America's Unkempt Front Yard

Gallery

A Landmark Shows Its Wear

With its rusty fixtures, peeling paint and trampled lawn, the Mall has long been in need of a facelift.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

On a recent tour of the Mall, he pointed out the 1830s stone canal house at 17th Street and Constitution Avenue NW.

Passed by hundreds of tourists every day, the oldest structure on the Mall is heavily overgrown with bushes. Windows and doors are boarded up. The woodwork looks as if it hasn't been painted in years.

Nearby, the Bicentennial-era lake at Constitution Gardens, west of the World War II Memorial, is spotted with algae. Its stone border and east terrace are crumbling in places.

The souvenir and snack stand at 15th Street and Madison Drive NW resides under a torn and faded tent where visitors sit at metal picnic tables on dirty rubber matting amid trash cans and foraging crows.

Across the Tidal Basin, an area considered part of the Mall, the Jefferson Memorial's sea wall is sinking into the water. So much of the basin's southwest sea wall is overtopped at high tide that a footpath detour has been built.

"There are not a lot of things that don't have that nick or ding, or need a coat of paint," Akridge said.

Despite a few new restrooms and snack shops, a chronic scarcity of both remains, he said.

The Mall was part of the original 1791 plan formulated by Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the French-born architect hired by George Washington to design the capital.

It has undergone many changes. It was expanded with fill dredged from the Potomac River and then populated with the famous monuments and memorials.

In 1902, the Senate commissioned the McMillan Plan, an ambitious program for the Mall that was inspired by Europe's great parks.

The Park Service is working on a new plan for the Mall, seeking public input and weighing alternatives.

But some people want more than a plan. Judy Scott Feldman, head of the nonprofit National Coalition to Save Our Mall, says a new McMillan-like commission is needed.

"You can fix up things all you want," she said. "But really what we need is something bigger that deals with bigger issues."