2005-02-27
LANDSCAPE DESIGN
The Washington Mall | I came home Friday night to a urgent phone call from a lady friend who was calling to find out what I might know about the Reflecting Pond on the Mall in Washington D.C. | Seems one of our local school teachers gave her son an assignement to come up with details on how and why the pool was created | What's the philosophy behind it, that sort of thing | They've gotten so desperate for detail that the desk for the Washington Monument was called ["...somebody actually answered!] but they didn't know much about why the reflecting pond was built |
Frederick Law Olmstead, Augustus St. Gaudens and Charles F.McKim all had a part in the planning of the renovated Mall in the 1920s | Knowing more about the values these men had, combined with the original vision of the city as proposed by architect Pierre L'Enfant would be closer to the direction in learning the answer to the question, or so I'm thinking |
During the 20th Century, the Mall became the focal point for a range of public demonstrations and protest actions | Marian Anderson performed there when, in 1949, she, a world renowned opera singer who happened to be black, was denied performing at a concert hall | Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech", Vietnam War protests, and other mass gatherings have been held there | It is, or was, the space of the Polity |
The Mall was patterned after the grandeur that is the gardens of Versaille | No doubt, we may see pomp and circumstance reserved for Corporate American nobility in the next number of years; you can be certain, however, that just as the space was nearly lost to us during the last Robber Baron Era, that this generation's Royal Thieves will not retain possession of it forever |
The Washington Mall | I came home Friday night to a urgent phone call from a lady friend who was calling to find out what I might know about the Reflecting Pond on the Mall in Washington D.C. | Seems one of our local school teachers gave her son an assignement to come up with details on how and why the pool was created | What's the philosophy behind it, that sort of thing | They've gotten so desperate for detail that the desk for the Washington Monument was called ["...somebody actually answered!] but they didn't know much about why the reflecting pond was built | Frederick Law Olmstead, Augustus St. Gaudens and Charles F.McKim all had a part in the planning of the renovated Mall in the 1920s | Knowing more about the values these men had, combined with the original vision of the city as proposed by architect Pierre L'Enfant would be closer to the direction in learning the answer to the question, or so I'm thinking |During the 20th Century, the Mall became the focal point for a range of public demonstrations and protest actions | Marian Anderson performed there when, in 1949, she, a world renowned opera singer who happened to be black, was denied performing at a concert hall | Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream Speech", Vietnam War protests, and other mass gatherings have been held there | It is, or was, the space of the Polity |
The Mall was patterned after the grandeur that is the gardens of Versaille | No doubt, we may see pomp and circumstance reserved for Corporate American nobility in the next number of years; you can be certain, however, that just as the space was nearly lost to us during the last Robber Baron Era, that this generation's Royal Thieves will not retain possession of it forever |
OTHER TALES ABOUT THE MALL: Don Poss visits the Vietnam Wall | National Park Service's "L'Enfant's Plans for Washington DC | A history of the Mall |
¶ 22:01
