Memorial Avenue Corridor: Cultural Landscape Inventory, George Washington Memorial Parkway, National Park Service

Earley, Judith; Guenther, Dagmar

Memorial Avenue corridor is a name applied to the mile-long axial composition that includes Arlington Memorial Bridge, Memorial Circle, Memorial Avenue Bridge (over Boundary Channel), Memorial Avenue, and the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery at the hemicycle. Arlington Memorial Bridge and its features were intended to be both a monumental entry to the federal city and a formal, processional route to Arlington National Cemetery. The Memorial Avenue corridor was the design of the McKim, Mead and White architectural firm, under the project architect, William Mitchell Kendall. The corridor is a major element of the system of public buildings, parks, memorials, bridges, and drives that constitutes the monumental core of Washington D.C. Arlington Memorial Bridge is considered the most beautiful bridge in Washington. It crosses the Potomac River from a point at the end of the Washington Mall axis near the Lincoln Memorial. Several designs for a river crossing a little north of this location had been considered during the later decades of the nineteenth century and one was selected. But in 1901, the Senate Park Commission (McMillan Commission) proposed a different type of bridge at this site. They drew an axis between the then-proposed Lincoln Memorial and the home of Robert E. Lee, on the heights of Arlington, Virginia, as the line the bridge would take. Nearly three decades passed before the bridge was built, but the design bears the imprint of the Park Commission’s work. The two ends of Arlington Memorial Bridge stand on created land, formed from river dredgings. The resulting new land became East and West Potomac Parks, on the east side of the river, and Columbia Island (renamed Lady Bird Johnson Park in 1967) on the river’s west side. The Arlington Memorial Bridge roadway turns around Memorial Circle, proceeds as Memorial Avenue Bridge, crosses the river terrace below Arlington House, and terminates at the hemicycle and entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. Tall pylons, topped by sculpted eagles, mark the Columbia Island ends of the two bridges. Memorial Avenue was conceived as an “Avenue of Heroes," and seven memorials have been placed along it since 1960, including the Women in Military Service for America Memorial located at the hemicycle. The avenue is partly enclosed by a hedge of American holly (Ilex opaca) and white oak trees (Quercus alba). A building to accommodate visitors to Arlington National Cemetery was completed in 1988 and lies within the original boundaries of the avenue. Transportation corridors—Highway 110 and a line of the Metro, Washington’s rapid transit system—pass below grade, but are marked on the avenue by entrance and exit roads, elevators, escalators and signs. The composite features of the Memorial Avenue corridor are significant as important elements in the neoclassical urban design of the National Capital as it evolved during the first third of the 20th century. As a whole, the corridor maintains moderate rather than high integrity because of the effects of various intrusions and losses, but many of its elements, particularly its primary architectural features, have high integrity.

Memorial Avenue Corridor: Cultural Landscape Inventory, George Washington Memorial Parkway, National Park Service

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