A Visit To Meridian Hill Park
Today, a chilly January morning with snow in the air, I took a short bus ride on 16th Street in Washington, D.C. to visit a park I hadn't seen in a while. Meridian Park is located between 15th and 16th street about 1.5 miles north of the White House and a few more miles south of Silver Spring, Maryland. Administered by the National Park Service, Meridian Hill Park is listed as a National Historic Landmark. During my visit, I walked up and down the large walkways on the upper portion of the Park and took the winding stairways down to the Park's lower level where I saw the basin for the reflecting pool and the basins cascading into it. The pool and cascades were empty in the dead of winter, and the beautiful green landscape was not to be seen.. Still, during my visit I saw the four famous statues constructed in the Park which include monuments to President James Buchanan, Dante, Joan of Arc, and the Serenity statue dedicated to Navy Lieutenant Commander Henry Schuetze. The Park was quiet on a Tuesday morning, but I saw people walking their dogs, jogging, and like me, out for a peaceful walk on a chilly day in a beautiful space.
A reading of this recent photographic history, "Meridian Hill Park" (2017) inspired my morning visit. Written by Fiona Clem, a tour guide and resident of the Meridian Hill area, the book is part of the extensive series of local histories published in the Images of America Series of Arcadia Publishing. The book whetted my interest in seeing the Park again. It brought back memories of an earlier visit with my daughter years ago The book presents the history of Meridian Hill Park and the people associated with it in a series of well-reproduced images together with Clem's insightful annotations and commentary.
The book enhanced my appreciation of what I saw on my morning visit. Clem traces the history of the area that became the Park from its early years, when the ground was home at varying times to Admiral David Porter of War of 1812 fame, ex-president John Quincy Adams, the poet Joaquin Miller who built a log cabin on the site, as well as to hospitals, universities, and Civil War staging areas. Plans for the eventual park began in 1910 but the Park wasn't completed until 1936. It was an ambitious and highly expensive project for the day, with the formal gardens and the expensive walls required due to the hills on which the Park stood. The book describes the people responsible for the design and construction of the Park and explores the background of the Park's two sections, an upper level and a lower level, Clem gives background on each of the four statues in the Park (as well as on a fifth statue which mysteriously disappeared in the 1970) and takes the reader on a tour of the Italianate gardens, the walkways, and the Reflecting Pool. In an extensive chapter of the book, Clem explores how the Park has been used over the years, from concert series held in the 1940s and mid-1960s, to some of the first integrated theater in Washington, D.C., to games and recreational activity in the Park's upper level, to simple enjoyment of promenading and beauty.
Meridian Hill Park fell upon hard times in the 1980s. The Park had suffered from lack of maintenance and, much worse, became a haven for crime and drugs. I remember well when most people were afraid to go near the Park. The wall, its isolation in the middle of the city, and the many nooks and crannies and secluded places in the Park made it an all too lucrative site for illicit activity. Fortunately, neighbors and community activists worked with the National Park Service to clean up Meridian Hill Park and made it safe. Today, this highly unusual park with the two levels, pool, gardens and walkway is a community treasure and a delightful place to visit.
I was glad to be reminded of Meridian Hill Park through this book and to take the opportunity to visit on a Winter's morning. I look forward to returning to the Park in Spring or Summer to sit on the benches and read, and to enjoy the fountain, pool, and gardens.
