A 20th-century idea ideal for today's Mall
November/19/2010 02:31 AM Filed in: Mall history | Washington Post
Dear Coalition Friends:
In his recent Shaping the City column in The Washington Post, Roger Lewis writes about landscape architect Cy Paumier's proposal to resurrect an idea based in the 1901 McMillan Plan for a new plaza and fountain on the Mall's 8th Street axis. See the article below.
But this notion that we can continue to be inspired by the McMillan Plan, or to complete unfinished portions of that Plan, is ruled out in the National Park Service's new National Mall Plan. On pages 131-132, the final document states that NPS has dismissed the McMillan Plan's relevance because "it would conflict with NPS policy, as well as plans approved by the Commission of Fine Arts, and it would not meet any need." Read the NPS plan.
The Mall Plan edits out the McMillan Plan in favor of more recent agency plans that declare the Mall, as is, a "completed work of civic art."
Here is another example of competing views of the Mall. Is it complete, or a work in progress as Lewis says (and we agree)? What is historic about the Mall, its historic visionary plans or its current condition? What history are we preserving?
The Mall Plan proposes a new plaza, but in a different location and to serve different purposes from that proposed by Paumier and the McMillan Plan. The NPS idea is for a redesigned plaza at Union Square, at the foot of the Capitol, intended to draw large gatherings off the grassy panels to a new paved area at the far east end of the Mall.
Readers, as you review the McMillan Plan and Paumier's concept, do you have other ideas for how that still evolving design concept could play out on the Mall of the future? We would like to hear from you.
Read the entire McMillan Commission report.
# # #
THE WASHINGTON POST
A 20th-century idea ideal for today's Mall
By Roger K. Lewis
Saturday, November 13, 2010; E02
Is it time to again modify part of the Mall, America's symbolic open space stretching for two miles between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial?
Apparently it is. This week Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed a final plan for renovation of the Mall, including the Washington Monument and its grounds, and West Potomac Park. Among the many changes is the creation of paved, multipurpose spaces where there now is lawn (which in some places is worn down to little more than bare soil).
The idea of creating such paved spaces is actually an old one: A plaza with a fountain was shown in the McMillan Commission plan drawn 109 years ago, but it was never built.
Under the McMillan plan, the plaza would have been centered on the Eighth Street axis, a spot now shared by the Hirshhorn Museum to the south and the National Gallery of Art's Sculpture Garden and the National Archives to the north. The plaza's east and west edges would have been the Mall crosswalks aligned with Seventh and Ninth streets.
In recent years, no one has advocated building such a plaza more zealously than landscape architect Cy Paumier, who has spent years studying, writing about and preparing design studies and renderings of the Mall. His reasons for building a civic plaza at that location mirror those expressed by the McMillan Commission in 1901.
From the Capitol to the Monument, the Mall is traversed only by walkways and busy streets. The relentless procession of grass panels is never relieved by a permanent place of repose or assembly in which to conduct activities or stage events best situated on hardscape. Quoting the commission, Paumier notes that the proposed fountain and civic gathering place were designed "to relieve the monotony of the meadow-like stretch a mile and a half long" and to provide "seats tempting the passer-by to linger for rest."
Is building such a plaza today a good idea? Paumier emphatically says yes, and his reasoning is convincing. His design studies suggest that a simple, well-crafted plaza would be attractive and functional. It would enhance the Mall aesthetically while also at last provide a paved, centralized space on the Mall that people can occupy without trampling vegetation and muddying shoes.
Some people, including members of Congress, think the Mall is a finished work and needs no modification. But it has long been and will continue to be a work in progress.
Visionary planning concepts, no matter how well-conceived, require periodic tweaking and sometimes substantial editing as cities evolve. Over time, urban functions and needs change, sometimes temporarily but often permanently. Once-desirable ideas fall into disfavor. Technological innovation and changing social norms alter people's tastes and behavior. And, of course, design theories and aesthetic principles never stop mutating.
The Mall's plan and composition have been tweaked and edited for two centuries. L'Enfant's original 1791 sketch showed the Mall as little more than a long, broad open space between the Capitol and the Potomac River. Not surprisingly, the plan was first tweaked soon after L'Enfant was fired, when Andrew Ellicott redrafted it and showed a rationally ordered Mall landscape lined by civic buildings.
During the 1800s, messing with the Mall and violating the plan's original intentions occurred routinely. The Mall became a multipurpose, quasi-naturalistic park where sheep and cattle grazed. A railroad station was built on the Mall, and deciduous trees and miscellaneous shrubbery filled much of the space. The medieval-style Smithsonian Castle poked into the space instead of lining its edge, as the Mall plan showed. All of these interventions were emblematic of American utilitarianism coupled with romanticism characterizing 19th-century aesthetic tastes.
Inevitably the 19th-century zeitgeist and its Victorian-era tendencies ran their course. The grandiose, classically styled 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago ushered in a new American Renaissance as neoclassicism in architecture, urban design and landscape architecture swept the country. By the end of the century, the design of the capital's freestyle Mall was viewed as obsolete and incompatible with American values and aspirations.
Accordingly, the U.S. Senate Park Commission, known as the McMillan Commission, undertook the Mall's redesign. Its esteemed members were architects Daniel Burnham and Charles McKim, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, all of whom had been instrumental in creating the Chicago exposition.
The 1901 McMillan Commission Plan was a substantial edit, not just a tweak. A complete makeover, it recaptured and embellished the conceptual intentions of the L'Enfant and Ellicott plans, calling for demolition of everything but the Smithsonian Castle. Using reclaimed land along the Potomac River south and west of the Washington Monument, the McMillan plan also envisioned new park spaces, new memorial sites - for Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson - and a tidal basin. Thus the overall shape of today's officially defined Mall was determined by the McMillan plan.
Since 1901, the Mall's plan has undergone tweaking as the use of the space has evolved, sometimes in unexpected ways. During and after World War II, the Mall was covered by temporary buildings for wartime workers. Museums and memorials have risen, and today diverse activities - sports, performances, exhibitions, marches and rallies - frequently animate the site.
In the spirit of "better late than never," let's hope that a well-functioning multipurpose plaza, similar to that proposed more than a century ago, finally comes to fruition on the Mall.
Lewis is a practicing architect and a professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland.
In his recent Shaping the City column in The Washington Post, Roger Lewis writes about landscape architect Cy Paumier's proposal to resurrect an idea based in the 1901 McMillan Plan for a new plaza and fountain on the Mall's 8th Street axis. See the article below.
But this notion that we can continue to be inspired by the McMillan Plan, or to complete unfinished portions of that Plan, is ruled out in the National Park Service's new National Mall Plan. On pages 131-132, the final document states that NPS has dismissed the McMillan Plan's relevance because "it would conflict with NPS policy, as well as plans approved by the Commission of Fine Arts, and it would not meet any need." Read the NPS plan.
The Mall Plan edits out the McMillan Plan in favor of more recent agency plans that declare the Mall, as is, a "completed work of civic art."
Here is another example of competing views of the Mall. Is it complete, or a work in progress as Lewis says (and we agree)? What is historic about the Mall, its historic visionary plans or its current condition? What history are we preserving?
The Mall Plan proposes a new plaza, but in a different location and to serve different purposes from that proposed by Paumier and the McMillan Plan. The NPS idea is for a redesigned plaza at Union Square, at the foot of the Capitol, intended to draw large gatherings off the grassy panels to a new paved area at the far east end of the Mall.
Readers, as you review the McMillan Plan and Paumier's concept, do you have other ideas for how that still evolving design concept could play out on the Mall of the future? We would like to hear from you.
Read the entire McMillan Commission report.
# # #
THE WASHINGTON POST
Shaping the City
A 20th-century idea ideal for today's Mall
By Roger K. Lewis
Saturday, November 13, 2010; E02
Is it time to again modify part of the Mall, America's symbolic open space stretching for two miles between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial?
Apparently it is. This week Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed a final plan for renovation of the Mall, including the Washington Monument and its grounds, and West Potomac Park. Among the many changes is the creation of paved, multipurpose spaces where there now is lawn (which in some places is worn down to little more than bare soil).
The idea of creating such paved spaces is actually an old one: A plaza with a fountain was shown in the McMillan Commission plan drawn 109 years ago, but it was never built.
Under the McMillan plan, the plaza would have been centered on the Eighth Street axis, a spot now shared by the Hirshhorn Museum to the south and the National Gallery of Art's Sculpture Garden and the National Archives to the north. The plaza's east and west edges would have been the Mall crosswalks aligned with Seventh and Ninth streets.
In recent years, no one has advocated building such a plaza more zealously than landscape architect Cy Paumier, who has spent years studying, writing about and preparing design studies and renderings of the Mall. His reasons for building a civic plaza at that location mirror those expressed by the McMillan Commission in 1901.
From the Capitol to the Monument, the Mall is traversed only by walkways and busy streets. The relentless procession of grass panels is never relieved by a permanent place of repose or assembly in which to conduct activities or stage events best situated on hardscape. Quoting the commission, Paumier notes that the proposed fountain and civic gathering place were designed "to relieve the monotony of the meadow-like stretch a mile and a half long" and to provide "seats tempting the passer-by to linger for rest."
Is building such a plaza today a good idea? Paumier emphatically says yes, and his reasoning is convincing. His design studies suggest that a simple, well-crafted plaza would be attractive and functional. It would enhance the Mall aesthetically while also at last provide a paved, centralized space on the Mall that people can occupy without trampling vegetation and muddying shoes.
Some people, including members of Congress, think the Mall is a finished work and needs no modification. But it has long been and will continue to be a work in progress.
Visionary planning concepts, no matter how well-conceived, require periodic tweaking and sometimes substantial editing as cities evolve. Over time, urban functions and needs change, sometimes temporarily but often permanently. Once-desirable ideas fall into disfavor. Technological innovation and changing social norms alter people's tastes and behavior. And, of course, design theories and aesthetic principles never stop mutating.
The Mall's plan and composition have been tweaked and edited for two centuries. L'Enfant's original 1791 sketch showed the Mall as little more than a long, broad open space between the Capitol and the Potomac River. Not surprisingly, the plan was first tweaked soon after L'Enfant was fired, when Andrew Ellicott redrafted it and showed a rationally ordered Mall landscape lined by civic buildings.
During the 1800s, messing with the Mall and violating the plan's original intentions occurred routinely. The Mall became a multipurpose, quasi-naturalistic park where sheep and cattle grazed. A railroad station was built on the Mall, and deciduous trees and miscellaneous shrubbery filled much of the space. The medieval-style Smithsonian Castle poked into the space instead of lining its edge, as the Mall plan showed. All of these interventions were emblematic of American utilitarianism coupled with romanticism characterizing 19th-century aesthetic tastes.
Inevitably the 19th-century zeitgeist and its Victorian-era tendencies ran their course. The grandiose, classically styled 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago ushered in a new American Renaissance as neoclassicism in architecture, urban design and landscape architecture swept the country. By the end of the century, the design of the capital's freestyle Mall was viewed as obsolete and incompatible with American values and aspirations.
Accordingly, the U.S. Senate Park Commission, known as the McMillan Commission, undertook the Mall's redesign. Its esteemed members were architects Daniel Burnham and Charles McKim, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, all of whom had been instrumental in creating the Chicago exposition.
The 1901 McMillan Commission Plan was a substantial edit, not just a tweak. A complete makeover, it recaptured and embellished the conceptual intentions of the L'Enfant and Ellicott plans, calling for demolition of everything but the Smithsonian Castle. Using reclaimed land along the Potomac River south and west of the Washington Monument, the McMillan plan also envisioned new park spaces, new memorial sites - for Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson - and a tidal basin. Thus the overall shape of today's officially defined Mall was determined by the McMillan plan.
Since 1901, the Mall's plan has undergone tweaking as the use of the space has evolved, sometimes in unexpected ways. During and after World War II, the Mall was covered by temporary buildings for wartime workers. Museums and memorials have risen, and today diverse activities - sports, performances, exhibitions, marches and rallies - frequently animate the site.
In the spirit of "better late than never," let's hope that a well-functioning multipurpose plaza, similar to that proposed more than a century ago, finally comes to fruition on the Mall.
Lewis is a practicing architect and a professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland.