America's Main Street 700 block pennsylvania avenue nw
The broadest and most important street in Pierre L’Enfant’s 1791 plan for the nation’s capital connects the U.S. Capitol and the White House. Pennsylvania Avenue. Almost every American knows its name. As America’s Main Street, Pennsylvania Avenue is where Americans practice their rights to free speech and assembly. It is our ceremonial stage, where the nation comes together to celebrate — new presidents, national holidays, and victories — and to mourn, as at funeral processions for seven of the eight presidents who died in office. L’Enfant’s plan called for a grid of streets broken by wide diagonal avenues offering visual connections among the city’s important buildings. The avenues would be named for the states. Pennsylvania, home of the nation’s seat of government at the time of the Revolution, was later honored with the most central avenue. The area around Seventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue developed as early Washington’s main marketplace. In 1871 the ornate, red-brick Center Market arose on the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue and shops, wholesalers, and other small businesses clustered nearby. In the 1930s the market district disappeared, replaced by the stately, classically detailed National Archives and other Federal Triangle buildings. Thirty years later, the north side of the avenue had grown shabby. President John F. Kennedy noted this as he traveled the parade route from his inauguration at the U.S. Capitol to the White House in January 1961. President Kennedy appointed scholar and policy expert Daniel Patrick Moynihan to plan the restoration of this “great thoroughfare of the city of Washington.”
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