Where is Truxton Circle?
Truxton Circle, Lincoln Road is at the top of the photo.
You’ve seen the streetpole banners on Florida Avenue designating the area around North Capitol Street as Truxton Circle. But exactly where is the circle? The circle, pictured above, used to sit right there at the convergence of North Capital Street, Florida Avenue, Q Street, and Lincoln Road.
Urban planning blogger Richard Layman spotted a diagram of the old circle posted on the wall at the offices of DDOT.
Truxton Circle Diagram, Source: Richard Layman
In 1940 the District removed the circle and replaced it with a traditional intersection that failed, and continues to fail, to match the elegance of the original circle pictured at the top of this post.
A quick perusal of the DC Atlas, the District’s main online map product, reveals the circle’s imprint on the properties just north of Florida Avenue. It seems that the property lines still accommodate the circle.
Great Truxton's ghost! Proptery lines still show outer limit of the old circle.
Perhaps DDOT will one day resurrect the circle after its seventy-year absence. In 2006, DDOT restored downtown’s Thomas Circle to its original shape, eliminating the almond-shaped cut-through for Fourteenth Street. In the 1980s the District similarly restored Logan Circle, eliminating the Thirteenth Street cut-through. Here in LeDroit Park, Third Street bisected Anna J. Cooper Circle until the District in 1984 restored it to its original circular shape.
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