I grabbed a smattering of photos yesterday, taking advantage of some gorgeous weather (I walked about as much as the Nats did against the Giants, though I think I was more successful). I put most of them in their usual places in the
Photo Archive, but I thought there were some standouts that would be worth seeing in sizes larger than my normal images, so I
posted this gallery as well. What all is in it?
If you haven't been to 1st and L since Thursday, you might be a bit surprised at what the
northeast corner looks like, because about 24 hours after the
decision to reject the landmarking application, workers arrived at the
Market Deli and removed all the beige siding and the signs. (Dang, I would have offered to hang onto one of those.) I took a bunch of shots of not only the defrocked Deli but also its siblings along that stretch of 1st Street, because with raze permits having been filed, they may not be around much longer.
I also caught the progress at the Little Red Building version 2.0, where the windows and doors are now in place. And then I figured I'd better save for posterity the
signs on the M Street fences at
Canal Park announcing the availability of 3,500 square feet of restaurant space when construction is completed in (we hope) 2012.
A new demolition project started on Friday, bringing down the last portion of the decommissioned ramp from RFK to the outbound
11th Street Bridge, which will bring quite a change to 11th Street south of M as the massive retaining wall that has run along the east side of the street will be disappearing. There will be a new ramp from M just east of 11th to take traffic to the new outbound freeway bridge, but it will be set back a bit, and 11th Street itself will be wider since it will have traffic running in both directions to and from the new "11th Street Local" bridge. (
UPDATE, many days later: As I watch the demolition, I now see that most of the retaining wall is going to stay in place, since that is where the new on-ramp to the outbound freeway will be. Duh.)
I walked the circuit
down 11th,
across O, and
back up 12th, and took photos of the work on the new freeway span as it gets closer to crossing above O (above, left), as well as shots of work on the new exit ramp (above, right) that will take drivers off the inbound freeway span all the way up to M Street (rather than dumping them onto 12th as in the current configuration). I put a bunch of before-and-afters on my
11th Street Bridges project page (where you can also see
graphics and information on the new design), but there's a number of enlarged versions of these construction photos in the
photo gallery I posted (scroll down about halfway).