In many ways, 16th Street might be THE heart of Washington.  It starts on H Street NW and runs in an absolutely straight line for just under 7 miles when it hits the Maryland line, but then runs fewer than 2 miles more when it ends at

Georgia Avenue, just short of the Beltway.

H Street NW is just one block north of Pennsylvania Avenue,  and if 16th Street continued on the block between Pennsylvania and H, it would run right through Lafayette Square, and if it continued south of Pennsylvania Ave, it would divide the White House (address 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue) in two. So we are lucky it stops where it does.

We are going to walk up 16th from Lafayette Square to the Maryland line, stopping to learn what we can about what we pass. Don’t be in a hurry. This will probably take some time. But we should learn a lot.

Here is a picture looking north on 16th from its H Street start.

We are not going to begin our walk today, but turn around and look at the White House and Lafayette Square.

All of these people are walking on Pennsylvania Avenue, which has been closed to vehicles between 15th and 17th Streets for almost 30 years. Now, it is filled with tourists and protesters. Like these:

North of the White House, between the White House and H Street, is 7 acre Lafayette Square. Originally, when the White House was first built, Lafayette Square was part of a larger area named President’s Park. It included the area south of the White House now known as the Ellipse, as well as areas to the east and west of the White House, now the sites of the Treasury Department and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. In the 1830s, Lafayette Square was made a separate area and renamed.

It is a pleasant place,with green grass, seasonal gardens, curved brick walkways, and statues.

The center of the square featues a statue of our controversial 7th president, Andrew Jackson. If you don’t know why he is controversial, Google him.

He sits proudly on his horse, with its front legs raised. It is apparently the first statue anywhere with two legs raised and not a third support for the weight. It is also the absolutely first bronze statue cast in the United States. The sculptor was Clark Mills. His studio was a few blocks away. His assistant was one of his eleven slaves. It was dedicated in 1852. And, by the way, the model for the horse was Mills’ horse, not Jackson’s. At the time the statue was created, Jackson and his two best known horses, Duke and Sam Patch, had departed from this earth.

There are four other larger than life size statues, one on each corner of the Square, each representing a European who had come to America to participate in our revolution.

One, of course, is the Frenchman Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette (you can just call him Lafayette). Believe it or not, Lafayette was commissioned as an officer in France at age 13, came to America out of idealism, and was made a Major General in the Continental Army when he was 19. He was a close aide to Washington (25 years his senior), participated in battles, stayed the winter at Valley Forge and more, and was adulated as a hero of the war. The statue dates from 1890.

Another is the Pole, Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura  Kosciuszko. He came to America at the age of thirty, having received military training in Warsaw, and filled with idealism, serving for almost ten years in various capacities before returning home. The statue was dedicated in 1910.

The third is the Prussian, Friedrich Wilhelm August Heinrich Ferdinand von Steuben. Von Steuben came to Valley Forge at a low point for the American army, bringing his skills to retrain the army before it went back to battle. The statue was dedicated in 1910.

And the fourth is another aide from France, Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de  Rochambeau. He led the French expeditionary force, fighting with American troops at Yorktown. The statue was dedicated in 1902.

That’s enough of this. We should get started on our exploration of 16th Street, and not get bogged down too long here.

And we will do just that. But not today.