January 27, 2009
Dear Coalition Friends:
Among the numerous stories about the Inauguration on the National Mall are a few we'd like to point out because they highlight the Mall's role in American public life and its powerfully symbolic design:
President Obama, standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the Inaugural concert on Sunday, January 18th, spoke of the significance of the National Mall, its monuments and public open space, and the role of the American people:
"What gives me that hope is what I see when I look out across this mall. For in these monuments are chiseled those unlikely stories that affirm our unyielding faith - a faith that anything is possible in America. Rising before us stands a memorial to a man who led a small band of farmers and shopkeepers in revolution against the army of an Empire, all for the sake of an idea. On the ground below is a tribute to a generation that withstood war and depression - men and women like my grandparents who toiled on bomber assembly lines and marched across Europe to free the world from tyranny's grasp. Directly in front of us is a pool that still reflects the dream of a King, and the glory of a people who marched and bled so that their children might be judged by their character's content. And behind me, watching over the union he saved, sits the man who in so many ways made this day possible.
And yet, as I stand here tonight, what gives me the greatest hope of all is not the stone and marble that surrounds us today, but what fills the spaces in between. It is you - Americans of every race and region and station who came here because you believe in what this country can be and because you want to help us get there."
- CBS News broadcast a story about "the special place of the Mall in American public life" on Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, January 19th. Correspondent Bill Plante interviewed local architectural historian Cynthia Field on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. Field is editor of the book "The National Mall: Rethinking Washington's Monument Core." Writing after the Inauguration, Dr. Field said, "For me, the satisfaction is that the National Mall functioned as we described it in our book as a place of pilgrimage, a place for the visual expression of nationhood, a place of meaning apparent to every person who went there just to be in that place." Watch the segment (after a short commercial).
- Also from MLK Day, History's grand stage is set: National Mall has seen struggle, triumph with comments from local historian Lucy Barber ("Marching on Washington").
- Writing of the Inauguration in his blog, LA Times architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne, gives due credit to the Mall's brilliant designers, L'Enfant and the McMillan Commission:
"The ability of the Mall to take on essentially whatever kind of crowds we throw at it year after year is foremost a tribute, of course, to its planners: First to Pierre L’Enfant, the tempestuous Frenchman personally hired by George Washington in 1791 to sketch the initial plan for the new capital city, and in equal measure to the four men -– architects Daniel Burnham and Charles McKim, landscape architect Frederick Olmsted Jr. and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens –- who in 1902 advised Sen. James McMillan in updating the original scheme... As the space filled with a record crowd this morning, the vision of those men was not so much vindicated as fully drawn for the first time. It took more than two centuries, but today it became clear exactly what L’Enfant anticipated for the capital from the start, and in particular for its almost absurdly roomy public spaces."
- You may have seen the satellite view of the entire Mall on Inauguration Day from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial. GeoEye is making available FREE a downloadable, high resolution satellite image of the Mall at 11:19 EST on January 20.
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