Donald Trump is a pompous jackass but he deserves a lot of credit (as long as public access to the observation tower is maintained) for investing to convert the Old Post Office to a hotel. Pennsylvania Avenue should be one of the most vibrant corridors in the United States and except for Freedom Plaza, it is largely vacant.
Building a hotel at the Old Post Office and redeveloping the land that the FBI headquarters is located on will go a long way towards improving Pennsylvania Ave.
Additionally, investing $200M will create some construction jobs, which our economy needs.
A Trump Makeover for Washington’s Old Post Office
In 1970, the government planned to tear down the landmark 1899 postal tower on Pennsylvania Avenue, but preservationists succeeded in saving it. Credit Daniel Rosenbaum for The New York Times
New York Times
May 27, 2014
By Eugene L. Meyer
"WASHINGTON — The landmark 1899 post office tower on Pennsylvania Avenue — the second-tallest building in Washington — looked out of place in the Federal Triangle of neoclassical government buildings constructed mostly in the 1930s.
To complete the Triangle in an architecturally compatible style, the government wanted to tear it down, leaving only the building’s clock tower to rise above its replacement in homage to the Richardsonian Romanesque structure that would be no more.
The 1970 plan gave rise to Don’t Tear It Down, an organization (now the D.C. Preservation League) that successfully fought the demolition. Yet efforts to reuse the old building as offices for other federal agencies, with a ground-floor food court pavilion below the soaring nine-story atrium, also failed. The Old Post Office, a preservationist success, was a governmental flop, a federal white elephant saved from the wrecking ball — but for what?.."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/re...-new-life.html
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