MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE
Mt Vernon Square to Union Station
7th to 9th Streets NW

Today	Cross Section

Techworld Plaza	Carnegie Library

Washington Convention Center	Methodist Church

Mount Vernon Square, which is located on the Eighth Street Axis and featured as a prominent node in the District’s design scheme, offers potential as a focus for future development. The square, which L’Enfant originally intended for one of the states to improve upon, was the site of a 19th Century market. After the Northern Liberty Market’s demolition in 1872, the space became a public park in 1877, and was selected as the site of the City’s first public library in 1903. The Carnegie Library was designed in the Beaux Arts style by the New York firm of Ackerman and Ross, who modeled it after a Carnegie Library in Atlanta, Georgia. However magnificent the building’s design, the Carnegie Library soon became obsolete due to the emerging popularity o f open stacks and was abandoned until the University of the District of Columbia claimed the building for use as its architecture school. Today, the Library’s monumental front doorway is locked and its northern side reveals the modern "front" of the archi tecture school. Its closely spaced modernist columns, which are precipitously close to the street, and its barred doors transmit a harsh message to the pedestrian. Development at the periphery of Mt. Vernon Square has evolved through many forms to the condition that it finds itself in today. The diagonal Massachusetts and New Jersey Avenues intersect to create small wedge lots around the Square; these parcels have traditionally hosted churches and banks that maintain a continuous, albeit small, frontage to the eastern and western edges of the square. Between the parcels’ uses, numerous hotels, small groceries, and retail shops traditionally infilled the street fron tage. However, in tandem with historical periods of economic decline, the square’s architectural edge suffered and declined. Recent development and proposed large-scale civic improvements have begun to readdress the holes in the Square’s edge. However, only the square’s southern edge, which contains the Techworld Plaza (which was built in 1989 by the Smith-Williams Group) is built out to the street frontage. The common plaza between the two towers, acknowledges the Eight Street Axis by using an aerial bridge to frame a visual connection between Mt. Vernon Square and the Smithsonian Gallery of American Art located on G Street. The Plaza also addresses the Mt. Vernon Square building frontage by creating a continuous edge that defines the southern periphery of the square. In addition, a haphazard collection of new and period buildings, including the early twentieth century Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, vaguely suggest an architectural edge to the east and west, while the nort hern edge is dominated by surface parking lots that open the square to an infinite northern view. These three sides have yet to be developed toward a concerted effort to accommodate the pedestrian. However, opportunity exists as development pressures as sume the unimproved lots surrounding the square and the existing functioning buildings, such as the Journeyman Pipe Fitter’s Building, and the shops fronting New York Avenue alignment begin to readdress the square’s containment.