Each Monday, sit back, relax, and ease into the work week with puzzles created from images in our collections that have been designated as open access. Anyone can now download, transform, share, and reuse these images as part of Smithsonian Open Access, launched in 2020.
Nestled among the saucer magnolias and beds of tulips in the Enid A. Haupt Garden is the Downing Urn, created in 1856 to memorialize landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing. In 1851, Downing presented his plans for the neglected space we know today as the National Mall to the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents. His visions included a natural style of landscape as well as architectural features, such as a president’s park, a monument park, a suspension bridge, and more. Congress never granted full funding for the designer’s plans and he died suddenly in a tragic boating accident the following year.
To remember Downing’s legacy, the American Pomological Society funded a memorial urn. Landscape designer Calvert Vaux designed the marble sculpture and it was created by artist Robert E. Launitz. Though it was initially located near the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the Institution moved the Downing Urn to the east entrance of the Smithsonian Castle in 1972 and then to the Enid A. Haupt Garden in 1989.
The Original
The Puzzle
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