New Life Breathed into Kiley’s Banneker Park
The National Park Service has unveiled a plan that would improve access to Banneker Park (also known as the Tenth Street Overlook) in Washington, D.C., with new curb ramps, stairs, crosswalks, and ADA-compliant pathways.
The new work is an effort to improve the connection between L’Enfant Plaza and the developing Southwest Waterfront for pedestrians, cyclists, and those who are physically challenged. Designed by landscape architect Dan Kiley in 1967 and officially opened on November 1, 1971, the 4.7-acre Modernist park is nested within an eight-acre landscape that affords panoramic views of the Potomac River and marks the terminus of the Tenth Street Mall, which originates at the Smithsonian Institution Building (The Castle) on the National Mall. Kiley’s design comprised a 200-foot-wide, granite-paved elliptical plaza, the centerpiece of which is a large conical fountain that projects water more than thirty feet high and catches it in a circular basin made from honed green granite. The concentric rings of the central fountain and basin are reiterated in the benches, double rows of London plane trees, and low concrete walls that establish the plaza’s edge. The plaza is paved with granite squares, a continuation of the Tenth Street Mall’s materials.
As was recently reported in Greater Greater Washington, the Nation Park Service's plan includes new trees and plantings, and will potentially add areas for stormwater retention as well. On April 7, the project will go before the National Capital Planning Commission for a revised concept review.
Banneker Park was part of TCLF’s Landslide 2013: The Landscape Architecture Legacy of Dan Kiley, which highlighted the site’s deteriorating condition due to lack of maintenance and the then-current plans to alter Kiley’s National Register-eligible design. With this most recently announced plan, TCLF remains optimistic that any future work at the park will honor Kiley’s design, while improving its physical and visual connectivity to the contiguous Southwest Waterfront.
