Insights
- Recent actions by the Trump Administration on the National Mall are stirring public push-back.
- Without an updated Mall plan, who will decide where to locate future museums and memorials?
- To celebrate our 250th birthday, we need a National Mall Commission of talented architects and others to create a 3rd Century Mall plan for our Stage for American Democracy.
Challenges to the future vitality of the National Mall as the Stage for American Democracy are front and center in the public eye. Guardrails are failing – or being eliminated: military soldiers (National Guard) instead of U.S. Park Police posted at the Lincoln Memorial; the 100-year-old East Wing of the White House demolished in two days; all seven members of the Commission of Fine Arts fired, vacating a review body that has overseen design matters on the Mall since 1910.
Public shock is stirring strong push-back. The American people get it. Even Congressional members on both sides of the aisle get it. The Mall is more than an ordinary public place. It’s our landscape symbol of who we are as a people, a nation, a thriving democracy for almost 250 years. The guardrails themselves – however rickety and bureaucratic – are part of that symbolism.
Who will decide the future of our National Mall in its 3rd Century?
What kind of ballroom will replace the East Wing? Who will curate changes to the architectural majesty of the National Mall? Is a triumphal arch, a traditional monument to military conquest, the right symbol to celebrate our country’s 250thbirthday and unique democratic heritage? Who besides the president will control how the American people experience this public open space at the heart of American government and democracy, and police our national monuments?
Now, more urgently than ever, we need a comprehensive, long-range plan for our National Mall to update the last plan, the 1902 McMillan Plan, to show where and how the Mall can continue to grow with public open spaces, museums, monuments – and White House improvements.
We need a plan for unified Mall governance to bring order and coherence to the design review process that today involves 14 Congressional committees, 8 federal agencies, and 6 DC entities. Site selection and design review for a museum or memorial project can take decades or face oblivion. Surely creating a memorial to John Adams – first authorized by Congress in 2001 but languishing since then – is something we can agree on!
Meanwhile, without an updated plan, modern threats such as flooding are ignored. What will it take? Another flood of the National Archives like the devastation in 2006? More floodwaters leaking into the Smithsonian’s collections of our country’s history and heritage?
The President or Congress needs to launch a 3rd Century Mall Commission – a commission of thoughtful architects, landscape architects, engineers, civic leaders, educators – to create the new, optimistic vision for our Stage for American Democracy in its 3rd century.
The urgency is now. The Mall belongs to us, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
If not a commission to guide the vision for the future, then who?
Let’s rally our elected leaders and our professional organizations in relevant fields – architecture, engineering, landscape architecture, civics education, urban planning – to come together to provide a most meaningful gift to celebrate our 250thbirthday next year: a 3rd Century Mall Plan.
• Learn more about the Mall’s history, needs, and exciting possibilities for the 3rd Century Mall here.
