text: Architectural assessment L'Enfant Plaza was considered a masterpiece when it opened in 1968. The Washington Post architectural critic Wolf von Eckardt called it "a triumph of good architecture over bad planning." He believed it would be Washington, D.C.'s version of Rockefeller Center or the Place Ville-Marie, and predicted people would throng the plaza—which he felt would be the "city's major urban attraction." Von Eckardt piled praise on the plaza itself, calling it "exceptionally attractive" and "modern America's most beautiful 'outdoor salon'". He also lauded the "marvelous" cruciform-and-globe light fixtures and the huge "dramatic" fountain. Architects Chloethiel Woodard Smith and Louis Justement felt the esplanade and plaza were an "essential ... appropriate entrance to the Southwest." Five years later, in 1973, von Eckardt continued to sing the plaza's praises despite its shortcomings. Although he recognized that the plaza was largely devoid of foot traffic most of the time, he considered it a "superb work of urban design" on par with the great plazas and squares built in Paris under Napoleon III or Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.
  Such high praise did not last. Even von Eckardt felt the Forrestal building was an "esthetic disaster" (sic) and "silly"—"like an elephant tottering on the legs of a giraffe." He heartily disliked the design of the plaza itself ("all the charm of an empty freeway") Banneker Park, with its minimalist fountain, came in for similar criticism. He declared that the city's decision to cancel the skywalk to Maine Avenue SW ruined the southern end of the Promenade: "It ends with a whimper." Two years after L'Enfant Plaza opened, Washington Post architecture critic Eugene L. Meyer called it a "ghost town", and said it was "not living up to its advance billing." Araldo Cossutta, who designed the North and South Buildings for I. M. Pei & Associates, declared it a "product of outmoded city planning". The complex's reputation did not improve over the next 30 years. In 2003, Washington Post architectural critic Benjamin Forgey was just as critical: