National Mall in the context of "Lincoln Memorial"

The United States Capitol, often called the Capitol or the Capitol Building, is the seat of the United States Congress, the legislative branch of the federal government. It is located on Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Although no longer at the geographic center of the national capital, the U.S. Capitol forms the origin point for the street-numbering system of the district as well as its four quadrants. Like the principal buildings of the executive and judicial branches, the Capitol is built in a neoclassical style and has a white exterior.

Central sections of the present building were completed in 1800, when the 6th U.S. Congress convened there on November 17, 1800, moving the national capital from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.. The building was partly destroyed in the 1814 Burning of Washington by the British, then was fully restored within five years. The building was enlarged during the 19th century, by extending the wings for the chambers for the bicameral legislature as more states were admitted to the union, with the House of Representatives housed in the south wing and the Senate housed in the north wing. The massive dome was completed around 1866 just after the American Civil War. The east front portico was extended in 1958. The building's Visitors Center was opened in the early 21st century.

The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in 1937 for the American people by a joint resolution of the United States Congress. Andrew W. Mellon donated a substantial art collection and funds for construction.

The core collection includes major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Browne Widener, Joseph E. Widener, and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present and includes the largest mobile created by Alexander Calder.

The National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) is a natural history museum administered by the Smithsonian Institution, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It has free admission and is open 364 days a year. With 4.4 million visitors in 2023, it was the third most-visited museum in the United States.

Opened in 1910, the museum on the National Mall was one of the first Smithsonian buildings constructed exclusively to hold the national collections and research facilities. The main building has an overall area of 1.5 million square feet (140,000 m) with 325,000 square feet (30,200 m) of exhibition and public space and houses over 1,000 employees.

Cass Gilbert (November 24, 1859 – May 17, 1934) was an American architect. An early proponent of skyscrapers, his works include the Woolworth Building, the United States Supreme Court building, the state capitols of Minnesota, Arkansas, and West Virginia, the Detroit Public Library, the Saint Louis Art Museum and Public Library. His public buildings in the Beaux Arts style reflect the optimistic American sense that the nation was heir to Greek democracy, Roman law and Renaissance humanism. Gilbert's achievements were recognized in his lifetime; he served as president of the American Institute of Architects in 1908–09.

Gilbert was a conservative who believed architecture should reflect historic traditions and the established social order. His design of the new Supreme Court building in 1935, with its classical lines and small size, contrasted sharply with the large federal buildings along the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which he disliked.

Washington, D.C., is administratively divided into four geographical quadrants of unequal size, each delineated by their ordinal directions from the medallion located in the Crypt under the Rotunda of the Capitol. Street and number addressing, centered on the Capitol, radiates out into each of the quadrants, producing a number of intersections of identically named cross-streets in each quadrant. Originally, the District of Columbia was a near-perfect square but contained more than one settlement; the Capitol was to be the center of the City of Washington. Thus, the Capitol was never located at the geographic center of the whole territory, which was eventually north of the Potomac River, consolidated into one city. (The geographic center was located near the onetime marshy area of the present-day intersection of 17th Street, NW and Constitution Ave.) As a result, the quadrants are of greatly varying size. Northwest is quite large, encompassing over a third of the city's geographical area, while Southwest is little more than a few neighborhoods, large parks, and a military base.

The boundaries of the quadrants are not necessarily straight lines radiating from the medallion, but in three instances follow the paths of the boundary streets (which in some cases curve around topographical features): North Capitol Street, South Capitol Street, and East Capitol Street. The axis of the National Mall through the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial forms the boundary running west of the medallion.

Southwest (SW or S.W.) is the southwestern quadrant of Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, and is located south of the National Mall and west of South Capitol Street. It is the smallest quadrant of the city, and contains a small number of named neighborhoods and districts, including Bellevue, Southwest Federal Center, the Southwest Waterfront, Buzzard Point, and the military installation known as Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling.

14th Street NW/SW is a street in Northwest and Southwest quadrants of Washington, D.C., located 1.25 miles (2.01 km) west of the U.S. Capitol. It runs from the 14th Street Bridge north to Eastern Avenue.

Northbound U.S. Route 1 runs along 14th Street from the bridge to Constitution Avenue, where it turns east with US 50. US 1 southbound previously used 15th Street NW due to the ban on left turns from westbound Constitution Avenue to 14th Street, but it now uses the Ninth Street Tunnel, five blocks to the east. 14th Street crosses the National Mall and runs near the White House and through the western side of Washington's Logan Circle neighborhood.

The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the Smithsonian Institution. It was conceived as the United States' museum of contemporary and modern art and currently focuses its collection-building and exhibition-planning mainly on the post–World War II period, with particular emphasis on art made during the last 50 years.

The Hirshhorn is situated halfway between the Washington Monument and the US Capitol, anchoring the southernmost end of the so-called L'Enfant axis (perpendicular to the Mall's green carpet). The National Archives/National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden across the Mall, and the National Portrait Gallery/Smithsonian American Art building several blocks to the north, also mark this pivotal axis, a key element of both the 1791 city plan by Pierre L'Enfant and the 1901 MacMillan Plan.

The Tea Party movement was an American fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party that began in 2007, catapulted into the mainstream by Congressman Ron Paul's presidential campaign. The movement expanded in response to the policies of Democratic president Barack Obama and was a major factor in the 2010 wave election in which Republicans gained 63 House seats and took control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Participants in the movement called for lower taxes and for a reduction of the national debt and federal budget deficit through decreased government spending. The movement supported small-government principles and opposed the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), President Obama's signature health care legislation. The Tea Party movement has been described as both a popular constitutional movement and as an "astroturf movement" purporting to be spontaneous and grassroots, but alleged to have been influenced by outside interests. The movement was composed of a mixture of libertarian, right-wing populist, and conservative activism. It sponsored multiple protests and supported various political candidates since 2009. The movement took its name from the December 1773 Boston Tea Party, a watershed event in the American Revolution, with some movement adherents using Revolutionary era costumes.