More and taller fences. Metal detectors. Restricted access. Armed guards.
Government in most forms — from the White House to local high schools — is a lot less accessible than it used to be.
Even as technology has made it easier for the public and government to communicate, the trend has been to limit or prohibit physical access to public buildings.
Defended as necessary to improve security, the erection of fences and other barriers also should be viewed as a way that government separates itself from those they govern.
And it’s no more obvious than in the history of the White House.
In a 2019 piece, Washingtonian magazine outlined the history of public access to the White House, noting that disagreement about what the president’s home should look like and what it should represent started even before it was built.
Washington, D.C., architect Pierre L’Enfant had envisioned a “presidential palace,” bigger and more imposing than the current White House. “George Washington was fine with this concept,” the magazine wrote, “but Thomas Jefferson thought it unbefitting to a democracy.”
George Washington never lived in the White House because it wasn’t finished until after he had left office.
Jefferson, the second occupant, after John Adams, added a fence around the house, largely to keep grazing livestock from ruining the gardens.
More fences were added after the British burned the White House in 1814.
Then that great populist Andrew Jackson got serious about keeping people out with a heavy-duty fence in 1833, just after he was elected to a second term.
Over the decades, other wars and threats became reasons to add new barriers.
In recent years, the pace escalated. Following the 1983 attack on U.S. Marines barracks in Lebanon, President Ronald Reagan approved more concrete barriers along the perimeter of fences surrounding the White House. After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, President Bill Clinton approved the closure of Pennsylvania Avenue, a public street, to vehicles.
After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, not even pedestrians were allowed on the section of Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House. In 2004, government allowed pedestrians to return, but not vehicles, and with increasing frequency, the street is blocked off completely.
In response to protests in U.S. cities, including Washington, earlier this summer, authorities ordered even more property surrounding the White House to be fenced off, including parks, streets and even private property. They cited risks to the president.
