Solomon Northrup, a free African American from New York, arrived in Washington in 1841 in the company of two white men who had promised him a job as a fiddler. After a day touring the Capitol and White House Grounds, the men drugged him and handed…

Thomas Law was a wealthy Englishman who invested financially and ideologically in the development of the new city of Washington. In 1804 he wrote a pamphlet, published anonymously, proposing a canal from the Anacostia River to the Potomac following…

Margaret Bayard Smith was a writer and a vital figure in the early social life of Washington, DC. Her letters and diaries provide some of the best descriptions of early Washington. In 1837 she recorded what the Mall looked like when she and her…

In 1850, President Millard Fillmore commissioned landscape architect, Andrew Jackson Downing to landscape the Mall. His design divided the Mall into four smaller parks, each with a unique appearance, connected by curving walks. Downing was an…