The downtown was a mix of boring and cut and fill. We moved to DC in 1971, while much of downtown DC was torn up, with lots of detours and one-way streets. I re

The downtown was a mix of boring and cut and fill. We moved to DC in 1971, while much of downtown DC was torn up, with lots of detours and one-way streets. I remember whole blocks that were just steel plates over pits. My father was not much of a city guy to begin with, but when he found out that most of the maps were wrong, because of all the temporary changes to one-way streets and such, he just revolted. It offended his private pilot sensibilities for the maps to be so wrong. It was hard to get him to go into DC for a long time. One reason for some of the cost overruns was that Metro discovered that many of the buildings they were boring under weren't built very well and they had to do a lot of extra, unplanned, work to strengthen the foundations. I remember a building somewhere around Florida and U Street that had these massive girders holding it up while Metro rebuilt it's foundations. Who knows? Maybe that extra work helped us during the East Coast earthquake a few years back.