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Interior Museum Opens Exhibit on Inaugurations

Just in time for this week’s 55th Presidential Inauguration, the Interior Department’s museum today opens the exhibit “Inaugurations: An Evolving Tradition.”

The exhibit contains 18 inauguration-related objects on loan from 11 National Park Service sites. Among the items are Clara Barton’s invitation to a ball for President Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration; President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s beaver and silk-lined top hat; and the original sheet music for the “President Lyndon Baines Johnson March” performed at Johnson’s 1965 inauguration.

Visitors to “Inauguration” can also find out who introduced “So help me God” to the Oath of Office, as well as when it became customary to hold balls on Inauguration Day.

The exhibit is on display through March 31. It is free and open to the public, but adult visitors must present a form of photo ID to gain entrance. Museum hours are 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. The museum is in the main Interior Building at 1849 C St. NW. For more information, call (202) 208-4743.

Heritage Trail Unveiled in Southwest D.C.

Officials from the city’s Southwest Neighborhood Assembly, along with members of Cultural Tourism D.C., officially unveiled the District’s fourth self-guided neighborhood heritage trail on Saturday. The new trail, “River Farms to Urban Towers: Southwest Heritage Trail,” is located just blocks from the site of the city’s planned baseball stadium along the Anacostia waterfront.

The two-hour self-guided tour, which begins at the Waterfront/SEU Metro station and ends near the Waterfront Mall, follows Fourth Street and runs along the Washington Channel. Signs along the way tell the story of a working-class neighborhood that was razed in one of the nation’s first experiments in urban renewal.

Stops on the trail include “Wheat Row,” Waterside Towers and the Arena Stage building. Along the waterfront, visitors can see where U.S. Colored Troops returned to Washington at the end of the Civil War.

For more information on the Southwest or other heritage trails, go to https://www.culturaltourismdc.org.

— Amy Carlile and John McArdle

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