National Mall and Memorial Parks

National Mall and Memorial Parks (also known as National Capital Parks-Central) is an administrative unit of the National Park Service encompassing many national memorials and other areas in Washington, D.C. They include:

  • African American Civil War Memorial
  • Constitution Gardens
  • East Potomac Park
  • Ford's Theatre National Historic Site
  • Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial
  • George Mason Memorial
  • Hains Point
  • John Ericsson National Memorial
  • Korean War Veterans Memorial
  • Lincoln Memorial
  • Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial
  • National Mall
  • National World War II Memorial
  • Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site
    • Old Post Office Tower
  • Thomas Jefferson Memorial
  • Vietnam Veterans Memorial
  • Washington Monument
  • West Potomac Park

Federally owned and administered parks in the capital area date back to 1790, some of the oldest in the United States. In 1933 they were transferred to the control of the National Park Service. These parks were known as the National Capital Parks from their inception until 1965. The NPS now operates multiple park groupings in the D.C. area, including: National Capital Parks-East, Rock Creek Park, President's Park, and George Washington Memorial Parkway. National Mall and Memorial Parks also provides technical assistance for the United States Navy Memorial.

Famous quotes containing the words national, mall, memorial and/or parks:

    “Mr. Speaker, at a time when the nation is again confronted with necessity for calling its young men into service in the interests of National Security, I cannot see the wisdom of denying our young women the opportunity to serve their country.”
    —Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    “A father ... knows exactly what those boys at the mall have in their depraved little minds because he once owned such a depraved little mind himself. In fact, if he thinks enough about the plans that he used to have for young girls, the father not only will support his wife in keeping their daughter home but he might even run over to the mall and have a few of those boys arrested.”
    —Bill Cosby (20th century)

    “I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have given themselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”
    —Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)

    “Perhaps our own woods and fields,—in the best wooded towns, where we need not quarrel about the huckleberries,—with the primitive swamps scattered here and there in their midst, but not prevailing over them, are the perfection of parks and groves, gardens, arbors, paths, vistas, and landscapes. They are the natural consequence of what art and refinement we as a people have.... Or, I would rather say, such were our groves twenty years ago.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)