The tall metal fence that has surrounded Lafayette Square for nearly a year opened Monday morning — to the delight of tourists and relief of D.C. residents, who took cautious steps forward into the center of the park.
Families held phones aloft and smiled for selfies in front of the White House, and children in face masks sprinted through the grass. Secret Service officers patrolled on bicycles, riding in circles on the paths of the park, as a small protest of three live-streamed a demonstration calling for the recognition of the Yoruba nation — the closest any protesters have been able to get to the White House since the Trump administration erected the no-scale fence amid daily racial justice demonstrations in June.
For nearly a year, Lafayette Square has been ground zero in the struggle over how best to secure the nation’s capital — its buildings, monuments and lawmakers — after a year of protests, a bitterly contested election and two deadly attacks at the Capitol in less than three months. The fence that still surrounds the park has been in place the longest of all the fencing D.C. has watched go up and down in the past year.
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Urban planners, civil rights advocates and legislators — from members of the D.C. Council to Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the District’s nonvoting member of Congress — have called for the removal of fences around the nation’s capital.
Slowly, over the past two months, the fences have started to come down.
On Monday morning, Spotty, a 7-year-old mutt with wiry gray fur and a pink tongue that vibrated as the dog panted in the midmorning sun, posed for photos on the grass as Caleb Ng, 33, crouched to get a good angle.
Ng, who lives downtown, said before the Trump administration closed Lafayette Square last year, the park was a regular stop on their daily morning walk. In the months since, he said, he would walk by only occasionally to check if the gates were still closed.
On Monday morning, he was surprised to find they had been opened for the first time.
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“It’s refreshing,” he said. “I won’t say it feels like we’re back to normal, because so much has happened that I’m not sure it will ever really feel that way, but it’s nice to have the park back.”
As he strode up H Street and through the area that D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) named Black Lives Matter Plaza as a foil to the federal government's fenced-off fortress, Ng said, he recalled what it felt like to do so last summer when the fence first went up.
Tear gas canisters rolled down the pavement as the air prickled with chemicals. Seeing police in full tactical gear became a near-daily occurrence.
“It was scary sometimes just to go out and walk the dog around here,” Ng said.
When racial justice protests broke out in D.C. on May 29, days after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd by kneeling on his neck until he stopped breathing, law enforcement used short metal barricades and concrete blocks to corral crowds and close off stretches of the park and surrounding streets.
Night after night, protesters and police would face off, with hails of rubber bullets and stun grenades and plumes of chemicals sending demonstrators running, shouting and retching into the bushes. Demonstrators tore down police barricades to build their own barriers in the street — a separation between them and the advancing police line. Fires broke out, including one inside a National Park Service structure along the north edge of Lafayette Square and another in the basement of the historic St. John’s Church that officials later blamed on vandals.
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The day after President Donald Trump strode to the steps of St. John’s Church to pose for cameras and hold up a Bible while federal police blasted peaceful protesters with tear gas and beat back bystanders with batons, a black chain-link fence was assembled around Lafayette Square.
The aggressive response was roundly criticized by members of the press, former military officers and elected officials, prompting a more scaled-back presence that allowed the park to briefly reopen.
Then on June 22, demonstrators tossed chains around the statue of President Andrew Jackson at the center of Lafayette Square and tried to pull it down. That was the last day pedestrians were allowed to freely roam the square. New barricades were erected over the next several days — tall black fencing reinforced by concrete barriers. It enclosed Lafayette Square and encircled St. John’s Church across the street.
The U.S. Secret Service did not respond to questions about why the park was reopened Monday or whether the remaining fencing will be removed.
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“The agency is committed to balancing necessary security measures with the importance of public access and view,” a Secret Service spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Due to the need to maintain operational security, we do not discuss the specifics of security fencing or other operational means and methods.”
The fence, which still encircles the park, confused some tourists as they spotted small clusters of people on the other side and wondered how they, too, could enter. A handful of open panels funneled pedestrians and cyclists into a few entry points, though much of the length of the park remained closed-off.
“We didn’t know we could get this close,” San Diego resident Aly Garcia said as her 5-year-old daughter, Kimberly, clung to her legs. “We saw the fence and were like, ‘Oh, no.’ But then we walked a little closer and realized it was open.”
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An officer on-site Monday morning said the agency had opened the gates at 8 a.m.
“You just opened this today?” asked a woman lining up a photo of the White House.
The officer nodded.
“Oh, wow,” she said. “I’m glad I decided to come today.”
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