Density through verticality, a tenet of the SmartGrowth crew, is dealt a blow by a literary hero at the National Building Museum.
Last night, the architect, professor, and bestselling author Witold Rybszynski delivered the Charles H. Atherton Memorial Lecture. Billed as an examination of “Washington D.C.’s height limit, which—for nearly 100 years—has set firm limits for the heights of buildings in the District,” the event also promised “thoughts on the future of D.C.’s skyline.”
A large contingent of District officials was in attendance. I could only assume that their presence meant a forgone conclusion in favor of the Administration’s desire to have the restriction lifted. All spring, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Neil Albert has been talking about “re-visiting” the height limitation, a federal law that would require an act of Congress to change. Harriet Tregoning, Director of the Office of Planning, told the Dupont Circle Citizens Association in March that she would “always try to fill out the zoning envelope.” The magisterial Chairman of the Historic Preservation Review Board Tersh Boasberg topped the list of very important persons who came to bear witness.
Just why would they be so interested in what this man had to say?
The Big Ryb is an architect and scholar, Professor of Real Estate (!), the Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the Wharton School of Economics, and architecture critic of Slate. Author of 15 books, his works range widely: a history of domesticity (Home); a biography of legendary landscape gardener Frederick Law Olmstead who designed Central Park and our National Arboretum, (A Clearing in the Distance); a surprise bestseller about the invention of the screwdriver (One Good Turn); and most recently an exploration of real estate development in America (Last Harvest: How A Cornfield Became New Daleville). In the world of books and publishing, he is known by the term popularizer.
For the many experts in the hall, Ryb’s lecture may have “revisited” architecture 101. For a non-expert like me, it was nifty and replete with common sense: our love of certain architecture can be understood in terms of the size of the beings who use it, as well as their partiality to light and air. Between the comments about human scale and the assertion that we can achieve a lot of density with medium rise buildings (like Paris), I should have known that this popularizer was no ordinary professor of Real Estate, but I was thrown off by rather a lot of criticism of L’Enfant. Thus, I was stunned when the Professor concluded that Washington is “a nice anomaly.”
As for changing the height limitation, the Big Ryb advised DC to “leave well enough alone.”
Let us hope the many Administration figures in the audience will carry word back to the Deputy Mayor of Economic Development that verticality is not all. Maybe they will counsel him to just let go of the Tenley Library/ Janney School public private partnership to develop 12 floors of condos on a sliver of school land, cantilevered over the library. Popular opinion in Tenley is against it, and I feel certain that Ryb would say it is as preposterous as it sounds.