Much like the food trucks that line the Mall today, food wagons in the late 1800s catered to office workers and tourists. Here a wagon offering "Hot Waffles 6 for 5c" sits on the Mall near the southside of the Treasury Department building.

This illustration accompanied an article discussing efforts to restart construction on the Washington Monument, with hopes to complete the monument by the national centennial in 1876. The point of view of the illustration is from the Mall's baseball…

This painting from 1833 was published in New York City in 1834. It shows a view of Washington, DC from Anacostia. The Navy Yard and the Capitol can be seen in the center, while the Arsenal and the White House can be seen toward the left. The ships…

This view down Pennsylvania Avenue NW from the corner of 6th Street shows part of Washington near the Mall around 1860. On the corner in the foreground, where the Newseum is today, stood the National Hotel, one of the most prominent hotels in the…

There was a hotel on this part of Pennsylvania Avenue starting in 1805. In 1820 the business was bought by Jesse Brown in 1820 and the place was renamed Brown's Indian Queen Hotel. The hotel was popular with out of town visitors and congressmen…

The brick Baltimore and Ohio Railway Depot stood at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Second Street on lots formerly occupied by a cabinet maker and a boarding house. Fitted with offices, living rooms, and a waiting room, an agent and a…

This detail of Adolph Sachse's stylized bird's-eye view of Washington highlights the section of the National Mall west of the US Capitol on present-day 6th Street. The National Mall was still parkland, a series of gardens, experimental plots, and…

The Baltimore and Potomac Railroad, a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad, crossed the National Mall between 1870 and 1907. Sheds for waiting trains and empty freight cars extended into the parklands of the National Mall. As the population grew…

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…

Even before President Abraham Lincoln officially created a Department of Agriculture in 1862, the Bureau of Agriculture, part of the Patent Office, was growing crops on the National Mall, conducting research, and distributing seeds across the…