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June 7, 2002
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Photos: Courtesy Michael Van
Valkenburgh Associates |
The National Capital Planning Commission
(NCPC) voted unanimously in June to select a landscape design
by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates of New York City for
a pedestrian adaptation of Pennsylvania Avenue directly in
front of the White House.
The NPCC expects to present the plan
to the President and Congress for approval this fall and have
the landscape complete in time for the January 2005 Presidential
inauguration.
Blocked with Jersey barriers and police
cars, the avenue has not been open to vehicular traffic since
President Clinton ordered it closed in 1995 after the Oklahoma
City bombing.
Van Valkenburgh’s design would turn
the two-block-long stretch of the avenue into a plaza lined
with elm trees and paved in granite in front of the Treasury
and Old Executive Office buildings and a granular paving in
front of the White House. Steel posts and guardhouses would
protect the ends of the plaza. What was once a six-lane avenue
would have only an access lane for emergency vehicles and
potentially a tourist trolley. The plan allows for the street
to be converted, through moveable street furniture, from a
pedestrian plaza for tourists to a parade route for inaugurations
and other major events. The NCPC approval acknowledges that
Pennsylvania Avenue, formerly a busy thoroughfare, will not
reopen to vehicular traffic in the foreseeable future.
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“I have been to Washington a few
times since September 11,” Van Valkenburgh says. “The
feeling in Washington is that there has been a loss of civic
dignity in this place between the White House and Lafayette
Park. For our firm, what was most important was that we reclaimed
that sense of dignity.”
The Van Valkenburgh plan was chosen in
an invited competition with EDAW, Balmori Associates, and
Peter Walker and Partners.
Kevin Lerner
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