Photo by yakfur.At least, that’s the question I’m asking myself after reading John Kelly’s column this morning, an examination of the geographical past, present, and future of the National Mall. According to a National Park Service spokesman which Kelly quotes, the Mall proper “extends only from the Grant Monument at First Street west to 14th Street.” Between 14th and 17th Streets, the green area is officially known as the “Washington Monument Grounds,” and the official titles for the areas west of 17th and below the I-395 bridge over the Potomac are West Potomac Park and East Potomac Park, respectively.
To think, all this time, I’ve thought that the Lincoln, Vietnam, and World War II Memorials were actually on “the Mall”. How daft of me. Also, I’d like to take this opportunity to correct all my emails as captain of the softball team last year — the emails should have noted that we were playing games in West Potomac Park and on the Washington Monument Grounds, not that we were “heading to the Mall.” I regret the error.
But in all seriousness, Kelly concludes that the naming divisions don’t really make that much sense anymore, especially considering that no one — not even this writer — really gives a squat about what and where they are. (In fact, he goes a step further to suggest that the area should officially be expanded all the way south to Hains Point to facilitate more monuments and give “we the people” more space — an entirely different argument for another day.) “The Mall” is a moniker that, in as much as it belongs to “the People,” belongs to us residents of the District; after all, we’re the ones who have to travel around a big slab of green and brown that bisects our city, not to mention dealing with America trampling around on it. So, why can’t the entire area just be “The Mall”? The fact that this debate seems to lay dormant in a city with so many similar disputes over neighborhood boundaries and names, indicates to me that, officially or not, we’ve already informally made our choice — it’s all the Mall.
