L'Enfant Plaza

L'Enfant Plaza is a complex of four commercial buildings grouped around a large plaza in the Southwest section of Washington, D.C.. Immediately below the plaza and the buildings is the "La Promenade" shopping mall. The plaza is located south of Independence Avenue SW between 12th and 9th Streets SW (9th Street actually runs underneath the centers of the buildings on the easternmost side of the plaza). It was built perpendicular to L'Enfant Promenade, a north-south running street and pedestrian esplanade part of which is directly above 10th Street SW. The plaza is named for Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant, the architect and planner who first designed a street layout for the capital city. It was dedicated in 1968 after completion of the north and south buildings.

L'Enfant Plaza was part of the Southwest D.C. urban renewal project, one of the earliest urban renewal projects in the U.S., and the first such in D.C. The rapid expansion of the population of Washington, D.C., during World War II led to the extensive construction of suburban office buildings and housing tracts. But with federal agencies (which were the area's largest employers) restricted to the city center, a movement began after the war to redevelop Washington's older, more dilapidated, single-family-dwelling neighborhoods to provide high-density, modern housing for workers. In 1946, the United States Congress passed the District of Columbia Redevelopment Act, which established the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency (RLA) and provided legal authority to clear land and funds to spur redevelopment in the capital. Congress also gave the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) the authority to designate which land would be redeveloped, and how. The RLA was not funded, however, until passage of the Housing Act of 1949.

A 1950 study by the NCPC found that the small Southwest quarter of the city suffered from high concentrations of old and poorly maintained buildings, overcrowding, and threats to public health (such as lack of running indoor water, sewage systems, electricity, central heating, and indoor toilets). Competing visions for the redevelopment ranged from renovation to wholesale leveling of neighborhoods, but the latter view prevailed as more likely to qualify for federal funding. Demolition faced almost all structures in Southwest Washington and was to have begun in 1950, but legal challenges led to piecemeal razing of the area until the mid-1950s. Most of the dwellings in Southwest D.C. were Victorian row houses. Poor and middle-class African American and immigrant Central and Eastern European families living in the area were forced out of their homes by use of eminent domain, receiving only a fraction of the value of their homes in compensation. In 1954, Southwest D.C. had about 3,900 buildings housing 4,500 families. About 60 percent of the residents were African American, and the remainder Caucasian. Only 20 percent of the residents owned their own home, and 72 percent of the buildings were rated as substandard. The area which became L'Enfant Plaza was primarily Victorian townhouses, although a shuttered slaughterhouse also stood in the area.

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