Posts about The Mall

Constitution Gardens

Many Washingtonians feel that Constitution Gardens is the best part of the Mall already. Certainly it's the most unique, with its informal pond and romantic pathways. The winning design, by Rogers Marvel Architects + Peter Walker and Partners, will build on the gardens' strengths to make it even better.

The designers propose to introduce a new pavilion at the east end of the existing pond. This pavilion would become the centerpiece of activity in the garden. It would contain a restaurant and a dock for model boating. In the winter, the eastern section of the pond would be used for ice skating.

These additional active uses are good additions, although one wonders if another ice skating rink can survive so close to the existing rink at the Sculpture Garden.

One negative aspect of this plan is that it actively turns its back on the street. It proposes to raise new hills along Constitution Avenue in order to "provide separation" between the park and downtown. This is entirely the wrong approach, and will contribute even more to the segregation of the city's cultural amenities from the city's residents.

Washington Monument grounds

In contrast to Constitution Gardens, the Washington Monument grounds are probably the worst section of the Mall. The giant grass lawns are not destinations to anyone but a few softball players. Rather, they are long, empty voids that tired visitors must traverse.

The poor condition of the grounds is even more unfortunate because they are the geographic center of the monumental core. In theory this should be the most heavily-built and formal area of the Mall, but in reality it is the least.

The winning entry for this section, by OLIN + Weiss/Manfredi, is disappointing in its scope. Rather than address the fundamental deficiencies with the grounds as a whole, the design focuses closely on the southeast corner and largely ignores the rest.

To the designers' credit, what they have proposed for that section is excellent. They would replace the afterthought that is the existing Sylvan Theater with a wonderful new grass amphitheater. It would blend seamlessly with the surrounding landscape, would face and help to frame the Washington Monument, and would vastly improve the theater experience in every way.

They also propose a cafe and bookstore, to be built into the side of a small hill so that they appear as one with the rolling landscape. These are good additions that will improve the edge condition between park and city, and the proposed architecture is both appropriate and totally unique.

Union Square

Better known as the Capitol Reflecting Pool, Union Square suffers from many of the same problems as the Washington Monument grounds. It's visually impressive, but usually empty. There's not much reason for people to go except to pass through, and its monumental components are so oversized that they are a barrier to walking.

The winning design, by Gustafson Guthrie Nichol + Davis Brody Bond, does much to improve the situation.

The designers propose reducing the size of the reflecting pool and carrying additional pathways through the site, creating new connections with the Smithsonian area to the west.

They also propose to narrow Pennsylvania and Maryland Avenues, and to convert them from parking lots to more pedestrian-friendly streets.

Unfortunately, the garden areas north of Pennsylvania Avenue and south of Maryland Avenue are afterthoughts in this proposal. It would have been nice to see a new building on the north end of the site, mirroring the location of the US Botanical Garden. That area is a nether-zone between the Mall and Senate Park, and would be more valuable as the site for a future museum.

Next steps

The Trust for the National Mall does actually intend to build these designs. Fundraising will begin soon, and the first ribbon-cutting could take place as early as 2016.

That's good news.

Overall, these ideas would improve the National Mall. It would still be an imperfect space, poorly connected to the living city around it. But it would, for the most part, be better than it is today.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

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Just two weeks ago, NCPC approved NPS plans for 5 stations on the Mall, at Smithsonian Metro and near the Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and FDR/MLK memorials.

They said the goal was to get one station installed before the cherry blossom festival. Not only did the cherry blossoms come quickly this year thanks to the good weather, but so did the station.

As it turns out, NPS and Capital Bikeshare exceeded that promise: a 2nd station, at the Washington Monument, is also active today.

Twitter user whiteknuckled surmised, "I predict the new Mall bikeshare station will either have zero docks or zero bikes at almost all times for the next few weeks."

It will be very interesting to watch the CaBi dashboard and, once it's available, the trip data to see how this station affects usage. At the NCPC meeting, Harriet Tregoning predicted it will spark a large surge in daily memberships, which are fiscally very healthy for Capital Bikeshare.

In other exciting bicycle infrastructure news, WABA reports that DDOT is installing bike lanes on Columbia Road today.

Someone riding south on the 15th Street lane has to merge into busy traffic and then cross the Mall either by riding on the sidewalk, which is often quite crowded with tourists and joggers, or in the road, where cars expect to drive fast and not encounter cyclists. The last time David rode there, a DC taxi pulled up right behind and started honking, even though there was another, mostly empty lane it could switch into. It eventually did, honking even more.

It gets worse around Maine Avenue and Ohio Drive, near the Tidal Basin. Not only is the pavement in this area in horrible condition, but those roads are configured like highways with cars speeding along the winding curves. The sidewalks are extremely narrow and packed with pedestrians, especially during warm, sunny weather and in Cherry Blossom season.

The pedestrians deserve to use that space, but what do cyclists do? Riding in the road is only an option for southbound bicyclists, and it's a harrowing experience with the curved yet high-speed roads and drivers traveling very fast.

In the other direction, there isn't really a choice. From the path over the Mason Bridge, a cyclist has to ride on the sidewalks around the Tidal Basin, go the long way around west of the Tidal Basin toward the Lincoln Memorial, or take a long detour through East Potomac Park to get to the eastern side Ohio Drive and then head back up through the Maine Avenue area.

From Southwest DC, there's a path along the Case Bridge, which carries I-395 over the Washington Channel, but to get to it you have to navigate across and around highway-style ramps in Banneker Park, then 2 narrow switchbacks which force dismounting.

On the East Potomac Park side, the path turns into a narrow sidewalk along the on-ramp from the Park Police headquarters. Riders have to travel though the NPS parking lot (or go farther out of the way), then ride along the western Ohio Drive past the George Mason Memorial to get to the path.

On the Virginia side, the Mount Vernon Trail connects to many trails, but has no direct connection from the 14th Street bridge area to Pentagon City right across the freeways. Someone riding there has to either head north through Lady Bird Johnson Park and then wind around the Pentagon parking lots, or go south to the airport and then backtrack through Crystal City.

Alternatives improve Virginia connections

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement suggests 3 alternatives. The most ambitious, Alternative 2, proposes a new bridge from western Ohio Drive across the Potomac along side the Long Bridge (the CSX and VRE tracks) and then over the GW Parkway, with access to both the Mount Vernon Trail and Long Bridge Park.

The connection in Virginia seems great, but dumping cyclists in East Potomac Park isn't that useful. It's a little closer to the Case Bridge path, but not much, and getting to downtown or the Mall is worse than today's existing bridge.

The DEIS also contains 2 other, smaller bicycle proposals. Alternative 1 slightly widens and makes some changes to the approaches to the Mason Bridge path on each side, connecting to the Mount Vernon Trail and to the Jefferson Memorial. An earlier version also proposed widening the bike/ped path on the George Mason Bridge, but this bridge widening was removed from the alternative for "technical complexity." The final EIS ought to reconsider this option.

Alternative 3 has two parts. One would create better and more consistent wayfinding signage on both sides of the river. The second part proposes new trail connections to the Pentagon and in Pentagon City.

Around the Pentagon, a new connection would extend the half-built trail under the Humpback Bridge over to Boundary Channel Drive, providing a more direct connection between the 14th Street Bridge and the Pentagon. In Pentagon City, it would create a better bike connection from the north end of Crystal City (12th and Clark) west along Army-Navy Drive, under I-395, and along the south edge of the Pentagon Reservation to Columbia Pike and the Washington Blvd trail.

DC needs better bike connections as well

The Virginia connections would significantly improve access to the bridges, but there are no comparable bike connections proposed on the DC side of the river. This is the most glaring missing piece in the DEIS. The team should study and propose a better connection to 15th Street.

Drivers have direct connections in all directions here, even having too many ramps to too many roads. Cyclists, meanwhile, have one bad connection southbound from downtown and none at all northbound, and poor and winding connections to other directions.

This isn't just a recreational amenity. Many already use the bridge for commuting. Many more likely would for both commuting and general transportation if there were a clear, direct, and safe connection.

Ideally, we could find a way to extend the 15th Street cycle track from Pennsylvania down through the Mall, then past or through the Maine Avenue/Ohio Drive/East Basin Drive area up to either the Mason Bridge path or a new bridge.

WashCycle suggests extending the new bridge along the railroad tracks across East Potomac Park to the east side, where it's a lot closer to the mainland. Another option is to convert 1 lane on East Basin Drive (the 2-lane road from Maine Avenue to I-395 South and the Jefferson Memorial) into a 2-way bicycle facility up to Maine Avenue, and eventually connect through the Mall to the 15th Street lanes.

What do you think is the best way to create a connection between the Mall and downtown across the Potomac?

Last January, the Department of Energy announced the Decathlon would not take place on the Mall as it had the previous four times. Word was the Department of the Interior, home to the inimitable National Park Service, had pressured DOE because of the Decathlon's negative impact on the Mall's otherwise pristine greenery. NPS applauded the move.

Rumors later surfaced that the Decathlon would land at National Harbor, the bastion of sustainability located outside the Beltway, with dismal transit access and no incidental foot traffic.

After protests from competitors, fans and even Congress members, DOE finally settled on West Potomac Park, at least in central DC, though not terribly convenient or visible. As a result, the organizers had to provide a costly shuttle service from the closest metro stations. The permit conditions and the lack of large paths also required they lay down more tile flooring than ever before to protect the park's grass.

Whatever the cause of the westward move, it will be real detriment to Washington, DC and to the vitality of our monumental core. The National Mall, which has been called a failed public space, suffers from a lack of nearby residences and non-museum attractions.

The two weeks of the Solar Decathlon is the only time you can find dwelling units other than the White House in the region's most central, yet least populated Census tract. Since several team members have to live in their houses, the event literally doubles the population.

Most events on the mall last several hours or a day, attracting people for a very specific purpose only to cast them out again as soon as the event is over. People come for the event, not for the place.

The Solar Decathlon turned the National Mall into a destination, a true place with an interesting streetscape. While the hours to go in the houses were limited, people could admire the craftsmanship from outside any time of day. This encouraged lingering, what Jane Jacobs called one of the most important functions of a good public space.

The Decathlon's placemaking ability was apparent this year, despite its less-than-optimal location. West Potomac Park, which is typically only visited by kickballers and 10k runners, felt lively for two weeks.

It was also a great opportunity for residents and visitors of the nation's capital and fastest growing city to see the potential beauty in compact, energy-efficient living. I can attest to this.

During this year's Decathlon, I was right in the middle of the first-time home buying experience. We were feeling the temptation of the "go farther, get more" mindset that fueled the inexorable creep of suburbia. Seeing small, but beautiful and impeccably designed entries emphasized to us what you can do very little space. We came away fascinated, and firmer in our resolve to forgo space in order to find a excellent urban location.

How did the Decathlon end up in Orange County? The City of Irvine and the Orange County Great Park fought for it.

Meanwhile, it's unclear if NPS even submitted a bid. When asked, DOE said it couldn't release a list of applicants or discuss specific bids. I contacted NPS last week to see if they or an associated group had submitted a bid for the Mall. They haven't yet responded.

Of course, given the agency's joy at this year's move from the Mall, it's doubtful they made much effort to keep it here.

Where other regions have entities that fight to bring vibrant events like the Solar Decathlon in, the Washington region does not. Residents here suffer because the Park Service, as a national entity, doesn't actually represent their interests, though they are its most immediate stakeholders.

It's only fair that the Department of Energy spread the love of the Solar Decathlon around the country. But the US loses the ability to truly showcase its commitment to sustainability. Building two dozen passive houses on America's front lawn, blocks from the halls of power, sends a powerful message.

The Solar Decathlon certainly attracts visitors from afar on its own. But it also benefits immensely from being located in a place where there are hundreds of thousands of other travelers who would stop by given the easy opportunity.

Washington, DC is the nation's capital and a huge, international tourist destination. Irvine, California, is a distant suburb of Los Angeles with 215,000 people. Not much of a showcase.

Even in West Potomac Park, with the Washington Monument peeking over the trees on one end, and the Jefferson Memorial rotunda on the other, it was still clear where you were.

Not any more. Moving the Decathlon around has some merit, but the new location is a true shame. Few think of sustainability when they think about Orange County.

Each design team is charged with coming up with innovative ways to revitalize 3 zones: Constitution Gardens (the area containing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial), the area encompassing the base of the Washington Monument and Sylvan Theater, and Union Square (the Mall's eastern third). The winners of the 8-month competition, now in its final stage, will be announced in a ceremony on May 3. A group of 12 finalists has been selected, 4 for each section.

Three individuals with extensive public space design experience, though not all planners or designers by profession, shared their insights as to what makes a great public space in a January 11 panel talk at the National Archives. They agreed that great spaces must be able to sustain a high level of use over time yet retain the surrounding community's sense of ownership and stewardship.

The challenge at the heart of the treatment of the Mall is that it must be a national symbol, a green space for area residents, and the locus of expressions of the national public mood (celebrations, remembrances, protests) all at the same time. Theaster Gates, a Chicago-based artist and cultural developer, spoke eloquently to this conflict: "America is a very complex place with lots of different people and lots of different interests that would like to see themselves present on the Mall."

An "evolving monument," Gates said, isn't a permanent manifestation of one historical person or event, but rather a constant symbol of the community's mood that is "a carrier of whatever the moment is" and "accumulate[s] multiple stories." Public art or architecture that changes with the times would carry more meaning for people than a statue of, for example, Civil War commander John Logan, whose significance is lost on most who pass through Logan Circle.

The idea of public parks as staging grounds for cultural movements has been tested by the presence of Occupy DC in the city's central public squares. Gates insisted that there is no way to plan a space to accommodate certain types of First Amendment expression, as the very act of planning for them takes away their spontaneity, and thus much of their power.

"No matter how much planning and designing we do, people have the ability to remake spaces," Gates said, as Occupy has done. "Public space has to be able to cradle movements," added Tupper Thomas. "Spaces are defined by how people choose to use them. I don't think you can design niches for resistance," said John Bela.

Three specific precedents for innovations in public parks were discussed: the restoration of Brooklyn's Prospect Park as a popular gathering place, the transformation of Manhattan's High Line from an elevated railroad to a mile-long green space, and the annual observance of Park[ing] Day when on-street parking spaces are turned into temporary parks.

30 years ago, Prospect Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead (whose hand is also seen in parts of the Mall, Rock Creek Park, and on Gallaudet University's campus), had become "totally unused" because people were afraid to go on. Tupper Thomas's Prospect Park Alliance engaged in a grassroots dialogue, beginning with door-to-door canvassing, with the goal of getting Brooklynites, some of the country's most diverse citizenry, to love the park again. The park now has more visitors than it can handle, and the Alliance's new challenge is raising enough money to maintain it.

Park[ing] Day mastermind John Bela of San Francisco's Rebar Art and Design Studio spoke to the idea of planning for the sustainability of public spaces as a constantly evolving process. Park[ing] Day relies on a how-to manual with a few guidelines, but beyond that each group can make what they want of it. The most important aspect of the temporary parks, however, is that they have a truly public feel, and are not just extensions of the commercial spaces in front of which many of them are created.

Manhattan's High Line has accelerated the surrounding neighborhood's redevelopment and, because of this, has sparked the interest of other cities seeking to emulate it.

The fact that it took two entrepreneurs to take on the task of remaking the High Line, with initially no help from the city bureaucracy, shows that the traditional planning process is broken, said Bela. Consultants and activists with their own agendas, he noted, too often come to dominate "open" planning processes, essentially drowning out other community voices. To counter this tendency, planners should offer many affected people different levels of engagement in a process to give them more ownership.

It is good that cities are seeking to be noticed for good public spaces, added Gates, but each city should decide what kind of re-use of abandoned urban infrastructure is appropriate to its own context. Thomas cautioned those seeking to emulate the High Line to pay as much attention to community development as to economic development.

"Cities are being determined by what the public realm is," Trust for the National Mall President Caroline Cunningham summarized. In the Mall's case, local residents' desires for a certain type of public realm must be balanced with the nation's need for a place that is "both grand and personal" and evokes the country's history and future, while allowing the people to help shape that future through collective action.

This year, I spent my Turkey Day in Istanbul. I stayed a little over a week, but I don't think it took me more than a few hours of sightseeing to recognize how very different this metropolis is from Washington. One of the most notable differences I came across is how Turks conceive of and plan around their national monuments.

While DC fights to keep the National Mall a memorial unto itself, even Istanbul's oldest neighborhoods (2,000+ years of use) integrate historical treasures and modern establishments with great success.

In the world of cities, Istanbul is nothing short of a heavyweight. With an estimated population of over 14 million residents (as high as 17 million by some counts) and about 2,500 years worth of history under its belt, the metropolis is one the most impressive and diverse in the world.

Today, the megacity calls Turkey its home and it is, at least in legal terms, a secular community. Since its humble beginnings around 600 BC, however, Istanbul has played host to a number of empires, religions and cultures.

With so much history and so much civilization to account for, I expected to find a city that kept is cultural treasures under lock-and-key. But one walk through Old Town—the most ancient part of the metropolis, and the home to vast majority of Istanbul's sites, including the Hagia Sophia and the Topkapi Palace—proved my assumptions entirely wrong.

Instead, what I found was a bustling neighborhood that played host to a myriad of restaurants, shops, park areas, bike share stations, street vendors, locals, and tourists. And, it just happened to include one of the Seven Wonders of the World and a slew of other notable historical sites. No big deal.

As I snacked on a kebab at the edge of the 1,600 year old Hippodrome of Constantinople, I couldn't help but wonder how different the area would be if the US National Park Service were in charge.

Here's my best guess.

If we were to judge by the state of affairs on the Mall today, that would be it for the cafés and most of the street vendors. No more private art galleries and no more fruit stands. Few locals and fewer hotels. Bike share stations? Probably not. And, definitely no kebabs.

Last year, I volunteered regularly for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a Visitor Services representative. It was a fantastic opportunity to interact with tourists visiting the museum, and often our capital, and sometimes a city of any kind, for the first time.

It was my job to answer their questions and point them in the right direction. Most of the time, I really enjoyed the work. There were only two questions I dreaded: 1) "Can you recommend a few good restaurants nearby?" and 2) "Where can I buy some sunscreen (or band aids or a calling card or a pair of socks or a pack of cigarettes)?"

These are reasonable questions with no reasonable answers. I hated being the bearer of bad news, especially when visitors with a laudable moral consciousness were concerned. Unfortunately, the reality is—and was—that aside from the USHMM café, there are no restaurants near the museum, and the closest convenience store is a hike, as well.

Instead of leaving the look-but-don't-touch policing to the multitude of museums that flank the Mall, the National Park Service enforces a set of policies that turn the entire space into an immaculately preserved dead zone.

Of course, to be fair, the locked-down, mile-long strip of federal buildings surrounding the area doesn't help matters any when it comes to creating a friendly, mixed-use space. But, at the very least, these structures are inaccessible to the public for reasons of security, and they are places of work. The Mall, on the other hand, is a place of recreation, and I pick on it, because there are no legitimate obstacles to opening it up for classy, organic, well-planned commercial development.

If the National Park Service ever considers the idea, Istanbul's Old Town is a perfect case study for how things may go right. While every monument, mosque, obelisk, and museum has its own space, the areas in between are filled with modern conveniences, such as restaurants, shops, and street vendors.

Istanbul has gone through many transformations, but the most beloved and impressive structures remain respected and intact, even after all these years. Indeed, perhaps it is because of its age, rather than in spite of it, that the city has done such a great job of integrating the old with the new. If nothing has undone the Hagia Sophia yet, it's unlikely that a hookah bar and a couple of carpet stores will suddenly get the job done.

Our Mall and the monuments on it are much, much younger, but we can learn from older cities and use their experience to our advantage. We ought to be confident in the fact that our national treasures are impressive, inspiring and important. And we shouldn't tiptoe around them just to make sure no one forgets it.

It's nice to think that we can preserve every last square inch of our capital for our grandchildren's grandchildren just as it exists today, but it's neither smart nor sustainable.

Plus, if my grandchildren's grandchildren are anything like me, I'm sure they'll be much more interested in enjoying a beer at a Mall-side café with a clear view of Mr. Lincoln than running back and forth across a pristine, treeless lawn in search of Advil and SPF 6,000 sunscreen. Maybe they'll dig kebabs, too.