DC: MALL EXPANSION

Much of the additional federal office space that was proposed for this expansion of the National Mall ended up being built in the formerly African-American and Jewish neighborhood of Southwest—after its buildings were leveled and its residents expelled. While there were many sites in and around DC that would have been suitable for this construction without the displacement of thousands, the architects and planners of the time worshipped at the altar of high modernism and the “city beautiful” movement. They viewed the existing city as messy and archaic, something to be torn down and reconstructed. The city’s racially diverse population was living in a squalor of its own making, the thinking went, and only the (white, male) architect and city planner could be its salvation.

And so it was that Southwest was destroyed. From the Washington Post, “Southwest was once a vibrant African-American and Jewish neighborhood, but urban renewal projects in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s leveled this neighborhood—its homes, churches, and synagogues—displacing more than 1,500 businesses and 23,000 people.”