Modern Dilemma: “I Don’t Understand It, It Doesn’t Look Old to Me”

by Richard Longstreth

During the mid-20th century, the champions of modern architecture seldom missed an opportunity to ridicule the past. At best, the past was a closed book whose chapters had mercifully ended with little bearing upon the present. But often the past was portrayed as an evil. Buildings and cities created since the rise of industrialization were charged with having nearly ruined the planet. The legacy of one’s parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents was not only visually meaningless and degenerate, but socially and spiritually repressive as well. Architects such as Walter Gropius saw the contemporary city as so much detritus. The more of the alleged blight removed from the scene, the better.

Such sweeping indictments in architectural and planning circles added fuel to the cause of historic preservation in others. It is no coincidence that the National Historic Preservation Act came at a time when the Modernist cause seemed to be exercising a hold on Federal policy.

This relationship, among other things, makes it difficult to consider the legacy of Modernism. Furthermore, Modernism is still with us. It can be argued that more of its agenda has been realized over the past three decades than over the previous half century.

Nevertheless, the products of a generation ago can indeed be examined from a fresh perspective. What was called by its proponents simply “Modern Architecture” does not always seem modern anymore.

Washington, DC’s southwest redevelopment area fully manifests the Modernist imperative. Planned in the 1950s, and largely in place by the mid-1960s, this model venture retained but a few vestiges of the previous urban fabric. Street patterns and block size were modified. New construction increased density and open space at the same time. Planning struck a balance between automobiles and pedestrians, and separated the two wherever possible.

The project was a consummate manifestation of Federal urban renewal programs, when wholesale learance and sweeping new designs were irreproachable objectives. It was comparable to the National Mall, a few blocks away, in that nothing of its kind was more ambitious, more realized, and, arguably, more accomplished in its design.

Locally, the project represented not only major physical and demographic changes. It also, for the first time, allowed Washington Modernists to exhibit their talents in a conspicuous way. The precinct stands as a pantheon to the best and brightest: Chloethiel Woodard Smith, Charles Goodman, Keyes Lethbridge & Condon, among others. Famous practitioners from outside Washington, including Harry Weese, I.M. Pei, Dan Kiley, and Hideo Sasaki, also contributed.