How the Mall Means

The National Mall is the focus of millions of visitors to the America's capital, Washington, DC, each year. Today's Mall is the product of three significant periods of planning and development. This article examines the L’Enfant Plan, the McMillan Plan, and the National Park Service Master Plan to understand the ways in which this public space has evolved as well as the referential meaning it holds for us today. Through Goodman's theoretical framework, the Mall is perceived as a cohesively built environment with potential meaning for reflexive as well as prescriptive implications for American national identity. 1 1. Nelson Goodman, “How Buildings Mean,” Critical Inquiry 11, no. 4 (1985): 642–53. The object of the present investigation is to prepare for the city of Washington a plan that shall enable future development to proceed along the lines originally planned—namely, the treatment of the city as a work of civic art—and to develop the outlying parks as portions of a single well-considered system. 2 2. Charles Moore, ed. “Report of the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia on the Improvement of the Park System of the District of Columbia,” in The Improvement of the Park System of the District of Columbia (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1902b)

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