Mall Talk

Described by one historian as "the single most important public space in the country," and by another as "our most sacred space," the National Mall—a 684-acre National Park that stretches from the U.S. Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial—obviously plays an important role in shaping American understandings of national identity and purpose.¹ Some twenty-five million people visit the Mall each year: more than twice the number who visit other national parks such as the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Yosemite, combined. In part, the Mall's popular appeal corresponds to its repeated use over the past century as a public space for democratic discourse. As Lucy Barber argues, since the late 1890s and especially after World War II, the National Mall has functioned to forge an "American political tradition" of active, and activist, citizenship.² On August 28, 1963, it hosted the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; forty years later, a granite marker commemorating that march's iconic moment—Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech—was dedicated on the top steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In April 1971, Vietnam Veterans Against the War staged five days of protests on the Mall, and 500,000 antiwar demonstrators rallied at the Washington Monument. Between 1987 and 1996, the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt was displayed five times on the Mall. On January 20, 2009, almost two million people crowded the Mall to attend the historic inauguration of the nation's first African American president. Each year, the National Park Service, one of many federal agencies charged with managing the Mall, receives some 6,000 applications for public gathering permits, and about 3,000 public events are held.

Permanent memorials strewn throughout the Mall—from the monuments that occupy its central core to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in West Potomac Park and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Constitution Gardens—also play central roles in defining the constantly evolving terms of American national identity. Many Americans learn about their history and become emotionally engaged members of the nation through the touristic experience of visiting these memorials—whether as an obligatory civics exercise in middle-school or on family vacation. The mall's memorials help generate what Benedict Anderson terms the "affective bonds of nationalism," and evoke an imaginary national citizen: the "good" citizen that all Americans aspire to become.³

Today, however, this sacred space of inspirational citizenship is a mess. The National Mall's once verdant lawns have been trampled into shabby patches of dusty brown soil. Sidewalks and seawalls are crumbling. Air and noise quality is poor, compounded by dense suburban commuter traffic and the drone of planes taking off and landing at nearby Reagan National Airport. The U.S. Capitol Reflecting Pool is fetid: in 2008, scores of ducks swimming in the contaminated pool died of avian botulism.⁴ Benches, bathrooms, and refreshment stands, the basic amenities of cultural tourism anywhere, are few and far between. An estimated $400 million in deferred maintenance costs is needed to repair the Mall, but year after year the nation's political representatives divert such funds to the fifty states they represent. Now well into its third political century, the citizens and spaces of Washington, D.C. remain unrepresented in the United States Senate.⁵ America's cherished "front yard," the physical locus of treasured national ideals and actions, is simultaneously loved to death and utterly neglected.

The story of how this happened—how the National Mall became a primary symbol of America, a gathering place for activist citizenship, and a much used and abused public park—is considered in two new books. One, a collection of essays edited by Nathan Glazer, longtime Harvard professor of education...