Join Us Greening the Great Grand Avenue

Today the wide straight road of Embassy Row in Washington DC seems lined with trees. Each day a thousand people walk or run along its flat sidewalks, we estimate. The two miles of the avenue from Wisconsin Avenue to Dupont Circle is a busy commuter route. By one official count 40,000 vehicles travel on weekdays to and from downtown.

The hot air over Washington has warmed with the heat island effect. It will get hotter. But for 18 years our little group has tried to keep the Mass Ave corridor cool; our mission is to re-grow the Avenue’s former canopy of big trees.

L: Sidewalk by 2226-2230 Mass Ave in 2008. R: The tree allée seen from 2234 Mass in 2026.

A legacy abandoned

The great avenue of formal design is the brainchild of Maj. Charles P. L’Enfant. His 1791 plan for the new city envisioned the avenue as the city’s longest cross-town thoroughfare. In the 1880s and 1890s, the city engineers, planted same type trees in rows in “parking” between sidewalk and homes. Then on the western extension about 1900 came the mansions designed by top architects and top-hat clients. By 1974 the National Park Service designated the great avenue’s western part “unique in the city and perhaps the nation.”

But decline hit the landscape and buildings by the 1990s. It could hit again – so our little group needs your help! Join us! Learn how busy streets can be green and cool.

Canopy grew a lot

From 2006 we showed people on the route the amazing photo of the sidewalk in 1913 (see right). We pulled wagons of tools and hoses for weekend rescue. Our hyper local activism engaged diplomats, city and federal officials, experts. They still help our Board and volunteers.

The trees you see now are survivors of two years of roadbuilding; some have issues. The oldest trees that defined the street’s grandeur are dying off. The ‘NextGen’ trees planted in the past 18 years have issues. The very newest trees need local care.

If Restore Mass Ave’s model of strategic planting and local owner care for trees and greenspace can be pursued, it might sustain the avenue’s green legacy for a long time. Another century?