A Short History of the Park

Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park is located in Northwest Washington, DC and bounded on the west by 16th Street, on the east by 15th Street, on the north by Euclid Street and on the South by W Street. It is located in a densely populated and very diverse neighborhood between Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights and Reed-Cooke, which has been rapidly gentrifying during the past ten years.

Meridian Hill/ Malcolm X Park was designed and developed as a formal public park that would"greatly enhance the beauty of the city and its environments" while "attracting large numbers of visitors from all over the city." [1] (CLP, xii) The development of the park since the early 20th century had been influenced by the City Beautiful Movement of the early 1890s (CLP, p. 34) [2] Its landscape design and architecture by George Burnap and Horace Peaslee was neoclassicist, inspired by Italian Renaissance landscape design, with an upper mall, a great terrace overlook and water cascades flanked by hillside gardens. The construction lasted from 1915 until 1936, when the park was officially completed and opened to the public. Parts of the park had been opened before. Due to the outbreak of WWII and the shift of government resources to war production, not all elements of the park were completed.

The land is owned by the United States government and, due to the special status of Washington, DC as a for the US government, the park is maintained by the National Park Service since 1933 (beforehand by the "Office of Public Buildings and Grounds"). The park was funded with federal money and its development was influenced in many respects by directives from Congress, especially the federal Commission of Fine Arts (CLP, p. 3, p. 5). [3] The park has been designed as "the first National Park for the Performing Arts" in the U.S.. Even though Meridian Hill Park has been used by people from the surrounding neighborhoods since it was opened, the park wasn't really designed as a neighborhood park and doesn't have a playground or a ball field. The conflict between federal government, represented by the National Park Service, and its idea of the park as a nice, representative place for the performing arts in the Capital City on the one hand and people in the neighborhood who wanted to play in the park one the other shaped the discussions surrounding the park since the beginning. In a letter from 1932 a federal representative writes:

[4]

The park was very popular in the first decades after it's opening, and the park was famous for its public concerts, which were part of a government effort to provide entertainment for people during the depression and World War II (CLP, p. 10). [5] During the early 1940s, the popularity of the park peaked - famous was a series of "starlight" outdoor concerts during the summer that started in 1941 and lasted until 1944. After the war, many white families who lived in the area moved to the suburbs -- this "white flight" increased after school desegregation in 1954. During this time, an American families moved to Columbia Heights and went to the park for recreation. African American residentsmany Afric, who had lived there in the 1950s, like the Washington writer Marita Golden, remember the park fondly as a part of neighborhood life (City Paper, Nov. 24, 1989, p. 22). [6] In the early 1960s, the "Starlight" concerts were reinstituted. According to the CLP, conditions in the park deteriorated since the late 1960s (the CLP refers to the riots in 1968 as the moment of transition) to the extent that the conditions in the city and the neighborhood deteriorated (CLP, p. 10). [7] In 1969 a bill to change the name of the park to "Malcolm X Park" was introduced in Congress, but it was not passed (City Paper, ibid, p. 18). [8] Since the late 1970s, the park became increasingly perceived as being "dangerous", which led to an increased police presence and patrols in the park.

In 1990, following a murder of a neighborhood teenager nearby, the "Friends of Meridian Hill Park" formed, who have been working ever since on making the park more attractive for the neighborhood again. They are organizing a range of activities surrounding the park, including free concerts during the summer, and have been working with the National Park Service on developing plans to further improve the park, which has been designated a National Historic Landmark in 1994. Their interests clashed frequently over the plans for the park, representative for the clashing interests federal vs. local park: In the mid 1990s, the National Park Service announced a plan to restore the park to the way it looked in 1936, without considering the changes suggested by the "Friends of Meridian Hill Park" who wanted to make the park more neighborhood friendly and include a playground (WP, 2/3/2000). [9] The issue hasn't been resolved yet. The plans for the future of the park have to deal with other complex issues, such as gentrification in the neighborhood and the problem that the improvement of the park will make real estate around the park more attractive, which in turn forces low-income residents to move outside the area - and the city.

As this brief overview of history and current debates surrounding the park shows, the history of the park is complex and interwoven with the history of the U.S., the city and the neighborhood.

This history hasn't been systematically explored yet - especially the social history of the park raises many questions - here are some of them: There is some indication that the site of the park, which used to be called "Columbia College Lands", was part of a community of working class African Americans. Apparently, a part of the community was relocated when the park was built, but the history of this relocation is unknown till today (CLP, p. 25). [10] Other issues that haven't been systematically explored are the ongoing tensions between federal government and neighborhood about the park -- how did these tensions develop historically? To what extent do they reflect different notions of a "public park"?

How did the "white flight" in the 1950s, after desegregation of schools, affect the park history? How did the riots in 1968 on 14th street affect the park? And is what about the perception - and/or reality, that the park was dangerous -- how did this develop? Is it supported by crime statistics? Why is the information o the crime in the park so contradicting -- one the one hand, there are sensational reports in the Washington Post, which describe the park as: "By the '80s, it was a no-man's land as crack cocaine dealers and prostitutes invaded its grassy esplanade, giving Meridian Hill the title of the most violent park in the Washington area." [11] (WP, July 1, 1999) On the other hand, the City Paper writes that this perception, which is dating back to other articles in the Washington Post in the 1980s, "is founded in ignorance. " "Practically no crack is sold there. In fact, the park is a booming open-air marijuana market...." (City Paper, Nov. 24, 1989, p. 17). [12] The same article quotes a responsible police officer, Lt. Berberich, who states that the increasing sale of marijuana in the park actually led to a decline of crime in the park, because "it's easier to sell drugs than to rob somebody" (CP, ibid., p. 18). [13] These contradicting accounts already point to some of the controversial issues surrounding the more recent history of the park in the late 1970s and 1980s.

One of the challenges of the digital project on the history of the park, therefore, will not only be to facilitate historical research on some of the unexplored issues of the park history, but also to deal with controversial issues such as crime and crime perception in the history of the park.

The following statues are in the park:

• Buchanan
• Dante
• Jean d'Arc