GM was signing up for this year’s Bike to Work Day, when he saw that there was going to be a new pit stop for the event in Georgetown at the intersection of M and Pennsylvania (there’s another one down by the Waterfront Park). GM wasn’t surprised they added a new pitstop, but he was surprised at what that location was called: Meigs’ Park.
GM has never heard that little pocket park referred to as Meigs’ Park. He had no idea where the name would have even come from. But a little Googling led to this fantastic article by the superlative Streets of Washington.
In short, the name Meigs refers to Captain Montgomery C. Meigs. Meigs was given the responsibility to modernize the District’s water supply system in 1852. An important project for the system was the construction of an aqueduct bridge from Georgetown to Washington along Pennsylvania Ave. over Rock Creek.
Meigs devised a beautiful design to use arching pipes to both carry the water and provide structural support to the bridge. Here’s a photo (as reproduced on the Streets of Washington site):
What’s funny is that Meigs attempted to have this bridge named after himself, although it never quite took. As the Streets of Washington writes:
As early as 1861, it was being called the Meigs Bridge, but ironically that name never really caught on—ironically in that Meigs had been as vain as he was brilliant. He had his name engraved on the side of Cabin John Bridge and stamped into numerous metal fittings throughout the aqueduct system, yet few people called his bridge the Meigs Bridge. Also known as Bridge No. 6, the span was sometimes called the Tubular bridge or the Aqueduct bridge, but usually it was just the Pennsylvania Avenue bridge over Rock Creek.
And that’s still true.
So why has Meigs’ name been resurrected for the park? Searching for answers quickly reveals that the only party using this name is the BID. Are they secretly fans of elegant 19th century engineering?
GM will reach out to them to find out. In the meantime, good luck ever using the name Meigs’ Park and expecting anyone to know what you’re talking about.
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
Hey Topher,
Will here from the BID. I know when we spoke to NPS about using Meigs’ Park as the site for our second BTWD location, the rangers knew exactly where we were talking about. The BID referring to it as Meigs’ park predates my employment here, but I don’t think we made it up, but rather were informed of its name by another authoritative party (NPS perhaps). Since you raised the issue, I too have been unable to locate an authoritative source for it online, but given the history of General Meigs’ in the area, it seems highly credible that the pocket park was formally named for him at some point in time, but with little fanfare or public legitimacy, and perhaps that’s why it hasn’t stuck.
I hope you can track down more documentation on it, I enjoyed learning about the history of Meigs.
Meigs would certainly be disappointed that the only thing bearing his name today is a minor little park that isn’t really a park and isn’t even widely known by his name. He stamped his name all over his projects (including the iron steps inside the capitol dome!) and took credit for the work of the architects who designed the projects he oversaw. But he certainly left his mark all over the city – the Capitol dome and wings, the Pension Building (now the Building Museum), Arlington cemetery, the post office bldg, the aqueduct system.
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