Meridian Hill Park 15th and w streets nw
at the corner of 15th and Florida Avenue is one of the many entrances to Meridian Hill Park, a dramatic urban oasis established in 1912 and completed in 1936 . Its stunning, 12 -acre landscape features the longest cascading waterfall of its kind in North America, a grand promenade, and some of the city’s most interesting sculpture. Nationally known artists performed here from the 1930 s into the 1970 s, making it America’s first park for the performing arts. Pearl Bailey and Perle Mesta drew 20,000 people for “an evening of Pearls” in 1968 . The park was the inspiration of Mary Foote Henderson, the wife of Senator John B. Henderson, who lived in a Romanesque, castle-like mansion that once stood at the northwest corner of 16 th and Florida Avenue. Horace W. Peaslee, the park’s designer, was inspired by the eighteenth-century gardens of Italy and France. The walls and walk- ways of the park represent the first use of exposed aggregate concrete anywhere in the world, here raised to the level of fine art by John Joseph Earley. The multi-colored stones are all from the Potomac River and are designed to shimmer in the light like an impressionist painting. Situated between a predominantly white community on the west and a predominantly black community on the east, the park was a public space shared by both races in segregated Washington. Today the park, known to many as Malcom X Park, sits amidst the city’s most multicultural community and is again a gathering place and a setting for concerts and public programs.
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