Lincoln, Lincoln, I’ve been thinkin’
The Reflecting Pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C, has been refurbished at last. The project took two months — long enough that the statue of a seated Honest Abe in the Lincoln Memorial bent the elbow of its right arm and rested its chin on its palm out of boredom. The bottom of the pool is painted what President Trump calls “American Flag Blue.” Color experts say it’s actually navy blue, which is the same color of blue used in the flag of the Confederate States of America. But I guess “Confederate Flag Blue” might divide the country. Oh, wait …
In the spirit of the Reflecting Pool, I’ve been, well, reflecting on the history of the District of Columbia and its many monuments. The District was created to be the permanent seat of the federal government of the newly established United States of America in 1790. New York City had been the capital city, but the South held out to have the capital in their territory. The land chosen was donated by Maryland and Virginia. It was a conciliatory measure to persuade the Southern states to agree to Alexander Hamilton’s proposal to have the federal government assume the debts that all 13 colonies had accrued in fighting the Revolutionary War. The South thought it had pulled a fast one — the land was a swamp. But the North got revenge in 2015 by charging exorbitant ticket prices for “Hamilton.”
The Lincoln Memorial sits on land that was created by dredging mud from the Potomac River bottom, then using it to fill in the marshland. Construction crews poured 220 concrete piers and anchored them in bedrock to prevent the structure from sinking. But the same precautions weren’t taken with construction of the Reflecting Pool in 1922-1923: it was just stuck in the mud, with no supporting understructure. As a result, the pool sank about 2 feet over the years. And the lack of adequate filtration in the water supply system allowed algae to cover much of the water. Maybe you remember the quaint children’s rope-skipping chant that arose in the 1950s:
“Lincoln, Lincoln, I’ve been thinkin’
Your reflecting pool is stinkin’!
Smells like swamp gas, looks like slime!
Guess it’s reconstruction time!”
But it took until 2009 for the government to undertake improvements. Then in 2012, that refurbishment had to be refurbished. And in 2017, the refurbishment of the first refurbishment has to be refurbished. Then, in 2026, President Trump decided to fix what went wrong the first three times just in time for the country’s 250th birthday. There is no truth to the rumor that nearly 5 million unpublished pages of the Epstein Files form the new underlayment.
I guess the new pool looks OK. I won’t lie: I’ve been to D.C. a few times and never once noticed its color. When I think of it, it’s black-and-white, from the photos taken on Aug. 28, 1963, during Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. 250,000 people lined the sides, back and front of the pool that day.
Black and white, just like the crowd.
No “American Flag Blue” in sight.