No through street.

AuthorFreund, Charles Paul
PositionArtifact - Brief Article

HERE IS THE new pedestrian plaza in front of the White House. The space used to be a typically busy downtown street, but after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing it was "temporarily" closed to traffic, 9/11 sealed its fate as a city street.

First Lady Laura Bush formally "reopened" this stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in November, but its permanent transformation into a plaza is really another stage in the closing of what was once the world's most open capital. Many D.C. streets are being narrowed or obliterated, and the city's once-grand open spaces are increasingly interrupted by concrete barriers, chain-link fences, bollards, and armed guards. The Washington Post's editorial page editor, Fred Hiatt, has argued that the experience of Washington now evokes...

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