[1] Originally a neighborhood recreational area like nearby Dupont Circle, Scott has lost all social uses except as the location for public memorials.

[4] Although residential buildings such as a Georgian Revival style mansion built in 1906 by Simon Guggenheim on the corner of 16th and M Streets, a Beaux-Arts house built in 1907 by Carolina Caton Williams at 1227 16th Street, and John Russell Pope's 1912 neoclassical redesign of Levi Morton's Bell House, still existed; usage was to change a couple of decades later around the time of the Great Depression.

[8] The 1940 construction of the underpass at Thomas Circle had left Scott as "one of the worst remaining traffic bottlenecks in the city" in need of improvements of its own.

[7] Construction had involved re-laying 4,200 feet (1,300 m) of the original water and sewer lines, and moving the statue of Scott, as a single unit without detaching the bronze from the granite base, temporarily out of the way.

[7][9] The lobbyists from 16th Street, led by Frank B. Steele, complained about reduced property values, the cutting down of trees, and excessive expenditure, stating that expanding the surface junction would be better, and that if there were to be an underpass the logical line for it would be along Massachusetts Avenue, following the line of the Thomas Circle underpass.

[7] Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives became involved, as well as then Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, and the National Capital Park and Planning Commission decided upon the 16th Street route.

[12] The original neighborhood recreational use has largely vanished, with no pedestrian access at all to the central ellipse, and no pathways around it, it being entirely enclosed by roadways.