The Lincoln Memorial’s Designed Views: From the McMillan Plan to Today

The Lincoln Memorial was designed to be seen — and to be seen from. Its site, its raised terrace and the trees around it were all arranged to create views (broad, open panoramas) and vistas (narrow, deliberately framed lines of sight) tying it to the rest of Washington, D.C. A Cultural Landscape Inventory of the memorial, prepared for the National Park Service by the University of Pennsylvania’s Urban Heritage Project (PennPraxis) and completed in August 2022, traced how those views were made and how they have fared.

The Lincoln Memorial, looking west, April 2022. NPS / Gjesfjeld.

Built on reclaimed river mud

The idea of monumental sightlines in Washington goes back to Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s 1791 plan, which set major landmarks along a tree-lined east–west axis from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, so each could be seen from the other.

The ground under the Lincoln Memorial did not yet exist. It was reclaimed from the Potomac mudflats in the late 19th century and became part of West Potomac Park in 1897. The 1901/1902 McMillan Plan then called for a national monument at the west end of the extended Mall to honor Abraham Lincoln and the reunion of the country after the Civil War. Ground was broken on February 12, 1914, and the memorial was dedicated on May 30, 1922. The landscape, including the Reflecting Pool, was designed by Henry Bacon, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and others.

The memorial and grounds at the dedication, May 30, 1922. Harris & Ewing, photographer. Library of Congress.

A landscape of sightlines

The McMillan Plan made the memorial the western anchor of the great east–west vista, in line with the Washington Monument and the Capitol, with framed views over the Reflecting Pool and along two tree-lined allées. It also set new axes along planned routes — 23rd Street running north–south, a parkway along the Potomac, and the Arlington Memorial Bridge — each aimed at the memorial and its circle, with views running back out along the radiating roads. West of the circle, the Watergate Steps were to open sweeping views of Virginia, the river and Arlington House.

The raised terrace and circle made sure the memorial featured in every designed view, visible even from the Virginia shore. From the portico, the columns framed views in all four directions, and landscape architects planted trees and shrubs to frame vistas toward Parkway Drive, 23rd Street and the bridge — plantings that, as they grew, screened the portico’s edges perhaps more than intended.

The designed landscape in 1934, with the roads and plantings that framed its secondary views. War Department, Army Air Forces.

A stage for protest

The landscape took on new meaning as a place of public assembly and protest, beginning with Marian Anderson’s concert on the memorial’s steps in 1939, after she was barred from performing at the DAR’s Constitution Hall; a crowd estimated at 75,000 gathered. With the memorial as backdrop — a symbol of national victory and emancipation — it became central to civil rights protest. The long east–west axis offers a vast stepped platform, and visually ties each event and its cause to the nation’s best-known landmarks.

The views today

Recent changes have been few, mostly new roads and memorials; the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Korean War Veterans Memorial lie outside the landscape but can be seen from parts of it.

Looking east along the Reflecting Pool to the Washington Monument and Capitol, 2021. NPS / Torkelson.

Using field work, photographs, 2018 LiDAR data and GIS viewshed analysis, the team found the McMillan Plan’s main views and vistas still legible despite overgrown vegetation: the great vista along the Reflecting Pool, the vistas down the elm allées on either side, the view west across the bridge and river to Arlington House, and the vistas along Parkway Drive, 23rd Street (to Constitution Avenue and the John Ericsson Monument), Henry Bacon Drive and Daniel French Drive.

The portico’s own views have suffered most. The view east is still open, but those to the north, south and west are largely blocked by historic plantings that have grown far beyond their intended size. New bridges and roads have also changed some views, especially in the northwest corner. Even so, the inventory concluded, the landscape’s views and vistas keep their overall integrity.

Sources

Based on "Views and Vistas of the Lincoln Memorial Cultural Landscape," National Park Service, adapted from the Lincoln Memorial Cultural Landscape Inventory prepared by PennPraxis; the NPS page is a work of the United States government in the public domain, and its narrative is rewritten in hubnx’s own words. The source names the same street both “23rd Street” and “23rd Avenue”; the page uses 23rd Street.