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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a minister and African American civil rights leader. On August 18, 1963, he delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. A plaque on the steps of the Memorial marks this event. In 2012, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial was dedicated on the National Mall to commemorate King's work and his vision for equality and national unity.
The Constitution Gardens were dedicated in May 1976 as part of the United States Bicentennial and were declared a living legacy to the US Constitution by President Ronald Reagan in September 1986. During World War I, the US government built temporary offices on this site. Those buildings remained until the early 1970s when President Nixon ordered their removal and replacement by a park. On a small island in the middle of the lake lies a memorial to the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, dedicated in 1984.
The Cuban Friendship Urn originally stood in Cuba to honor American deaths on the USS Maine and during the Spanish-American War. After the urn was damaged in a 1926 hurricane, it was sent to the United States and placed outside the Cuban Embassy. Some time in the 1960s, it disappeared following the deterioration of Cuban-American relations. In 1992, the National Park Service located the urn and placed it in its present position in East Potomac Park.
Located next to the White House, the Eisenhower Executive Office Building currently houses offices for executive staffs of the President, Vice President, First Lady, and Second Lady. Designed in the French Second Empire architectural style, this massive granite building originally housed the State Department, War Department, and the Department of the Navy. The building took 17 years to complete. It was the largest office building in the US when it opened with 553 rooms. Each office door contained a brass knob with the insignia of the State, War, or Navy department. The building has been renovated and is a National Historic Landmark.
Commemorating the first air mail flight connecting Washington, Philadelphia, and New York, the Aero Club of Washington placed this plaque in 1958 to mark the 40th anniversary of that flight. Following 52 experimental flights by the Post Office Department in 1911 and 1912, the first extended test of airmail service occurred in May 1918, when the US Army and the Post Office Department together set up an experimental line between New York and Washington, DC using army pilots.
This is the second memorial to Roosevelt in the city; the first is near the National Archives and matches Roosevelt's own statement about what a memorial to him should look like: a block of stone about the size of a desk. However, in the 1970s, Congress approved a larger memorial, which was constructed in the 1990s once funding was secured. The FDR memorial generated controversy over depictions of Roosevelt in a wheelchair. Some activists argued that the wheelchair should be more prominent, while others pointed out the fact that Roosevelt's disability was largely hidden during his own lifetime.
Olmsted Jr. was a landscape architect appointed by President Theodore Roosevelt to serve on the Senate Park Commission in 1901. The Commission was charged with improving the Mall's design and restoring elements of Pierre Charles L'Enfant's original plan. Olmsted Jr. established himself after apprenticing with his father, Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect famous for building New York's Central Park. While working for the Commission, Olmsted Jr. was responsible for designing the landscape and parks system for the Mall. Throughout his life, he remained committed to national and civic parks across the US.
Founded in 1906, the Freer became the first Smithsonian museum dedicated to Asian art. Charles Freer donated his collection of nearly 10,000 works of Chinese, Japanese, Egyptian, Near Eastern, and Indian objects and American art for this new museum. Freer also funded the construction of the building that opened in 1923, and he would only allow art from his collections to be displayed within its galleries. Since merging with the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the museum is now known as the Freer-Sackler.
George Mason (1725-1792), author of Virginia's Declaration of Rights, was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He refused to sign the Constitution because of the absence of a Bill of Rights and a disagreement over the issue of standing armies. The memorial was funded through an effort by the Board of Regents of Gunston Hall, Mason's home in Fairfax, Virginia, which now operates as a museum. The site of the memorial was home to a garden called the Pansy Garden in the 1920s. The memorial was approved in 1990, but groundbreaking did not take place until 2000.
Established in 1966 as part of the Smithsonian Institution, the Hirshhorn collects and exhibits modern and contemporary art building on founder Joseph Hirshhorn's collection of 6,000 art works. Hirshhorn was a Latvian immigrant to the United States. His collection contained pieces by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Edward Hopper and sculptures by August Rodin and Alexander Calder. The Museum opened in 1974, designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft as a large piece of modern sculpture. The elevated hollowed-center cylinder building distinguishes it from other museums on the Mall. Curved exterior concrete walls open to visitors through a large window offering a full view of the Mall and the Sculpture Garden below.
Jacob Coxey led the first march on Washington in the spring of 1894. Starting in Massillon, Ohio, Coxey marched to the Capitol to bring attention to the plight of unemployed Americans. Coxey proposed that the federal government subsidize a labor program for the unemployed. At the time, a law prohibited gatherings on the Capitol Grounds, but Coxey believed in his cause and tried to give a speech. He was arrested and then jailed for 20 days. Coxey returned in 1914 and successfully spoke on the Capitol steps pleading for a jobs program for the unemployed.
McMillan was a US Senator from Michigan who led the Senate Park Commission in creating a new design plan for Washington's public spaces, including the National Mall. The work and plan of the Senate Park Commission is often referred to by McMillan's name, because he worked very closely with architects and artists appointed to the commission. McMillan died in office in 1902, and would not see his work implemented on the Mall.
The Jefferson Memorial features a classically-inspired dome surrounded by columns. The centerpiece of the memorial is a 19 foot bronze statue of Jefferson. The statue was the second one of Jefferson placed in the Memorial, replacing a work made of plaster because material shortages during World War II made metal unavailable. Inscriptions on the interior walls of the memorial include passages from the Declaration of Independence, Notes on the State of Virginia, and A Summary View of the Rights of British America.
In May 1968, Jesse Jackson and other members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) gathered in Washington, DC, to draw attention to poverty through the Poor Peoples' Campaign. Carrying on the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. after his assassination in April of that year, the SCLC lobbied Congress to create laws that encouraged economic equality. To highlight issues of economic inequality, SCLC constructed a temporary encampment known as Resurrection City on the Mall near the Lincoln Memorial. Jackson served as city manager and mayor of the tent city for its six week existence.
On July 27, 1995, the presidents of the United States and the Republic of Korea dedicated the Korean War Veterans Memorial on the 42nd anniversary of the war's end. The memorial consists of an open triangle filled with 19 stainless-steel figures representing the 4 US military branches who look as if they are on patrol. A shallow reflecting pool fills the circle. Surrounding the soldiers is a wall filled with etchings made from war-related photographs. Another wall lists 22 members of the United Nations that contributed troops or medical support to the Korean War effort.
Constructed between 1914 and 1922, the Lincoln Memorial consists of a large, columned, classically inspired structure with a statue of Lincoln in the interior. Inscribed on the interior walls are Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address and his Gettysburg Address. The site has become a frequent stage for the civil rights demonstrations. African American opera singer Marian Anderson performed there after being barred from performing at then segregated Constitution Hall in 1939. In 1963 Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
As a women's rights activist in the early 1900s, Burns organized political marches and rallies to pressure male lawmakers into passing a Constitutional amendment allowing women to vote. In 1913, she helped organize a suffrage march on Pennsylvania Avenue the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. Burns and Alice Paul formed the National Women's Party in 1917 and continued to fight for women's right to vote. Burns was arrested with other members of the Party after picketing the White House in 1917. While in prison, she went on a hunger strike with Alice Paul to show their commitment to their cause. They won the fight in 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment.
The Main Navy and Munitions temporary war buildings were built quickly in 1918 during World War I under the direction of Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, to provide emergency offices for wartime workers. Nearly 14,000 U.S. Navy personnel worked in these buildings, including the Secretary of the Navy and the Bureau of Navigation. FDR would later say he wanted the structures to be "of such superlative ugliness" that they would be torn down quickly. Despite their appearance and presence on parkland of the Mall, the offices proved useful for more than 50 years. President Nixon ordered them demolished in 1970. Today, the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial and Constitution Gardens occupy the same space that belonged to the Main Navy and Munitions buildings.