Katsumi and Chika Koshino, Japanese newlyweds on their honeymoon, posed for a souvenir photograph in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue with the White House behind them. The mother of 6-month-old Donovan Hample, of Austin, Minn., put her smiling baby down on the newly quiet roadway for a similar picture.
The big white house that's long been a backdrop for tourists' snapshots got some competition yesterday -- from the asphalt in front of it.
Visitors to Washington as well as area residents marveled at the empty street, closed over the weekend to vehicular traffic as a security measure for the White House.
The six-lane road -- fabled internationally, a cross-town route for thousands of motorists locally -- now is merely a blank space connecting the White House grounds with the springtime lushness of Lafayette Square.
The change brought delight to those reveling in the spaciousness but disgust from those who suddenly found themselves off a previously beaten path. The two-block space left between the barriers set up at 15th and 17th streets directly disturbed commuters but caused a more subtle change in the culture of Lafayette Square, a place accustomed to protest.
For 16 years, Concepcion Picciotto has maintained an anti-war vigil on a highly prized piece of sidewalk across from the White House, daily delivering her message not only to the president's home but to thousands of passing motorists. No more. And she doesn't like it.
"They have taken away our freedom, step by step" Picciotto said. "I miss the trolley passing by. The people used to take pictures of me. I see the flashes going ping, ping, ping."
David Lockwitch, a Pennsylvania Avenue regular and anti-war demonstrator, was as unhappy as Picciotto. "There are fewer people to see us now," Lockwitch said as he ate his carryout breakfast of scrambled eggs and coffee.
Whether they considered it a charming novelty or a permanent nuisance, those who walked Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday said life outside the White House gates will not be the same.
"Let the pedestrians have the street," said Elbow Jones, a retired telephone company employee from Modesto, Calif., who was sightseeing at the White House. He positively delighted in striding across Pennsylvania Avenue not far from where the protesters sat.
"We aren't jaywalking," Jones said. "This is great."
Neil Horstman, executive vice president of the White House Historical Society, took advantage of the street closing and strode across the quiet avenue on the way to his office on Jackson Place, on the west side of the park.
"I was away when they closed the street," he said. "When I got to town this morning, I wanted to take a stroll out here. This is a much more direct route to my office."
Others liked a park where the noise of traffic no longer drowned out birdcalls or the sound of squirrels digging for buried nuts in the park's well-kept lawn.
Nicky Pratt, of Fairfax, departed for work early yesterday to have a few minutes to sit on a park bench and read the new book by Robert Fulgham, "Uh-Oh."
"It is so much quieter now," she said. "There used to be horns and whistles blowing."
There is a drawback for Pratt, however, in the new arrangement. As a coordinator for the Congressional Youth Leadership Council, she has to find a place each month for eight buses filled with students to park near the White House.
Until last weekend, the block of Madison Place along the east side of the park was where they usually stopped. Now that street is closed to all traffic except Metrobuses.
"Maybe they will just circle around," she said, looking at the concrete barriers and police officers guarding the entrance to Madison Place at H Street NW.
Yet, the newfound space where tourist buses will no longer pass but where roller-skaters are welcomed pleased Arnold Prives, special projects director for Forbes magazine, who visits Washington often from New York. On his way to breakfast at the Willard Hotel from the Hay-Adams Hotel, where he was staying, Prives walked briskly across Pennsylvania Avenue.
"This is a most welcome change for Washington," he said. "Pennsyl vania Avenue will become like Central Park. There will be entertainers and celebrities. The avenue can be a place for a 40-yard dash. Tents will go up for parties.
"There are a lot of positive things to come out of this, things not realized now."