Watergate Steps

Built in the early 1930s as a ceremonial portal for dignitaries arriving by boat, the steps never hosted visiting heads of state. Instead, the site found a lasting civic role in 1935 when the National Symphony Orchestra began staging performances from an anchored river barge. For three decades, the “Sunset Symphony” drew crowds of up to 12,000 listeners who spread across the stone, riverbanks, and surrounding boats for everything from Wagner to military band music, until rising jet traffic from nearby Washington National Airport brought the tradition to a close in the mid-1960s.