Join us as we welcome author and historian Dr. Zachary Schrag for a discussion of the development of the Metro and its impact on Arlington. He is the author of “The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro.”
Schrag scrutinizes the project from its earliest days and will focus on Arlington, its general planning, routes, station architecture, funding decisions, land-use impacts, and the behavior of Metro riders. The story of the Great Society Subway sheds light on the development of metropolitan Washington, postwar urban policy, and its impact on Arlington.
Many rely on the Washington Metro, the 106-mile rapid transit system DC and its inner suburbs. In the first comprehensive history of the Metro, Dr. Schrag tells the story of the Great Society Subway from its earliest rumblings to the present day. Unlike the pre–World War II rail systems of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, the Metro was built at a time when most American families already owned cars, and when most American cities had dedicated themselves to freeways, not subways. Why did the nation’s capital take a different path? What were the consequences of that decision?
Using extensive archival research as well as oral history, Dr. Schrag argues that the Metro can be understood only in the political context from which it was born: the Great Society liberalism of the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. The Metro emerged from a period when Americans believed in public investments suited to the grandeur and dignity of the world’s richest nation. The Metro was built not merely to move commuters, but in the words of Lyndon Johnson, to create “a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.”
Dr. Zachary Schrag is a professor of history at George Mason University and specializes in the study of cities, technology, and public policy in the US. He is the author of four books and multiple articles in scholarly journals including the Journal of Policy History, the Journal of Urban History, Rethinking History, Technology and Culture, and Washington History. His essays have appeared in the American Historian, the Journal of American History, Politico, Slate, the Washington Monthly, and the Washington Post.
His book “The Great Society Subway: A History of the Washington Metro” will be on sale at the event or you can buy yours early at the museum store or at the AHS online store (allow for shipping time!)
This event will be in-person and via Zoom.
PREREGISTER FOR ZOOM ACCESS. You can attend this event on Zoom or in-person on the Marymount University Main Campus. If you want to attend this event virtually, please CLICK HERE to register. You can also cut and paste this link: https://forms.gle/URdta4eVxpdra2LU8 into your own browser and complete it there. Please register by Wednesday, September 10. Zoom access information will be sent to you in an email on the morning of the event on Thursday, September 11.
DRIVING DIRECTIONS and FREE PARKING: Attendees planning to attend the event in-person should enter the Marymount University campus at the library gate on N. 26th Street. From Glebe Road going north, take a right onto 26th Street. Pass the intersection with Yorktown Road and then enter the campus through the next gate on your left. The library is to your left as you enter the campus. Free garage parking is just past the library at the bottom of the small incline. (Handicapped parking is immediately to your right as you enter through the gate onto campus.)
- If the university has lowered the garage gates, push the button and let them know you’re here for an Arlington Historical Society event in the library. To leave, push the button and they’ll raise the gate.
This event is one of the monthly series of free public programs sponsored by the Arlington Historical Society. This event is hosted courtesy of the Marymount University politics program’s American Heritage Initiative. For more information, please email: info@arlingtonhistoricalsociety.org.
