Sixty years ago, breaking up the federal government was all the rage.
Experts advised that no new government offices be established in Washington. In October 1953, prominent architect Waldron Faulkner went further, proposing that most existing agencies leave town, too. He advocated, in the words of one historian, "preserving the heart of the capital as 'a cultural center' of libraries and museums."
These advocates for what became known as dispersal weren't trying to make the government smaller or smarter or simpler. They weren't proposing a shift in authority to the local level. They were worried about continuity of essential services in case of nuclear attack — so worried that planners argued against placing any important structures in major cities.