THE WASHINGTON POST.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 2019EZ14
tion of Independence is unkempt.
There are plans to refurbish the
park and build a new pavilion (an
unnecessary intrusion). But noth-
ing has happened yet. The same is
true for President’s Park to the
north, which connects the Mall to
the White House grounds. It could
be one of the most beautiful places
in the city but is now merely a
wasteland of provisional security
barriers.
It was a challenge to create the
Mall, which required significant
destruction of existing buildings,
old trees and park land. Since then,
and with only a few exceptions, the
Mall has been kept open and the
line of sight unobstructed. But,
rather like swelling around a
wound, parks have burgeoned
along the great gash of green.
There are even stretches of the
Mall where you can walk between
parks that are almost contiguous,
and if you have an afternoon, it’s
worth the challenge: See the Mall
without stepping foot on it.Try this path:
Start at the Bartholdi Foun-
tain, which sits in a small park at
the base of Capitol Hill;
Continue into
the Botanic Gar-
den, where the
outdoor garden
space has been
maturing and fill-
ing out to the point
that it is genuinely
inviting;
Now look
across the street at
the construction
site of the Eisen-
hower Memorial,
where there will be
a new expanse of
green space when
the project is finished;
Continue into the gardens of
the National Museum of the
American Indian, some of the
best in the city, with a fountain
that will transport you to a canyon
in the Sierra Nevada or a waterfall
on an untamed river;
Keep going, past the National
Air and Space Museum, to the
Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden
and then to the large, formal
square of the Enid A. Haupt Gar-
den at the Smithsonian Castle.
Finally, duck into the Freer
Gallery of Art to admire the gar-
den courtyard in its center.
Now you have walked most of
the length of the space officially
known as the Mall (which stretch-
es from the Capitol to the Wash-
ington Monument), and except
for a few street crossings and bare
patches, you have been within
garden spaces that are made to a
human scale.
Wasn’t that better than your
usual path, down the center of
that big open space, full of tour-
ists, raked by the sun and full of
the cacophony of ice cream
trucks? Of course it was.
[email protected]environmentally constructive
and easy to use. Even a small
gesture can work wonders.
Across the wide expanse of In-
dependence Avenue SW from the
Mary Livingston Ripley Garden is
Earth Day Park, its homelier twin
along the axis of the Ninth Street
Expressway. It is less green, less
tended and more basic in its plant-
ings, and the noise of cars is ever
present. But it is land reclaimed
from the nihilism of concrete and
one is thankful for it, warts and all.
The park also leads to Hancock
Park behind the Federal Aviation
Administration building, a tree-
filled rectangle that wants some
love, but is delightful, none the
less, for being so hidden and so off
the usual tourist’s track.
The older buildings along the
Mall were often raised above street
level, on plinths, a now out-of-
fashion design idea that neverthe-
less encouraged the incorporation
of garden spaces that stand apart
from the civic topography. Some of
these offer ideal escapes. Along the
south face of the National Gallery
of Art’s West Building are two
large fountains,
surrounded by gar-
den enclosures,
and you might pass
by them a thou-
sand times with-
out noticing how
inviting they are. If
you want to eat a
sandwich, or just
take a break from a
run or a bike ride,
climb the steps and
find space on one
of the benches nes-
tled in the embrace
of the old, neoclas-
sical building. The Mall and all its
tumult will seem a thousand miles
away.
Some of the grander buildings
along the north side of the Mall
also offer green hideaways. Along
Constitution Avenue from 19th to
23rd streets NW, are several gar-
dens, some mere ornaments to the
institutional facades they comple-
ment, but others genuinely invit-
ing. The tone of National Acad-
emy of Sciences’ front yard is set
by Albert Einstein himself, whose
statue sits rumpled, and at ground
level, in the southwest corner of
its green space. On the other side
of the front garden is a lovely
outdoor arbor.
Some of these institutional
front yards look onto one of the
great, unrealized possibilities of
the Mall, which is Constitution
Gardens, an ill-tended and care-
worn park that was dedicated in- This is land reclaimed from
the Potomac River, and it is full of
potential. There is a gentle rise
and fall to the landscape, and a
large, shallow lake. But the lake is
filthy and the water is green, and
the humble but evocative memo-
rial to the signers of the Declara-
FROM PREVIOUS PAGEFrom the Cover
The best of [the
gardens] offer
amenable urban
escapes, quiet
spaces with shade
and a sense of
leafy enclosure.