In April 1963, DC’s three appointed commissioners begged the federal government to build every freeway on the map: the Three Sisters Bridge, the Inner Loop, the East Leg, the North-Central. Almost none of it survived the decade.
In 1967 the National Capital Planning Commission mapped out the freeway grid Washington was supposed to get: a K Street expressway, a Three Sisters Bridge, an I-95 extension up through northeast. Almost none of it got built.
This post explores the proposed Southside Freeway in Arlington which never came to be. Learn about the 1960 proposal, the public opinion, and why the highway never came to fruition in this post.
Planners proposed a bridge over the Potomac’s Three Sisters islands again and again. The 1960s version came closest, until a court fight killed it.
In 1955 a young Senator John F. Kennedy bought Hickory Hill on Chain Bridge Road in McLean, Virginia. When state highway planners proposed widening the quiet road past his front door, JFK helped push the new alignment onto open farmland instead.
Six months after the last streetcar ran up Wisconsin Avenue, a camera caught Georgetown’s idea of rush hour on June 30, 1960.
