D.C. World War I Memorial

This guide to the D.C. World War I Memorial on the National Mall opens with John Philip Sousa leading the Marine Band here on Armistice Day in 1931, when architect Frederick Brooke's marble bandstand was still a working stage for concerts. It traces the memorial's purpose honoring more than 26,000 D.C. residents who served, including 499 who did not return, and the plain, rank-free listing of their names in a segregated capital. Sousa, born just blocks from here, personally endorsed this circular shape as the ideal bandstand design.