Tuesday, April 14, 2026

There are places you visit and enjoy, and then there are places that stay with you, that feel extra special.  Sometimes it’s because of the memories the place holds, sometimes it’s because of its beauty, and sometimes it’s because of how they’re designed.  Once in a great while, you find a place with all of those elements.

For me, our National Mall is one of those amazing places. I found myself thinking about it over coffee this morning. Not about any one monument, but about the way they relate to each other. The spacing, the lines, what you can see from where you stand.

My very first visit to Washington, D.C., came back to me.  It was after dark, and I was sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with a colleague. The crowds had thinned, the lights shimmered, and the city felt so much quieter than it did during the day.

She looked out across the Mall for a while before saying, almost casually, “You know, I’m Canadian, so this all lands differently for me than it does for you. But I have to say… you guys sure know how to make a magnificent capital city.”

At the time, I remember smiling at the comment. It felt generous, maybe even a little unexpected.  But thinking about it now, I realize she was noticing something I didn’t yet have the language for.  The design of the place is magnificent.

If you begin at the Capitol and look west, your eye travels in a straight, deliberate line.

At the base of the Capitol, before you ever reach the open stretch of the Mall, you pass Ulysses S. Grant – depicted on horseback as a general.  Not inside the building, but just outside it; set at the edge, facing west. Toward Lincoln.  From there, your eye follows his line. Across the open ground. Toward Lincoln, waiting at the far end.

It doesn’t feel like an accident. And it isn’t.

What we think of as the National Mall today is less a single plan than a layered set of decisions. Pierre L’Enfant sketched the original vision in 1791 — grand avenues, long sightlines, a city that would reflect a young nation’s ambitions. But it took more than a century, and the 1901 McMillan Plan in particular, to bring order to that vision.

The McMillan planners leaned into something simple and powerful: clear the clutter, open the views, and let the space do more of the work.

And with that discipline, meaning starts to build.  Especially, at the far end, when you meet Lincoln.  Not a general. Not a victory monument.  He’s not even engaged in the brilliant oratory he was known for.  Rather he’s a wise but exhausted president seated, reflective, burdened by what it took to hold the country together.

When you step back, the line begins to feel intentional in a different way. Grant at the Capitol. Lincoln holding the far end of the Mall. And then, just beyond him and across the river, Arlington National Cemetery.

It reads like a kind of resolution. A path through the Civil War toward our second founding.  And yet, it doesn’t quite close the chapter. Arlington remains across the river — at Lee’s house.  That may be the point.  That might not be the point.  I think the actual point is, you are invited to reflect on all of it.

What’s striking is how restrained all of this feels.  There’s no single moment or monument that tells you what to think. Instead, the meaning arrives in your mind as you move through it; east to west, present to past, power to reflection to sacrifice.

Even the monuments themselves hold back. The Washington Monument rises, yes, but it does so cleanly. The Lincoln Memorial holds its ground without reaching upward. The space between them does as much work, in your heart, as do the structures themselves.

It’s a reminder that real estate isn’t just about what gets built. It’s also about what’s left open, what lines up, and what you can see from where you stand.  Day to day, we tend to think of land in terms of use and value. But places like this remind us of something else — that how it’s all arranged can shape how we remember, the stories we’ll tell about ourselves, the lessons learned that (with any luck) we need not repeat.

Every addition to the Mall since — the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the World War II Memorial, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial — has had to find its place within that larger conversation.

That’s a harder task than it sounds.  Because once a landscape begins telling a story, every new element either deepens it or interrupts it.

Which makes you wonder what would happen if we introduced something entirely different into that composition. Something large. Declarative. Something that tried to bring the whole line to a conclusion.

I don’t think it would work, because that isn’t how the space works.  Even the smallest details point to a different intention. A smaller reflecting pool at Grant. A larger one at Lincoln. Moments that ask you to pause and consider, not to arrive and declare.

You’re not being told what the story was. You’re given space to consider it.

I’m not sure it’s meant to end any other way.  And maybe that’s the point. The Mall, as it stands, asks us to consider who we’ve been, who we are, and where we’re going…together.

I like that the arrangement currently tells a story of reconciliation, not domination or triumph.  I like the way it holds our struggles and pursuits.  I like its reverence.

And maybe that’s part of what makes it feel distinctly American. It doesn’t tell you what to think. It gives you space to think it.  It leaves room; for interpretation, for disagreement, for thought.  I’d prefer it stay that way.

Until Next Time,

Mary Schuster
Chief Knowledge Officer
October Research, LLC