By the 1950s, Pennsylvania Avenue was marked by deteriorating homes, shops, and office buildings on the north side and monumental Neoclassical federal office buildings on the south side. President John F. Kennedy noticed the dilapidated condition of the street when his inaugural procession traversed Pennsylvania Avenue in 1961. Kennedy established the Ad Hoc Committee on Federal Office Space to recommend new structures to accommodate the growing federal government (which had constructed almost no new office buildings in the city since the Great Depression). Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan was assigned to help staff the committee. But in writing the Ad Hoc Committee's final report, Moynihan went beyond the committee's mandate and proposed (in part) that Pennsylvania Avenue be redeveloped using the powers of the federal government.