Georgetown University almost built a neoclassical bus station

In 1985 as Georgetown University considered its plans for the future, University Architect Dean Price sketched this illustration of a possible neoclassical bus station.

This excerpt from Georgetown’s Campus Plan: 1983-2000 A.D. and Beyond describes the proposal:

An Intermodal Transportation Center, a key development in the University’s future plan, will serve as the major point of interaction between the various transportation modes. The Georgetown University Transportation Society (GUTS) bus operation, the Metrobus System, and a specially developed electric non-fixed rail trolley-like system will operate from this facility, located just inside the Canal Road access.

Although Price’s neoclassical depot was never built, Georgetown did ultimately build its bus station. The McDonough Bus Turnaround opened in 2015 and is the hub for the university’s three-route GUTS bus system.

It’s not, however, quite so opulent as the original proposal.

Today this only serves GUTS, and conversations about what to add to GU have shifted from a bus that looks old timey to a gondola.

This article was first published on December 4, 2018. It’s interesting to look back at the region’s history, so we are sharing it again.