Land Matters

If I had ever doubted that the three laws of real estate (location, location, location) also held true for parks, I got a refresher course last weekend. A friend of mine was in town, so we walked from my house in downtown Washington, D.C., to the National Mall to see the Cherry Blossom Festival and, coincidentally, the Smithsonian Kite Festival.

Turned out that, for me, the Kite Festival was the real jaw-dropper. Mass kite flying must be one of the most joyous public events that can be celebrated in a park. Just the variety of kite designs was something I’d never dreamed of. There were kites that looked like fish and kites that looked like Wright Brothers airplanes, pink elephant kites, kites that spun in the air, and kites that could maneuver like enormous insects. The cumulative effect of dozens of colorful designs in the air at one time between the Washington Monument and the World War II Memorial, in sight of the Tidal Basin with its masses of cherry blossoms, was one of a mass celebration of the arrival of spring, of casting off your winter garb and letting the spring breezes blow through your hair.

I read that a million visitors were expected for this year’s 10-day Cherry Blossom Festival, and it looked as though about half of them had showed up that one Saturday. Little wonder the Mall is suffering from trampled grass and compacted soil—but, I suppose, that’s one of the hazards of being “America’s Front Yard,” in the very heart of the nation’s capital, easily accessible by subway, bus, or, in my case, walking.

The next day we visited the National Arboretum, which proved to be a study in contrasts with the Mall. It’s on the very edge of the city, so we had to drive; there’s no subway stop or other convenient mass transit anywhere nearby. Perhaps even more dire in terms of location, it’s in a low-income neighborhood—run-down public housing is right next door.

Too bad, because the rolling wooded topography of the arboretum on its site overlooking the Anacostia River, while very different from the linear Mall with its monuments and memorials, is every bit the Mall’s equal in terms of landscape beauty—yet compared to the Mall only a sprinkling of visitors showed up. Location is the bugaboo that has marginalized this wonderful public garden, condemning it to lower visitation than it deserves in a densely populated city that needs accessible parks. I’ll wager the vast majority of Washington residents have never been there; many, probably, are unaware that it even exists.

Other landscapes have fared far worse because of their locations. The NCNB Plaza in Tampa, designed by the late Dan Kiley, leaps to mind; its demolition earlier this year was due in part to its being somewhat out of the way and raised above street level (a location issue of a different sort).

Reader, what parks or other public landscapes are you aware of that have thrived—or alternatively, tanked—mostly because of location, location, location?

J. William “Bill” Thompson, FASLA
Editor/bthompson@asla.org