'Enfant designed the National Mall as the opposite of that. He called it the Grand Avenue. It would be a democratic, egalitarian public space - a long lawn anchored by the Capitol where the people's representatives met, and stretching westward toward where the President would live. There was no palace garden. There was just the Mall, open to anyone who walked onto it. Two centuries later, the Mall hosts approximately 24 million visitors a year. It is where Martin Luther King Jr. spoke and where Marian Anderson sang. It is where presidents are inaugurated and where the rights to assemble and petition the government are exercised at scale.
The Mall proper extends 1.9 miles between the Capitol steps to the east and the Lincoln Memorial to the west, with the Washington Monument 1.2 miles from the Capitol marking the historical halfway point. Between Constitution Avenue NW and Independence Avenue SW, the Mall at its widest measures 1,586 feet across; the open central vista between the innermost rows of trees is 300 feet wide. The whole landscaped park covers 309.2 acres between the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. Pierre L'Enfant's original plan called for a Grand Avenue running due east from the Capitol's terraced grounds to the Potomac. The Washington Monument, planned as the western anchor of that axis, was built farther east of the planned spot because the original location's ground was too marshy to hold the obelisk's weight. The geometric purity of the axis is, as a result, slightly imperfect. The Lincoln Memorial later occupied the original line a half mile further west on landfill, restoring the symmetry.
Along the Mall, ten major Smithsonian museums anchor the north and south sides like a constellation of treasure houses. On the north (Madison Drive): the National Gallery of Art's West and East Buildings, the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of American History, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture - the youngest of the museums, dedicated in 2016. On the south (Jefferson Drive): the National Air and Space Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Arts and Industries Building, the original Smithsonian Castle (1849, the oldest), the Freer Gallery, the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, and the National Museum of African Art. The National Museum of the American Indian completes the easternmost southern position, dedicated in 2004. With one exception - the National Gallery, which is technically administered by its own board - all are part of the Smithsonian Institution. All offer free admission. Together they hold tens of millions of objects across art, history, science, anthropology, and aerospace.
Beyond the museums, the Mall hosts the monumental memorials that define Washington's visual identity. The Washington Monument rises 555 feet at the geographic and visual center. The Lincoln Memorial anchors the western end. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial - Maya Lin's polished black granite wall - lies northwest of Lincoln. The Korean War Veterans Memorial sits southeast of Lincoln, the World War II Memorial sits between the Washington Monument and Lincoln, and the Reflecting Pool stretches between them. South of the Mall proper, around the Tidal Basin, the Jefferson Memorial, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, the George Mason Memorial, and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial cluster around the cherry tree-lined water. The Capitol itself sits at the eastern terminus, with the Capitol Reflecting Pool and the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial at its base in Union Square - though as of 2011, Union Square is technically administered by the Architect of the Capitol rather than the National Park Service after a Congressional transfer.
Rows of American elm trees line the sides of the central path that traverses the length of the Mall. The elms are largely descendants of original plantings that survived Dutch elm disease in the twentieth century through aggressive arboricultural management - a National Park Service program of regular pruning, monitoring, and selective replacement. The Tidal Basin to the south is ringed by cherry trees, originally a 1912 gift from the city of Tokyo to the city of Washington. Both the elms and the cherries are essential to the Mall's seasonal character - cherry blossoms in late March or early April drawing more than a million visitors per peak weekend, the elms providing summer shade along the central walkway. The Smithsonian Gardens maintains roughly a dozen formal gardens around the museums, including the Enid A. Haupt Garden behind the Castle and the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden.
The Mall has been the staging ground for nearly every major political assembly in American history since the Civil War. Suffragists marched here in 1913. The Bonus Army of unemployed World War I veterans camped along Pennsylvania Avenue in 1932. Marian Anderson sang from the Lincoln Memorial steps in 1939. The 1963 March on Washington brought 250,000 people to the Reflecting Pool's edges. The 1969 Vietnam Moratorium drew about 500,000. The 1995 Million Man March, the 2000 Millennium March, the 2009 Obama inauguration, the 2017 Women's March - each in turn used the same long lawn between Capitol and Lincoln as a national amphitheater. The U.S. Park Police stopped publishing crowd estimates in 1996 after the Million Man March count became a political dispute. The Mall remains under the administration of the National Park Service's National Mall and Memorial Parks unit, with the exception of Union Square. It is, by L'Enfant's original design and by 235 years of use, the country's largest stage.
The National Mall is centered approximately at 38.8898 N, 77.0231 W. The 1.9-mile axis runs east-west from the U.S. Capitol at 38.8898 N, 77.0091 W, to the Lincoln Memorial at 38.8893 N, 77.0502 W. Best viewed from 1,500 to 3,500 feet AGL, though the entire Mall is inside the Washington Flight Restricted Zone with no GA overflight permitted - aerial views require approved operations. The Washington Monument at the visual center is the dominant landmark, with the Smithsonian museums lining both sides of the central lawn. Reagan National (KDCA) lies two nautical miles south. The Mall is most distinctive in aerial photography during the cherry blossom bloom in late March or early April.