The Plan To Throw Shade On Cleveland Park

• 12:12 PM EDT

by UrbanTurf Staff

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On this day of 100+ degree heat, we take a look at a novel proposal aiming to bring relief from the sun to a retail strip along Connecticut Avenue NW.

The concept is a shade structure in Cleveland Park crafted partly from salvaged heritage tulip poplar wood. Architect Megan Downey, a Cleveland Park resident, began looking into solutions to the corridor's lack of shade after watching foot traffic move quickly through the promenade rather than stopping to eat or shop. Her firm, Megan Downey Studio, came up with the concept.

The structure would span the promenade between Macomb and Ordway Streets NW, an area that got a major overhaul last year but has struggled to keep pedestrians lingering given the lack of shade. The proposal calls for four canopy sections — each roughly 62 feet long — made up of undulating wooden louvers, with cabling and climbing plants woven in above sections of restaurant dining space.

The wood for those louvers would come from two large tulip poplars — trees that predate the neighborhood itself — that were slated for removal, prompting a push to find some way to preserve them. Downey brought the concept to District Bridges, the nonprofit that manages the Cleveland Park Main Street, and the two ideas — shade and salvage — merged into a single design using thermally-modified poplar alongside white metal columns and metal cabling for plantings.

Renderings filed with DC's Historic Preservation Office show the structure weaving between existing storefronts including Bank of America, H&R Block, and Al Volo. The plan also incorporates a play structure and benches with planters along the north and south sidewalk sections.

Organizers describe it as a grassroots effort, with fundraising happening in parallel with a review by DC's Historic Preservation Review Board. If it clears the board and secures funding, the shade structure would mark one of the more architecturally ambitious streetscape interventions to come out of a DC commercial corridor in recent memory — and a rare case of a felled tree finding new life just blocks from where it once stood.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/the_plan_to_throw_shade_on_cleveland_park/24779.