He was “artist extraordinary” to the Army, drawing likenesses (including one of Washington at Valley Forge), decorating ballrooms, and building banquet halls. Then by turn he became a drillmaster, like Von Steuben. When peace was declared he made a brief visit to France to see his father and, incidentally, to establish the Society of the Cincinnati in France and procure the gold eagles he had designed as insignia of the organization. Then he returned to remodel the New York City Hall for the reception of the first Congress of the United States, a building of such beauty never before having been seen by the assembled representatives of the people. L’Enfant was an artist, and this Washington knew when he selected him to design the Federal City. He was imbued with the artistic development of Paris, with its fine central composition from the Tuileries to the Arch of Triumph, the beauty of the Champs Elysees, the Place de la Concorde and adjacent great buildings as the Louvre; and with Versailles, built by Louis XIV, with its fountains, terraces, gardens, and parks, which still thrill thousands of visitors each year. He understood the art of city planning.
L’Enfant was long maturing in his mind the plan he so quickly put on paper. In September, 1789, while yet the idea of creating a capital city was still in the air, he wrote to President Washington asking to be employed to design “the Capital of this vast Empire.” The nations of Europe wondered at the probable future of the new Republic. Visualizing the future, L’Enfant wrote:
No nation ever before had the opportunity offered them of deliberately deciding upon the spot where their capital city should be fixed, or of considering every necessary consideration in the choice of situation; and although the means now within the power of the country are not such as to pursue the design to any great extent, it will be obvious that the plan should be drawn on such a scale as to leave room for that aggrandizement and embellishment which the increase of the wealth of the Nation will permit it to pursue to any period, however remote.
Major L’Enfant, a man of position and education and an engineer of ability, was also familiar with those great works of the master Le Nôtre, which are still the admiration of the traveler and the constant pleasure of the French people. Moreover, from his well-stocked library Jefferson sent to L’Enfant plans “on a large and accurate scale” of Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfort, Carlsruhe, Strasburg, Orleans, Turin, Milan, and other European cities, at the same time felicitating himself that the President had “left the planning of the town in such good hands.”
Thereupon the name of L’Enfant became, and has since remained, inseparably associated with the plan and development of the Nation’s Capital. He was gifted but eccentric, a characteristic that got him into many and serious difficulties.
President Washington had high regard for him and wrote of him as follows:
Since my first knowledge of the gentleman’s abilities in the line of his profession, I have viewed him not only as a scientific man, but one who added considerable taste to professional knowledge, and that, for such employment as he is now engaged in—for projecting public works and carrying them into effect—he was better qualified than anyone who had come within my knowledge in this country, or indeed in any other, the probability of obtaining whom could be counted upon. I had no doubt at the same time that this was the light in which he considered himself; and of course he would be tenacious of his plans as to conceive they would be marred if they underwent any change or alteration. * * * Should his services be lost, I know not how to replace them.
Chapter V
THE L’ENFANT PLAN
The L’Enfant plan, as before stated, was prepared for the Federal City under the direction of President Washington and Thomas Jefferson in 1791 by Maj. Pierre Charles L’Enfant, and applied to the 10 miles square set apart as Federal territory and called the District of Columbia. This was the first and most comprehensive plan ever designed for any city. It was a masterpiece of civic design. As originally drawn it extended only to Florida Avenue NW. and was designed for a city of 800,000, the size of Paris at the time. It was submitted to Congress by President Washington on December 13, 1791.
The original plan shows explanatory notes and references by Major L’Enfant, among which he calls attention to the position of the main buildings and squares, the leading avenues, and the plan of intersection of the streets and their width. The avenues were to be 160 feet in width. No city designed merely for commercial purposes would have avenues of such width; hence the whole plan indicates that it was especially designed for the seat of government of the Nation.