Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
was narrow, shallow, and poorly constructed.As commercial traffic declined,
it functioned primarily as an open sewer and a breeding ground for mos-
quitoes, collecting noxious waste from nearby buildings and markets.
Widely reviled as a public health hazard, the canal was covered over during
the 1870s, taking with it the last trace of Tiber Creek, one of the funda-
mental elements of Washington's original “natural” topography.
17
L'Enfant's lofty ambitions for the Mall remained unrealized at the mid-
dle of the nineteenth century. Jefferson's poplars had grown up to flank
Pennsylvania Avenue with stately rows of greenery, and the grounds of the
Capitol were embellished with an assortment of ornamental plantings, but
the Mall itself was little more than an ill-defined cow pasture. The Mall's
undeveloped status was a continued source of embarrassment and concern.
Aside from the unsightliness and practical problems posed by the unkempt
assemblage of pastures, hillocks, dirt tracks, and marshes, the undeveloped
expanse of the Mall presented a troubling symbol for a nation whose self-
proclaimed destiny was to subdue the American continent and transform its
wastes and wildernesses into a blooming garden, an agrarian paradise, and
an exemplar of moral, social, and economic progress.
18
Despite the slow pace of improvements, there was no shortage of pro-
posals for the Mall's embellishment during the first half of the nineteenth
century. Most of these plans shared a common faith that nature could be
improved to serve a variety of practical, political, educational, and inspira-
tional ends. Rather than simply cordon off a parcel of untrammeled nature,
or produce scenes of purely aesthetic value, the proper public park should
combine pictorial beauty and opportunities for leisurely strolling with
instructional horticultural displays, facilities for botanical research, and less
explicitly didactic demonstrations of artistic, moral, and social principles. In
addition to the immediate practical benefits of serving as models for the
embellishment of home grounds, encouraging horticultural experimenta-
tion, and promoting scientific and aesthetic progress, such public gardens
were thought to have more subtle and far-reaching effects. Contemporary
landscape designers and moral philosophers believed that properly designed
public gardens would elevate the taste of the citizenry and improve the
behavior of those who came in contact with beautiful and well-ordered
scenery.While many of these ideas had their basis in English landscape the-
ories, they had a particular resonance in the United States at a time when
many believed that the country was beginning to stray from its mythic roots
in agrarian-based republican virtue. Public parks were also thought to pro-
