The Smithsonian Institution, or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums, education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded on August 10, 1846, it operates as a trust instrumentality and is not formally a part of any of the three branches of the federal government. The institution is named after its founding donor, British scientist James Smithson. It was originally organized as the United States National Museum, but that name ceased to exist administratively in 1967.
The National Mall is a landscaped park near the downtown area of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. It contains and borders a number of museums of the Smithsonian Institution, art galleries, cultural institutions, and various memorials, sculptures, and statues. It is administered by the National Park Service (NPS) of the United States Department of the Interior as part of the National Mall and Memorial Parks unit of the National Park System. The park receives approximately 24 million visitors each year.
The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is a botanical garden at Bronx Park in the Bronx, New York City. Established in 1891, it is located on a 250-acre (100 ha) site that contains a landscape with over one million living plants; the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, a greenhouse containing several habitats; and the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, which contains one of the world's largest collections of botany-related texts. As of 2016, over a million people visit the New York Botanical Garden annually.
The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is an art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., focusing on Asian art. The Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art together form the National Museum of Asian Art in the United States. The Freer and Sackler galleries house the largest Asian art research library in the country.
The Smithsonian Institution Building, more commonly known as the Smithsonian Castle or simply The Castle, is a building on the National Mall housing the Smithsonian Institution's administrative offices and information center. The building is constructed of Seneca red sandstone in the Norman Revival style. It was completed in 1855 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965.
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the Smithsonian Institution. It was conceived as the United States' museum of contemporary and modern art and currently focuses its collection-building and exhibition-planning mainly on the post–World War II period, with particular emphasis on art made during the last 50 years.
Calvert Vaux FAIA was an English-American architect and landscape designer, best known as the co-designer, along with his protégé and junior partner Frederick Law Olmsted, of what would become New York City's Central Park.
Andrew Jackson Downing was an American landscape designer, horticulturist, writer, prominent advocate of the Gothic Revival in the United States, and editor of The Horticulturist magazine (1846–1852). Downing is considered to be a founder of American landscape architecture.
The National Museum of African Art is the Smithsonian Institution's African art museum, located on the National Mall of the United States capital. Its collections include 9,000 works of traditional and contemporary African art from both Sub-Saharan and North Africa, 300,000 photographs, and 50,000 library volumes. It was the first institution dedicated to African art in the United States and remains the largest collection. The Washington Post called the museum a mainstay in the international art world and the main venue for contemporary African art in the United States.
The Ellipse, sometimes referred to as President's Park South, is a 52-acre (21 ha) park south of the White House fence and north of Constitution Avenue and the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The Ellipse is also the name of the five-furlong (1.0 km) circumference street within the park. The entire park, which features monuments, is open to the public and is part of President's Park. The Ellipse is the location for many annual events.
The Lafayette Square Historic District is a National Historic Landmark District in Washington, D.C., encompassing a portion of the original L'Enfant Plan for the city's core. It includes the 7-acre (2.8 ha) Lafayette Square portion of President's Park, all of the buildings facing it except the White House, and the buildings flanking the White House to the east and west. The district was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970.
Hillside Cemetery is located on Mulberry Street in Middletown, New York, United States. Opened in 1861, it was designed in the rural cemetery style by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted, later noted for their collaboration on Central Park. There are several thousand graves, some with excellent examples of 19th-century funerary art.
Beechwood is a Gilded Age mansion and estate located at 580 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island best known for having been owned by the Astor family. Part of the Bellevue Avenue Historic District, it was built between 1852–53 and designed in the Italianate style by Andrew Jackson Downing and Calvert Vaux. Richard Morris Hunt renovated the estate in 1881 after it was bought the year before by William Backhouse Astor, Jr.
The Enid A. Haupt Conservatory is a greenhouse at the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) in the Bronx, New York, United States. The conservatory was designed by Lord & Burnham Co. in the Italian Renaissance style. Its major design features are inspired by the Palm House at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, and Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace.
Lafayette Square is a seven-acre public park located within President's Park in Washington, D.C., directly north of the White House on H Street, bounded by Jackson Place on the west, Madison Place on the east and Pennsylvania Avenue on the south. It is named for Marquis de Lafayette, a French aristocrat and hero of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and includes several statues of revolutionary heroes from Europe, including Lafayette, and at its center a famous statue of early 19th century U.S. president and general Andrew Jackson on horseback with both of the horse's front hooves raised.
Enid Haupt was an American publisher and philanthropist whose gifts supported horticulture, the arts, architectural and historic preservation, and cancer research. She has been described as "the greatest patron American horticulture has ever known" by Gregory Long, the president of the New York Botanical Garden.
Andrew Jackson is a bronze equestrian statue by Clark Mills mounted on a white marble base in the center of Lafayette Square within President's Park in Washington, D.C., just to the north of the White House. Jackson is depicted dressed in military uniform, raising his hat with his right hand, while controlling the reins with his left hand as his horse rises on its rear legs.
The Enid A. Haupt Garden is a 4.2 acre public garden in the Smithsonian complex, adjacent to the Smithsonian Institution Building on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. It was designed to be a modern representation of American Victorian gardens as they appeared in the mid to late 19th century. It replaced an existing Victorian Garden which had been built to celebrate the nation's Bicentennial in 1976.
The Smithsonian Gardens, a division of the Smithsonian Institution, is responsible for the "landscapes, interiorscapes, and horticulture-related collections and exhibits", which serve as an outdoor extension of the Smithsonian's museums and learning spaces in Washington, D.C. Established in 1972 as a groundskeeping and horticulture program, Smithsonian Gardens currently manages 180 acres of gardens on the National Mall, 64,000 square feet of greenhouse production space, and the Archives of American Gardens, a research collection of over 60,000 photographs and archival records covering American landscape history from the 1870s to the present.
Downing Vaux was an American landscape architect. Vaux was one of the eleven founding members of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) in 1899.
