The Mall in London, which runs along the side of Saint James Park, was originally a playing field for King Charles II of England and his courtiers. They played pall-mall, a game similar to croquet. By the mid-1700s, it had become a tree-lined avenue…

Solomon Brown was likely the first African American employee at the Smithsonian Institution. He began work there in 1852 as a maintenance worker, building exhibit cabinets, cleaning, and moving specimens. He advanced to serve as clerk to Secretary…

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…

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,…

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.…

This postcard from 1913 shows the Mall and Pennsylvania Avenue. The building in the left foreground is the old Botanic Garden conservatory, with the Bartholdi Fountain between it and Pennsylvania Avenue. Business and residential buildings are still…

The Columbian Institute was a Washington organization dedicated to the promotion of the arts and sciences for the benefit of the nation. In 1820, two years after their official charter was approved by Congress, the Institute was granted five acres of…

The original botanic gardens in Washington were built in line with the Capitol building, where the Capitol Reflecting Pool is today. The new design proposed for the Mall in the early 1900s called for an open green space from the Capitol to the…

In the late 1920s, Congress and Washington city planners debated moving the Botanic Garden from the Mall to a larger location elsewhere in the District. This map shows a proposed plan for the Botanic Garden on a much larger site than is possible on…