Street Art and Museum Tours

Washington National Mall Mystery: The Philip Reid Time Capsule

• Washington D.C.
• 1-2 h
• 4 km
• 12 stops

A Yale historian arrives in Washington with a single lead: a mysterious email pointing to a time capsule hidden somewhere on the Capitol grounds. The trail follows Philip Reid , an enslaved man who helped raise the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol dome in 1863, and then disappeared from the historical record entirely. Walk through the U.S. Capitol , the Library of Congress , the Botanic Garden , and a dozen landmarks woven into the history of American democracy and the people it failed. The answer you find at the end will be more personal than you expected.