What almost was: freeways instead of U Street and Sherman Ave

The ~~Sherman Avenue~~ 14th Street freeway

Browsing around the internet the other day, I found something strange: plans for a freeway that was to be built where Sherman Avenue is. Proposed in the late 1950s and 60s, the freeway was part of a larger plan for freeways in DC, including an inner beltway. One of the plans included the inner beltway passing near U Street. Can you imagine a freeway there? It’s crazy.

There were other routes as well, which brought I-95, I-66 and I-70 into the city. The plans caused a lot of opposition in the city, one of the so-called “freeway revolts” around the country. Unlike many places, the opposition was mostly successful, with only a few parts, like the SW Freeway, actually built.

Furthermore, a lot of the funds for the planned highways was shifted over to funding Metro, so we can thank them for that.

The proposal for the U Street and Sherman Avenue freeway was thankfully never built, as it would have demolished a lot of houses and other buildings (see the photo overlaid with the freeway at Sherman to the right), and also physically divided the neighborhood. I’m very glad most of these plans were never followed-through. It’s interesting to imagine how the area would have looked had these been built — think about our neighborhood with the Whitehurst or SW Freeways slicing through. Doesn’t seem like somewhere I’d want to go.

Interestingly, in planning circles there’s a movement to demolish old highways — in San Francisco, for example, the Embarcadero freeway was taken out without any increase in traffic, and similar things have happened elsewhere. Luckily we won’t need to have that debate.

Sherman replaced by Freeway

The photos in this post all came from A Trip Within the Beltway, which is about the proposed DC highway system. However, it’s also kind of a strange blog, in that the writer advocates for building all these highways, just putting them in tunnels, and blames Masons and Catholics, among others, for them not being built, and that Volvo and the phone company have pro-highway subliminal ads. So there’s that.

Click the images for bigger versions, there’s some interesting details in there.

UPDATE: Douglas Willinger, author of the highway blog, notes that the upper right image is actually an alignment for a highway on 14th Street! Even worse.