Washington’s Lafayette Square on Election Day: do sunny skies portend the calm before the storm? (MONTAGE)

I’m breaking all of my own rules these days.  Averse as I am to including two analysis-free montages in a row, now I’m taking the violations a step further by featuring two consecutive articles that a) offer very timely content (likely to seem irrelevant in a few days) and b) carry heavily political undertones, though I will strive to remain non-partisan.  Why depart from tradition?  Well, it was early afternoon of November 5 when I took these photos: a Presidential Election Day, which only happens once every four years.  And I was in the heart of Washington DC at the time, at Washington’s Lafayette Square literally a stone’s throw from the Oval Office, which is somewhere I had never been before—at least on this important day.  So I figured it was worth capturing. 

No, this Lafayette Square isn’t a downtrodden mall on the east side of Indianapolis; not that I’d expect most people to come to this conclusion, but, to long-term followers of my blog, that is the Lafayette Square I have referenced multiple times in the past.  Washington’s Lafayette Square is of national or even global importance—it’s the closest of Washington DC’s many squares to the north side of the Oval Office.  It’s metaphorically the public front yard to the White House, and, aside from those who participate in the scheduled tours, it is the closest most people will ever get to the home of the country’s chief executive.  Thanks to its proximity to this prominent seat of power, it’s routinely a site of demonstrations, the vast majority of which are peaceful, though a slightly smaller majority in recent years than previously.

On a beautifully clear day in early November, I was in downtown DC for unexpected business and decided to take a thirty-minute stroll toward Washington’s Lafayette Square at the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue NW to see if the place looked any different from the past.  I’m not a regular at this site, at least not in recent years.  However, while an intern in the city in the late 2000s, I did make frequent visits to capture the energy and weirdness of the demonstrations that took place, all of which transpired during a time of far lower political polarization and far removed from any major election.  Not the case in 2024.

Approaching Washington’s Lafayette Square from 16th Street NW, it was impossible not to notice the installation of impediments: eight-foot tall chain-link fencing and Jersey barriers.  Though these obstructions made entrance to the Square difficult, it wasn’t impossible: the fences simply channeled access through a few carefully monitored doorways.  The park was still completely open to the public, though the atypical presence of these barriers served to amplify the energy and tension at the moment when tens of millions of Americans were casting their ballots.

Pivoting to the left from the previous photo, one receives a reminder of the friction that spills over from Washington’s Lafayette Square into surrounding areas.

St. John’s Episcopal Church, the venerable house of worship for every president since James Madison, received moderate damage from arson during the June 2020 riots.  It remains the closest religious building to the Oval Office, and now appears fully restored—or at least mostly restored.

The opposite end of the crosswalk in the pics above leads directly to an access doorway to Washington’s Lafayette Square.

Once inside the park, the area didn’t seem particularly busy, considering the level of activity taking place at various polling centers nearby.  From what I heard, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) encouraged or even required federal workers with DC offices to remain at home for remote work that day. 

The majority of Washington’s Lafayette Square eschews any sort of monumental landscaping or ceremonial allées that one might expect for a plaza that anticipates the primary seat of the executive branch of a nation’s government.  Aside from the southward viewshed toward the White House, Lafayette Square looks pretty much like a typical urban park: a few brick/concrete paths and gathering areas dividing large expanses of turf grass and deciduous trees.

Approaching the White House itself, however, yields a different view than normal.  The POTUS residence is scarcely visible, in fact.  It’s not just another set of chain-link fencing that conceals it though (though that is also still present).  Beyond just the fence, temporary trailers and scaffolding obscure about 85% of the view.

The big house is back there!  As the blue sign indicates, workers are busy installing the Inaugural Parade Viewing Stand.  I don’t recall this in years past, but I’m sure my memory doesn’t serve me well; I haven’t exactly been glued to the television on or preceding Inauguration Day.

The fencing at this portion of Washington’s Lafayette Square impedes any access to the largely pedestrianized portion of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, where tourists and demonstrators assemble for the closest possible view of the White House without direct access.  At this point, the photo below is about as close as most civilians can get, where the White House would be approximately 1,500 feet away to the left.

And the photo below includes two significant images: the famous Andrew Jackson statue on his bucking horse (probably the closest to a defining landmark in Lafayette Square), and the marginally visible White House in the background, behind all that scaffolding.

From my perspective, it seems a bit premature to construct temporary viewing material for an Inauguration Parade that won’t take place until January 20, 2025—a good two-and-a-half months away.  Perhaps it’s a deliberate gesture to repel tourists who might view the White House during the sunset of the current term: basically an oblique tactic for promoting security.  And the obstructed view, combined with the unusual time (early afternoon on a working weekday) might explain the thin crowds.

The most important and, dare I say, “iconic” fixture at Washington’s Lafayette Square is the immobile demonstrator: the one or two individuals who essentially build a sort of makeshift shelter at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW to advertise customarily fringe beliefs in a peaceful manner, while directly staring down the Oval Office.  With the new fencing and the scaffolding along pedestrianized Pennsylvania Avenue, this perm-camper has no choice but to settle a few hundred feet further from the White House.

The saturation with activist messaging has moved a few hundred feet as well.

To be frank, the signage this time around, on Election Day, was a bit disappointing: far more stereotypical messages, the likes of which one might see in a storefront window of a a business (or the front yard of a home) in a college town.  No campaigns for obscure presidential candidates who only appear on the ballot in one or two states; no championing a cause for “chewers’ rights” or some other interest group that 99.9% of the country did not know even existed; no references to Lyndon LaRouche.  Usually the political leanings of these career activists are nebulous, if not outright paradoxical.  I’m not sure what happened here: the seated “hippopotamus rights” crusaders are usually the most interesting part of a visit to Lafayette Square.  This time around on Election Day, few of the signs were still spicy, but most were predictable.

A few news media crews and independent journalists had perched themselves at opportune viewing points.

Beyond that, Washington’s Lafayette Square on Election Day mostly bestowed to the public its verdant landscape, a bit parched after an uncharacteristically dry October.

A few people were using the park benches to enjoy a late lunch, or perhaps to just sit and decompress after voting, sometimes with signage that I suspect they wished more people would have the chance to see.

Returning to the northern perimeter of the park, near the primary east-west collector road H Street NW, a few other long-term demonstrators separated themselves from what little of a fracas there appeared to be.

And, back outside the temporary fencing, where H Street NW meets 16th Street NW, the more sophisticated TV crews appear to be waiting for something newsworthy to transpire, broadcasting filler material as they appear just as unsuccessful as I was at capturing anything of note.

All in all, the visuals at Washington’s Lafayette Square were serene and upbeat, a reflection of a beautiful Indian summer day.  And a little boring.  But a boring Election Day is something many nations would covet, given that transfers of authority often result in contentious elections, so that the big Decision Day is fraught with tension if not open protest.  Things were remarkably calm on November 5, 2024, what turned out to be the eve of a surprisingly straightforward and quickly resolved election which, though not remotely a what I’d consider a landslide, yielded a clear-cut victory that is difficult to contest.  Whether the calm persists through December up to January 20th Inauguration Day remains to be seen.  At least that ugly scaffolding will get put to use.