Washington D.C

How Washington D.C was conceived and built?

Two centuries ago Pierre Charles L’ Enfant’s plan for the city was influenced by urban planning prevalent in Europe and by neoclassical landscape design exemplified by Versailles. L’ Enfant placed the capitol on Jenkins Hills and the President’s house on a lower terrace then overlooking the Potomac River. Pennsylvania Ave. passes through these two buildings The National Mall:

Its formal structures, ceremonial spaces, and carefully planned vistas have their roots in earlier European capitals designed to showcase autocratic regimes. But these are, in Walt Whitman’s words, democratic vistas where the American people can freely assemble to play, attend cultural events, or petition the government for change. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History: Rest rooms are specially mentioned at the top of the Museum’s pamphlet.

Ground Floor:

Birds of D.C; Atrium Café, Museum store, Auditorium, wheelchair access, restaurant, cloakroom, tickets, stairs, escalators, information etc., First Floor:

Human Origins; Ocean Hall; Mammal Hall; Special exhibit gallery; Imax theater; Early life; Fossil Plants; Fossil Mammals; Dinosaurs; Ancient Seas; African Cultures; Ice Age; Discovery Room; Rotunda elephant

Second Floor:

Earth, Moon, Meteorites; Hope Diamond; Gems and Minerals; Special Exhibit Gallery; Western cultures; written in Bone; Reptiles; Bones; Insect Zoo; Butterflies +plants

Lincoln Memorial

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” [Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863]

As President he used the power of the office to preserve the Union. In freeing the slaves Lincoln left a legacy to freedom that is one of the most enduring birthrights Americans possess. Congress incorporated the Lincoln Monument Association in March 1867 to build a memorial to the slain President. But the construction began on February 12, 1914. President Warren G. Harding dedicated the memorial on May 30, 1922 with his statue (19 feet tall and 19 feet wide) in 28 marble blocks (1809 – 1864).

ThomasJefferson Memorial

President Franklin D.Roosevelt dedicated the Memorial on April 13, 1943 on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the third President of USA was a political philosopher, architect, musician, book collector, scientist, horticulturist, diplomat and inventor. His own appraisal: (on tombstone as written by him) “Author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom and Father of the University of Virginia” ‘I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man’