Navy Yard, also known as Near Southeast, is a neighborhood on the Anacostia River in Southeast Washington, D.C. Navy Yard is bounded by Interstate 395 to the north, South Capitol Street to the west, and the Anacostia River to the south and east. The neighborhood is named after the Washington Navy Yard. The Navy Yard fills about half of the neighborhood. The neighborhood is in D.C.'s Ward 6, currently represented by Tommy Wells. It is served by the Navy Yard Metro station on the Green Line.
Historically, the Anacostia River was once a deep water channel with natural resources and home to the Nacotchtank Indians. In 1791, Pierre Charles L’Enfant designed the plan for Washington D.C. and, recognizing the worth of the Anacostia River, set up the city’s new commercial center and wharfs there. In 1799, the Washington Navy Yard was built in the area and for many decades was the nation’s largest naval shipbuilding facility. Today, the Washington Navy Yard has been run by the Navy longer than anywhere else.
The Navy Yard was a busy center in the 19th century and was important in the development of the area. The lively wharf was a center for jobs, serving ships with lumber and raw materials for the growing city. It also played a key role in defending the city from the British during the War of 1812. Surrounding the wharfs was a large commercial district, light industrial businesses, and one of the city’s most notable neighborhoods. As the city and nation developed, the Navy Yard changed from ship building to making finished ship products and weapons ammunition. By the mid-1940s in wartime the Navy Yard and the expanded Annex area were making the most ammo with 26,000 employees in 132 buildings on of land.
However, during the 20th century the river got worse. The pollution of the river made it less valuable to the city. After World War II, the Navy Yard moved everything to a smaller campus, slowing commerce in the area. For this and other reasons the riverfront neighborhoods became overrun with crime.
For many years, the neighborhood was an industrial district The area was formerly home to a large commercial and adult-entertainment district, which has now been displaced. Since 1990, the building of a new U.S. Department of Transportation office complex and Nationals Park, the new USD$600 million stadium of the Washington Nationals Major League Baseball team, caused quick changes in the neighborhood. Most of the neighborhood's land and businesses have been purchased by companies and is currently being developed into commercial and residential projects. The area plans to contain 12 to of office space, 9,000 residential units, 1,200 hospitality rooms, of retail space, four public parks, and an Anacostia Riverwalk trail system.
Getty Center
The Getty Center, located in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, is a campus founded by oilman J. Paul Getty. It is used for for cultural exhibitions.
The center which costed $1.3 billion to built opened on December 16, 1997.
People like its architecture, gardens, and views overlooking the Los Angeles. It is located at the top of a hill. Entrances to the building include traveling from a visitor's parking garage at the bottom of the hill. Alternatively, it also has a three-car cable-pulled tram.
The center draws 1.3 million visitors annually.
It is one of two locations of the J. Paul Getty Museum. It has "pre-20th-century European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts; and 19th- and 20th-century American and European photographs".
One of the paintings on display is "Irises" by Vincent van Gogh. Besides the museum, the center's buildings house the Getty Research Institute (GRI), the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the administrative offices of the J. Paul Getty Trust. The latter owns and operates the center.
It also has outdoor sculptures displayed on terraces and in gardens. The center was designed by architect Richard Meier. The campus includes a central garden designed by artist Robert Irwin.
GRI's separate building contains a research library with over 900,000 volumes and two million photographs of art and architecture. The center's design included special provisions to address concerns regarding earthquakes and fires.
The Getty Museum started in J. Paul Getty's house in Pacific Palisades in 1954. He made the house larger by adding a new section. In the 1970s, Getty built a copy of an Italian villa near his home.
This new building was a better place to keep his art collection. It opened as a museum in 1974. After Getty died in 1976, all of the land and buildings were given to the Getty Trust to be used as museum space. However, the collection grew too big for the site. The people running the museum looked for a new location closer to Los Angeles.
In 1983, the Trust bought the land where the center is now. The new campus has on a site in the Santa Monica Mountains above Interstate 405, surrounded by kept in a natural state. The land cost $25 million. The top of the hill is above I-405. So, on a clear day it is possible to see not only the Los Angeles skyline but also the San Bernardino Mountains to the east as well as the Pacific Ocean to the west.
In 1984, Richard Meier was chosen to be the architect of the center. It took a several years to get permits to build the Getty Center. The Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company built the new buildings starting in August 1989.
The construction was significantly delayed, with the planned completion date moved from 1988 to 1995 (as of 1990). By 1995, however, the campus was described as only "more than halfway complete".
The center finally opened to the public on December 16, 1997. Although the total project cost was estimated to be $350 million as of 1990, it was later estimated to be $1.3 billion. After the center opened, the villa closed for extensive renovations and reopened on January 28, 2006, to focus on the arts and cultures of ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria. Currently, the museum displays collections at both the Getty Center and the site (called the Getty Villa) in Pacific Palisades.
In 2005, the "Los Angeles Times" printed a series of articles about how the Getty Trust and its president Dr. Barry Munitz were spending money. However, the California Attorney General investigated of the Getty Trust and found that no laws had been broken. The trust agreed to appoint a person from outside the Trust to review how money would be spent in the future. The Getty Trust experienced financial difficulties in 2008 and 2009 and cut 205 of 1,487 budgeted staff positions to reduce expenses. Although the Getty Trust endowment reached $6.4 billion in 2007, it dropped to $4.5 billion in 2009.
Meier has exploited the two naturally-occurring ridges (which diverge at a 22.5 degree angle) by overlaying two grids along these axes. These grids serve to define the space of the campus while dividing the import of the buildings on it. Along one axis lie the galleries and along the other axis lie the administrative buildings. Meier emphasized the two competing grids by constructing strong view lines through the campus. The main north-south axis starts with the helipad, then includes a narrow walkway between the auditorium and north buildings.
The axis continues past the elevator kiosk to the tram station. The axis goes through the rotunda, past the walls and support columns of the exhibitions pavilion, and finally the ramp besides the west pavilion and the central garden. Its corresponding east-west visual axis starts with the edge of the scholar's wing of the Getty Research Institute (GRI), the walkway between the central garden and the GRI, and the overlook to the azalea pool in the central garden. The east-west axis then follows the walkway between the central garden and the west pavilion, and finally the north wall of the west pavilion and the courtyard between the south and east pavilions.