Quote:
Originally Posted by Cirrus
The correct answer for DC is underground: Metro Center station, the intersection of the Red, Orange, Blue, and Silver Metro lines.
There's no good single street corner answer. The Monumental Core isn't important enough for day-to-day life, and no individual downtown corner stands out as important enough (Farragut Square might be a contender, but I think a relatively weak one). And while there are some contenders for the city's core neighborhoods (14th and U is probably most obvious), these are not important at all to suburbanites and therefore are more properly the heart of part of the city, not the whole city.
But Metro Center is important to everyone. It's the answer.
|
Hm, not sure I agree with that. It seems to me like the heart of DC has to be the Capitol building. It's the point that differentiates the different street directions which DC is famous for. It's undeniably the center and symbol of the city. I get that you're trying to differentiate between the heart of the city for tourists vs locals, but DC isn't a normal city in that sense. It's the national capital, and the capitol building is really the symbol that defines DC. The National Mall is the central gathering point for protests and celebrations, as well as being the cultural corridor of DC where the majority of the museums are clustered. I don't think anyone would consider Metro Center the heart of anything but the metro system.
If you wanted to pick a site away from the mall area, the Chinatown Gate/Verizon Center (or whatever corporate name it has now), Dupont Circle, Lafayette Square Park, or even the Wisconsin and M St. intersection could be good picks. I get these might be more NW focused, but that's where I lived when I lived in DC so that's what I know best.