As the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C. communicates our nation’s founding principles through its architecture and urban design. Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the city planner chosen by George Washington, built the city “around the idea that every citizen was equally important,” symbolized by “a great public walk,” open to all, where generations of Americans have exercised their rights to freedom of speech and assembly. In further recognition that power in the United States resides in the people, L’Enfant placed Congress, not the president’s house, on a high hill overlooking the Potomac.

The architectural features of significant buildings also embody the idea that our government is "of and by the people". These are places where the tenets of our democratic republic take shape and where our ideas about power find material expression. They belong to all of us and not to any single party or administration.

As Carol Quillen, president and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said, "as the United States prepares to mark its 250th anniversary, these places invite us to reflect on our aspirations as a nation and on our shared responsibility to safeguard what future generations will inherit. Once irreversible changes are made to an historic structure, there is no going back, and we risk undermining not only the physical coherence of our capital city but also our shared understanding of who we are as a people."

This Preservation Month, the National Trust for Historic Preservation is taking a closer look at five remarkable civic spaces and landscapes—places that have shaped American democracy and that hold meaning far beyond the borders of the Nation’s Capital.

As you explore these historic sites, we ask you to consider what places in your community define your civic identity. What would you fight to protect?

Come back each week as we explore a new civic landmark in Washington, D.C. For more follow us on Instagram @savingplaces.

Arlington National Cemetery to Lincoln Memorial

Located just over the border in Virginia, the site now known as Arlington National Cemetery was once a plantation founded by George Washington Parke Custis, Martha Washington’s grandson. The plantation passed down to Custis’ only daughter, Mary, who had married Robert E. Lee—and over time, the Custis-Lee family enslaved over 100 people at the site.

On April 20, 1861, following Virginia’s secession from the Union, the Union Army gained control of the site for its strategic position protecting Washington, D.C.

In 1863, a portion of the former plantation was home to formerly enslaved people in an area known as “Freedman’s Village,” which remained through 1900. In 1864, the site became a national cemetery, eventually holding the remains of approximately 16,000 Civil War soldiers.

In 1932, Arlington National Cemetery became the southern anchor for the Arlington Memorial Bridge. With the recently completed Lincoln Memorial (1914), it created a physical expression of national reconciliation, stretching across the Potomac and connecting the Union and the Confederacy in a gesture of healing.

Today this viewshed continues to honor those who, in Lincoln’s words, gave “the last full measure of devotion.” In 2022, descendants of Robert E. Lee and those enslaved at the estate—the Parks, Grays, and Syphaxes—came together at Arlington House in a remarkable act of reconciliation.

It is because this viewshed carries so much meaning that the National Trust has raised concerns about a proposed “Triumphal Arch,” whose scale, location, and design will disrupt this important visual and symbolic vista. The Arch will dwarf the Lincoln Memorial and disrupt the long, open, and uninterrupted viewsheds, overwhelming the entry to Arlington National Cemetery.

The White House

No building in America carries more symbolic weight than the White House. Since John Adams first took up residence in 1800, it has served simultaneously as a home, a seat of executive power, and a material testament to the voice of the people, as its architect was selected through a public competition. A National Historic Landmark stewarded by the National Park Service on behalf of all Americans, it sits in the context of L’Enfant’s carefully conceived plan for the city, with clear line of sight to Capitol Hill that serves as a physical reminder of the connections among our branches of government.

Designed by Ireland-born architect James Hoban, the White House was built over eight years from 1792-1800. Its construction reflects the full complexity of American history: envisioned by George Washington, designed by an Irish immigrant, built by enslaved people, who contributed to nearly every phase of the work, from quarrying stone and cutting timber to producing bricks, and assembling its roof and walls, alongside paid white workers.

While the White House has evolved considerably over two centuries (most dramatically when British forces burned it in 1814), it has endured as what generations of Americans have simply called the “People’s House.” Heads of state, politicians, artists, scientists, and ordinary citizens have all passed through its doors, and its image has become shorthand for the principles underlying the American democratic republic.

That symbolism is inseparable from its setting and relatively modest scale and design. The White House’s position, originally in direct sightline with the Capitol, was not accidental. L’Enfant designed the city so that the legislative and executive branches would be visible to one another. This relationship between buildings is itself a civic argument, one that has shaped how Americans and the world understand the architecture of democratic power.

National Mall

From the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to the dome of the Capitol, and from the White House to the Potomac River, the National Mall is an expanse of land where generations of Americans have gathered to exercise and demand their rights.

The L’Enfant Plan envisioned a broad avenue anchored by the U.S. Capitol Building and a monument to George Washington, a plan only fully realized a century or so later by the 1902 McMillan Plan, which expanded L’Enfant’s original dream.

Before 1902, the “Nation’s Front Yard” as it is now known, had an open sewer system running through it, along with segregated stations for streetcars and trains. Prior to the abolition of slavery in D.C. in 1862, it also contained holding pens and auction blocks for enslaved people. While the Mall has been at times both an “industrial area and public park,” it has also always been a place for Americans of all ages to physically draw attention to important issues facing the nation.

The first large scale protest was in 1894, when 500 unemployed workers, as Coxey's Army, came to the National Mall to draw attention to an economic depression. Since then, the space has seen women march for the right to vote, World War I veterans looking for support following their service, Rabbis calling attention in 1943 to the Holocaust and, in 1963, 250,000 people gathered for the March for Jobs and Freedom and heard a young John Lewis and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. call for action.

In 1978, the American Indian Movement ended The Longest Walk from Alcatraz in San Francisco to Washington, D.C., to draw attention to critical legislation, and in 1987 in conjunction with the National March for Lesbian and Gay Rights, the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt was unveiled with panels provided by family and friends who had lost loved ones to the devastating disease. In the 21st century, these moments of protest continue to play an important role in Americans’ fight to protect their rights.

Today, our National Mall unites us with generations of Americans, holding different and even conflicting convictions, who have come here to peacefully exercise rights and freedoms guaranteed to each of us. Visiting this powerful place now reminds us of our obligation to safeguard these freedoms for future generations.