Standing in the shape of the Smithsonian Institution sunburst, close to 4,000 Smithsonian staff, interns, fellows, and volunteers gathered on the National Mall in front of the Smithsonian Castle on Thursday, July 1, for this group portrait. This was…

These mallets and ball were used to play a game called pall mall, which involved hitting the ball down a green playing field and through an iron hoop. The game was popular in England in the late 1600s and continued to be played into the early 1800s.…

President Adams' diary entries from June 1827 detail his regular visits to the White House garden. In this entry he describes the variety of plants in the garden, from fruit trees to common weeds. The President relied on his gardener, John Ousley, to…

Levees for flood control were first constructed on the National Mall after the Great Potomac Flood of 1936. They were north of the Reflecting Pool, extending from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument. This early levee system did not…

President George Washington and city planner Pierre L'Enfant chose the land for the new capital of the United States, in part, because of the beauty of its landscape. Rolling hills, the meeting point of two rivers, flat lands along the river banks,…

Tamaki Miura performed an aria from Madame Butterfly as part of the opening performance for the Sylvan Theatre on the Washington Monument grounds in June 1917. Miura was a Japanese opera singer who toured Europe and the United States in the 1910s and…

Diana Hopkins lived in the White House in the early 1940s with her father Harry, who was a special assistant to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. This article reports on the victory garden she was allowed to have on the White House grounds during…

Sixth president, John Quincy Adams, often swam in Tiber Creek near the White House. In 1825, he commandeered an abandoned boat and rowed it down the creek, planning to swim back. A sudden storm arose, sweeping the leaking boat into the Potomac where…

Tiber Creek raced through the city from the base of Capitol Hill to the Potomac River. In the early 1800s, it was about 800 feet wide, flowing just below the hill where White House was built. Swimmers, boaters, and fishermen navigated its waters.…

Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, established the People's Garden on the site of a former parking lot outside the Department of Agriculture in 2009. The garden is maintained by volunteers from the Department. All of the produce grown in the…