When Pierre L'Enfant sketched the federal city in 1791, he drew a 400-foot-wide ceremonial promenade running west from the Capitol toward the Potomac - a grand avenue, he called it, lined with stately gardens and public buildings. For most of the next century, the National Mall did not look like a grand avenue. In the 1840s, residents kept cabbage patches there. The Washington City Canal, an open sewer by the time it was filled in, ran along the northern edge. A Baltimore and Ohio Railroad station sat where the National Gallery of Art now stands. Steam locomotives shrieked across the grass twenty-four hours a day. About thirty people a year died crossing the surface-level tracks. On July 2, 1881, President James Garfield was shot in the back at the B and O station four months into his term and died eleven weeks later. The Mall that twenty-five million Americans now visit annually is essentially a creation of the twentieth century.
In 1900, the centennial year of the federal city's founding, Congress empaneled the Senate Park Commission - headed by Michigan Senator James McMillan, with Daniel Burnham as architect, Charles McKim as architect, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. as landscape architect, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens as sculptor - to develop a comprehensive plan for the city. The commissioners toured European capitals in the summer of 1901 to study Versailles, Paris, Rome, and Vienna. They returned to Washington with the McMillan Plan, presented to Congress on January 15, 1902. The plan called for the removal of the railroad station from the Mall, the consolidation of all Smithsonian and federal museum buildings into a coordinated arrangement along the central greensward, the dredging and reshaping of the Tidal Basin, the construction of the Lincoln Memorial at the western end of an extended Mall axis, the demolition of buildings encroaching on the grass, and the planting of paired rows of American elms. Most of the plan was actually executed - the railroad station moved to Union Station in 1907, the Mall was cleared of its accumulated clutter, the Lincoln Memorial was built (1922), the Tidal Basin was reshaped, and elm trees were planted. The Mall as visitors today encounter it is essentially the realization of a Beaux-Arts vision from 1901.
Almost every major American civic gathering of the twentieth century happened on the National Mall. The Bonus Army marched there in 1932. The 1939 Marian Anderson concert at the Lincoln Memorial - after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused her use of Constitution Hall - drew 75,000 listeners. The August 28, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom drew 250,000 people, and from the Lincoln Memorial steps Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the I Have a Dream speech. The Vietnam War Moratorium of October 1969 brought a half million people. Robert Kennedy's funeral train arrived at Union Station; Kennedy's body was driven the length of the Mall to Arlington. Reagan's funeral in 2004 used the same route. The 1995 Million Man March, the 1997 Promise Keepers gathering, the 2009 Obama inauguration that drew 1.8 million people - the largest crowd in the Mall's history - all happened on the same patch of grass. The Mall is functionally America's central plaza. It works because it was designed to.
Eleven of the nineteen Smithsonian museums sit on or adjacent to the Mall, all free to enter. Working from west to east on the south side: the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; the Smithsonian Castle (the institution's first building, designed by James Renwick Jr. and opened in 1855); the National Museum of African Art (underground); the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (also underground); the Freer Gallery of Art; and the National Air and Space Museum (1976), the Mall's most-visited building. On the north side: the National Museum of African American History and Culture (2016, the newest); the National Museum of American History; the National Museum of Natural History (with the Hope Diamond, Henry the Elephant in the rotunda, and the dinosaur halls that draw children and biologists in equal measure); the National Gallery of Art (West Building and East Building, plus the sculpture garden); and the Newseum (now closed, though the building stands). Two and a half million people each visit Air and Space, Natural History, and African American History every year. The combined Smithsonian draws about 25 million visits annually.
At the western end of the Mall stand the memorials. The Washington Monument, completed in 1884 after thirty-six years of construction, rises 555 feet - the tallest stone obelisk in the world. The lower third (built from 1848 to 1854) is a slightly different color than the upper two-thirds (built 1879 to 1884) because the original quarry was abandoned during the construction pause and a different quarry was used when work resumed. The Lincoln Memorial sits at the far western end, completed in 1922. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982), Maya Lin's controversial design when she was 21 - a black granite wall sunk into the earth with the names of 58,318 dead - has become one of the most-visited monuments in the United States. The Korean War Veterans Memorial (1995), the World War II Memorial (2004), the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial (1997), the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial (2011), and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial (1943) complete the constellation. The memorials cluster between the Lincoln Memorial and the Tidal Basin. The walk from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial is exactly two miles. People underestimate the distance constantly.
The Mall is best explored on foot or by Capital Bikeshare. Driving on or near the Mall is a frustrating experience - chronic congestion, limited parking, confusing one-way streets that reverse direction during rush hours. The Smithsonian Metro station on the Blue, Orange, and Silver lines exits directly onto the Mall. Federal Center SW is convenient for the easternmost museums; L'Enfant Plaza, the Smithsonian, and Foggy Bottom serve other portions. Most museum buildings open at 10 AM and close at 5:30 PM, every day except Christmas. Food on the Mall is mainly the carts and the cafeterias inside the museums; better lunch options sit in the East End along 7th Street. The most popular strategy for first-time visitors is museums by day, monuments by night. The memorials become spectacular after sundown when the white marble and the spotlights and the reflected dome of the Capitol all combine into something you cannot get during daylight hours. The summer monument crowds extend well past midnight, even in heat that has not broken since Memorial Day.
The National Mall runs from the U.S. Capitol at 38.8899 degrees N, 77.0091 degrees W westward to the Lincoln Memorial at 38.8893 degrees N, 77.0502 degrees W, with the Washington Monument at the center near 38.8895 degrees N, 77.0353 degrees W. From the air the Mall reads as a long green rectangle bordered by museums on both sides, with the Tidal Basin and West Potomac Park extending the corridor southwest from the Washington Monument. Best viewed at 2,000 to 4,000 feet AGL; the entire site lies within the Washington FRZ and the prohibited area P-56A. Nearest airports are Ronald Reagan Washington National (KDCA) 3 nm south, College Park (KCGS) 7 nm northeast, and Washington Dulles (KIAD) 22 nm west.