Posts about L'Enfant Plan

This is a map of the existing conditions at Longfellow Triangle:

Look at how wide the streets are that surround the triangle. Connecticut Avenue is 6 lanes, not counting its generous median. 18th Street is 4 lanes. M Street is 5. All of them have on-street parking, although the parking lanes are used as through lanes at peak periods.

If the city repurposed the parking lanes on each surrounding block and used that width to add to the triangle, the park space could be dramatically enlarged with little reduction in street capacity. On Connecticut Avenue the median could be repurposed as well, or it could substitute for one of the parking lanes.

These images show how that might work. In the left image, parking lanes and the Connecticut Avenue median are identified in red and orange. In the right image, the orange spaces are shifted towards the triangle, and the travel lanes are correspondingly shifted outward.

The end result would be a considerably larger triangle, one with enough space to begin to take on some of the functions of a true city park. Instead of containing just a row of benches and some shrubs, the space would be large enough for tables, flower beds, and possibly a small lawn. Today's underused leftover could become tomorrow's Dupont Circle or Farragut Square.

The down side is that around 30 on-street parking spaces would be lost, and peak period street capacity would drop slightly. This seems a very reasonable price to pay for a greatly enhanced public space.

Other potential complications include the final placement of DDOT's proposed M Street cycle track and the National Park Service, which is notoriously hard to work with. Neither of these hurdles appears to be a deal breaker, however. The cycle track will only take up a few feet, and if NPS reconfigured Thomas Circle in 2005 they might be willing to reconfigure Longfellow Triangle now.

Obviously this idea would require a considerable amount of additional study before it could be deemed practical. But if it is practical, the upside for urban livability might be tremendous.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

The purpose of the project is to repair and replace existing features in kind, and to install a new fence on the south side of the park, in order to enhance both aesthetics and visitor use. HDCMS and its contractors have coordinated with NPS staff regarding preservation of the character-defining features of the park and consistency with its 1929 landscape plan. ...

The project includes: repairs to damaged flagstone, curbs, and concrete flat work; replacement of existing, tulip-style trash receptacles with Victor Stanley models; turf restoration of the compacted soil areas; restoration of the existing benches; replacement of a cherry tree and installation of a Chinese fringe tree; and a new wrought iron fence to remedy the existing social paths (compacted soil areas) caused by pedestrian traffic to and from the Dupont Metro Station. [emphasis added]

The new fence will provide protection for restored plantings and rehabilitated turf in the park. The NPS is considering two standard fence styles in use in US reservations. The work is expected to take place during 2011/2012. Please see http://parkplanning.nps.gov/DupontTrianglePark for more information about this proposal.

In short, people are crossing from the park to the Metro station, because they want to sit on the benches before or after using the Metro. But instead of creating a pathway to the Metro, NPS's response is to fence it off and block people.

Why must NPS slavishly follow a 1929 landscape plan, specifically? What's so special about 1929?

Rob Halligan, former president of the Dupont Circle Citizens' Association, wrote:

When we came to the Park Service with the money to renovate the park, we weren't too happy to hear that they were inflexible on any modification or improvement that didn't adhere to that 1929 plan. We did point out that the present use and environment (Metro station, the grand houses are around it are now businesses, cars everywhere rather than mostly horses), but they wouldn't take that into account when trying to add or change any element.

In 1929, there was no vehicular underpass or subterranean streetcar station, both of which were built in 1948-1950. There was no Metro station, and nothing generating over 23,000 trips to and from the southeast corner of 20th and Q every day.

Parks change. The Wikipedia article and its cited sources say Dupont Circle wasn't even a traffic circle until 1871. The park got a statue in 1884, which was then replaced by a fountain in 1921. It had playground sandboxes for a while in the 1930s, right after the Park Service took it over; at the time, at least, they apparently didn't feel that all parks need to stay exactly as they were in the 1920s.

Is the "right" Dupont Circle one with a statue? Or a fountain? Or sandboxes?

Someone created a plan for this park in 1929. It's a fine layout, though not especially remarkable. Now, the neighborhood has changed, and specifically having one path to 20th Street and one to Connecticut Avenue but none to Q might not be most appropriate.

If the Metro station had existed in 1929, the landscape designer may well have put in paths there as well. The grass is worn away between the benches and Q Street, proving people want to cross there.

This fence won't "enhance visitor use." And saying the fence will "remedy the existing social paths" is quite the Orwellian doublespeak; the right remedy for social paths is to design a good path, not to block it off.

For that matter, NPS isn't even pushing for the same plan as in 1929. That plan had a fountain and shrubs, said resident Ingrid Suisman, who has been pushing for the renovation for six years. But NPS refused to allow those elements, saying they are too hard to maintain. The need to follow 1929 plans apparently doesn't extend to removing elements, only changing them... and adding fences.

The grass is also badly worn away along the southeast corner. ANC Commissioner Mike Silverstein said that a lot of people stand there to wait for the 42 bus, which stops along the side of the park. The sidewalk here is extremely narrow, made worse by large light poles and trash cans that take up some of the space.

With a new fence along the curb, everyone waiting for the bus will have to stand in the narrow sidewalk or in the street, and anyone trying to walk along Connecticut will have to as well. Silverstein fears the fence will now force people to walk or wait for the bus in the street, which could be very dangerous.

Connecticut Avenue was once narrower, with wider sidewalks; it was widened in the 1920s, around the time of this landscape plan.

When DC renovated the triangle parks at S and T Streets, they changed their use and layout. They fenced off most of the S Street park for a dog park. Before, there was a pathway cutting off the corner from S to New Hampshire Avenue; that got moved closer to the corner, and benches moved.

Meanwhile, on the adjacent triangle at T Street, there was a very old tree which arborists determined needed protection to survive. A small area for people to congregate was built, while the rest was closed off for the tree.

Some space gained more protection for plants, while other space became more designed for people and animals. The triangles remained parks, but different parks that serve the needs and desires of the neighborhood today. The same can happen with the Q Street triangle without violating the L'Enfant Plan (which didn't even specify whether these triangles, circles and squares would be grassy, paved, or just dirt).

This park could be designed to better serve the needs of people today without reducing the amount of plantings. The paths to the center seating area could traverse the triangle north-south instead of the current east-west. Or, maybe the seating area should move closer to Connecticut Avenue to double as a bus waiting area at the busiest times.

It's probably too late for any real changes, and some could cost more money than is available. This project is already happening several years later than neighborhood leaders had hoped. Silverstein said, "The money has been sitting for a couple of years while NPS has been deliberating and processing. Letting the money and the project languish while we process it to death is something else that should be avoided."

Unfortunately, NPS wasn't using that long period of time to get public comment on plans or anything like that. Wiliams wrote in his email, "Work is expected to begin shortly after the [30-day public] comment period closes September 12th!" In other words, they clearly see this comment period as a formality, as all the design work has already been completed and it's just a last step before actually putting shovels in the ground.

Sadly, without the ability to make more substantial changes, just renovating the park as is will surely lead to grass again being trampled. But that's still better than fencing it off and creating an impassable barrier at exactly a spot where thousands travel every day.

Suisman feels a fence is better than none, and the park can serve more as an oasis with the fence. But today, the park is being well used by people waiting to meet others by the Metro, or waiting for buses. It contributes positively to the area as it is. We shouldn't take away that value and transform the park into a mostly empty zone, which won't be any quieter but will be less utilized, just because a 1929 designer chose that role when the neighborhood looked very different.

It's not 1929 anymore (though looking at the economy, sometimes you wonder). DC can have great parks that fit the L'Enfant Plan without having to freeze them permanently exactly like they were in 1929. Unfortunately, the Park Service continues to look backward instead of forward, and interpret its mission as one of preventing any change rather than finding ways to maximize green space and recreation in the current day.

HDCMS executive director Paul Williams declined to comment for this article, and NPS spokesperson Bill Line has not yet replied to emails.

ANC Commissioner Mike Feldstein plans to organize a community meeting to discuss the park. Meanwhile, you can submit comments to NPS using this online form. Ask them to delete the fence and to allow new paths at the places residents want and need to walk.

The freeway here is actually four separate roadways, two in each direction. The middle two lead to ramps to the 11th Street Bridges, which are being removed; the outer two connect to the Southeast Freeway. On the eastern end, the ramps connect to Pennsylvania Avenue at Barney Circle and also pass underneath as a roadway that runs along the waterfront to RFK Stadium.

Without the freeway, DDOT could reconstruct this roadway as a new local road between L and M. Let's call it Lamp Street. It no longer needs to cary Pennsylvania Avenue traffic to the freeway, as those cars should take 295 to the 11th Street Bridge. Therefore, it only would carry cars going to and from the stadium and local traffic.

1-2 lanes each way, plus parallel parking, sidewalks, and a two-way cycle track along the railroad side would suffice. With the remaining land, DC could allow some new development fronting onto Lamp Street and onto L. I don't know what neighbors would like to see, but if I lived there, I'd like to see some townhouses facing L, connected in the back to taller buildings along Lamp.

The townhouses could be 2½-3½ stories above ground. The larger portions could be set back enough to keep L feeling low-rise while also providing more opportunities for adding housing and some nice views of the water on the Lamp Street side.

Best of all, bridges could then connect over the railroad tracks. If the existing grade of the freeway (and what will become Lamp Street) is high enough above the tracks to allow the CSX double-height trains to pass completely below, then 13th, 14th, and 15th could continue to new intersections with Lamp (with a downward slope), and pedestrian bridges could then cross the tracks.

If that's not high enough, the grade could be raised to make Lamp the same height as L, or else the extensions of 13th, 14th, and 15th could simply be pedestrian plazas atop the ground floor of the Lamp apartment buildings connecting to bridges over both Lamp and the tracks. That would avoid direct connections from Lamp to the other streets, which some residents might like to avoid drivers using those streets, but would also diminish connectivity.

The next question becomes how the bridges can let pedestrians and cyclists down from the high altitude over the tracks. Extending the bridges down to the waterfront should be part of the Cohen project. Pedestrians and cyclists shouldn't have to travel long distances to the east or west to get down; they should be able to descend directly toward the waterfront.

These could be standalone bridges extending along the streets' right-of-way, and they could also connect directly to parts of the new buildings. Cohen should plan to build these bridges and ensure any overpasses between the buildings aren't in the way. DC could also require CSX to go along with these bridges as one of the conditions of their Virginia Avenue tunnel project.

The bridge at 14th, in particular, would make this new waterfront plaza and the riverfront boathouses easily accessible from the Potomac Avenue Metro. The L'Enfant Plan was about connections: avenues and roadways connected major circles and squares to each other and to the edges of the city. Ensuring an easy connection from the major intersection at Potomac Avenue to the waterfront, and reconnecting the grid across the tracks even for non-vehicular traffic, best fulfills the true spirit of the plan.

Rather than worrying about the width of the right-of-way for paper streets that don't actually go anywhere, NCPC should focus on guaranteeing these connections and upholding the intent of the L'Enfant Plan.

Whether DC goes with this plan or some other arrangement for the current Southeast Freeway segment east of the 11th Street Bridges, it would help to make a decision soon. The most recent designs for the 11th Street Bridges include a ramp from the current northernmost freeway road up to 8th Street.

If Lamp (or whatever it's ultimately called) ends up using the south side of the freeway right-of-way, DDOT should make sure Skanska lines up the new ramp with the final road.

Instead of directly flowing into the freeway on the western end, DDOT could reconnect 9th Street between I and Virginia Avenue, where current ramps lead to the defunct freeway. The reclaimed land on each side, between the 11th Street Bridge ramps, could provide space for the Marine Barracks expansion instead of taking the nearby community garden.

According to the NCPC report, DC worked out this deal with Cohen Companies (which owns the project) as part of a settlement over another lawsuit concerning the Southwest Waterfront. If the project doesn't win necessary approvals, that settlement becomes void and Cohen can continue to pursue damages in the Southwest case.

The DC Historic Preservation Review Board approved the project and the formal closing of Virginia Avenue, 14th Street, and a small strip of M Street, provided that development doesn't encroach on protected viewsheds. The question is how wide to keep the streets' viewsheds: the original L'Enfant width or something narrower?

The L'Enfant Plan set aside very wide spaces for streets. Those "streets" are much wider than the actual roadways we have today; for many neighborhoods, they span the distance from the buildings on one side to the other, including the front yards, sidewalks, and tree box areas.

The "streets" are narrower in certain spots, however. Two triangular federal "reservations" make up the western and eastern ends of the planned buildings, and another one is part of the plaza. These reservations are areas set aside from the L'Enfant plan and have variously become triangular parks or buildings. Just like Farragut and McPherson Squares cut into the K Street right-of-way, making the street narrower in those areas, these reservations partly occupy the right-of-way for M and Virginia.

As a result, the remaining Virginia Avenue and M Street right-of-way are narrower next to the reservations than elsewhere. Cohen appears to have the right to develop on the reservations, meaning that at most, any viewshed would only be the width of the narrower part of the "streets."

However, the NCPC staff report argues that there should be no development on any of the right-of-way for the streets, even where the right-of-way is wider than adjacent to the reservations. This would prohibit building even along the stretches which don't actually maintain any viewsheds due to the developed reservations.

Complicating this is a legal dispute between DC and the federal government about an existing law that says DC may sell off these reservations. The law says,

Where title to the street or alley, of which all or part is to be closed, can reasonably be determined to be held by the United States or the District, the Council may dispose of the property to the best advantage of the District and may assess the fair market value of the land and the value of the District's improvements on the land to the person(s) to whom the title to the land is to vest. Any money received for land where the title was held by the United States shall be deposited in the Treasury of the United States to the credit of the United States.

In a 1986 case, Techworld v. D.C. Preservation League over the closing of 8th Street, NW where it now passes between the Techworld buildings south of Mount Vernon Square, a court ruled for DC but the case was then settled. NCPC staff still feel that DC does not have the right to sell these portions of streets. The staff report also objects to the bridge over 14th Street.

If DC's right to sell the reservations is valid, as it appears so far to be, then banning development on adjacent parts of the Virginia Avenue and M Street right-of-way doesn't actually protect any viewsheds. More importantly, there isn't much of a view to protect here. Virginia Avenue just turns into railroad tracks and a freeway, and 14th runs into the huge retaining walls between the tracks and the freeway.

The L'Enfant Plan's vistas are important where those vistas actually exist. They don't here, and even if the infrastructure one day went away somehow, they still wouldn't. Nevertheless, this plan still preserves the vistas by maintaining a clear right-of-way for all of the original L'Enfant streets. The only question is how wide that right-of-way needs to be.

Today, the importance of some avenues is greater than the importance of others. This is due, in large part, to their suburban connections, not any particular naming convention.

The grand avenue, home to everything from Inaugural Parades to festivals of all sorts, is Pennsylvania Avenue. Connecting the Legislative and Executive branches, it was always meant to be the heart of Washington. In the southeast, it continues as a major roadway toward central Prince George's County, Maryland.

Similarly, Connecticut, Georgia, and New York all are major thoroughfares to outlying parts of the region. Another important street is Wisconsin Avenue, running from M Street in Georgetown to the Beltway north of Bethesda; it was an important road long before the name was applied. As late as 1903, it was still called the Georgetown and Rockville Pike. This historic name is the basis for two streets in suburban Montgomery County: Old Georgetown Road and Rockville Pike, the straightened version.

Some feel that certain states got short shrift. Tiny Delaware has a fractured, relatively unimportant street. However, the main reason that it is less important today is because of its strategic importance as a transportation corridor. To the north, Amtrak, MARC, and Metro's Red Line trains use Delaware Avenue to enter the L'Enfant City. Similarly, Maryland and Virginia Avenues in Southwest and Southeast now have above-grade railway embankments carrying trains along streets intended to be grand public avenues.

But street-naming doesn't have anything to do with importance to the Revolution or the prestige of any one state, at least not directly. State names were assigned to avenues based on their geographic location within the United States.

For that reason, one found Georgia Avenue in the southernmost portion of the city. Running from what is now Fort McNair across the southern side of Capitol Hill, we know it today as Potomac Avenue. Near the northern edge of the city, the avenue named after the then-northernmost state, New Hampshire, passed through Washington and Dupont Circles, just as it does today.

Vermont joined the union in 1791 as the fourteenth state, while Kentucky joined in 1792. It was during these years that Washington was being laid out. For that reason, they both received places within the system. Tennessee gained statehood in 1796, and its avenue became the first glaring error. After all, Tennessee forms the southern boundary of Kentucky, yet Kentucky Avenue lies entirely south of Tennessee Avenue.

By the time Congress first met here in 1800, there were three diagonal avenues left to be named. Ohio and Indiana fit into the system well enough, but Louisiana was sorely out of place.

With the first nineteen states represented in the city, Washington ran out of avenues. Maps from the 1800s available on the Library of Congress' website show that Maine and Missouri had short avenues within the bounds of the Mall, but it is unclear exactly how all the new states were represented as they came on board.

In 1890, Boundary Street was renamed after the twenty-seventh state, Florida. Despite being farther south than any other state (it would remain so until 1959), it got the street forming the northern boundary of the city.

Yet by the time the twentieth century got going, Washington was expanding into the hills and dales above the Fall Line. As the street grid expanded, new avenues were added, and old ones obliterated. Around 1914, the citizens of Brightwood managed to get Brightwood Avenue renamed after Georgia. They had hoped to curry favor with senator Augustus Bacon, but he promptly died, and never had a chance to affect the fortunes of these suburban pioneers. The construction of the Federal Triangle complex in the 1930s eliminated Ohio's avenue and shortened what had been Louisiana Avenue. Louisiana's name itself had moved a few blocks east to a new street constructed as part of the changes brought by Union Station and Columbus Circle in 1907.

Today, one can still see some geographic order to the state-named avenues. However, much of that is due to the age of certain regions. After all, New England hasn't had a new state since number twenty-three, Maine, joined in 1820. For the most part, states on the East Coast can be found downtown. Alaska Avenue is the northernmost avenue (in its entirety). Mississippi, which is at least in the south, is the southernmost state-named avenue. But the similarities largely end there.

Crossposted at Track Twenty-Nine.

North of Georgetown and Boundary Street (Florida Avenue), the area formerly known as Washington County, DC began to develop. For the most part, developers extended the grid as the most efficient way expand the growing city. Some areas, notably Petworth, recreated the principles of the L'Enfant plan, with avenues and circles intersecting the grid. In other places, geography made a rectilinear grid impractical.

As the city expanded, so did the system of naming streets. In the L'Enfant city, the highest lettered street was W Street (running between Ninth and Fifteenth Streets NW). Unlike numbers, the alphabet is not infinitely expandable. In order to continue to have an alphabetical progression of streets, the alphabet starts over. Only "streets" are subject to the convention. Avenues, roads, drives, and other minor streets do not conform to the alphabetical progression. "Places," on the other hand, usually appear one block north of the correspondingly lettered street and often share the same first letter.

After the first alphabet runs out of letters, street names restart alphabetically with two-syllable names. "Adams Street" follows "W Street." Once the second alphabet is exhausted, the system repeats with words of three syllables. "Webster Street" is followed by the third alphabet's "Allison Street." However, the Fourth Alphabet does not use words of four syllables. Instead, the Fourth Alphabet, only present in the Northwest and largest quadrant, uses the names of plants in increasing alphabetical order. Thus "Aspen" follows "Whittier."

Typically, each of the other alphabets uses the same letters used by the First Alphabet (A-W, skipping J). However, there are some exceptions. The Second Alphabet has Yuma Street, there's a Jefferson Street in the Third Alphabet, and Xenia Street appears in Southeast. East-west streets in the District are often discontinuous due to obstructions. Sometimes the street continues with the same name on the other side, and sometimes it changes to a different name. Shepherd Street NW, for instance, is split by Piney Branch Park between Fourteenth and Sixteenth Streets, but keeps the same name on both sides. However, on the other side of Rock Creek Park, in Upper Northwest, the two-syllable "S" street name is Sedgwick. Still, a look at the first letter of streets in the District easily shows the strata of the alphabets.

The highest numbered street in the District is 63rd Street in the Capitol Heights section of Northeast. Southeast's nearby 58th Street is that quadrant's highest numbered street. In Northwest the ridges and valleys of the Potomac Valley cause numbered streets (and the grid) to give up the ghost at 52nd Street. And tiny Southwest sees its highest number with 23rd Street south of the Lincoln Memorial.

Of course, without its state-named avenues, Washington would have a far less complex street system. But the avenues don't only add complexity, they also close the streetscape, provide vistas to monumental buildings, and create squares, plazas, and parks throughout the city. These famous streets are important streets in the city, but they don't conform to the system, and as a result are more difficult to find.

Except for California Street and Ohio Drive, all the states have avenues named after them. The shortest of the avenues is Indiana Avenue, found near Judiciary Square and the Archives. It stretches less than half a mile, exclusively in Northwest. While no state-named avenue passes through all four quadrants, the longest, Massachusetts Avenue, passes through three. It stretches from border to border across the District, although it lacks a bridge over the Anacostia, and continues northward into Montgomery County, Maryland.

Crossposted at Track Twenty-Nine.