BOUNDARY STONE NEAR SIXTEENTH STREET, NORTHWEST
This survey was approved by Congress with the amendment that all public buildings should be erected on the Maryland side of the Potomac River.
On March 29, 1791, President Washington arrived on a visit to the Potomac and stayed at Suter’s Tavern in Georgetown. The next day, accompanied by the three commissioners and Maj. Pierre Charles L’Enfant and Andrew Ellicott, he rode over the ground. Washington met the owners of the land the same night, and the general terms were then agreed upon and signed by the 19 “original proprietors.” The area of 100 square miles embraced about 64 square miles of Maryland soil (ceded previously in 1788) and about 36 square miles of Virginia soil (ceded in 1789).
Thereupon the three city commissioners were ordered to have the boundary lines permanently marked by monuments placed 1 mile apart. One of these boundary stones can be seen to-day near the north corner of the District of Columbia. Each stone was quite large, and this particular one is well preserved.
PRELIMINARY STUDIES
When the city of Washington was planned under the direct and minute supervision of President Washington and Secretary of State Jefferson, the relations that should exist between the Capitol and the President’s House were closely studied. On August 7, 1791, L’Enfant sent a sketch to President Washington, with a note, “the plan altered agreeable to your suggestion.” Indeed, the whole city was planned with a view to the reciprocal relations that should be maintained among public buildings. Vistas and axes; sites for monuments and museums; parks and pleasure gardens; fountains and canals—in a word, all that goes to make a city a magnificent and consistent work of art were regarded as essential. Thus, aside from the pleasure and the positive benefits to health that the people derive from public parks in a capital city like Washington, there is a distinct use of public spaces as the indispensable means of giving dignity to Government buildings and of making suitable connections between the great departments.
The original plans were prepared after due study of great models. The stately art of landscape architecture had been brought oversea by royal governors and wealthy planters, and both Washington and Jefferson were familiar with the practice of that art.
On September 8, 1791, it was decided by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, and James Madison, in conference with the Commissioners of the District of Columbia—
to name the streets of the Federal City alphabetically one way and numerically the other from the Capitol and that the name of the City and Territory shall be the City of Washington and the Territory of Columbia.
The city had also been divided into four sections—namely, northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest—with the Capitol as the center and North and South Capitol Streets dividing the east and west sections and East Capitol Street and the Mall the north and south sections.