page_title: President's Park
section_title: The Ellipse
hierarchical_section_title: President's Park / The Ellipse
caption_attribution_description: English: Aerial view of the White House and the Ellipse in Washington, D.C.
context_page_description: President's Park, located in Washington, D.C., encompasses the White House including the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, the Treasury Building, and grounds; the White House Visitor Center; Lafayette Square; and The Ellipse. President's Park was the original name of Lafayette Square. The current President's Park is administered by the National Park Service. The park is officially referred to as President's Park or The White House and President's Park.
context_section_description: President's Park South (commonly called the Ellipse) is a 52 acres (21 ha) park located just south of the White House fence. Properly, the Ellipse is the name of the five-furlong (1 km) circumference street within the park.  The entire park is open to the public, and features various monuments. The Ellipse is also the location for a number of annual events.  D.C. locals can often be heard to say they are "on the Ellipse", which is understood to mean that the individual is on the field that is bounded by Ellipse Road.
  The park was conceived in 1791, the first plan for the park was drawn up by Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant, and during the American Civil War (1861–1865), the grounds of the Ellipse and incomplete Washington Monument were used as corrals for horses, mules, and cattle, and as camp sites for Union troops. The Army Corps of Engineers began landscaping work on the Ellipse in 1867 and worked on it through the late 1880s.
caption: Aerial view of the Ellipse and White House grounds
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II", "Image Software": "Picasa 3.0", "Image ExifOffset": "102", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "364", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7152", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:05:15 22:48:01", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "6144", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "4096", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "234", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "52c60e432ffae7d11f2a39f400730cee"}