Belts are always being tightened in Washington, D.C., which explains why the National Mall—a great swath of turf and fountains bordered by a parade of museums—has looked forlorn for decades. “Systematic defunding by Congress is the reason,” says Caroline Cunningham, president of the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit organization that, with the National Park Service, has taken in hand the 300-plus-acre mall, a.k.a. America’s Front Yard, and its associated parks, which are visited by 29 million visitors each year.
Thanks to a $1 million grant from American Express—part of a projected $350 million being solicited for the comprehensive National Mall Plan—the latest restoration target is the Lockkeeper’s House, a dilapidated 178-year-old stone structure near the Washington Monument and National War Memorials that is a relic of Washington’s long-ago canal system. In addition to bringing the Lockkeeper’s House back to its early-19th-century condition—it has been closed and slowly disintegrating since the 1970s—the grant will move it some 32 feet, shifting it from its practically curbside position on Constitution Avenue to the quieter entrance of the woebegone Constitution Gardens, a 38-acre park that is another National Mall feature with improvements in its future.
For more information about the Trust for the National Mall, go to nationalmallrg or see nps.gov .
