Man Stops Traffic at 17th and K to Demand $200 Million
Morning Roundup: Goodbye, Abe Edition
Judge Throws Out WTU Suit Over Teacher Layoffs
Vegetate to Close at the End of the Month
Morning Roundup: Rain Won't Go Away Edition
The Post's Darryl Fears went to Eastern Market on Sunday to check out a display seeking community feedback on two different brick design options for the streets surrounding the historic building. The city plans to replace much of the asphalt roads around the fire-damaged market by the time it reopens later this year.
According to the story, few people paid much attention to the brick display down at the market this weekend, and the Post didn't bother to illustrate its story with any photos. So we've posted some samples of the two kinds of brickwork being proposed: cobblestone and Holland paver. NB: these are just samples of these kinds of bricks we found from brick companies on the internet, not necessarily the exact bricks being considered by DDOT for the Eastern Market project, but they should be a good enough approximation. If you've got an opinion on which brick would be best, you can contact ANC 6B's Mary Wright, or Abdullahi Mohamed from DDOT at abdullahi.mohamed(at)dc.gov.
UPDATE! DDOT sent us the real photos, and it turns out the "cobblestone" bricks aren't quite as cobbly as we'd first imagined. Revise your comments!
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
I sincerely hope they select a historically-accurate brick pattern that's in keeping with the neighborhood. Otherwise, senile old batfart historical fetishists with no life will go completely ape$h!t and say it's the worst thing since Hitler re-arranged the bricks at the Reichstag and totally ruined the feng sui.
I am surprised there is even an option. I know the CHRS and DC HPO too well for my own health, and I am surprised that they have not come down like the hand of god on those bricks and demanded that they be cast from the same molds as John Phillip Souza's teeth.
Yep, cobblestone FTW.
whichever is smoother, i guess, would be my choice.
for the sake of the people pushing the baby tanks on their way to the former junkpunchers for their morning caffeine.
won't anyone think of the children?
uh, to kind of counter monkey's point, i would like to make a plea against the "cobblestone" variety, purely because (if they're anything like the cobblestones in old town alexandria) they eat up high heels like nobody's business. a historically accurate reason that may not be, but still....
I agree -- although, I maintain that all bricks, cobblestone or not, eat up heels. If I could invoice the city of Alexandria for all the times I've had to repair or replace my shoes, I'd be a rich woman.
Also, bricks/cobblestones are slippery when icy. Lawsuits waiting to happen.
since crushed peanuts aren't an option, i'm going with cobblestones.
Whatever is less slippery when that joint ices up or is buried under packed down snow.
that would be the equivalent of a rock-climbing wall, laid on its side.
whatever option costs more and extends the project by 3 more years. and the one that fails to jumpstart the economy of the sad "local" merchants who ply their wares at the market.
Is there a gold or baby skull option?
I was going to say sunshine and farts. Also, Katrina and the Waves has to be playing in the background AT ALL HOURS.
Please, please, please the baby skull option. God that would be great for tourism.
I say cobblestone first and then when breeders and high-heel wearers complain, back to asphalt.
A semi-OT rant, if I may.... I understand and sympathize with the historic preservation movement, but in my mind these kinds of requirements are a big part of the reason why projects are so damn expensive these days. So much time is spent on such trivial details of a project, it is seriously mind-boggling. Anecdotes are not data, but I have personally been involved in several public projects whose budgets were completely busted by historic preservation (or recreation) issues. Again I completely understand the goals of preservationists, but these historic requirements can mandate research into every little detail of a project, all the way down to the handrails and trashcans. And then after all that research, SHPO can disagree with the preservationist, and months (and thousands of dollars) are spent in a bureaucratic debate with very little real-world impact.
I have a similar rant on the EIS process. The fact that it takes ~5 years for a project to enter a true preliminary design phase is absurd (before the final EIS, you have to keep looking at 'alternative' and 'no-build' scenarios). How does anyone expect to make any progress this way? Again I understand the aims, and I do not call for the abolition of these processes. But they do have to be much more flexible and rapid. As an example, the Silver Line process started in 2000. Obviously there are other issues with that project, but I they are similar to what I'm complaining about, namely that these bureaucratic processes are a serious brake on infrastructure improvements.
I understand the issues discussed above may not necessarily be occurring on this project. My post is not intended to spur debate on this specific project, but on the requirements for public projects in general, and I think this is most relevant as we attempt to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on public projects in the coming months and years.
Anecdotes aren't data? This is dcist; each one of us has that special n=1 experience and this is all the data we really need.
W/r/t the bricks - do they have something in a pillow top? Us satin palmed dandies prefer to buy our organic green olives in comfort.
I'm a big fan of packing peanuts. They feel real good when you fall and very pleasant to walk on with your bare feet.
Yes, but they don't give you the popping satisfaction the way packing bubbles may have.
That said, I'm with the peanuts. They would certainly be more thrifty and you there would be greater color options.
Sea Foam Green, Ivory White, and Peanut Natural.
as long as they're not the biodegradable kind cause that'll just turn into a slimy and then non-existant mess.
There are three types of bricks going into three different locations within Eastern Market (this is from a DDOT mailing list post):
"This week DDOT temporarily installed samples of the stone and brick materials selected for the sidewalks and roadway as part of the overall project. The public is invited to view the paver samples and submit comments before the permanent installation begins.
There are three samples to view -
The first is a molded brick selected for the sidewalks on the south and east sides of the Market, where the Farmers’ Line shed is located. Many of the existing bricks in that area are missing or have deteriorated.
The two other samples are a 4”x8” Holland Paver and a 6”x9” special paver known as Colonial Cobble Stone, one of which would be installed along 7th Street, SE, between C Street and North Carolina Avenue, to differentiate the Market area."
I take it the moving sidewalk option is off the table?
I feel the Earth move under my feet.
I feel the World...tumbling down..tumbling down.
And that is why packing peanuts or Easter Peeps would be
a wonderful thing to behold.
I vote for whatever brick is the flattest. Many of the vendors, myself included, use displays that require a pretty flat surface to function properly. I'm also concerned about the layout of the bricks, most of the vendor spaces are delineated by the current brick pattern, and redoing it completely has the potential to cause massive chaos amongst vendors who line their spaces up by the brick count.
Hey there, I just wanted to double check to make sure that the "cause massive chaos amongst vendors who line their spaces up by the brick count." part was in jest right? Please say it was a jokey-funny? This is DC, and we are an anal lot, so I had to check. But if I thought of cute-eclectic street vendors descending into chaos because of lines in the brick... I don't know what I would do.
Not joking at all. You would not believe the fights I have seen break out between vendors who have been setting up next to each other for years! Thank god my booth neighbors are awesome, it's kind of sad to see grownups fighting like children.
How about we go for true historical DC accuracy and go with mud, with some rickety wooden planks on top?
Don't forget the horse manure, the open-ditch ally latrines, the outhouses, and the horseflies the size of coconuts. Also, is it too much to ask for a cholera epidemic? I mean, yeah, lead in the water and excessive turbidity is nice and all, but nothing says "historical accuracy" quite like the bloody flux. Except maybe slashed prostitutes in Whitechapel.
23 comments over a pile of bricks? Are you kidding me? Some of this could have been avoided if Mr. Fears had remembered to bring his camera... I'm just saying...
well, my revised thoughts are this: meh.
whatever they choose, it isn't anything fancy.