The National Mall : a place of wars
During the Civil War and both World Wars, the military occupied the Mall - now almost half the Mall honors the dead.
The "temporary" war buildings shock us now
Built first in World War 1, the concrete buildings to the right housed the Navy and Army. By WW2, they expanded their presence and served as a Pentagon of its time. For any of us who never visited the Mall before 1970, the images can inform us how tied to war our Mall's projection of a national identity has been.
When the Mall only extended to the Washington Monument, the Civil War took it over completely.
As the Civil War began, tens of thousands of recruits showed up in Washington to be organized. Their tents were on the Mall. They drilled incessantly.
When Washington turned into a city of makeshift hospitals, Lincoln had state of the art wards built on the Mall.
After Teddy Roosevelt had the Mall extended to its current length, there was new open space to fill. By the time of the dedication of the Lincoln Monument in 1922 (when my novel begins), the temps had arrived.
The temps lasted until 1970 when Presdient Nixon had them demolished
Once gone, the space began filling up with memorials to all our wars. While Lincoln's Memorial and the Grant Memorial below the Capitol are the Civil War bookends to the Mall, now the space rid of the temps honors WW2, Vietnam and Korea.
War on the Mall brings up a lot of questions and thoughts. This topic came to me because of the end of our war in Afghanistan. Will that be enshrined on the Mall some day? How?
What do you think about our "front yard" being so much about war and death? Is it possible that mourning the dead at the memorials makes us yearn more for peace? or does it make us think that being war-like is just the way life is?