Field Trip Friday America 250: Walking The Mall’s Founding Story

Start at the glass cases that hold the nation’s promises, then step outside into a lawn where those promises are tested every day. We take you on the America 250 walking tour across the National Mall, linking the National Archives, Washington Monument, Constitution Gardens, the Jefferson Memorial, and the George Mason Memorial into one continuous story about ideals, people, and practice.

We talk about why the Mall is both shrine and stage: a place where the Declaration and Constitution command quiet attention while 9,000 permitted events each year—protests, performances, even pickleball—demonstrate civic life in motion. Jeremy Goldstein from the Trust for the National Mall shares Bicentennial memories, explains why Constitution Gardens is a commemorative space for documents rather than a traditional memorial, and invites us to read the landscape as carefully as we read inscriptions. The details matter: the Washington Monument’s two-tone stone records a stop-and-start nation; its interior stones catalog a century’s worth of civic groups; the aluminum cap nods to innovation meeting tradition.

We dig into the productive tension between founding ideals and early realities, using Jefferson’s words and Mason’s influence on the Bill of Rights to ask how interpretation shapes identity. Signers Island in Constitution Gardens offers a tactile way to connect with each state’s role, turning abstract civics into place-based learning. Educators get a boost with virtual strolls and ready-to-use activities, making the tour accessible from any classroom. Throughout, we return to a core idea: the Mall is where documents, monuments, and people meet, and where a more perfect union remains a work in progress.

Walk with us through history that still moves. If this journey sparks your curiosity, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review telling us which stop captured your imagination most.

Check Out the Civic Literacy Curriculum!

School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership

Center for American Civics

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Welcome back. It's Field Trip Friday with our good friend Jeremy Goldstein from the Trust for the National Mall. Jeremy, I am real stoked about today's tour because it's the America 250th tour. I'm sure everybody has heard about America 250, whether you're in the Civics world or not, because the branding seems to be everywhere. We're really excited to celebrate our nation. So today's tour is going to take us through a couple of monuments. And like all of the other tours, it will be linked in our show notes. Please, please, please click the link, check it out. This one has five sites, about an hour estimated walking time, unless you're like me and like to read everything possible in every monument. But today we're going to talk about like the Washington Monument, Constitution Gardens, Thomas Jefferson's memorial, and one that I just learned about, George Mason's memorial. So, Jeremy, welcome back. Can we talk about how do these memorials connect us to the nation's founding ideals?

Bicentennial Memories And Meaning

SPEAKER_00 1:53

You know, it's it's interesting. And and thank you for having me back. I am always excited for these conversations. I will quickly note, you know, I started two years ago at the Trust for International Mall and the 250th was like off in the distance. And I wrote down and I was taking notes for a meeting today, and we're 22 days into the 250th right now, which is fascinating. And I have these memories because I'm old enough of 1976. I was I was really young, but of just the the presence of the bicentennial and the you know the semi-quincentennial which we're in right now. I had this sort of these memories of of not just the branding, but red, white, and blue everywhere. I had a pair of red, white, and blue bell bottoms. One of my friends had a bonnet. That's amazing. Uh the Wheaties boxes, everything was was was branded for for uh 1976. So, you know, we're in a different era. We're in the we're at the 250th, and we put together on the site this link of sites that starts really at the National Archives for the founding documents and really check their exhibit out. They have some great documents that are on display, especially for the 250th. They're bringing some of the things out of the back room, so to speak. And then we, you know, we recommend that you take the the overview of this as you take the walk to the Washington Monument, Constitution Gardens, which is uh was built and designed, designed and built in 1976, where the trust is actually raising money to renovate that. The Jefferson Memorial, and then finally the George Mason Memorial. As you mentioned, it's one hour of walking, but it can take up to five hours if you are a reader of all the texts and things. So, how do these link to the nation's founding ideals? I the way I kind of classify these is like people and concepts. And this is what's really fascinating to me about them all, is that we have these monuments, the Washington to, you know, the the first president, you know, the the considered the founding fathers here, Jefferson, Washington. And then there are also these reverent spaces to the documents. And that to me is is kind of an interesting twist on museums and monuments and memorials. So Constitution Garden, that's about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Now, there were a bunch of people, signers, founders who are part of it. But think about this. This is a monument, this is a space that's reverent towards the document. So, you know, the constitution is a living document that gets amended and gets, you know, interpreted in several different ways. And what we have is this this memorial, this sorry, memorial, it's a commemorative space. It's not a memorial, it's a commemorative space to the the documents. And then you have the story of these individuals who were connected to that period of time, to the concepts and ideas, to the authorship and all of those pieces. And I find that combination of people and paper is really substantial.

People And Paper On The Mall

SPEAKER_01 4:42

So when we talk about, you know, these ideals, founding principles, liberty, unity, and the kind of like national mythology, if you will, what tensions exist between those ideals and early realities?

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Yeah, I uh you know, the mall and the the commemoration spaces and the memorials and monuments are all about contexts, context in which they were built, right? At the time, but also the context of the commemorative event, you know, document or individuals. So these individuals lived in times. We don't dismiss that, the narratives alive and well. What I always sense is that when people go to the mall and they start reading the text of the mall, so to speak, they are really kind of bringing in their own interpretation, their own perspectives. For lack of a better term, we bring our own bias. We walk into the the mall that way. So, really, the early realities and the founding of our country, uh, you know, there was a revolution. There were people who fought and died for the separation from, you know, a monarchy and creating these some really big ideals, some very lofty ideals. I try to imagine people sitting in a room and saying, we should really do better, we should make things more perfect. And that's what I actually love the term more perfect union because it's you know, perfection's a goal, but it isn't going to be produced immediately. And, you know, you can continue to strive to be more perfect. So, look, there are faults of every human experience, there are victories, losses, and shortcomings. And I think that that is well preserved in the mall. And then we also, as I say, bring our own narratives to that, our own life experiences to that. And those contexts, whether they're today or the past, or even at the time of the building of the memorial, those are important to consider. Those are multiple narratives that I hope people pick up when they go to the mall.

Ideals Versus Early Realities

SPEAKER_01 6:37

And I love that you talk about reflection because I think that's one of my favorite things about the National Mall, is there's all these really amazing things, but there it also really asks you to reflect. So, how do physical symbols like the Washington Monument, because I feel like that is like one of the symbols, right, of the mall, how do those reinforce our civic identity?

SPEAKER_00 6:59

There's so much there that I could talk about it for about an hour, but I I'm and actually right now, as I'm talking to you, I'm looking at our images that we have on the National Mall Gateway site. The first thing I think of when I look at it is two stages of completion, which kind of tells the story of our nation. We're always building, we're always trying to, you know, strive towards that more perfect. Perfection is off in the distance. I think of it as, you know, almost like looking at a horizon and striving towards it. And we're going to stumble and we're going to build and rebuild. If you look at the stone of the Washington Monument, it is simply two different types of stone, two colors of stone, because it was started and then it wasn't completed. And then later on, it was completed when more funding was available, when there was less of a conflicted political time. And then the other piece about civic identity, the like the kind of Washington monument in a nutshell, or the contexts that I talked about before. This is the if you go to the Washington Monument and you take the elevator up, and I've talked about this in a past episode, I think the commemorative stones on the elevator or the shaft up the middle of the uh the Washington Monument, I find those really interesting. I could spend days, I would love to kind of like spend days taking the elevator up slowly or walking up the steps slowly and looking at all of these because yes, there are commemorative stones to states, but also at the time there are civic organizations like the Grange and other groups from towns and cities across the United States that have put their stone in the Washington monument. So what it is is this composition of a snapshot of a time when that monument was completed. My little piece of trivia that I always ask people and students, and I'm revealing it here on a podcast, depends on how many people listen to this, but what is the top of the Washington monument made of, the very tip of it is my favorite thing to ask.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

I know, but I don't want to see aluminum, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:58

It's aluminum, and you know, and it's a precious metal, especially at the time. And a lot of people are like, gold. And I'm like, ah, not so much. And you know, that aluminum top of the Washington Monument, which is the cap of the Washington Monument, I find it to be kind of an interesting little piece because you have this great stone monument in the tradition of obelisk type monuments. Washington was very reluctant about monuments to himself, right? You know, if you're gonna talk about a humble individual and and the complexity of Washington's leadership, that's kind of a symbolic piece too. So I always find that the monument has these layers and several chapters within one monument because it it really, as it's being built, it spans time. There is a there's a friends group or or a group that that is the descendants of the original fundraisers of the monument. I mean, they're actively involved in it too. They've published a book that's available on the National Mall as well, the monument, and it's building with great historic photos too.

unknown 9:55

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

I'm I'm just so excited about these things. You talked about a book, and I'm like, ooh, where's the book? I'm gonna get it. So as people are visiting today and in the future, what can they learn about the ongoing work of democracy through the America 250 tour?

Washington Monument As Civic Symbol

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Yeah, the America 25050 tour starts at one of our kind of national treasures, which is the archives. And again, reverence for documents and those things that were, you know, written down as the intent of this democracy, those are a really great starting place because then you're also walking out to, as I've mentioned before, a space that is democracy and civics in action. You know, 9,000 permitted events, those events are approved. Those can be protests, though, can be performances, they can be pickleball matches, which we sponsor on the national mall. But the the sort of civic engagement of the American people and engagement with democracy in action is what you see on the mall. It's the activity down to the kickball leagues and and several you know other pieces. And then there's also the uh the the idea that the you go from the founding documents to the active space, and then you're commemorating these founding fathers or founding signers. You if you go to within uh Constitution Gardens, there is a Signers Island, and the Constitution Gardens is about a 23-acre park within the park. And on this island is a circular um commemoration. You take a little bridge and you cross into this island, and there are engraved signatures of each one of the founders organized by the states. There are a lot of spaces on the National Mall that show you, like if you are American and live in a state, or if you're not a, you know, if you've come from far away but have experience with these states, you can find your state on the National Mall, which I think is really cool. You can find the state where those signers from the original 13 colonies were there. And that commemorative space, the the island in the middle of the pond, links people to founding fathers, founding documents. And again, you're getting that whole package on there of the people, the and the the um the ideas and the the kind of the writings. So in a nutshell, that entire tour starts with the paper and then gets you into all of the spaces that are commemorative while you're walking through an active First Amendment space.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Well, and I think one of the things I really appreciate about the website too is I'm looking at Constitution Gardens while we're speaking, and you can take a virtual stroll through this site and you can kind of preview it. And if you're an educator, there are reflection, you know, questions, there's educational activities. It's a really a something that you can plug into your classroom and show your students, especially if you like me live in Arizona and you're not, you know, we're not bringing kids to DC because it's not really close. So, Jeremy, thank you so much for taking us through this America 250 tour. I again I'm coming to DC, and every time we have these conversations, I'm like, oh, I should do this tour, I should do this tour. But I'm really excited to just explore the things that I haven't seen yet. So thank you so much, and I'm really looking forward to our next field trip Friday.

SPEAKER_00 13:07

Thanks so much. I'm looking forward to it too. Thanks.