Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, Washington, DC. The evolution of a contested urban landscape1

Abstract

Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, a 2½ mile-long scenic drive connecting the Mall and Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC, is the oldest of several parkways located in and around the nation's capital. Proposed as early as 1867, the parkway was authorized by Congress in 1913 and completed in 1936. The sinuous tree-lined roadway begins near the Lincoln Memorial, extends along the Potomac waterfront to the mouth of Rock Creek and then winds up the narrow valley separating Georgetown and Washington, passing under a series of impressive early twentieth-century bridges before entering Rock Creek Park through a tunnel under the National Zoo. The parkway ranges in width from a narrow grassy strip along the Potomac River to a more generous corridor averaging slightly more than 500 feet through most of the densely wooded Rock Creek Valley. Below the Connecticut and P street bridges, the parkway broadens significantly to provide amphitheater-like expanses of open lawns bordered by trees and shrubs (figures 1–16; and see 125).