Reading Landscapes from the Edge

Watergate Steps

Team names, titles, and institutions:

  • Alyssa Hunziker, Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Literatures, Department of English, Oklahoma State University

  • Angelika Joseph, Ph.D. Candidate, History and Theory of Architecture, Princeton University

  • Rebecca Summer, Assistant Professor of Urban Geography, University Honors College, Portland State University

  • La Barbara James Wigfall, Associate Professor, Landscape Architecture and Regional & Community Planning, Kansas State University

Our landscape starts with the Watergate Steps. Today nicknamed the “steps to nowhere,” these steps opened in 1932 as part of the Arlington Memorial Bridge construction, meant to unite the North and South through the symbolic landscapes of the Robert E. Lee Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall. The steps were to be a ceremonial riverside entrance to the Lincoln Memorial, a “water gate” to the Potomac. However, this plan never materialized. Cut off by the high-traffic Ohio Drive at the base and Parkway Drive at the top, the steps do not provide access to the Potomac River or the Lincoln Memorial and they are difficult to access. Aside from local joggers, few people make the Watergate Steps a destination; those who do often have the steps and the commanding view to themselves. Situated at the “steps to nowhere,” this module asks students to consider: what new understandings emerge when we center landscapes on the edges of dominant landscapes? Through three parts of the module, students will learn the method of reading landscapes from the edge; apply this method to more dominant landscapes in the viewshed from the edge; and identify relationships within and across landscapes. 

Type of class: upper-level seminar (approx 20 upper-level undergraduate students)

Part I: Learn to read the landscapes from the edge

Students will learn to “read a landscape” through embodied experience situated in place. They will first consider how the landscape looks, sounds, and feels to them as individuals before considering how this landscape is produced through systems of power.

Part II: Apply the method of reading landscapes from the edge to landscapes within the viewshed

In groups, students will select one site seen from the Watergate Steps to research and visit. Students will consider where Black and Indigenous histories are legible in the landscape.

Site Examples

  • Arlington National Cemetery and Arlington House

  • Arlington Memorial Bridge

  • Lincoln Memorial

  • Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Island

  • The Potomac River

  • The Rosslyn Skyline

  • Georgetown

Part III: Identify relationships within and across landscapes in the viewshed

Returning to the Watergate Steps, students will zoom out to analyze the landscape from above, paying special attention to the relationships between the sites from part two, and the significance of those sites in the larger national context.

Module C Citation

Hunziker, A., A. Joseph, R. Summer, L. Wigfall. “Reading Landscapes from the Edge, Module C,” (Roberts, A., Way, T. Directors), 2022. Available from Part 1: Black & Indigenous Histories of the Nation's Capital, NEH Summer Institute for Higher Education Faculty, Retrieved on (date retrieved) website: https://www.apeopleslandscapehistory.org/syllabus-bank.