The Lost 9th Street
8 04 2009Sometimes progress has victims. Every time we see photos of now demolished blocks it makes us wonder what our city would have looked like had there been more of a preservation movement back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Pictured is the 800th block of 9th street NW in the late 70s before it was demolished to make way for the old convention center. Now the site is just a big old parking lot waiting for the new City Center development. That facade in the middle would have definitely been worth saving!
[Photo: R.S. Scurlock LOC]
i agree, i’d have loved to see more of these old buildings lining our streets, but i don’t think you can peg this loss on historic preservation.
you can have all the preservation rules and laws in place that you want, but that’s not going to stop a raging, rioting populace from burning said old buildings to the ground.
I just wish I knew what my house looked like when it was first built.
The District’s master plan and zoning downtown encouraged higher density development, so historic preservation activists had the deck stacked against them. Urban design guidelines should have called for more preservation and integration of old buildings into new development projects.
$10,000,000!
Hey IMGoph, that’s a a real stupid - probably racist comment. If you could read you’d notice that the buildings were not burned down in the tragic riots in the late sixties, but still standing in the late 70’s. If anything they were torn down by business interests for the 1st convention center.
Whatever the merits of tearing them down, it’s pretty obvious that the city and nation have lost nearly all of our architectural treasures to overzealous business communities - not low income people…
jay’o: i’m sorry you read my comment that way. i’m not speaking necessarily about the buildings featured here, but of the 9th (and 7th) street corridors overall.
the fact is a lot of those buildings were lost due to damage from the riots. that’s not racist, and commenting on that fact doesn’t make one a racist. accusing others of the fact in high dudgeon sure seems like you’re jumping into the deep end for no good reason.
i did not click through and read about these specific buildings. you’re right, they weren’t lost to the riots, but my initial point still stands—historic preservation (or any other kind of law) serves one no purpose when faced with a violet mob.
I remember the buildings along 9th St NW before the old Convention Center was built, including my favorite bar that occupied three store fronts. Not much of old downtown is left anymore. We DO need to preserve what is there now so the future generations can get some idea what DC was like in the good old days and to appreciate the architecture. We can’t keep it all or the city would never grow. We already have a height limit that stops large buildings and keeps the city at a human scale. Keeping pockets of old buildings or better yet, incorporating them into new developments is a very good thing.
shoot, i meant “violent” at the end there…
IMGoph: I still think your broader point is way off base. The vast majority of the historical properties that have been lost are in Downtown and Southwest. In Downtown it wasn’t because of a population of rioters, and Southwest lost it’s history to nonviolent Urban Renewal professionals. I walk 7th, 9th and U streets a lot and there are still a great many histrorical buildings left.
Sorry I took your comment as racist, but a lot of suburban yahoos see DC as one big violent, out-of-control, irresponsible black community. Comments like yours feed into this. From what I’ve seen, 99% of the historical structures lost in this city are lost to wealthy developers and government planners who have historically (pun intended) run over peservation laws.
jay’o: you’re right, thanks to the government, we lost most of what had existed in southwest. and what happened downtown is a side effect of the height limit, i’d say. since we couldn’t build a tight downtown of tall buildings, the land that old 3-4 story rowhouses was located on became too valuable to not be built up to 12 stories high. it’s a shame, and a reason i personally would like to see the height limit rescinded in targeted areas to keep this office building sprawl from spreading.
i agree about the “suburban yahoos”, and i don’t see DC as anything that approaches homogenous. i am a DC citizen, and i’d rather be called racist than a suburbanite, if i was forced to choose one of the two
You should really look out for the out-of-control and irresponsible panda community.
Yahoo!!
IMGoph - Agreed!