The District of Columbia War Memorial was constructed in 1931, following a five-year-long campaign by the DC community to raise money for a memorial that would honor the 26,000 residents who served (and the 499 who died) in World War I. It was designed by local architects and planned to encourage public remembrance of those who served.
For many Americans, the “War to End All Wars” was the first time in the country’s history where soldiers were sent abroad to fight. Millions of Americans served their country, and by the end of the war, it was estimated that the U.S. suffered an estimated 320,000 casualties (204,000 wounded and 116,000 dead). In the years following the war, thousands of memorials were erected all over the world. A month after the war’s end, Washingtonians were already submitting letters to the United States Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) to design and construct a memorial for the city’s veterans and fallen soldiers.
The design selected for the memorial came from Frederick H. Brooke. He was a local architect based in DC and a veteran of WWI himself. His plan was “a circular, open-air Corinthian temple surrounded by a stepped base” with a domed roof. The columns sit atop a raised base with two sets of steps leading up to the floor level of the structure. It was designed with the dual purpose of being both a war memorial and a bandstand—it is large enough to accommodate an eighty-piece band. The memorial is surrounded by a circular terrace of blue stone paving with parallel blue stone paths bordering lawn panels, extending north to Ash Road and south to Independence Avenue. The structure is surrounded by open lawn, flanked on the east and west sides by Ash Woods, a large grove of trees that consists primarily of elm, maple, beech, and oak.
Almost 100 years after the dedication of the DC War Memorial, a national World War I Memorial was officially completed in Pershing Park in 2024.
DC Inventory: May 23, 2013
National Register: July 11, 2014
Within the National Mall and East and West Potomac Parks historic districts
]]>John Paul Jones was a British merchant marine turned fugitive who took refuge in Virginia in 1773. At the outset of the Revolutionary War, he entered the Continental Navy as a lieutenant. Swiftly promoted to captain, Jones was given command of his first ship in 1776. His aggressive tactics led to his promotion to commodore and earned him a reputation as a pirate among the British.
Created by sculptor Charles Henry Niehaus and architect Thomas Hastings, this memorial to John Paul Jones consists of a bronze portrait statue mounted against a marble pylon. The statue itself depicts Jones in a naval officer's uniform, holding the pommel of his sword in his left hand. On the rear of the pylon, a relief shows Jones hoisting the American flag on a war vessel. Tradition says that he was the first to raise the new flag on a foreign war vessel.
Congress authorized the statue on June 8, 1906 (34 Stat., 224) with an appropriation of $50,000. It was dedicated April 17, 1912. The statue is located at 17th St. and Independence Ave., N.W. and currently owned by the National Park Service.
Part of American Revolution Statuary
National Register: July 14, 1978
]]>The parks were a primary feature of the McMillan Commission Plan, the nation’s preeminent manifestation of the City Beautiful ideal of grand civic space. They are the cumulative product of a century of work by noted American architects. They are the setting for the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial, Vietnam and Koran War Veterans Memorials, and many others. They include nationally recognized works of art, most notably Daniel Chester French’s statue of Abraham Lincoln.
The parks were created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in one of the city’s most ambitious reclamation projects. Intended to improve both river navigation and the sanitation of the Potomac Flats, the reclamation project lasted for more than 30 years, beginning in 1882, and created more than 730 acres of new land enclosed by stone seawalls. Under an 1897 Act of Congress, the reclaimed land was reserved for recreational use. The McMillan Plan reserved the interior of West Potomac Park for passive recreation, and spaces for active recreation were later sited on the park’s fringes. During both World Wars, land in the parks was used for the construction of office and dormitory buildings to support the war effort. The parks are characterized by broad expanses of open space framed by mature landscape plantings and historic boulevards and drives. They have been managed by a succession of government agencies, beginning with the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds, and currently the National Park Service.
East Potomac Park (Reservation 333): From its earliest origins, East Potomac Park was meant to be a model “public playground,” and the park still contains many early-20th-century recreational features. Reclamation of the land was completed in 1911, and it was transferred to the Office of Public Buildings in Grounds for park use in 1912. The completion of Ohio Drive in 1916 allowed access to the park, and a development plan dating to the same year set the framework for the construction of later, primarily active, recreational amenities. In 1966-68, approximately 1,800 Japanese Cherry trees were planted along Ohio Drive around the perimeter of Hains Point. These trees were planted by friends of President and Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson in honor of their nationwide Beautification Program.
See separate entries for major contributing features including the Field House, Golf Course, Miniature Golf Course, Potomac Railroad Bridge, Swimming Pool, and U.S. Engineer’s Storehouse
West Potomac Park (Reservation 332): West Potomac Park is one of the nation’s most important designed landscapes, with several defining features that can be directly attributed to Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., one of the most famous American landscape architect of all time. The park contains the nation’s foremost collection of commemorative structures, which together represent the definitive history of 20th-century American memorialization. A number of its landscape features, including the Tidal Basin cherry trees and rows of elms flanking the Reflecting Pool, have become symbols of Washington, D.C., as have the landscapes associated with the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. The park has also become a continued venue for significant national social gatherings and demonstrations. In particular, the Lincoln Memorial has become an icon in the civil rights movement, best known as the location of such defining moments as Marian Anderson’s 1939 Easter Sunday Concert, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech in 1963. The nation’s annual Fourth of July celebration centers on the park and the adjacent National Mall. Newer contributing features of West Potomac Park include Constitution Gardens (1976), 56 Signers Memorial (1981), Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982), Vietnam Women’s Memorial (1993), Korean War Veterans Memorial (1995), and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial (1994-97).
See separate entries for major contributing features including the District of Columbia World War I Memorial, John Ericsson Monument, Japanese Cherry Trees and Statuary, Jefferson Memorial and Grounds, John Paul Jones Monument, Kutz Bridge and Independence Avenue Extension, Lincoln Memorial and Grounds, Lockkeeper’s House, Number Four Fountain (George Mason Memorial), and Tidal Basin.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: November 30, 1973 (revised November 11, 2001)
]]>The Cuban Friendship Urn was created as a memorial to the U.S. sailors who perished aboard the U.S.S. Maine in 1898, when the ship sank in Havana Harbor during the Cuban War of Independence. The sinking of the Maine is widely regarded as the event that spurred the onset of the Spanish–American War. Originally, the urn sat atop a marble column in Havana, a monument to the friendship between the U.S. and Cuba, until it was hit by a hurricane in 1926. It was then placed on a marble plinth and sent to the United States in 1928, where it was received by President Calvin Coolidge and positioned outside the Cuban Embassy.
The Cuban-American Friendship Urn disappeared when the friendship between the United States and Cuba soured in 1959. It disappeared for decades, during which its whereabouts are contested, before being moved to its current location in the 1990s.
DC Inventory: February 22, 2007National Register: October 11, 2007
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