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The National Mall is our nation's "front yard," an open space where Americans gather to rejoice, to play, to celebrate, to protest, to renew hope, and sometimes to mourn. From the L'Enfant Plan of 1791, later revitalized by the McMillan Plan of 1901 and the City Beautiful Movement, the Mall has been a spacious green park framed by classical monuments to our freedom and democracy and by the Smithsonian museums, symbols of our nation's history and culture. The Mall's great cross axis stretches east to west two miles from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, and north to south from the White House to the Jefferson Memorial. "Great Moments on the Mall," created by students of George Washington University in Spring 2003, highlights a series of historical gatherings on the National Mall, many of which have set the nation on a new course of freedom and tolerance, including:
While those who come to the Mall, sometimes hundreds of thousands strong, revel in its openness, others see it as a space waiting to be filled. Alas, pressures to fill in the Mall with new monuments that could be located elsewhere off the Mall, are changing the character of this wondrous expanse. Though Congress and then-President Reagan, in 1986, declared the National Mall essentially "closed," it reversed itself a decade later to permit the World War II Memorial to be located on 7.4 acres of open space midway between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Each year, new proposals would encroach further. The Mall belongs to the citizens of the United States. Only they can preserve it for future generations. This section was conceived by George Idelson, researched and written by Richard Pugh, Sean Sharifi, Ilana Weinberg and Kristopher White, edited by James R. Hood |
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Copyright © 2008 National Coalition to Save Our Mall Inc. All Rights Reserved |
