{"id":224,"date":"2015-06-29T15:19:53","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T15:19:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/urbanaturalroosting\/?p=224"},"modified":"2015-07-14T15:12:12","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T15:12:12","slug":"washington-d-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/urbanaturalroosting\/2015\/06\/29\/washington-d-c\/","title":{"rendered":"Washington, D.C."},"content":{"rendered":"

Washington, D.C.<\/h2>\n

Monuments \u00a0& Memorials in Washington, D.C.:<\/a><\/h3>\n

Probably no city in America has the combined monumental and federal qualities of European cities like Paris, Vienna, or Rome, but Washington, D. C., comes very close; although many cite\u00a0the precise details incorrectly, there is an absolute limit on building height in our capital city. No structure in the U. S. capital\u2013after the 1890s\u2013could be taller than \u201cthe width of the adjacent street plus 20 feet.\u201d So, this law is not about the height of the Washington Monument<\/a> or the statue on top of the Capitol Building<\/a>, but it does restrict building heights to make the city more like Paris or those other beautiful, boulevard-crossed, monumental capitals of Europe and South America. That idea is not quite urbanature<\/em>, but it does prepare the way for a city of wide boulevards, open spaces, and parks that line the Potomac River and surround the many of the most classically-inspired buildings in America.<\/p>\n

The National Mall<\/a><\/em><\/h4>\n

\"File:WashingtonDCMallAerialNavyPhoto<\/p>\n

Once in our federal city, head first to The Mall<\/a>, a long open-greenspace that connects the Lincoln Memorial, by way of the Washington Monument, to the U. S. Capitol Building, a distance of \u00a0just about two (2 miles; that is a good hike for even most out-of-shape American fast-food eaters). But the beautiful capital of our country has urbanature aplenty, from DuPont Circle to the Anacostia River, from the Masonic Memorial in Alexandria to Rock Creek Park of he city\u2019s west side. Our Mall includes theSmithsonian\u2019s Castle and its Air & Space Museum, as well as the Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of Art, the Hirschorn Museum and its Sculpture Garden and the Museum of African Art, the new \u00a0Museum of African-American History and Art, the American History Museum, and the Museum of the American Indian, the Freer Gallery, the Sackler Gallery, the Arts and Industries Building, and finally the Smithsonian International Gallery. <\/a>Is that enough for your museum sightseeing? Make sure and extend your \u00a0stay for an day or two longer than you had planned at first. America\u2019s attic<\/strong>\u2013as the Smithsonian is sometimes called thanks to Spencer Fullerton Baird<\/a>\u00a0(a professor at my own Dickinson College<\/a>) who took its collections from to a few thousand objects to many millions of objects\u2013houses as many separate items as any museum collection in the world. The Baird years were when the Smithsonian became America\u2019s greatest museum collection; in fact, the museum still refers to Baird as\u00a0America\u2019s Sublime Pack-Rat.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Washington, D.C. Monuments \u00a0& Memorials in Washington, D.C.: Probably no city in America has the combined monumental and federal qualities …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2617,"featured_media":187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/urbanaturalroosting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/urbanaturalroosting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/urbanaturalroosting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/urbanaturalroosting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2617"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/urbanaturalroosting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/urbanaturalroosting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/urbanaturalroosting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/urbanaturalroosting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/urbanaturalroosting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/urbanaturalroosting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}