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May 2026 (Part 03)

Meridian Hill Park and Adams-Morgan

We stayed in town over Memorial Day weekend, as Andy was using the beach house with a number of people.  Unfortunately for all of us, the weather was kind of miserable with cold and rain every day.  On Friday, we took some time off and went on a walking tour through Smithsonian Associates and DC Design Tours.  Caroline, the tour guide, was a former architect and did an amazing job discussing the local history.

The park itself was rather amazing, with a cascading water feature, which apparently had been under repair for over five years and just reopened last week.  The thirteen basin cascading fountain is one of the longest in North America.  The park is on a north-south line with the white house and Washington Monument (at least where it was supposed to be before they discovered the ground wouldn't support it and had to move it to the east).  Thomas Jefferson made a small effort to move the prime meridian to DC and this line.  The park and surrounding area was the creation of Mary Foote Henderson and her husband, who built built Henderson Castle across the street from Meridian Hill and then purchased surrounding lots and began developing the area, catering to wealthy residents.  They built several mansions, attempting to convince several countries to use them as their embassies, only having some success.

A statue of President Buchanan, who was just before Lincoln and didn't do much to hold the union together.  His statue was purposefully placed far away from the Lincoln Memorial and is even a bit out of the way in the park.  There is also a statue of Joan of Arc, gifted by an association of French women after WWI.