Georgetown almost built a neoclassical bus station

[RusskyHoya]

Like a lot of news sites having to reckon with every day turning into Covid Groundhog Day, Greater Greater Washington is rerunning some of its greatest hits. Here's a fun University one:

ggwash.org/view/76920/georgetown-university-almost-built-a-neoclassical-bus-station

In 1985 as Georgetown University considered its plans for the future, University Architect Dean Price sketched this illustration of a possible neoclassical bus station.

This excerpt from Georgetown’s Campus Plan: 1983-2000 A.D. and Beyond describes the proposal:

An Intermodal Transportation Center, a key development in the University’s future plan, will serve as the major point of interaction between the various transportation modes. The Georgetown University Transportation Society (GUTS) bus operation, the Metrobus System, and a specially developed electric non-fixed rail trolley-like system will operate from this facility, located just inside the Canal Road access.

Although Price’s neoclassical depot was never built, Georgetown did ultimately build its bus station. The McDonough Bus Turnaround opened in 2015 and is the hub for the university’s three-route GUTS bus system.

[njhoya78]

Funny...it sort of resembles the plans for the new on-campus basketball arena as well.

[RusskyHoya]

Speaking of Georgetown and buses, nice to see the University community and the broader Georgetown community join forces to stave off cuts to WMATA bus routes in the neighborhood. Among things on the table was eliminating the G2 route that stops at the front gates... which is near where the never-built neoclassical bus station would've been.

georgetowner.com/articles/2020/04/06/popular-georgetown-bus-routes-saved/

The broader question of what happens with public transit region-wide during pandemic and beyond remains very much an unknown.

[TC]

I don't think I ever waited for the G2 and said to myself "you know what I could really go for right now? Gothic pillars and some statues of prominent Jesuits from history that will probably be problematic 30 years from now."

Electric trolley is interesting though, where was that planned on going?

[C86]

Getting off the G2 at Healy Gates is one of the most picturesque ways to enter campus.. I’m glad the District saved it

[DFW HOYA]

This drawing gets way more attention that it probably deserves, which is probably a tribute to Dean Price's imagination.

The 1980's were a period for all sorts of architectural whimsy at Georgetown. The student center was designed to be built on the site of the O'Gara infirmary (the approximate site of Village C), while a series of concrete "podia" were to construct huge underground parking lots for 2,275 cars and place concrete esplanades above it, from New South all the way up to the medical center. The only one actually built was "Podium A", which was reconfigured to be the Leavey Center.

The bus transfer envisioned in the drawing would have been at the back of campus, not in front of it. The GGWash.org site correctly notes that what eventually got built three decades later, the McDonough bus turnaround, is underwhelming even by Georgetown's low standards.

There should be an exhibit of all the what-ifs of failed Georgetown architectural planning, from the 25,000 seat football stadium on the present side of Reiss to the completion of the quadrangle with a building across from Copley, and even a Brutalist plan to pave over Healy Lawn and install flagpoles for the 50 states across a vast conrcete plaza from Lauinger to Copley--think the Navy Memorial or Freedom Plaza at 37th and O. (My sentimental what-if: a 1928 plan to build an replica of the Palestra outside the gates at what is now Village B for an 8,000 seat basketball arena.)

Honorable mention goes to this 1954 plan for a new SFS building with a version of the "Christ the Redeemer" statue overlooking the Potomac River.

[TC]

Are those bells hanging down from whatever that thing is?