Restoration of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool began in November 2010. The two-year, $30.7 million renovation project almost completely rebuilt the structure. The 1923 original pool was built on an unstable foundation that sank and cracked. The…

When President Truman moved in in 1945, the White House was showing its age. Burned by British troops in 1814, renovated in 1902 and 1927, and expanded several times, the piecemeal and constantly incomplete renovations to the White House had left the…

On May 2, 1810, Washington officials and citizens flocked to the groundbreaking for the Washington Canal, which would connect the Potomac River to the Eastern Branch, also called the Anacostia River. Although the canal had been part of the original…

In 1870 the Army Corps of Engineers, headed by Major Nathaniel Michler, began dredging the Potomac to remove silt and improve ship traffic. Dredged material was dumped into the tidal flats along the Washington waterfront. In 1875 the project was…

In February 1792 President George Washington dismissed city planner Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant, who had been hired to design the new capital but continually argued with the Federal City commissioners. One of L'Enfant's most offensive acts was…

In 1902 the Senate Park Commission announced a plan to renovate the National Mall. Named after the committee chair, Senator James McMillan, the McMillan Plan redesigned the layout of the Mall from a system of informal gardens to today's streamlined,…

In 1850 President Millard Fillmore asked Andrew Jackson Downing, the nation's preeminent landscape gardener and advocate of a rural American style, to design the landscaping for the largely undeveloped National Mall and Smithsonian grounds. Downing’s…

In 1791, President George Washington hired Pierre Charles L'Enfant to create a plan for the layout of the federal city. L'Enfant focused on the area between Tiber Creek, today Constitution Avenue and the Eastern Branch, also called the Anacostia…