Editing Pennsylvania Avenue (section)

===20th century===

In 1959, Pennsylvania Avenue was extended from the Washington, D.C. border with [[Maryland]] to Dower House Road in [[Upper Marlboro, Maryland]].<ref>{{cite news |last1=Rowland |first1=James B. |title=6 Miles of New Road to Beaches Opened |work=The Evening Star |date=1 December 1959}}</ref>

On September 30, 1965, portions of the avenue and surrounding area were designated the [[Pennsylvania Avenue National Historic Site]]. The [[National Park Service]] administers this area which includes the [[United States Navy Memorial]], [[Old Post Office Building (Washington, D.C.)|Old Post Office Tower]], and [[Pershing Park]].<ref name="register" /> After the [[Great Depression in the United States|Great Depression]] in the 1930s and the move of affluent families to [[suburb]]s in the 1950s, Pennsylvania Avenue became increasingly blighted. [[John F. Kennedy]] and [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] tried to redevelop the street as part of the [[New Frontier]] and [[Great Society]] reforms, but the avenue further declined after the [[1968 Washington, D.C., riots]] in the aftermath of the [[assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.]]<ref name=":0">{{Citation |last=Troy |first=Gil |title=1981 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: The Ronald Reagan Show, the New Dynasty, and David Stockman's Reaganomics |date=2013-12-31 |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781400849307.50/html |work=Morning in America |pages=58–59 |publisher=Princeton University Press |doi=10.1515/9781400849307.50 |isbn=978-1-4008-4930-7 |access-date=2021-11-26 |archive-date=2021-11-23 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211123221650/https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781400849307.50/html |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1972, [[United States Congress|Congress]] created the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation (PADC) to rehabilitate the street between the Capitol and the White House, an area seen as blighted. The new organization was given the mandate of developing Pennsylvania Avenue "in a manner suitable to its ceremonial, physical, and historic relationship to the legislative and executive branches of the [[Federal government of the United States|federal government]]".<ref name="register"/>

In the 1980s, renovations were made to the [[Willard InterContinental Washington|Willard Hotel]], the [[Old Post Office (Washington, D.C.)|Old Post Office]], and [[Washington Union Station]], each located on or adjacent to Pennsylvania Avenue.<ref name=":0" />