Posts tagged The Mall
-
A busy day for NCPC
This morning, the National Capital Planning Commission (the federal government’s planning body for the DC area) released a great proposal for the future of the Federal area of the city. It calls for decking over not only the E Street Expressway but almost all of the “ramp spaghetti”, creating space for new buildings east and northeast or the Kennedy Center and… Keep reading…
-
Breakfast links: Interesting ideas from the past edition
Mall plus plus: The July 2006 issue of Washingtonian presented a vision for the National Mall that would create landfill and new canals behind the Jefferson Memorial to create space for new memorials and a relocated Supreme Court; the VRE tracks would also be buried to restore Maryland Avenue as a mirror of Pennsylvania. Thanks Nick! Keep reading…
-
The uninspiring WWII memorial
Yglesias and others find the World War II memorial “incomprehensible” and “un-American.” I know the first time I walked past it I spent more time trying to figure out why the states were where they were, than being inspired by the service of our men and women in the war. A memorial that does that is failing at its basic mission. Keep reading…
-
Union Station Intermodal Transportation Center meeting tonight
DDOT is conducting a study “analyze the feasibility and impact of creating enhanced access to multiple modes of transportation at Burnham Place, Union Station and the surrounding transportation network.” There’s a public meeting tonight from 6-8 pm at the Columbus Club at Union Station, 50 Massachusetts Ave NE. Keep reading…
-
Cannon almost stopped the Lincoln Memorial
A fascinating story in the Washington Post Magazine explains how Illinois Congressman and Speaker of the House Joe Cannon (who has a House office building named in his honor) fought the establishment of the Lincoln Memorial on what was then a swamp along the banks of the Potomac, preferring a smaller memorial near Union Station; years later, he admitted he was glad he had lost that fight. Keep reading…
-
From spaghetti maze to grande allée
The area around the Kennedy Center is surely one of DC’s greatest failures of urban planning. Earlier this decade the Kennedy Center attempted to fix the situation with a new plaza, until its funding was blocked in 2005. But the idea is still a great one. Today, DC Metrocentric found a concept study by architects Ehrenkrantz Eckstut and Kuhn, which takes the idea even… Keep reading…
-
Ramp spaghetti on the Potomac
The National Mall in Washington DC is an American icon, visited by millions of tourists, but also somewhat threadbare-looking; since 2001, increasingly choked with security barriers; and gradually becoming overbuilt with memorials for every group with clout in Congress. The National Coalition to Save Our Mall is fighting these disappointing trends. Keep reading…
-
Brooklyn puts retail in municipal building
“From the street, [Brooklyn’s Municipal Building] looks like ‘dead space,’” writes the Brooklyn Paper. “‘People have just accepted that government buildings are only for government,’” says Joe Chan of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. Downtown DC is even worse, with back to back Federal buildings each of which… Keep reading…
-
Washington’s good streets and bad streets
Washington, DC is a city with some of the most magnificent public spaces and some of the worst at the same time. The Mall is mixed; it’s a huge tourist attraction with great, free museums and monuments, but many of the buildings present blank stone walls to the streets and there are too many cars, rendering it more of an empty grassy space between attractions than a destination in… Keep reading…