Washington, D.C.'s Secret Places

Washington is a city built around seats of power, but its single largest chair sits not in the Capitol but on a street corner in Anacostia. The current aluminum version, built in 2006, replicates a 1959 mahogany original built by the long-closed Curtis Brothers Furniture company, which once stood on this very spot.

At 19 feet tall, it stands roughly as high as the Statue of Freedom perched on top of the U.S. Capitol dome — a fact locals enjoy pointing out to visitors who assume the Capitol has the city's tallest seat.

The chair has its own strange history: in 1960, a 21-year-old woman named Lynn Arnold spent 42 days living in a glass house built atop it as a publicity stunt, drawing crowds of onlookers from across the city.

Unveiled in 1979 to mark the centennial of Einstein's birth, sculptor Robert Berks' bronze memorial shows Einstein seated on a bench of white granite, manuscript papers scattered at his feet covered in his own mathematical equations.

The statue sits on the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences, just steps from the National Mall's main run of monuments and museums — yet because it isn't actually on the Mall itself, most visitors never wander the short distance to find it.

Beneath Einstein's feet, a circular map embedded in the ground charts the position of more than 2,700 metal studs representing the planets, sun, moon and stars exactly as they stood on the memorial's dedication day.

Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens began in 1880 as a private water-lily hobby garden and grew into a commercial operation before the National Park Service acquired it in 1938 — it remains the only NPS unit in the country dedicated specifically to aquatic plants.

Ponds of lotus and water lilies bloom from late spring through summer, drawing photographers early in the morning when the flowers are freshest, while a boardwalk and trails wind through a protected wetland that's also part of the wider Anacostia River ecosystem.

A small Visitor Center offers orientation exhibits, restrooms, and a Junior Ranger program for kids, free with park admission — which, like entry to the gardens themselves, costs nothing at all.