Qualla: National Mall

National Mall: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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.

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National Mall: The McMillan Plan

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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 Sai...

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National Mall: Civic Sacred Space

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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...

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National Mall: The Museums

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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...

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National Mall: The Memorials

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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 t...

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National Mall: Practical Mall

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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 Sil...

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