Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Downing's design stretched from the Capitol to the monument grounds
and the White House (figure 5).Though it had six distinct segments, it dis-
played greater unity than Mills's eclectic efforts, the entire composition
being held together by a simpler and more forceful and consistent series of
paths and picturesque landscape effects.The area south of the White House,
now known as the Ellipse, would consist of a circular field or “parade
ground” bordered by a ring of trees. An ornate suspension bridge over the
moribund Washington Canal provided access to the Mall. The monument
grounds consisted of broad open lawns adorned with looping paths and art-
fully placed plantings of native trees.The next section, between 12th Street
and 14th Street, was the most anomalous to modern eyes. Downing pro-
posed to create an evergreen garden, with an encyclopedic array of native
and foreign examples clustered around concentric paths. In addition to its
educational value, this garden would provide greenery in the winter
months, when Congress was in session and the tourist season was at its pre-
air-conditioning height. Where the Mall narrowed between Pennsylvania
Avenue and Maryland Avenue, Downing proposed a “Fountain Park” that
reinterpreted L'Enfant's grandiose formal cascade as a modest circular foun-
tain balanced by an irregularly shaped man-made lake flanked by pictur-
esque plantings. At the base of the Capitol, Downing called for the
construction of additional greenhouses and a few minor alterations to the
existing Botanical Garden.
If Downing's proposal for the Mall had been enacted,Washington would
undoubtedly have played a pivotal part in reinventing the form and func-
tion of urban nature in mid-nineteenth-century America. Unfortunately,
Downing died in a steamboat fire a year after submitting his plan. The
Smithsonian's grounds were developed more or less along the lines he
had proposed, but the broader outlines of his plan were never realized.
Washington's potential influence as a model was soon eclipsed by that of
NewYork, where Central Park played the leading role in sparking the trend
toward naturalistic park development that transformed the American urban
landscape in the second half of the nineteenth century.
While park advocates experienced continued setbacks in their efforts to
reinvent Washington's natural landscape, the District of Columbia govern-
ment and the US Army Corps of Engineers radically transformed the
topography, ecology, and hydrology of the nation's capital during the sec-
ond half of the nineteenth century. One of the fundamental steps in this
reinvention of Washington's urban environment was the provision of a safe
