Introduction

In 1782, Congress approved the use of the Latin phrase E pluribus unum (“Out of many, one”) on the Great Seal of the United States. While the nation’s official motto was made “In God We Trust” in 1956, the Latin phrase remains part of our nation’s tradition. It was embraced by the thirteen colonies as a moniker of their experiment for one nation in the wake of the American War for Independence. Oneness became integral to American identity. Thereafter, the idea of the United States as a melting pot has impacted the nation’s rich immigrant history. People of color and other minorities have fought against this assimilation process. These struggles manifest in public spaces, a territorial matter over control. The National Mall is one of those spaces whose history seems enchanted. The necropolis of monuments to men and war enshrines an American patriotism in the heart of the nation’s capital. Nathan Glazer, former professor of sociology at University of California, Berkley, wrote that “the creation of the present-day Mall was and is a remarkable demonstration of how a pluralist democracy can plan and build,” without explicit direction from a higher elected authority.1 Designers built the Mall, the monuments, and a collective memory in this space. Hundreds of thousands of school children take a pilgrimage to the Mall every year. It represents democratic ideals, serving as a spine for branches of government, federal agencies, and legislative bodies.

The Mall is not free of its past though. Dr. Brandi Thompson Summers, professor of geography at Berkley, wrote: “How the past is constructed tells us a great deal about an idealized present and future.”2 That present, according to Erik Swyngedouw, professor of geography at Manchester University, is a period of violent protests and riots he calls post-politicization.3 Stiff exercises of power to maintain the status quo have been met in recent times with resistance from an intersection of race and class. Swyngedouw called protestors at this intersection “insurgent architects” exposing disparaging wrongs and inequalities.4 He referenced the 2011 Occupy Movement, but it can apply to all protestors at any time. They have rebuilt spaces and laid claim to public squares, sidewalks, and parks. Protestors exercised their anger about a status quo that has increasingly favored the one and not the many. Race and class are two factors, but a third could be added – police brutality. Swyngedouw identifies militarized law enforcement as one of the chief irregularities saturating post-politicization. As the status quo crumbles, and those in power fight to maintain it, they depend on force. Protests are a tipping point, and insurgent architects are the force applied. As a single statement, “the political is…always disruptive.”5

The political has certainly disrupted the Mall, and it began with collective memory and nostalgia. Dr. Thompson Summers calls nostalgia a negation of painful memories. By association, collective memory is a devotional remembrance to temper nostalgia, a narrative opposed to alternative memory or truths.6 For example, Confederate monuments were raised across the United States as a pushback to Reconstruction and

civil rights. They were tolerated for a time, but now, organizations encourage municipalities to remove the monuments. A largely white majority raises a cry of protest though. They call it erasure of history, others call it historic revisionism, and a stalemate occurs. Similarly, the National Mall has monuments and memorials that evoke nostalgia more than truth. Its narrative glorifies war and American heroes.

Many view Washington and the National Mall as hallowed ground free of unrest, though this has hardly been the case. Dr. Thompson Summers wrote about riots in Washington after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in 1968. There was a misconception that the city was riot-proof because of its strong Black middle class and federal protection.7 That misconception continues today, fed more by an anti-terror narrative than one of class unity. This same reasoning extends to the National Mall. It has not been seen as a space to reckon with controversy and disruption. The 1901 Senate Park Commission’s model of sober Rome – the centennial framework for the Mall – looks more like the fall of Rome.8 Neoclassical and modernist monuments have grown tired. Kirk Savage, associate professor and chair of the Department of Art and Architecture at University of Pittsburgh, wrote in his book Monument Wars that monuments “offer an anachronistic experience: a face-to-face encounter in a specially valued place set aside for collective gathering.”9 The Mall exists in a bubble, popped once in a while by protests in a political crucible which bristles with barricades, barbicans, and brutality as the mob comes calling. It weathers the fight, peeks across the landscape, and returns once more to sober Rome.

The National Mall Expansion Plan for Washington, D.C. is written in three parts. The first part – Hallowed Ground – is dedicated to understanding the four historic master plans that preceded this project. It digs into design decisions, historical context, and overall reception which hallowed the National Mall in memory. The second part – Post-conflict Landscape – explores other entities related to post-politicization. There are several historic events, moments, and monuments that have impacted sociopolitical relationships. The final part – National Park – is informed by this research and responds to it with solutions. It covers analysis, concepts, and design that allow the Mall to expand.

1 Nathan Glazer, “Introduction,” in The National Mall: Rethinking Washington’s Monumental Core, ed. James F. Cooper and Nathan Glazer (New York: Newington-Cropsey Cultural Studies Center, 2008), 4. 2 Brandi Thompson Summers, Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 87. 3 A process in which apolitical contradictions are reduced to policy problems and an actual transformation of the prevailing political order seems ever more unlikely. As a result, crises compound the social classes and force them to conduct insurgencies against the establishment. For many political theorists like Swyngedouw and Žižek have identified the U.S.’s current post-democratic government as in a stage of post-politicization. Erik Swyngedouw, “The Velvet Violence of Insurgent Architects,” LA+ Interdisciplinary Journal of Landscape Architecture 03 (2016): 27 4 Insurgent architects are defined by Swyngedouw as a heterogenous group of gatherers that express discontent with the existing environment and assemble to experiment with and prefigure new democratizing urban public spaces. 5 Ibid, 29. 6 Thompson Summers, Black in Place, 88.

7 In the end though, Washington had more riots than any other city in the U.S. Ibid, 35. 8 Kirk Savage, Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape, (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009), 3, 5. 9 Ibid, 4.

Figure 1.1: Declaration of Independence, Trumbull, 1776 [U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C.] .