DC -- Columbia Heights -- Meridian Hill Park (Malcolm X Park):
- Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
- Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon
underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
- Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
- Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 3.128.199.88 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.
- Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
|
[1] MERID_080920_02.JPG
|
[2] MERID_080920_16.JPG
|
[3] MERID_080920_20.JPG
|
[4] MERID_080920_27.JPG
|
- Wikipedia Description: Meridian Hill Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Meridian Hill Park, also known unofficially as Malcolm X Park, is located in the Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Columbia Heights. The 12 acres (49,000 mē) of landscaped grounds are maintained by the National Park Service as part of Rock Creek Park, but are not contiguous with the main part of that park. Meridian Hill Park is bordered by 15th, 16th, W, and Euclid Streets NW.
In 1819, John Porter erected a mansion on the grounds and called it "Meridian Hill" because it was on the exact longitude of the original District of Columbia milestone marker, set down on April 15, 1791 at Jones Point, Virginia by Major Andrew Ellicott assisted by Benjamin Banneker. During the 19th century the environs of Meridian Hill became host to Columbia College, precursor to George Washington University. Prior to the Civil War, the mansion grounds became a pleasure park for the area. During the war, Union troops encamped there.
Much of the impetus for creating a public park on this portion of 16th Street came from Mary Foote Henderson, wife of Missouri senator John Brooks Henderson and local resident. She lobbied Congress with several plans for the neighborhood before getting approval for the park. The land was originally part of Columbian College, now George Washington University. In 1910, after the school moved to its current location, the federal government bought the land, and in 1914 the Interior Department hired landscape architect George Burnap to design a grand urban park modeled on parks found in European capitals. His plans, later modified by Horace Peaslee, included an Italian Renaissance-style terraced fountain in the lower half and gardens in a French Baroque style in the upper half. The walls and fountains were built with concrete aggregate, a new building material consisting of concrete mixed with small pebbles. After two decades under construction, the grounds were given park status in 1936 and have been designated a National Historic Landmark.
In the 1970s and 80s, crime became widespread in the surrounding neighborhoods. Meridian Hill Park became a haven for drug dealing and was considered unsafe, especially at night. After the murder of a local teenager near the park in 1990, a group of citizens formed "Friends of Meridian Hill Park". They organized volunteer nighttime patrols and lobbied the National Park Service to make improvements to the park. Their efforts were largely effective and today the park is considered relatively safe.
On Sunday afternoons during the warm weather months, people gather from 3:00–9:00 p.m. in the upper park to dance, participate in a drum circle, and provide food for the homeless. The activity has been held in the park since the 1950s, and attracts professional drummers from time to time.
Malcolm X Park:
Meridian Hill Park was to be renamed in 1969. DC residents overwhelmingly voted for the park to be named after Malcolm X. Constitutionally, Congress must ratify all of D.C.'s laws before they take effect. In 1969, a bill was introduced to rename the site "Malcolm X Park". The U.S. House of Representatives rejected this vote, instead voting to keep the "Meridian Hill Park" name. Although the bill failed, some locals informally refer to it by the proposed name.
Statues and features:
One of the intriguing feature of the park is the thirteen basin cascade fountains that form the center of the lower level formal garden. The fountains are designed with a recirculating water system which, through an elaborate series of pumps, supplies water to two large circular fountains on the upper level, and cascade found on the lower. Each cascade bowl flows to a larger bowl as they descend to the bottom. Water fills one bowl, overflowing into the next, until it reaches the large reflecting pool in the plaza.
Statues:
* "Serenity" by sculptor Jose Clara, dedicated to the memory of Lt. Commander William Henry Scheutze (USN);
* "Jeanne d'Arc," a gift from the "Ladies of France in Exile in New York." It is a bronze copy of a statue by Paul Dubois. The original is at the Reims Cathedral in France. In a city of many equestrian statues, this is the only one to depict a woman.
* "Dante" by Ettore Ximenes;
* A memorial to James Buchanan, the 15th president of the United States, sculpted by Hans Schuler.
- Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
- Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
- Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].