L'Enfant Plaza ( ) is a complex of four commercial buildings grouped around a large plaza in the Southwest section of Washington, D.C., United States. Immediately below the plaza and the buildings is La Promenade shopping mall."The L'Enfant complex ... includes three private office buildings and one government-owned building ..." See: Spinner, Jackie. "Rooftop Residences at Hechinger Site." Washington Post. October 29, 2001.Swisher, Kara. "Feeling Powerless Under L'Enfant Plaza." Washington Post. February 20, 1992.

The plaza is located south of Independence Avenue SW between 12th and 9th Streets SW (9th Street actually runs underneath the centers of the buildings on the easternmost side of the plaza). It was built perpendicular to L'Enfant Promenade, a north-south running street and pedestrian esplanade part of which is directly above 10th Street SW. The plaza is named for Pierre Charles L'Enfant,L'Enfant was born Pierre L'Enfant, but anglicized his name to Peter. Both names were used in the United States when referring to him. See: Sandiford, 2008, p. 5. the architect and planner who first designed a street layout for the capital city, known as the L'Enfant Plan. It was dedicated in 1968 following completion of the north and south buildings.

History Planning

L'Enfant Plaza was part of the Southwest Washington, D.C. urban renewal project, one of the earliest urban renewal projects in the U.S., and the first such in Washington, D.C.Banks and Banks, 2004, p. 41. The rapid expansion of the population of Washington, D.C., during World War II led to the extensive construction of suburban office buildings and housing tracts.Redevelopment of Southwest D.C. had originally been proposed in 1942 by Arthur Goodwillie, an executive with the Home Owners' Loan Corporation, an agency of the federal government which provided short-term loans to individuals in danger of losing their homes. The "Goodwillie Plan" recommended renovating a nine-block area near the U.S. Capitol building for use as wartime housing. It also proposed building new high-rise apartment stories on some open lots in the area. See: Gutheim and Lee, 2006, p. 260-261. But with federal agencies (which were the area's largest employers) restricted to the city center, a movement began after the war to redevelop Washington's older, more dilapidated, single-family-dwelling neighborhoods to provide high-density, modern housing for workers.Gutheim and Lee, 2006, p. 258.

In 1946, the United States Congress passed the District of Columbia Redevelopment Act, which established the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA) and provided legal authority to clear land and funds to spur redevelopment in the capital.Committee on the District of Columbia, 1978, p. 112. Congress also gave the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) the authority to designate which land would be redeveloped, and how. The RLA was not funded, however, until passage of the Housing Act of 1949.Gutheim and Lee, 2006, p. 260.

A 1950 study by the NCPC found that the small Southwest quarter of the city suffered from high concentrations of old and poorly maintained buildings, overcrowding, and threats to public health, such as lack of running indoor water, sewage systems, electricity, central heating, and indoor toilets.Gutheim and Lee, 2006, p. 266-267. Competing visions for the redevelopment ranged from renovation to wholesale leveling of neighborhoods, but the latter view prevailed as more likely to qualify for federal funding.Gutheim and Lee, 2006, p. 267–271; Banks and Banks, 2004, p. 42. Demolition faced almost all structures in Southwest Washington and was to have begun in 1950, but legal challenges led to piecemeal razing of the area until the mid-1950s. Most of the dwellings in Southwest D.C. were Victorian row houses.Goode, 1979, p. 149-150. Poor and middle-class African American and immigrant Central and Eastern European families living in the area were forced out of their homes by use of eminent domain, receiving only a fraction of the value of their homes in compensation.

In 1954, Southwest D.C. had about 3,900 buildings housing 4,500 families.Albrook, Robert. "D.C. to Get First Urban Renewal Funds For Developing Project 'C' in Southwest." Washington Post. October 10, 1954. About 60 percent of the residents were African American, and the remainder Caucasian. Only 20 percent of the residents owned their own home, and 72 percent of the buildings were rated as substandard. The area which became L'Enfant Plaza was primarily Victorian townhouses, although a shuttered slaughterhouse also stood in the area.Von Eckardt, Wolf. "In All Its Dead-End Glory." Washington Post. May 5, 1973.

New plan The RLA was the first to propose a major plaza along 10th Street NW. It commissioned architects Robert Justement and Chloethiel Woodard Smith to devise a master site plan for Southwest D.C. The Justement-Smith plan, released in 1952, called for wholesale clearance of the area.Gutheim and Lee, 2006, p. 268. Notably, the Justement-Smith plan also proposed building an esplanade above 10th Street SW (to allow it to pass over the railroad tracks and the then-under construction Southwest-Southeast Freeway) which would connect with Maine Avenue SW. The RLA later said it had studied putting the mall anywhere from 5th Street to 12th Street, but that 10th Street was the only economical location.Albrook, Robert C. "NCPC Has New Road Plan for Southwest." Washington Post. February 5, 1955. Parks would border the esplanade east and west, with a goal of providing an unobstructed view of the Smithsonian Institution headquarters and the National Mall. In November 1952, the NCPC released a report largely supporting the Justement-Smith plan (although emphasizing the construction of low-rise townhouses rather than a "forest" of high-rise apartment buildings).Gutheim and Lee, 2006, p. 269-271. The NCPC report also approved of the plan to build an esplanade above 10th Street SW, although it noted that there were significant geographical obstacles to the plan. In 1953, the RLA asked developers to submit plans based on the NCPC's November 1952 compromise report.Gutheim and Lee, 2006, p. 271.

Naming

"L'Enfant Plaza" was the name proposed by New York City developer William Zeckendorf in February 1954 as the title for a cultural center within a development that would almost completely encompass all of Southwest D.C. (an area designated as "Project C").Zagoria, Sam. "Zeckendorf 'Ideal City' Is Described to Officials." Washington Post. February 17, 1954. As originally laid out, a traffic circle would be built on Independence Avenue SW in front of the Smithsonian Castle. A wide, grass-lined pedestrian mall replaced 10th Street SW. A concert hall, convention center, and opera house would line the pedestrian mall, which would be built over the railroad tracks and Southeast Freeway and connect with the Potomac River waterfront. The plan called for all existing buildings in the 20-acre area to be razed. Zeckendorf and the RLA signed a "memorandum of understanding" locking in most of the major aspects of Zeckendorf's plan to allow further site study and architectural design to move forward."Realty Firm, District Sign SW Plan Pact." Washington Post. March 16, 1954. By October of that year, Zeckendorf had agreed to add government office buildings to the planned pedestrian mall.Albrook, Robert C. "Zeckendorf to Start Detailed Slum Plans." Washington Post. October 14, 1954. The developer said he had already spent $450,000 on studies, and planned to spend another $500,000 in developing a detailed plan. In December, Zeckendorf asked the NCPC and RLA to formally approve his plan for a 10th Street SW mall, and proposed that the federal government build a "12th Street Bridge" over the Potomac River to help reduce traffic flows along his mall—which now incorporated a roadway.Albrook, Robert C. "Zeckendorf Backs 'South Mall' Demand With 3 Plans Solving Traffic Problems." Washington Post. December 22, 1954. In February 1955, however, the NCPC proposed moving the planned "cultural mall" to 9th Street SW and retaining 10th Street as a major thoroughfare for traffic coming off the 14th Street Bridge. John Remon, chair of the RLA and NCPC vice chair, strongly criticized the plan (which also proposed relocating the railroad tracks) as far too costly. D.C. officials then proposed turning 12th Street into a southbound one-way, 9th Street into a northbound one-way, and building a new 14th Street Bridge span to accommodate the traffic flows.Albrook, Robert C. "Road-Bridge Proposal Based On South Mall Sent Planners." Washington Post. March 24, 1955. In a compromise, Zeckendorf agreed to revisit his plans to see if one or more of the proposed road plans could be accommodated under his proposed site redesign plan. The road and bridge dispute threatened to cause the failure of the entire redevelopment effort.

But in April 1955, the city's highway officials proposed a compromise; they agreed to eventually construct a major new bridge at Roaches RunThe NCPC had long advocated connecting M Street SW to a new bridge which would cross the Washington Channel and East Potomac Park and land on the Virginia side of the Potomac River near Roaches Run. The bridge would join the George Washington Memorial Parkway near the Crystal City neighborhood in Arlington, eliminating the 14th Street Bridge bottleneck. District of Columbia officials had refused to endorse the plan for years, not wishing to turn M Street into a (second) freeway which cut across the southwestern quadrant of the city. in exchange for NCPC approval of the existing preliminary plans offered by Zeckendorf.Albrook, Robert C. "D.C. Offers Roaches Run Bridge Plan." Washington Post. April 7, 1955. Additionally, National Park Service officials agreed to allow a portion of Independence Avenue SW (between the Lincoln Memorial and the Tidal Basin) and Ohio Drive SW to be used for a portion of the proposed Inner Loop Freeway—both long-sought objectives of the NCPC.Albrook, Robert C. "Park Aides to Propose Route Today." Washington Post. August 3, 1955. The NCPC subsequently approved nearly all of Zeckendorf's proposal for Project C, including the 10th Street mall.Allbrook, Robert C. "Zeckendorf Mall Plan Approved." Washington Post. April 9, 1955."Land Agency Hires Expert For Studies." Washington Post. September 30, 1955.

1955 cultural mall