Washington Landmarks

Washington was planned before it was built. In 1791, Pierre Charles L'Enfant drew up a design for the new capital, with the Capitol on a hill, a home for the president, and broad avenues running out at angles across a grid of streets. For decades the city was mostly plan and very little building. Visitors made fun of its muddy streets and empty lots.

The landmarks came slowly, and each one has a story. The White House was first occupied by John Adams in 1800 and burned by British troops in 1814, along with the Capitol. Both were rebuilt. The Capitol was expanded in the 1850s and 1860s, and its cast-iron dome was finished during the Civil War.

The Washington Monument took the longest. Work began in 1848, stopped in the 1850s for lack of money and then the war, and started again in the late 1870s. It was finished in 1884 and opened to the public a few years later. The stone from the second phase came from a different source, and the color change about a third of the way up shows in nearly every picture.

The Smithsonian Institution began with a gift from James Smithson, an English scientist who never visited the United States. Its red sandstone castle on the Mall was finished in the 1850s. The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated in 1922, at the far western end of the Mall on land that had been marsh and river not long before. The Jefferson Memorial followed in 1943. Many of these landmarks are photographed with cherry trees in front of them. The trees were a gift from the city of Tokyo, and the first were planted around the Tidal Basin in 1912.

When you look at pictures of Washington's landmarks, look at what surrounds them. In early views, the great buildings sit almost alone, with open fields, sheds and dirt roads around them. In later views, the city has filled in. Putting an 1860s picture next to a 1930s picture of the same building shows how long it took for the plan of 1791 to become a real city.