(photography by my friend and resident guide, Adam)

Hirshhorn, also called "an embassy on Mars":



Tensegrity (a permanent Bucky Fuller installation) -- none of the solid elements touch:



Spy Museum elevator -- "no photography allowed":




Monument to our aims -- Mt. Vernon:



Another -- Arlington:



Unknown but not unremembered:



Rodin's astonishing marble -- an "out of focus" effect physically attained.



Classicist's allegory: Diana the archer.



More Diana -- full raiment.



The National Building Museum -- where I'd long wanted to visit -- impressed incredibly in its colossal vastness. Twenty people could dance on a single column's capital.



Battlefield Park, one of many solemn testaments to America's second great crucible, the Civil War:



To close where we began, a fisheye of Gordon's Hirshhorn museum -- perhaps the Mall's best architectural surprise (spatially; we knew it was there, of course):

Good stuff, Mr. Dynamics. The Martian embassy shot, the first one, is the best of the lot.

Nice photos. Wow, I can't believe Kennedy was born in 1917 and has been dead for 45 years.

Shit, this whole place is really, really old.

MOM, you months ago captured a landmark by the same mind (Lever House). Back then I compared your achievement to Mario de Biasi, though in fact I think it was closer to Ezra Stoller, one-time "staff photographer" for SOM. Here is his take on Martian civic architecture. (Night helps everything).

UberCanis, the almost fake-sounding Virginia license plates, with their declaration, "400th Anniversary 2007", greatly reinforce one's impression of the place as really, really old.

And then there is Europe.

Aww, Hell. That linked photo's fantastic.

Thing I'd liked most about the Lever Building was how clean it was. (The Seagram Building, too, though it's a different look. Warmer.) Had no idea Lever House was drawn my your Embassy's architect, but I guess my eye likes clean and smooth.

"lines clean and smooth" -- "honest", as say the prophets of modernism.

Would you believe the Seagram building is bourbon-colored? And quite deliberately. Once upon a time, Seagram's best-selling product was Four Roses bourbon.

Warm indeed!