Understand
D.C.'s city planner, Pierre L'Enfant, planned the park as the cultural center of the city in the late eighteenth century, but while it today seems impossible to imagine the city without it, it took until the beginning of the twentieth century for the government to get its act together and complete it. The plan at its most basic was to connect with grand vistas the three most highly symbolic monuments of the republic: the political center of the republic, the Capitol Building, on the east; the monument to the founder of the republic, George Washington, at the center; and the monument to the leader who saved the republic, Abraham Lincoln, on the west. The collection of monuments has expanded with the times to include enormous constructions for other presidents, the most notable being those for Thomas Jefferson and for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as well as recent wars: World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War arguably the most moving memorial in the city. Construction continues with the tide of history—a new monumental sculpture of Martin Luther King, Jr. was unveiled in the summer of 2011.
Aside from the political powers that be, the main tenant on the Mall is the Smithsonian Institute, a government-run research and educational institution established in 1846 for the "increase and diffusion of Knowledge among men." Starting out with but a mere castle to its name, the Smithsonian has over the past 100 years established an extraordinary collection of free public museums unparalleled in size and scope throughout the history of mankind, the majority of which are in the eastern one-mile stretch of the park. The public favorites are the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of Natural History, famed for their respective magnificent collections of U.S. spacecraft and complete dinosaur fossils. The expansion continues, with the much anticipated National Museum of African American History and Culture slated for completion in 2015.
Monuments, museums, and memorials can easily distract a tourist from the actual significance of the Mall. The Mall is not simply a tribute to American history, it is where American history is made. The three branches of the government find their headquarters here, and the president as well as the country's congressional representatives and senators look out from their workplace upon the park the Supreme Court got the short end of the stick, with just a view of the front of the Capitol Building. The Mall serves as the principal gathering space for the nation's most important civic events, especially major protests and, of course, inaugural events. Likely the most powerful event to occur on the Mall in recent memory was the 1963 March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his I Have a Dream speech.
