Sophia Solano
Washington: Beneath the thin shadow of the Washington Monument this week, the walking paths were transformed into a maze of tall black fencing, creating dead ends and frustration for some tourists. A worker manned a gate to the west of the monument, letting pass only those with hard hats and badges.
“I don’t think any of these are going to be open in a few minutes,” he told a disgruntled cyclist, pointing to the curved walkways. Soon, picnickers were being informed they must vacate the monument’s grassy foothills, lest they be captured behind the fence line.
Less than two weeks before the nation’s big birthday party, its capital was getting a costly and disruptive facelift. America’s most postcard-able symbolic stretch – the National Mall – was being readied for its forthcoming semiquincentennial and, to that end, carved, drained and drilled as a thunderstorm brewed on a 32-degree day in Washington.
Joyce Warren, visiting from Frisco, Texas, was less bothered than others by the commotion. “We come from a town where it’s a growing city, and it’s like this everywhere,” she said.
On each lamppost hung three flags: one for the United States, one for D.C. and one for Freedom 250, the public-private partnership created by US President Donald Trump’s executive order to celebrate, in a patriotic splurge taking place largely across the Mall, the nation’s 250th birthday.
The area was being sliced into sections ahead of Salute to America, Freedom 250’s Fourth of July celebration that will feature what Trump has billed as the “largest firework show in history”, with more than 800,000 shells.
The Freedom 250 organisers warned those with respiratory health risks to take precautions. “Visibility may become compromised in a large fireworks display – visitors should anticipate effects on pedestrian movement, crowd management, emergency response operations, and navigation,” its website warns.
Unlike Independence Day celebrations in past years, attendees will be subject to search and screenings; the fencing will be used to create security checkpoints. From behind the fence line, power tools droned, buzzing towering bleachers from metal slats into seating. The flaps of pointed white tents billowed under a darkening sky.
Meanwhile, to the east of the monument, a 24-cart Ferris wheel was erected as part of the programming for the Great American State Fair, a multi-day festival organisers say is a “modern-day World Fair”, which began on Wednesday (Washington time). Crews also constructed a plywood arch – a model of Trump’s forthcoming “United States triumphal arch”.
The state fair kicked off on the Mall with Trump’s Wednesday “Rally to end all Rallies”, which he announced on Truth Social in early June after a number of performers pulled out of a planned concert series.
“We don’t want singers with no talent, but big fees to put you to sleep. We’ve told them all to stay home. All we want is you, me, a few speakers, and the Greatest Music ever played, the same Music you have listened to for years!” he wrote.
But a couple of days before his appearance on the Mall, tourists were kept from the traditional view of his home.
The White House facade was not visible past fenced-off renovations in the Ellipse, so tourists instead moseyed to get a view of its rear from Constitution Avenue.
From across the street, they could make out the remnants of the mixed martial arts event the president hosted on the lawn the previous week; the Ultimate Fighting Championship stage had been rendered to a metal arch, and the yellowing grass was riddled with mini excavators and boom lifts. Dozens of port-a-potties crowded neighbouring stretches.
Cody Barker, 56, and his son, Colby, 19, were in town to celebrate the latter’s high school graduation with a first trip to DC. They were disappointed, they said, to miss the classic White House glimpse.
“There’s a few things that we’re kind of like ‘son of a gun’, because we went over to the White House to take a picture, but of course as close as you’re going to get is here,” he said. “I get it, everything that transpired with the UFC thing and the next two weeks, but it’s like, ugh.”
Tourists by the Reflecting Pool were less scathed by all the construction – though many were stopped by fleets of reporters, who nearly outnumbered the casual onlookers, probing for quotes about the president’s $US14 million ($20 million) renovation that included painting the monument “American flag blue” and has since garnered attention for peeled paint and dead ducks.
At one particularly briny-smelling end of the monument, cameramen gathered to track the algae growth that had sprouted since the freshly painted pool was refilled.
Along its sides, tanks and tubes worked to pump hydrogen peroxide and “high-tech nano-bubble ozone technology”, according to the Interior Department, into the shallow water to treat the record-breaking bloom, leaving behind expanding milky clouds.
At the end near the Lincoln Memorial, conference attendees in matching blue shirts posed as members of the National Guard snapped their photo; one of their hats was caught in the hastening wind and rolled away. A wet mark inside the pool showed the waterline had gone down.
By Tuesday evening, a chain-link fence had been erected in a wide perimeter in the grass around most of the Reflecting Pool. Gaps in the fencing meant it didn’t hinder tourists from accessing the paths along the water.
Away from the hubbub, Tristan Monahan, a 20-year-old George Washington University student, sat on a bench in the calmer Constitution Gardens. He said the construction was interfering with his daily routine.
“That’s been really annoying, and it just looks ugly,” he said.
“I go on a walk every day and usually I come down from Foggy Bottom and I walk around that path by the Washington Monument. That’s closed now, so I have to just kind of walk on the streets and crowded sidewalks.”
But many tourists, the last batch in town before the semiquincentennial programming kicked off in full, were understanding of all the commotion.
“I remember the bicentennial in 1976,” Warren said. “It was a huge thing where I grew up in rural Texas. I mean, we were collecting the bicentennial quarters and we talked about bicentennials in school and what it meant. It’s like here, unless we tune in, people aren’t excited. I don’t get it. We’re still Americans.”
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