The Big Dig Downtown DC at H and 9th Streets NW

big hole at 11th and H st NW

Just one of the concrete trucks

I've been in awe of the big dig going on at the site downtown at the block between 9th and 11th and H and I streets NW for the past year. I've been watching the action as I take a bus by this site often. First it was a demolition of the old DC convention center with literally tons of debris and dust created and trucked out. Then they started digging the ground out with literally tons and tons of brown clayey earth being taken out in those larger Mack trucks. This then became a huge brown hole that I kept meaning to photo but missed it. Then they drove piles around the whole perimeter, framing the huge pit with wooden planks. That pile driving noise must have annoyed many of the people working in the buildings overlooking the site, or at the nearby hotel. It's now at the stage where they are putting down the concrete floor and hundreds of tons of concrete seem to be going in there. There are at least five cranes looming over the site.  Hundreds of men are working in the pit site, and now they are building the floors and whatever it takes to put up a new construction. I've been meaning to photograph this for a while but it's only now that I got to it. And I'm amazed by how fast the work goes!