Seeing DC’s iconic landmarks through a new lens — and tracking down lesser-known sights

There are only so many times a person can visit the Lincoln Memorial before the experience starts to feel pedestrian. At least, that’s what Beth Kanter thought — until she found a way to see the statue from a different perspective.

Last year, Kanter secured a National Park Service permit to venture 40 feet beneath the Lincoln Memorial. Accompanied by a historic architect from the National Park Service, Kanter got an up-close look at what she describes as the “subterranean mountain” propping up the iconic monument to America’s 16th president.

“That was truly spectacular,” Kanter said. “It’s kind of a majestic space underneath there. It’s pretty incredible.”

Thousands of tourists descend upon the nation’s capital each year, but it’s unlikely that any have seen the same view as Kanter, a local author who’s lived in upper Northwest since 1991. With her latest offering, she’s hoping her perspectives will inspire visitors and residents alike to broaden their horizons.

Published this month, her new book No Access D.C.: The Capital’s Hidden Treasures, Haunts, and Forgotten Places features chapters on close to 50 DC and area landmarks — some of them iconic, and others left off most itineraries. Photographs by Kanter and Emily Goodstein accompany the text.

Some locations, like the 9:30 Club and Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, will be familiar to even the most casual DC observer — including those attending Kanter’s book talk at Sixth & I tonight. But many other sites, like the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument in Northeast and the U.S. Botanic Garden production facility across from Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in far Southwest, have escaped widespread notice.

Kanter has been a professional writer for most of her two-plus decades in the city, first reporting for newspapers and magazines and later contributing to travel guides from Michelin and other organizations. Her previous books, including Washington DC Chef’s Table and Great Foods DC, examine the city’s rapidly evolving culinary scene.

All of her work so far led to this book, Kanter said. She spent more than a year researching locations, visiting sites, conducting “dozens and dozens” of interviews, taking notes and just sitting and watching. Unconventional visits to the monuments, including a trip beneath the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and a close look at the commemorative stones inside the Washington Monument, were particularly time-consuming, she said.

A few experiences stand out as particularly memorable for Kanter. She was astonished and moved to learn that the Botanic Garden production facility also serves as a repository for plants confiscated from U.S. Customs facilities at airports and through the mail. Those plants, which often arrive starved for water and sunlight, are nursed back to health and preserved alongside the rest of the garden’s collection. At the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Kanter visited “interstitial spaces” — separate floors of wiring and infrastructure that prevent maintenance crews from having to enter patient rooms.

“Sometimes when you slow down and take the chance to see what’s behind something, it gives you a greater appreciation for what the facade is,” Kanter said.

In the book, Kanter includes one chapter that particularly resonates with her family and close neighbors. A house near Kanter’s home in North Cleveland Park boasts a front lawn full of colorful dinosaur toys. The house’s owners put out the dinosaurs years ago for their grandson. Even as he’s grown up, though, people of all ages in the neighborhood — including Kanter herself — can’t help but fiddle with them when they walk past.

Whether you’re standing outside someone’s home or beneath a monument of historical import, there’s usually more to the story than meets the eye — something Kanter hopes readers of her new book will begin to appreciate in their travels around town and elsewhere.

“It’s easy to create a caricature of what DC is and not remember that there are people who live here and take what they do seriously in maintaining these different places,” Kanter said.

This post has been updated to clarify that Kanter wrote for Michelin travel guides, not the recently published restaurant guide, and the origin of U.S. Botanic Garden plants confiscated from U.S. Customs facilities.