The Pennsylvania Hypotenuse

As the nation's TV viewers know from watching many an open Cadillac --or caisson--make the trip, Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., has both grandeur and grubbiness. As it stretches toward the Capitol, the stalwart neoclassical fac,ades of federal buildings rise evenly on the right. But on the left side is an uneven collection of old hotels, decayed storefronts vacant above the first floor, and dreary parking lots.

Yet, as conceived by George Washington, who suggested it to the capital's original planner, French Engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant, Pennsylvania Avenue was to be a symbolic "axis of the nation," balancing democracy at either end in the architecture of the executive White House and the legislative Capitol. Last week the Kennedy-launched Council on Pennsylvania Avenue, chaired by Architect Nathaniel A. Owings, released plans that might make L'Enfant's dream finally come true.

Haussmannian. More than the stopgap panaceas and two-dimensional thinking of much urban renewal, the plan is Haussmannian in scope and architectural in dimension. The council would turn Pennsylvania Avenue into a ceremonial boulevard with distinctive brick paving, bordered by double or triple rows of graceful shade trees, and three-level sidewalks to take the rubbernecking out of parade watching. Constitution Avenue, which now makes a messy, scissorslike intersection with Pennsylvania, would neatly dive beneath it.

City planners have often pronounced the Treasury Building, at the White House end of the avenue, to be "misplaced," because it blocks the presidential residence from view down Pennsylvania. The new report turns this deficit into asset: the White House, the council members have perceived, is less impressive a terminus for the street than the colonnaded Treasury.

But more than the Treasury is needed, so they would create a great National Square that gives a distinguished destination for the avenue, provides access through a monumental gate to the White House grounds, and offers a car-free plaza for people afoot. Halfway between there and the Capitol, they take advantage of the fact that the National Gallery and the Archives Building now sit facing each other unrelatedly on opposite sides of the avenue, and would create another big Market Square that gives vistas of the fac,ades of both buildings.

Northern Triangle. But the council, while keeping grandeur in mind, wants more than a nice street for inaugural parades. Pennsylvania Avenue is the hypotenuse of two triangles. One, bounded on the south by the Mall, is composed of existing federal buildings --the Department of Justice, the Post Office and Department of Commerce. The council now proposes to finish the northern triangle south of G Street, presently a junky commercial slum. The most striking feature would be a daring mezzanine that carries pedestrians over traffic. Lifting strollers over cars, it would bring people into shops, theaters, hotels and restaurants woven around new federal buildings. New commerce could draw Washingtonians, who are building away from the Capitol, back toward the center of the city.

As befits an auto-age capital, where not only shoppers, workers and the nation's second biggest stream of tourists pour into the center of the city, plentiful double-level underground garages are provided, with accesses from neighboring streets but not from the grand eight-lane boulevard itself. It is, all told, a bold step up (and down) from the one-curb city.

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