They wanted to close streets and put up sleek newbuildings, creating commercial, cultural, and employment centers close to residences.They considered Southwest an ideal laboratory.So did the D.C. Redevelopment Land Agency,empow- ered to tear down Southwest in order to fix it. In the s New York developers Webb and Knapp put these ideas into a formal plan for a new Southwest, the nation’s first full-scale urban renewal project.Architects Harry Weese and I.M.Pei envisioned a Tenth Street Mall linking the National Mall to a rebuilt waterfront and a residential area serving , families of varying incomes. Offices,hotels, restaurants and shops would line the new mall.A major cultural and entertainment cen ter would complete the picture. While most of the residential buildings material- ized, Webb and Kn a pp never com p l eted the Ten t h Street Ma ll, and the cultural cen ter was built inste ad in Foggy Bottom (today’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts). Nevertheless, the brand-new residential areas, so convenient to
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker