As you all know, D.C. is one of the only cities (if not the lone city) without an interstate highway cutting through the heart of it. I-395 makes its way all the way to New York Ave. and I-295 slices through the east part of D.C., but nothing cuts through the core of the District.
Back in the heyday of highway building, a number of folks were arguing for more highways through our city, including 95/395 going all the way through, and 66 and 70 uniting between Georgetown and the Palisades. Things sure would be different had these plans come to fruition.
Check out the map below from The Washington Post on January 23rd, 1968.
Below are excerpts from the article.
The District’s 20-year war over interstate freeways appears to be entering ints most decisive stage.
…
Ten miles of the 29-mile system proposed in 1947 are open to traffic. The 19 miles the Highway Department wants to build before 1973, the target completion date for the national system would cost about a half-billion dollars, of which 90 per cent would be provided by the Federal Government.
…
One of the main complaints of the system’s opponents is that the 19 miles would displace 1359 families and several hundred businesses.
…
Actually, the rapid rail system of Washington has been the principal hostage of this freeway war. In 1966, members of the House threatened to kill the proposed subway unless freeways go the go-ahead.
They got it, and the subway system is still alive. But so is the threat of retaliation against the rapid rail forces if the House District Committee decides the freeway system is being slowed.
The article goes on for a while about arguments over who has the authority to kill the projects, but it gets interesting again when talk resumes about a proposed crosstown link under K Street.
As now planned, the link would be a tunnel, beneath K Street, beginning at 26th Street nw., surfacing near Mount Vernon Square (9th Street nw.) and connecting with the Center Leg of the Inner Loop, near the Capitol.
This tunnel was proposed in the Policy Advisory Committee’s sweeping agreement that cleared the freeway program in 1966.
Evidently, there was also a proposed “North Leg” route which cut up Florida Ave. and then east between S and T Streets, which would have displaced 10,000 people, a number of businesses, in addition to the Cosmos Club. Another proposal in the article mentions a four-lane freeway through Glover-Archibold Park. Ugh, thankfully none of these happened. How awful would that have been?!
Thankfully, a large number of these city-destroying proposals didn’t happen.
This protest poster gives a more detailed image of the proposed route through Shaw, and what else would have been lost.
The story of Home Rule is deeply connected to this protest.
http://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2314790/Screen_Shot_2014-09-30_at_5.53.24_PM.0.png
FYI, since you mention both in the article, the tunnel under K Street was a later rendition/revision of the original “North Loop” proposal. They were not both proposed at the same time.
The MLK Library has a copy of the 1971 study by DeLeuw, Cather Associates, which highlights the last, systemwide proposal before the mass freeway cancellations began.
That poster has the 1955 plan for cross-town I-66, opponents of which as USNCPC’s Elizabeth Rowe promoted the replacement plan for a crosstown I66 via a tunnel beneath K Street:
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-66-north-leg-west-k-street-tunnel.html
Alas the K Street Tunnel was stopped during the 1970s under arguments that the impending obsolescence of private automobiles due to the world running out pf petroleum by the 1990s never mind alcohol fuels nor electric propulsion:
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2007/02/doctrinaire-anti-new-highways-position.html
A more comprehensive overview of the systematic cancellations here:
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2014/09/getting-over.html
One can also see the 1971 study at various postings at ‘A Trip Within The Beltway’, as well as at Scott Kozel’s ‘Roads to the Future’
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2006/11/1971-deluew.html
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2006/11/1971-plans.html
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/search?q=1971
http://www.roadstothefuture.com/DC_Interstate_Fwy.html
My K Street Tunnel article in my previous comment above also includes portion of that 1971 study.
I know one thing for sure, NO ONE wanted the highway. My father was driving me to work (telephone Company) at the time, and he worked at the Washington Post, and he had a fit over this issue. My father was the most calm and collected man I have ever known, but he sure could be “set on fire” when it came to that highway. Every neighbor, friend, or human being, hated the idea. I don’t care where you came from, it was a “Hands Down” no go, as far and the Washington, Maryland, and Virginia commuters were concerned. You could hear people talk about it in the grocery store, the Pizza stores, gas stations, and anywhere you went. That fight went on forever.
I am SO GLAD they did not run the highway through our Capital, it would have been a disaster.
Not according to a 1967 letter from a Takoma Park resident- at least with regard to the highway with the most hyped protests, the North Central Freeway alongside Catholic University of America. Rather it became highly unpopular with the planning shenanigans with the strange deviations from what the assassinated U.S. President John F. Kennedy had endorsed in late 1962:
Citizens of Takoma Park and
Silver Spring had reason for their demonstrations of bitter
dissatisfaction with the highway authorities of your predecessor’s
administration. After we had been given reason to believe that the
causes of our protests had been in at least some part overcome, the
matter now threatens to break into renewed bitterness. I am sure you
will wish to avoid this as much as many of us.
We
showed that the methods of traffic projections which were claimed to
justify the North Central were fallacious, the results in error by as
much as 400 percent. Our contention was tacitly admitted in “re-studied”
versions of the proposal made public last year, sharply reducing the
original plan of 5 lanes each way.
The
re-studied proposal also tacitly admitted that the route first proposed
was needlessly, even carelessly if not ruthlessly, destructive of our
communities. The new version hugged both sides of the existing Baltimore
and Ohio railway, thus avoiding a new swath of destruction to divide
our communities and sharply reducing the number of homes to be taken.
The
reduced, re-routed proposal was made public last year with endorsement
of D.C. And Maryland highway authorities. The D.C. Portion was forced
through the National Capital Planning Commission by votes of
representatives of the D.C. Highway Department and of the U.S. Bureau of
Public Roads. From this we concluded, reasonably enough, that the
highway authorities of the two jurisdictions (Maryland and D.C.) had
reached a firm understanding with the Bureau of Public Roads.
Many
of us were therefore astonished and aroused to preparations for renewed
protests when Washington newspapers recently reported that the Bureau
has acted to open it all up again. We have not found the Bureau
forthcoming with candid information, but the press articles intimate an
intention to force Maryland to accept modifications of route or design
ostensibly “cheaper.”
The
result is that the whole controversy, which had been somewhat
quiescent, is beginning to agitate the communities again. I can assure
you this is so, for although I recently resigned chairmanship of the
Metropolitan Citizens Council for Rapid Transit and write this simply as
an individual citizen who wishes your administration well, I do remain
in close touch with neighborhood sentiment on transportation-related
issues.
http://wwwtripwithinthebeltway.blogspot.com/2012/01/crafted-controversy-scuttling-of-jfks-b.html
New Orleans almost ended up with a freeway going along the river which would have meant between the river and Jackson Square. Historic preservation folks (and others) managed to stop it but there is still a freeway that goes though the city – just in a different place. And it did disupt the communities that were there – which some might have thought was the reason.
If they plowed over the Capitol and Hoise and senate office buildings…would that help?
“Evidently, there was also a proposed “North Leg” route which cut up Florida Ave. and then east between S and T Streets, which would have displaced 10,000 people, a number of businesses, in addition to the Cosmos Club.”
I think that that also would’ve involved converting Rock Creek Parkway to a full freeway between Georgetown and Florida Ave.