Pershing Park, Washington, DC
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The years of World War I had a lasting impact of the city of Washington, D.C. As America fought “to make the world safe for democracy,” the nation’s capital saw an influx of thousands of wartime workers needed to staff the government, as well as African Americans fleeing the South’s poverty and Jim Crow laws as the Great Migration began. Temporary buildings (“tempos”) were built on the Mall that would not be torn down until America’s bicentennial. The city suffered human loss, with 499 men and women dying in the conflict.
Join Garrett Peck, tour guide, historian, and author of The Great War in America: World War I and Its Aftermath, on a walk though wartime Washington. The tour begins and ends at Lafayette Square and circles around the White House, visiting sites including Pershing Park, the First and Second Division monuments, and the D.C. War Memorial. Follow the routes of the city’s Preparedness Day and victory parades, and pass by the 15th Street site of the former Keith’s Theatre, where President Wilson sought relief from wartime worry.
Along the way, see where sheep grazed on the Ellipse, suffrage protesters were arrested, the forgotten site on the National Mall where dozens of “tempos” once stood, and where thousands of women volunteered for the American Red Cross—which helped gain women the right to vote in 1920.
The tour is 2 hours long, and involves about 2 miles of walking.
