The nanobubblers had to go. It was early June, and the Trump administration was planning an event at the Lincoln Memorial on June 12 to promote President Trump’s Ultimate Fighting Championship birthday celebration at the White House. Dotted around the perimeter of the memorial’s Reflecting Pool were the nanobubblers, the temporary water-purification machines meant to…
A historian once told me that the presidency would distill Donald Trump to his essence. That essence, it turns out, is trillions of microscopic organisms that suck up all the oxygen and endanger life around them. That essence is slimy, stinky and unrelenting, as reflected in the mass of algae that infests the Reflecting Pool…
President Trump wanted the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial to look pristine. Photosynthesis had other plans. Days after the Trump administration completed a $14.2 million project to coat the Reflecting Pool’s concrete floor with dark blue waterproofing material, clumps of algae dotted the surface on Sunday and Monday, giving parts of the pool a…
The National Park Service is using at least $67 million worth of park entrance fees to help fund President Trump’s beautification projects in Washington, according to a New York Times analysis of federal records. Nearly $60 million in fees paid by visitors to national parks across the country is funding repairs to nine of the…
This article is part of our Design special section on retrofits. In mid-March, as the South Carolina sun faded in the evening, tourists gathered in the shadows outside Charleston’s Old Jail. Two teenage boys ribbed each other — “Hey, did you see that? Wait, did you hear that?” They were there for a ghost tour…
This article is part of our Design special section on retrofits. As children growing up in Franklin, Ind., Stacie Grissom and Sean Wilson remembered passing the old Union Joint schoolhouse on their way to cross-country meets. “It’s this very weird building and it just pops up as you’re driving by,” said Grissom, a freelance marketing…
In 1995, when Madonna held herself a lavish 37th birthday party, she chose a suitably trendy location: the Delano, the Art Deco Miami Beach hotel that the impresario Ian Schrager had transformed into a magnet for the glamorati and guests that aspired to be like them. With its tastemaker clientele and discreet yet indulgent atmosphere,…
