Opinion: Tearing down ‘Deep Throat’s’ garage, and putting up a ... garden area?

Joni Mitchell once sang, memorably, “They paved paradise to put up a parking lot.” But in Washington, it’s a parking lot that’s about to bite the bullet.

And not just any parking lot, but the famous (infamous?) one in which Deep Throat — perhaps the most well-known anonymous source in journalism history — met with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward to assist him in uncovering the Watergate scandal.

And they say Los Angeles is callous about its history!

The garage, which is actually in Rosslyn, Va., will be torn down to make way for a 24-story office building and a 28-story residential tower. Actually, the developer announced plans last year to do away with the structure. But now Arlington County officials have approved the plan, and the wrecking ball is being warmed up.

A plaque that was installed there in 2011 outlining the structure’s historic significance will be retained, and, as my colleague Richard Simon reported, “The developer will be required to reinstall the sign once the project is finished and ‘design and incorporate additional historical interpretation into the garden space of the site for the purpose of acknowledging the site’s role in the Watergate scandal,’ according to Cynthia Liccese-Torres, Arlington County historic preservation program coordinator.”

Which sounds like a fun challenge for an architect, doesn’t it? “Hey, design a garden space for my new buildings, and be sure to include in the design how this place was once a cold, concrete parking garage, and this reporter and this FBI guy [Mark Felt, who revealed in 2005 that he was, in fact, Deep Throat] met here, and the stories that came out of it brought down a president. Oh, and maybe some roses, or a koi pond too?”

Of course, if you’re interested in Watergate but are in California and don’t have the time/energy/money to visit a soon-to-be-torn-down parking garage, you can also go to the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda for some perspective. My family and I did a couple of years ago; it was a hoot: The nice docent took us through the library, and then, when we came to the entrance to the Watergate section, she stopped and announced (and I’m paraphrasing): “OK, this is as far as I go. If you want to go on, you can.” Or, as Dante warned: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

Still, I’m sorry to see the garage go. It will be tougher still when they tear down the Watergate complex (no plans for that yet). Perhaps someday all that will be left will be a few plaques around Washington. After all, Nixon and many other Watergate figures are dead now, including Felt, and the rest of us who lived through the downfall of the House of Nixon aren’t getting any younger.

To a lot of journalists, Deep Throat — and that garage — will always have special meaning, because Watergate was the reason many of us got into journalism. Don’t let the famous Robert Redford movie “All the President’s Men” fool you: Journalism isn’t usually an exciting, glamorous field. But the image of a dogged reporter, of powerful forces arrayed against him, of late-night clandestine meetings in a parking garage — well, it’s the stuff of legend.

I hope the architect can make that garden space live up to all that. I dunno: Would an old typewriter on a pedestal be too corny?

Follow Paul Whitefield on Twitter @PaulWhitefield1