DCist was in Gallery Place/Chinatown/East End/Penn Quarter (take your pick) last week to take a look at the massive soon-to-be-completed building at the southeast corner of Seventh and H streets. Already, Urban Outfitters and Benetton have opened their doors. A movie megaplex will open soon, along with some more retail, infusing the Seventh Street corridor with more pedestrian traffic.

Unlike some new construction in the Seventh Street area downtown, DCist is most pleased with how this building turned out architecturally. First, compare its metrorail entrance to that of the escalator entry at 13th and U streets on the Green Line. At U Street, the new building at the metrorail station is short, squatty, quite unimaginative and architecturally, it is very dull and doesn’t even blend in with the neighborhood. (The Post’s Benjamin Forgey wrote a most fitting obituary for the corner a year ago.) At Gallery Place, the new building’s metro entry takes elements from Chinatown’s Friendship Gate making the underground portal very dignified for what would otherwise be a bland WMATA entry. While DCist is normally skeptical when architects try to recreate elements from the past in a contemporary setting, it seems to be done well here — not quite imperial Nanking, not quite Epcot.

And this design philosophy carries over to the next section of the building.