4 December 2008 - 17:39Capitol Visitor Center

Capitol Visitor Center,
originally uploaded by tackyjulie.

I took a walk around the East lawn of the Capitol yesterday, one day after the Capitol Visitor Center opened. I used to walk through the East lawn on my way to work, until six years ago. That was when work began on the CVC. There are quite a few changes, the most important being that the underground CVC provides a climate-controlled place for visitors to wait for their tour of the Capitol. In the summer, I used to walk by lines of tourists in the hot sun, and I felt sorry for them.

There’s a lot less lawn than there used to be. Trees were removed, and the signs seemed to indicate at the time that they would be returned. But the reality is that there is a lot more stone plaza and walkways than green space than there used to be.

If you didn’t know that the historic Olmstead landscaping plan has been lost forever on the East side, you might think it’s a pretty nice area. But I remember when the Kennedy Center used to put on noon-time concerts there, and I gather that we will not seen them there again. It’s not as pastoral and friendly as it used to be, but some of that has to do with the post-9/11 realities we deal with in Washington.

Yesterday, I took a couple dozen photographs around the Capitol and the Library of Congress, and posted them on Flickr.