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Make No Little Plans
Federal Triangle Heritage Trail
1 America's Main Street
The broadest and most important street in Pierre L'Enfant's Plan of 1791 for the nation's capital connects to the Capitol and the White House.
Pennsylvania Avenue. Almost every American knows its name. Almost every visitor to the Washington sets foot on it. As America's Main Street, Pennsylvania Avenue is where Americans practice their rights to free speech and assembly. It is our ceremonial stage, where the nation comes together to celebrate - new presidents, national holidays, and victories - and to mourn, as at funeral processions for seven of the eight presidents who died in office.
L'Enfant's plan called for a grid of streets broken by wide diagonal avenues offering visual connections among the city's important buildings. The avenues, he suggested, would be named for the states. Later, city authorities honored Pennsylvania, home of the nation's seat of government at the time of the Revolution, with the most central avenue.
The area where you are standing first developed in 1801 as Washington's main marketplace. In 1871 the ornate, red-brick Center Market arose just across the avenue, and shops, wholesalers, and the small businesses clustered nearby. In the 1930s the market district disappeared, replaced by the stately, classically detailed National Archives and its neighboring, grand Federal Triangle buildings.
Thirty years later, this side of the avenue had grown shabby. President John F. Kennedy noted the decline as he traveled the parade route from his inauguration at the Capitol to the White House in January 1961. President Kennedy appointed scholar and policy expert David Patrick Moynihan to plan the restoration of the avenue as the "great thoroughfare of the city of Washington." |