Up 227 dimly lit, winding steps, the view from the top of the fully restored Washington Monument offers a picturesque scene of Baltimore and the four surrounding squares in Mount Vernon below.

After the monument’s restoration was completed and the structure reopened in 2015, the next phase for the nonprofit that manages it has been addressing the north and south squares, then the east and west. The four squares of green haven’t been repaired in over 100 years, according to the Mount Vernon Place Conservancy’s executive director, Lance Humphries.

The grass is mostly yellow-brown, the marble is slowly disintegrating, and the electrical wires of lampposts are often exposed as people remove the protective panels to get power for things like charging their phones. The soil is compacted; there is no reliable watering system and no stormwater management.

This scene would all change with the green space restoration, Humphries explained, standing next to a fountain spraying one stream rather than the 12 that it was designed for.

The north and south squares will receive new soils, a new watering system, stormwater management, new electricity lines and lampposts, and all trees will be replaced except for one in the south square. Humphries said the goal is to make the green spaces look like a garden again, drawing people away from busy streets.

Hard structures will also be restored, from the marble to the sidewalks. A perimeter sidewalk will be added to the south square to keep pedestrians safe and sway drivers from speeding, as sometimes, cars collide with the marble. The restoration would also make the south square accessible for people with disabilities.

“I think anything that you can do to elevate the experience of the city from an open-space standpoint, from an architectural standpoint, from a placemaking standpoint, the exchange of ideas and open, inclusive space, that’s a good thing,” said Jack Danna, president of the Mount Vernon Belvedere Association, the community association for the neighborhood that works with the conservancy.

The city granted conceptual approval of the plan in 2011, allowing for the removal of trees from the north and south squares, but it held off from authorizing the replacement of trees in the east and west squares. Throughout the approval process, a group formed by two local residents called Save the Trees Alliance opposed the plan to remove over 100 trees and formed a petition that received thousands of signatures.

Eventually, the Conservancy and Save the Trees Alliance had to “agree to disagree,” Humphries said. The Save the Trees Alliance hasn’t posted on its Facebook page since sharing photos in 2020.

“If we’re doing something that’s going to last a half a century, we need we need to replant them because most of them will be dead by the time that rolls around anyway,” Humphries said. “And we can’t do all of this infrastructure work with them in place.”

In 2011, a certified arborist surveyed all the trees on the ground, and since then, 40 have died, according to Humphries.

Replacing the trees is a matter of public safety as well, Humphries said, as a tree with significant lean in the east square fell after a few days of heavy rain this past spring. The Forestry and Tree Services division of the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks handles trees in public spaces such as Mount Vernon Place.

Part of the opposition to the restoration was also that the green spaces would be closed to public access for a while. Humphries said once final approval and the remaining funds needed are received, the project in the two squares will likely take around 18 months. The squares will be closed during construction, but access to the east and west spaces will be open. There will be areas of staging to keep one side of Charles Street open while the other is being worked on.

Fundraising is another roadblock. The Conservancy has reached almost $9 million of the roughly $12 million needed for the project through funding from the city, state and federal governments as well as private donations. In the final push for fundraising, the conservancy continues to raise money through a small fee to climb the monument and other methods on top of government funding.

Although the plan for restoration was approved conceptually, the conservancy is working with the city for further approval before construction begins, Humphries said.

The squares will “make quite a showplace” when fully restored, Henry Hopkins, president of the Mount Vernon Conservancy said. He believes every generation should leave a place looking better than what they found, and he tries to do his part to at least bring Mount Vernon Place back to what it was.

“It’s very difficult to maintain the large park system with that type of budget,” said Henry Hopkins, president of Mount Vernon Place Conservancy. “And I think down the road, the city’s going to have to realize that park systems are very important to the population of the city, and they have to be maintained at a much higher level.”

It’s hard for the city to take care of the parks like it used to while managing other issues, so Humphries said that’s where the Mount Vernon Conservancy steps in to help. The group formed around 2008 to advocate and fundraise for the monument’s restoration, later establishing a public-private partnership with the city. Not only does the nonprofit maintain the monument and surrounding squares, but it now manages events like Flower Mart and the monument lighting in December.

The Conservancy commissioned OLIN, an architecture firm in Philadelphia, to develop the master plan for restoration. The first step was restoring the monument, which was closed due to dangerous conditions in 2010. After the conservancy raised about $7 million for the project, the public was welcomed back to the structure about five years later.

“The city, we’re often lost in this dialect of negativity, but there’s so many good things going on, from a small, grassroots movement to larger planning strategies that really have been realized by a lot of dedicated residents and stakeholders of the city,” Danna said. “And with that is woven into some of the greatest history of our nation, and that is here in Baltimore.”

The monument serves as a symbol of national pride, too, with a connection to the Fourth of July. As the first monument to Washington, its cornerstone was laid July 4, 1815, rather than Washington’s birthday. When it was found about 200 years later, inside was a newspaper folded open to a printed copy of the Declaration of Independence, among other relics.

“I think it’s wonderful because we’re like, ‘Oh we’ve been free for 250 years as a nation.’ And, there’s places like Ukraine right now who are fighting for their national independence,” Humphries said. “And so it really brings home that story of how the Fourth of July and the meaning of the Fourth of July is tied to the monument.”