The National Mall is officially crowded. Now that the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian is set to open next week, all the usable space intended to be used for museums, monuments and other important national sites have been taken. The Post explores the politics of the National Mall in this morning’s edition. Everybody wants a piece of it, but there’s no room to spare.
In fact, the chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission, John V. Cogbill III, tells the post that the Mall is “[d]one. We consider the Mall a finished work of civic art.”
But there is still at least one big battle that is being fought. Supporters of the future National Museum of African American History and Culture think they deserve a spot on the Mall. The museum has a nod from Congress and the White House on everything except for a location. Some museum supporters are pushing a location at the corner of 15th Street and Constitution Avenue, between the Washington Monument and the Museum of American History.
What does this mean in a broader sense? One-hundred years of planning and construction after the McMillan Commission changed the size and scope of the National Mall, its mission seems complete.
