Attempts to raze it failed, and it remains an example of an earlier Romanesque Revival style. A second attempt to raze an existing structure also failed. Planners envisioned a Great Plaza across 14th Street across from the Department of Commerce, requiring demolition of the existing District Building, the first example of the Beaux-Arts style in the Federal Triangle. With war looming in the late 1930s, plans for the Great Plaza were dropped, the District Building survived, and the surrounding area remained a parking lot for the next six decades. The 1998 dedication of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center where the parking lot once stood marked the completion of the Federal Triangle. It also marked the fulfillment of visionary architect Daniel Burnham’s counsel: “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood. Make big plans.”
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