Rock Creek Park

Rock Creek Park is a 1,754-acre federal park within the center of Washington, D.C. In the 1860’s sanitary and living conditions in Washington were so poor that President Lincoln requested a search for green space with fresh air to site a new presidential mansion.(1) Rock Creek was chosen and although the mansion was never built, the president’s surveyor seeded the idea that Rock Creek become a public park. Frederick Law Olmstead, Jr. was the landscape architect for the park (1900-1918) and carried on his father’s ideals of the City Beautiful movement. The design of the park coincided with the 1901 Plan for Washington, D.C., designed by Olmsted, Burnham, McKim and Saint-Gauden, and a redesign of 1791 L'Enfant Plan, which marked the nation's first attempt at city planning.(2)

Footnotes:

1 Spilsbury, Gail, Rock Creek Park. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003
2 Rose, Julie, “City Beautiful: The 1901 Plan for Washington, D.C.,” 1996
3 Davis, Timothy, “Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, Washington DC: The Evolution of a Contested Urban Landscape.” Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, Vol. 19. No. 2, (1999): 123-237.
4 Van Dyne, Washingtonian  “Washington DC: A City of Bridges” 2006
5 Spilsbury, Gail, Rock Creek Park. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003
6 Bentley, Callan, “Soapstone Valley, DC,” May 29, 2009
7 Spilsbury, Gail, Rock Creek Park. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003

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