Democracy Through Design: Pierre L’Enfant and Mapping Washington, D.C. | BRIdge from the Past

0:03 Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Bridge from the Past art across US history. I’m your host Mary and this series is meant for students like you to get ahead in your US history class by looking at pictures. Now I know what you’re thinking, it’s summer and you probably don’t want to think about history class or any class for that matter.

0:23 But I’m going to go Mark Twain on you and say that you should never let your schooling interfere with your education. Last episode I challenged you to go outside. It turns out going outside in Washington DC. Where I am right now in July is pretty much the worst idea ever. So we’re going to do the next best thing and look at the planning of Washington DC.

0:47 Back in the founding era and think about how it reflects American values, how it’s compromised at the very core of the story of our Federal city. Let’s jump in and see. Here is our image. So as you can see, it is a map and it is an old map. And old maps always have really great and long titles.

1:08 So this title says this is a plan of the city intended for the permanent seat of the government of the United States. So it’s a plan for a city that doesn’t exist yet. And it goes on to say it’s projected agreeable to the direction of the President of the United States in pursuance of an act of Congress passed the 16th day of July MDCCXC.

1:32 So this means is Roman numerals for 1790. So in July of 1790, congress passed an act that was agreeable to the President of the United States. So in 1790, the President of the United States is George Washington. And this is a plan for the new Federal city. So this is a city that doesn’t exist.

1:54 I can see from the map here there’s a lot of detail. It’s hard to read. I can see the Potomac River is a prominent feature of this map and this city is going to be on the banks of the Potomac River. I can see Virginia here. I can see Maryland here. So I’ve situated myself. I can tell that this is what’s now Washington DC.

2:16 But other than that, it’s hard to see and I have a lot of questions. So as always with primary sources, context is helpful. So here are some things that we need to know before we can jump in a little bit further to this map. So the story of Washington DC, like any good story, goes back to the Constitution. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to establish a federal city.

2:39 So the very first Congress in 1790 has to do just that. They have to decide where is this seat of the government going to be? And there was a lot of debate going on as to where this new Federal city would be. And it turns out that two heavyweights in this new government. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson

3:00 actually come to a pretty big compromise regarding the Federal city. So Alexander Hamilton really wanted the new federal government to assume the state debts from the Revolutionary War, and this was called the Assumption Bill that was being debated in Congress. Thomas Jefferson and his right hand man, James Madison were against the Assumption Bill, but they really wanted a Southern capital.

3:23 The Residence Act is this act of Congress that establishes what we now call Washington, DC. As the seat of the government. So how did this compromise come to be? Well, teamwork makes the dream work. Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson sat down, there, was wheeling and dealing, and they achieved this compromise. So Jefferson and Madison would get southern delegates to support the Assumption

3:44 Bill. Hamilton would get New York delegates to appoint the Residence Act. And voila, we’re going to have a new capital city along the banks of the Potomac River. So Maryland and Virginia are going to see land that’s going to become Washington, DC. Enter Pierre Charles L’Enfant. So as you can probably tell from his name, he’s French, he is born in Paris, but he actually comes to the United what becomes the United States to fight

4:07 in the Revolutionary War on the side of the colonies, which I think makes him pretty extraordinary because this wasn’t really his fight, so to speak. He was a Frenchman, but he identified with the American cause. He serves as a civil engineer to the Marquis de Lafayette, which gets him noticed by then General Washington. So when we now have this new Residence Act, this creation of a new Federal city, george Washington is like,

4:31 I know a guy, and he taps Pierre Charles L’Enfant to plan this new Federal city. So now we have a little bit more context and we can jump back into our image. So again, this image is kind of hard to see. So I’m going to quote another great Mind Hermione Granger and tell you that when in doubt, go to the Library. And we’re going to go to the Library of Congress.

4:53 So buckle up. So here is our map on the Library of Congress website. And as you can see, I can move around and there’s a lot more detail and there’s a lot to explore here. So I’m going to start with this sort of green section in the middle of the map of this proposed Federal city. And remember, I asked you to keep in mind how the plan of Washington DC.

5:16 Represents American values. So these ideas of compromise, these founding values of equality and reciprocity, things like that, so there’s a lot of I can see letters and numbers on this map. And if I move from side to side, I can see that L’Enfant has created what is in essence, a map key.

5:37 So I can see this A over here is an equestrian figure of George Washington. So right from the beginning, we have the plans for some sort of monument to George Washington to go right here in the Federal City. And spoiler alert, this is basically where the Washington Monument is located today.

5:58 So I see there’s letters and numbers and I can zoom around to see what these are supposed to represent. But there are two things here that aren’t abbreviated in any way, and that is the Congress House and the President’s House. So this is the Capitol and this is what’s going to become the White House. So the Congress House is really interesting because L’Enfant planned

6:21 for the Capitol to be on an existing hill known as Jenkins Hill. And he did this to sort of put Congress on a pedestal because Congress is supposed to be the most important branch of government. It’s the branch that’s closest to the people. And over here, not far away is the President’s House. And along the way from Congress to the President’s House, I have all these green spaces.

6:43 So I have these public walks. I have this Grand Park here, another park here. So this L, this park here is now what we would call the Ellipse. If you ever visit Washington DC. In December. This is where the national Christmas tree is. And this part right here, this wide green space here is the National Mall.

7:04 And if I go over to La Salle’s notes, I can see that he called for a public walk in a Grand Avenue. So this is really interesting because you wouldn’t see public spaces open to anyone in Europe. So this is sort of a uniquely American thing. And you can see this idea of sharing of power between Congress and the President.

7:28 They’re closely connected and you could easily travel between the two places. The other thing that I think is kind of interesting here is there’s all these yellow circles. So I have number two, number twelve, number ten. So what’s going on with these circles? And again, if I come down here to L’Enfant’s Map Key,

7:48 I can see that the squares, colored yellow being 15 in number, are proposed to be divided among the several states in the Union. So each state is getting its own space in this federal city. And the center of each square can be a statue, column, obelisk, or any other ornament that the state can choose to put up.

8:12 And what else is really interesting is the situation of these squares is such that they are most advantageously and reciprocally seen from each other and as equally distributed over the whole city district and connected by spacious avenues. So this is federalism. This is the idea that this is a union

8:33 of sovereign states and each state has its own place and they’re all equal. You can see the other states from other places within the city. And what’s also really cool about this, if you visit Washington DC. Even today, you can see that the city is a grid. So again, this is L’Enfant’s training. So he’s the Frenchman. He’s trained in sort of the premier institutions of France,

8:55 which is where you would want to be in 1790 if he wanted to be anybody. In the art architecture world, you have a grid system, so it would be easy to navigate the city. And you have these squares that are for the states. They’re connected by these diagonal boulevards. So again, if you visit Washington DC. Today, you’ll see Massachusetts Avenue, New York Avenue. They all are on a diagonal.

9:16 So a lot of the plans or ideas of the city today go back all the way back to Pierre Charles LaFonte. So I said that compromise plays a big role in this city, in the story of the Federal City. And unfortunately, LaFonte himself was not terribly good at compromise. So this city didn’t exist, right?

9:38 It had to be built from scratch. So there was a lot of building to do. There are a lot of interested parties, and he angered a lot of people, and he doesn’t want to compromise, and that ultimately gets him fired from the job. And another man, Andrew Ellicott, assisted by Benjamin Banneker, take over the planning of the Federal city. I’m going to take you forward in time to 19 one.

10:00 So what’s interesting to think about Washington DC. Is it was really created from scratch. There was nothing there. It was really a swamp, which you can tell if you visit in July. And it was sort of a very sleepy town for most of the 19th century. Cows graze on what was now the Mall. There was a train station on what is now the National Mall, though it actually interrupt debates

10:22 in Congress because the trains would make so much noise. So in 1991, the Senate formed something called the McMmillan Commission, and that’s a team of architects and planners who update the Capitol based on the original largely based on the original plans of L’Enfant. So what you have here is a plan of the National Mall. So again, you have Congress here,

10:44 and you have the White House here, and then you have the Mall. You have monuments. You have the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Washington the world War II memorial. You have all these monuments, memorials, and the Smithsonian museums lining this public space. So a lot of L’Enfant’s grand ideas for the capital didn’t come into fruition.

11:07 He wanted a big waterfall coming down in front of the Capitol building. He wanted a palace built for the President. But a lot of what he created, this idea of a public space where anyone could come and go and things are shared and the states are important, and this idea of Federalism is still with us today. So the National Mall is really a special place for all of us.

11:29 We’re all created equal. The space belongs to all of us. The monuments, the memorials, the museums belong to all of us, and it’s our job. We gather here sometimes for good reasons, sometimes to protest things that we see as bad throughout history. So I am going to kick it back to you and ask you how compromise is at the core of the story of Washington, DC.

11:54 And what role compromise plays in your own life today. Because this is a city really built out of this idea. That’s all that we have time for. To on BRIdge from the Past. So thank you for being with me. I hope you learned something. Be sure to like and subscribe to our channel for help with more in the civics and history space.

12:16 We’ll be back in August with regular episodes as BRIdge From the Past, so be sure to tune in then. Until then, everybody, take care.