Smithsonian

For two days I had to amuse myself in Washington from breakfast until dinner and I spent the majority of that time in various museums of the Smithsonian Institution.  I can't recommend these enough.  Where else can you see the Hope Diamond...

...the capsule used by Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on their moon shot in 1969...

...the Spirit of St Louis...

...the bones of a Neanderthal...

 ...and Julia Child's kitchen?

Nowhere, that's where.  I spent a whole day in the Air and Space Museum, and then a few hours each on the second day looking around the Natural History Museum and the American History Museum.

Mrs Walles joined me for the last one.  One of the feature attractions there is the Star Spangled Banner, the actual flag that flew over Fort McHenry at Baltimore as the British were repelled in 1814 and which inspired the words to the US national anthem.  It's not in a good state, having had bits snipped off over the years as souvenirs, and like the documents in the National Archive it is too fragile to allow photography.

Another noted attraction of the American History Museum is the collection of First Ladies' gowns.  Mrs Walles and I enjoyed speculating on the origins of some of the convoluted connections between early First Ladies and their respective presidents.  A surprising number of wives were absent, and two presidents had remarried while in office.  Quite a few First Ladies were sisters, daughters or nieces or in-laws.

Huge geek that I am I was very moved to see things like the Apollo 11 capsule in the Air and Space Museum.  But I was also moved by another spacecraft there for entirely different reasons.

That is SpaceShipOne, which one the X Prize a few years ago for being the first privately built vehicle to reach space (and which Richard Branson is now trying to commericialise).  But it was significant for me because when I decided to have a go at this writing lark back in 2003 the very first article I had published was about the X Prize.  I remember that it had an illustration of this very craft accompanying it, and now I've seen it in the flesh.

Back when the Smithsonian's collection was still housed in one building it gained the nickname of "America's attic", from the enormous jumble of things that it contained.  And while it has been split now into about a dozen museums, their close proximity (most are on the Mall) means you can still get that effect by meandering from one museum to the next and taking in as much as you can.  I only took in a tiny amount of the museums I visited - and there are still museums I didn't even get to - so I'll definitely be going back

Oh and did I mention that they are all free?  The US taxpayer spends almost a billion dollars a year funding all this for the greater good of the nation.  The Smithsonian really is a remarkable thing.  It was created out of a bequest by a British scientist, James Smithson who died in 1829.  He never visited America but left his fortune to the US government to increase and diffuse knowledge.  From what I've seen I'd say they've lived up pretty well to his wishes.

National Archives

One of the things I was rushing away from the White House to see was the National Archives.

That's the only photo I got because inside no photography is allowed at all.  There was a long line to get in and then more waiting in an antechamber tantalisingly close to my goal: the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.  My only disappointment was that the Magna Carta which is usually on display was away being restored.  But it was only a very slight disappointment.

These are housed in what they call the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom (yes, well, I'll let them off this time, they're obviously very proud of these documents) which is enormous and decorated a pair of murals of the signing of the declaration and the signing of the constitution.  Unfortunately the entire thing is lit so poorly that it's hard to see these as the artist intended, but they are still impressive.    You can see them online here probably better than I could in person.

The low light is due to the state of the documents which have had a tumultuous life and weren't always looked after that well.  Despite being restored recently it's very difficult to make out much of the original text.  But the larger stuff is still plain enough, like the "We the people" at the top of the Constitution and the "July 4 1776" on the Declaration. I saw John Hancock's flamboyant signature on the Declaration, from which we get the expression "John Hancock" for signature, though it wasn't quite as flamboyant as I was expecting.  And there were also recognisable signatures from other famous figures like Jefferson, Adams, Franklin and the like.  I was also amused by the error in the Constitution, which one of the guards pointed out, where Pennsylvania is spelled wrong.

During busy times visitors are let into the rotunda in groups of about fifty, and you only have a few minutes to look around before the next group comes.  But it's all you really need.  Before you go in a guard gives you a little pep talk and tells people not to try to read every last jot and tittle, but that doesn't stop people from trying and eventually being moved on.  You really go for the experience of seeing these historic documents first hand (even if they are behind thick layers of bullet proof glass).  I'd heard so much about them, and there they were in front of me.

It was well worth the wait.

Jefferson Memorial

Washington and Lincoln are all very well, but my man is Thomas Jefferson, and here is his memorial, across the Tidal Basin from the other two.

It's very much in the style of the Lincoln Memorial, though not as large.  Lincoln's is supposed to be a Greek temple, but this is more like the Pantheon in Rome.  It's more open on the inside, too, where we find the man himself.

My, he's even bigger than Lincoln - what did they eat back then?  But he was a larger than life character.  He founded the University of Virginia, wrote the Declaration of Independence and served as the third President of the United States.  During his presidency he made the Louisiana Purchase, buying pretty much all the land between the Mississippi and the Rockies from Napolean.  Napolean.  It would have been impressive if he had bought a bag of peanuts or a used button from Napolean - let alone over two million square kilometres of land.

Once he'd bought the land he sent Lewis and Clark to explore it.  He hoped they would find some living mammoths (that's how little was known about the interior).

He was a great man, though he hasn't always been recognised as such, and I'm glad he has a great building to remember him.

World War II Memorial

The National World War II Memorial is big, impressive and interesting, though for me the least moving of the three war memorials I saw in Washington.

This is America, of course, so the emphasis is on America (hardly surprising).  Yet the Vietnam Memorial is similarly focussed on the US but it immediately struck me with a whole swag of emotions.  Perhaps the difference is that, even though the WWII Memorial is dedicated to those who served in the war, those who fought are not really acknowledged in the architecture.  There was an installation at the back which Mrs Walles and I speculated was intended to convey the scale of losses - but there was nothing to confirm that was what it meant.

 

The memorial is big and round with a nice fountain in the centre.  Around the outer edges there are markers for each state and territory.  On either side there are tall monuments marked "Pacific" and "Atlantic".

There are some nice brasses.  Some had images, like these.

 

Others had little quotes, from President Truman and other figures of the time.

I suppose that for America the Second World War was a kind of coming of age.  It emerged the other side a global superpower, changed in many ways from before the war.  Perhaps this would explain the attitude the memorial seems to convey - not so much a sombre memorial of tragic losses, but more a celebration of a struggle won.  And it would also explain why this memorial has such a prime place on the Washington map, right between the Washington and Lincoln monuments, suggesting it commemorates an event on par with the Revolution and Civil War, two other key turning points in US history.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it isn't your run-of-the-mill war memorial.  Which isn't a bad thing.  It's still a good place to visit and reflect on the events of the war, but as an outsider I was far more moved by the Vietnam and Korean war memorials, of which there will be more in future posts.

And speaking of the Washington map, here's one with the position of the memorial marked.

Lincoln Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial stands at the north end of the Mall.  Here's a view of it from afar, looking from the Washington Monument, past the World War II Memorial.

Now normally there would be a beautiful glassy body of water called the Reflecting Pool in the picture above, but unfortunately they've dug it up to fix its foundations so all we saw was a muddy streak with a few diggers working away. I guess I'll just have to go back at a later date to get the full effect as intended. 

Nevermind, the Greek temple affair that is the Lincoln Memorial was still fantastic and beautiful, as long as you didn't turn around.  Mrs Walles and I made our way there on our first night in D.C. which made for an especially pretty sight which my photography doesn't come close to capturing.

You can just spy the man himself peeking out between two columns.  I returned another day and got this view during daylight.

There are a lot of steps leading up to the building which are hidden by the perspective, though the tiny size of the people in front of the columns hints at the distance from the camera to the top step. Everything about it is oversize and combined with the Greek architecture you feel that this must be a very old building, yet it was only built at the beginning of the twentieth century.  The names of all the states are engraved around the top on the outside.

 

The memorial isn't lit by day but in this photo you can just see the statue of Lincoln staring down towards me (well, actually towards the Washington Monument and Capitol, but it's hard to tell at this distance!).  Here's the man himself, from inside.

He's a big fellow.  I knew Abraham Lincoln was tall, but this is ridiculous!  There is more decoration on the inside.  There are murals up the top of the walls, almost too high to see.  And important speeches are engraved on either side wall.  To his right is the Gettysburg Address.

It's a good thing he kept it short.

I was under the impression (largely from The Simpsons) that people come to the Lincoln Memorial to ask Honest Abe for advice, but all I saw were tourists and Mrs Walles has never heard of such a thing, so it's probably apocryphal.  He looks like he's taking a well-deserved rest (which I think is the intention) so he's probably not keen to dispense advice anyway.  He certainly didn't have an opportunity to rest on his laurels after leading the north to victory in the Civil War.  The poor fellow was assassinated in this very town while the last fighting was still going on further south.

So two presidential memorials down, two to go. Here's the Lincoln Memorial on the map.

Lincoln people together

There wasn't a heck of a lot to see from the hotel room we stayed in in York last week, as you can see.

We weren't in the thick of it.  The most interesting thing about that picture, as far as I can tell, is the road running through the centre of it.  That's US Route 30.  If you turned left on it and drove and drove you'd eventually end up in Atlantic City, New Jersey on the Atlantic coast.  If you turned right you'd eventually find yourself in Astoria, Oregon on the Pacific Coast.  It's a road that runs across America.

There are several of these, a notable one being Interstate 80 which also runs through Pennsylvania on its way from New York to San Francisco.  But even though it has been superseded, Route 30 is interesting because it was made up largely from large parts of the Lincoln Highway, the first highway to cross the country.  Many stretches of Route 30 still follow the Lincoln Highway, though the bit in the picture above is not one of them, but rather one of the many bypasses that evade town centres that the original highway passed right through.  On the whole, though, Pennsylvania is a good state in which to follow the historic route.  It's a nice drive and some stretches (such as west of Lancaster) give a real taste of what highway travel must have been like in the US during the first half of the twentieth century.


It's said that the Lincoln Highway inspired the vast Interstate Highway System which eventually put it and its friends in the shade, after President Dwight D. Eisenhower, then in the army, travelled along it in 1919.  It may not be as famous as Route 66, but it has outlasted it (lasting almost a hundred years is itself an impressive feat here) and gathered a lot of history along the way.  I think Route 30 deserves to be remembered, even if it is by a foreigner who doesn't drive.