L'Enfant Plaza

L'Enfant Plaza is a complex of eight commercial and governmental buildings, as well as an underground shopping mall, built along a traffic-and-pedestrian promenade in Southwest Washington, D.C. It is named for Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant, the architect and planner who first designed a street layout for the capital city and was dedicated in 1968. The plaza is located south of Independence Avenue SW, between 12th and 9th Streets--although 9th Street actually runs underneath the centers of the buildings on the easternmost side of the plaza.

Metrorail's L'Enfant Plaza Station has three entrances in and near the Plaza. One of the entrances connects with the underground shopping mall. The Virginia Railway Express has a station named "L'Enfant" a few blocks to the east, between 6th and 7th Sts. at C St.

L'Enfant Promenade, the main street on which the plaza is centered, ends at a large rotary and public overlook called Banneker Circle, which contains Benjamin Banneker Park. (The Circle and Park are named for Benjamin Banneker, an 18th-century free black man who in 1791 assisted in a survey of the boundaries of the District of Columbia and was an activist for black Americans). Benjamin Banneker Park was designed by Daniel Urban Kiley and dedicated in 1970. It was the first public space in Washington to be dedicated to an African American. A formal memorial to Benjamin Banneker has been planned for Banneker Overlook; it is currently in the design phase. [ [http://www.bannekermemorial.org/memorial.htm "The Memorial" page] "in" [http://www.bannekermemorial.org official website of the Washington Interdependence Council: Administrators of the Benjamin Banneker Memorial] Accessed August 6, 2008.]

The buildings in L'Enfant Plaza are in the brutalist style of modern architecture. Many of them, including the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, were designed by I.M. Pei. On the east side of the promenade, in front of the hotel, is a large public garden.

As initially planned, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts would have stood at the end of L'Enfant Promenade where Banneker Circle currently stands. The Kennedy Center would then be the anchor for the development of a retail corridor along L'Enfant Promenade. However, the project's main developer, William Zeckendorf, filed for bankruptcy during the construction of the plaza, forcing the Kennedy Center's sponsors to find a new location. (They ultimately found a site in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood, although the abrupt relocation delayed its planned opening by three years.)

Banneker Overlook was discussed at one time as the site of the Smithsonian Institution's new National Museum of African American History. Instead, the museum will be built on the National Mall.

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