The Mall Travel Guide

One of the main features of L'Enfant's grand plan for Washington was a large central parkland. Today the two-mile-long Mall stretches west from the Capitol to the Potomac River. It wasn't always such a carefully manicured park, however: when the Capitol was built, it looked out across a muddy, bug-infested swamp and, by the 1870s, the south side was lined by meat-markets and warehouses and crisscrossed by railroad tracks. For a time a stark reminder of L'Enfant's unfulfilled dream, the Washington Monument was left unfinished for more than twenty years, an ugly stone stump cut off halfway.

The Mall has become DC's most popular green space, used for summer softball games and Fourth of July concerts. Yet its central role in a planned capital city also places it at the very heart of the country's political and social life. When there's a protest gesture to be made, the Mall is the place to make it, whether it's a demonstration by the Million Men marchers of black America, a mass prayer meeting of the Promise Keepers, or the unveiling of the commemorative AIDS Memorial Quilt. In addition to numerous museums, it boasts a quartet of presidential monuments, along with the White House and the powerful Vietnam and Korean war veterans memorials