Walking Washington, D.C.. Barbara J. Saffir
to the traffic light at Jenifer Street NW. Cross Wisconsin Avenue NW for designer deals on the right at the Nordstrom Rack outlet, Marshalls, and DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse. Inside 5335 Wisconsin Avenue NW is Range, one of several restaurants in the corral of James Beard Foundation Award finalist and TV’s Top Chef alum Bryan Voltaggio. It serves such delicacies as Muscovy duck rillettes and sweetbreads.
Continue northwest on Wisconsin Avenue NW to the Metro—or shoppers with Champagne tastes can amble a couple of blocks farther to Chevy Chase, Maryland, to pick up some trinkets at Tiffany & Co., Cartier, Gucci, and other posh stores.
BOUNDARY STONES: FROM DUST TO DUST?
Dying. Washington’s oldest federal monuments are dying—of neglect. Forty boundary stones were erected in 1791 and 1792 to mark the original 100-square-mile boundary of the new federal capital. Now all the sandstone monuments still embedded in the ground are decomposing, and several are just little nubs, missing entirely, or have been moved from their original locations. These lesser-known landmarks will be lost forever, unless the government steps in to preserve them permanently.
For the past century, volunteers and other advocates have fought to protect them. In 1915, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) began erecting iron-barred cages around the markers. But at least three fences are missing, one from an inaccessible stone and two on private property, according to the volunteer website, boundarystones.org.
The 40 stones were laid at 1-mile intervals along a 10-mile diamond by surveyor Maj. Andrew Ellicott after the District was selected for the capital by President George Washington. Maryland and Virginia ceded land to form the new capital, but in 1846 Virginia took back its land and its 14 boundary stones along with it.
The DAR still helps individually, and now also as part of a volunteer coalition called the Nation’s Capital Boundary Stones Committee. The coalition includes more than two dozen groups, such as the National Park Service, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the District Department of Transportation, and the D.C. Surveyor’s office. Co-chairman Stephen Powers of ASCE organizes biannual cleanups and is attempting to get the orphan stones recognized as a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.
When the stones were laid, each was typically 1 foot wide and 4 feet long, except for the 5-foot-long cornerstones, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report. The same Aquia Creek sandstone that the survey stones are made of was also used to build the Capitol and the White House. It was dug from a quarry roughly 40 miles south of D.C. in Stafford County, Virginia. That rock pit is now part of “Government Island,” and it’s protected as a public park.
POINTS OF INTEREST
Friendship Heights Metro Station 5337 Wisconsin Ave. NW, 202-637-7000, wmata.com/rail/station_detail.cfm?station_id=11
Washington, D.C., Boundary Stone NW6 in Boundary Park Neighborhood Conservation Area 5000 Western Ave., Chevy Chase, MD; montgomeryparks.org/parks_facilities_directory/boundarypnca.shtm
Fort Bayard Western Avenue NW and River Road NW, nps.gov/cwdw/historyculture/fort-bayard.htm
Mazza Gallerie 5300 Wisconsin Ave. NW, 202-966-6114, mazzagallerie.com
Shopping Centers 5333 and 5335 Wisconsin Ave. NW
ROUTE SUMMARY
1 Exit the Metro station at Western and Wisconsin Avenues.
2 Walk southwest on Western Avenue NW.
3 Turn right into Boundary Park Neighborhood Conservation Area.
4 Reverse direction.
5 Turn right into Fort Bayard park.
6 Walk northeast on Western Avenue NW.
7 Turn right just before Wisconsin Avenue NW into Mazza Gallerie.
8 Exit Mazza Gallerie onto Wisconsin Avenue NW.
9 Turn right to continue southeast on Wisconsin Avenue NW for one block.
10 Turn left to cross Wisconsin Avenue NW at Jenifer Street NW.
11 Turn left to head back northwest on Wisconsin Avenue NW.
Shoppers’ paradise at Friendship Heights Metro
2 FOREST HILLS TO TENLEYTOWN: TAKE ME HIGHER
BOUNDARIES: Military Road NW, 30th Place NW, Albemarle Street NW, and Wisconsin Avenue NW
DISTANCE: 2.3 miles
DIFFICULTY: Easy
PARKING: 2- to 4-hour free street parking along the route, 4-hour meters at Fort Reno
PUBLIC TRANSIT: At start: Metrobuses E2, 3, and 4 (Military Road–Crosstown Line) stop at Military Road NW and 32nd Street NW, connecting the Friendship Heights and Fort Totten Metro stations. At finish: Tenleytown-AU Metro.
It’s no Mount Everest. D.C.’s highest natural point is 409 feet, just a tad below Everest’s 29,028 feet, the world’s highest peak above sea level. But lest anyone rush too soon to explore this natural wonder off busy Wisconsin Avenue NW, begin instead in a ritzy residential corner of D.C. known as Forest Hills. That’s where some of the nation’s top scientists are studying something much higher: the stars. (The closest star, our sun, orbits about 491 billion feet above our heads.) These scholars work for the renowned Carnegie Institution for Science. Carnegie’s Forest Hills campus lies near the sprawling estate of the ambassador of Peru, a country known for its bucket-list hike to 7,970-foot-high Machu Picchu. Along the route are the former home of the country’s most powerful FBI director, haunts of novelists and newshounds, a Cold War bunker, and an underground arrest.
Start at Military Road NW and 32nd Street NW. Walk south one block on 32nd Street NW under six-story-high willow oak trees for the broad lawn, tan-brick mansion, and observatory of the private Carnegie Institution for Science on the left. Since 1903, the institute has been dedicated to scientific discovery to improve mankind and is one of 23 organizations created by industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Its headquarters is downtown. This 7-acre campus is called the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. Originally tasked with studying Earth’s magnetic field, now its astronomers, astrophysicists, and other scientists are working to discover planets, determine the age and structure of the universe, and investigate the causes of earthquakes and volcanoes. Carnegie’s website says its famous researchers have included Edwin Hubble, “who revolutionized astronomy with his discovery that the universe is expanding and that there are galaxies other than our own Milky Way,” and Vera Rubin, who confirmed the existence of dark matter in the universe. Carnegie hosts occasional public lectures at both campuses.
With Carnegie to the left, continue south on 32nd Street across Broad Branch Road NW, and turn left onto Linnean Avenue NW. Walk uphill and turn left on Garrison Street NW. On the left, the private three-story manor house where Peru’s ambassador lives isn’t visible from the street, but the gate hints at the history of this 25-acre compound on Rock Creek Park. Two gold coats of arms decorate the gate’s black metal bars. The emblem depicts Peru’s national animal, a llama-like vincuña, a cinchona tree (used to make the antimalarial treatment quinine), and a cornucopia stuffed with coins. On the left stone entrance post, it says “Battery Terrill” for the Civil War fort that once stood there. The ambassador’s 16-room colonial revival home was designed in 1928 for Charles and Lida Tompkins, the contractors who built many D.C. landmarks, including the east and west wings of the White House. Peru bought the site in 1944. Incidentally, a U.S. senator put Peru’s Machu Picchu