Freedom Plaza is defined by its expansive, raised granite and marble surface, which serves as a giant, walkable blueprint of Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s seventeen ninety-one plan for Washington. Black granite lines trace the streets and…
Civil War to Civil Rights
This walk traces the journey from the American Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement through downtown Washington, visiting the key sites where Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made history.
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1. Freedom Plaza
2. InterContinental the Willard Washington D.C. by IHG
The Willard InterContinental is a massive Beaux-Arts building on Pennsylvania Avenue, defined by its flat roof, symmetrical facade, and a ground floor marked by rusticated masonry. Designed by architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh and opened…
3. Church of the Epiphany
The Church of the Epiphany occupies a narrow, stone-faced footprint along G Street, squeezed between the glass and steel of modern office towers. Organized in eighteen forty-two, this Episcopal parish predates the surrounding commercial…
4. New York Avenue Presbyterian Church
The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church is a Georgian Colonial structure distinguished by the Lincoln Memorial Tower, which houses a belfry and a four-sided clock. Located just three blocks from the White House, this congregation traces…
5. Ford's Theatre
Ford’s Theatre is recognizable by its brick facade on Tenth Street Northwest, which features several altered window openings where brick colors differ due to repairs. Originally built in eighteen thirty-three as the First Baptist Church,…
6. Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture
The Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture fills an entire city block, defined by its massive scale and rows of thirty-five-foot-tall Corinthian columns that evoke the Greek Parthenon. This historic structure, built in…
7. Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office
The Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office is a slender, unassuming brick building on Seventh Street that narrowly escaped destruction. In nineteen ninety-six, it was a derelict structure slated for demolition when a government carpenter…
8. District of Columbia Court
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals occupies a neoclassical building at four hundred thirty E Street Northwest that is recognizable by its historic status as Washington’s first City Hall. Originally designed in eighteen twenty, this…