Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park
Roads to Diversity
Long before Europeans arrived, Meridian Hill was a sacred place for Native Americans. As recently as 1992, a delegation of Native Americans walked across the continent to this park to mourn the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival. They were received by environmentalist Josephine Butler, a champion of park preservation.
Europeans named the hill for Commodore David Porter’s grand Meridian Hill house (1825) which straddled the route of the prime meridian (16th Street). Americans used this meridian as a starting point for mapping the continent until 1884 when it was replaced by the Greenwich (England) Prime Meridian. President John Quincy Adams leased Porter’s house in 1829.
Later landowner Mary Foote Henderson persuaded federal officials to build the elaborate, European style, 12-acre Meridian Hill Park. Its starlight performances drew citywide audiences until the park began declining in the 1950s. In the 1960s it became a staging ground for political demonstrations, and in 1970 activist Angela Davis unofficially renamed it Malcolm X Park. Then in the 1990s, Friends of Meridian Hill and others worked with the National Park Service to evict criminal activity and restore the park as a cultural center.
As you proceed to Sign 3, don’t miss three landmarks: the Envoy at the corner of Crescent Place (once Meridian Mansions, home to congressmen and diplomats), and 1624 and 1630 Crescent Place, both designed by John Russell Pope, architect of the Jefferson Memorial.
Marker is on 16th Street, NW, on the right when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
