Folger Park: Cultural Landscape Inventory, National Capital Parks-East-Capitol Hill Parks

Fanning, Kay; Zhang, Grace

Folger Park is a two-acre park located in a residential neighborhood on Capitol Hill in SE Washington, D.C. It is a formal urban park bounded on the north and south by D St, on the west by 2nd St., and on the east by 3rd St. The site is important as a component of Andrew Ellicott’s 1792 revision of the 1791 L’Enfant Plan for Washington. As it exists today, the park is mostly the result of NPS work conducted in 1936. There does not appear to be any remnants of the original 1880s design. Folger Park has two Periods of Significance: 1791-1792, when this area first appeared on Ellicott’s modification of the L’Enfant Plan, and 1936, when it was redesigned. Except for vegetation, the park has not greatly changed since 1936. The vegetation conforms only in the most general way to the 1936 plan and most of the 1936 trees have died. First developed in the 1880s under the jurisdiction of the Office of Public Buildings and Grounds (OPBG), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the original design was symmetrical but picturesque, with curving gravel walks and dense plantings. The two main curved walks formed several oval grass panels. A circular fountain occupied a central plaza. Surrounded by rows of street trees, the park contained dense plantings of trees and shrubs, many of them flowering. From its creation in the mid-1880s through the end of the 19th century, Folger Park appears to have been well maintained. In 1905 it still retained an abundance of native and non-native plantings. By the 1920s, however, many of its trees and shrubs had been lost; probably it had begun to suffer from irregular maintenance. The condition of these parks led to their major overhaul in the 1930s with funding from President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. New circulation systems were developed for these three parks that established axial alignments of walks oriented to the cardinal directions. Simpler vegetative palettes, comprising lines of trees circling the park and informally arranged trees on grass panels, replaced the earlier profusion of trees and shrubs in a multitude of species and varieties. The new design of Folger Park featured a cross-shaped walks set within an oval walk that ran near the park’s boundary. Entrances at the four corners connected with the oval walk; entrances at the mid-points of each of the four sides led to a central plaza, paved with flagstones and featuring an octagonal “wading” pool. This circulation layout remains largely intact today. Placed at the east and west ends of the long axis were identical structures composed of a drinking fountain flanked by twin benches. In the wall behind each fountain was a plaque depicting the park’s new plan. Unlike the circulation and structures, it is not known how much of the 1936 planting plan was carried out. A photograph of 1964 showing one quadrant of the park suggests the planting was mostly implemented, but most of the trees have since died. Sometime before 1964, the wading pool was converted into a planter for annuals and roses. A planting plan of 1984 called for the addition of several new trees to augment existing vegetation, which was then sparse. Today, the lines of street trees remain, though most of them have numerous gaps. The park’s tree arrangement is different from that called for in 1936. Many of the street trees have died; only D St. retains an unbroken line of trees. Most of the park’s small-scale features date from the 1936 redesign. The remaining significant features are the iron frame and wood-slat benches, a design developed for National Capital Parks in the mid-1930s, and the quarter-round concrete curbs, a type of boundary element first used in the city parks in 1904/1905. The most important vistas from the park are along its east-west and north-south axes. The view to the south opens out to a large green space, former site of Providence Hospital.

Folger Park: Cultural Landscape Inventory, National Capital Parks-East-Capitol Hill Parks

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