With Americans of Past and Present Days

by J. J. Jusserand

The city must be beautiful, due advantage being taken of the hilly nature of the spot for grand or lovely prospects, and of its water resources for handsome fountains and cascades: "five grand fountains intended, with a constant spout of water—a grand cascade" at the foot of Capitol Hill,[118] etc., a part of the plan which was, unluckily, left in abeyance. Some had spoken of a plain rectangular plan, "a regular assemblage of houses laid out in squares, and forming streets all parallel and uniform." This might be good enough, L'Enfant declared, "on a well-level plain, where, no surrounding object being interesting, it becomes indifferent which way the opening street may be directed." But the case is quite different with the future federal city: "Such regular plans, however answerable they may appear on paper ... become at last tiresome and insipid, and it could never be, in its origin, but a mean continence of some cool imagination wanting a sense of the really grand and truly beautiful, only to be met with where nature contributes with art and diversifies the objects."[119] We may imagine what his feelings would be if he saw, in our days, the steam-shovel busy around the city, dumping as many hills as possible into as many vales, and securing a maximum platitude.

But the city must be more than that; besides being beautiful, healthy, commodious, it should be full of sentiment, of associations, of ideas; everything in it must be evocative and have a meaning and a "raison d'être." Rarely was a brain more busy than that of L'Enfant during the first half of the year 1791. Surveying the ground, mapping out the district, sketching the chief buildings of the model city that was to be,[120] he presented three reports to Washington, the first, giving only his general ideas, before the end of March, the second in June, the last in August, the two latter accompanied with plans, the last of which being the one which was followed in the building of the city.

By the amplitude of its scope, the logic of the arrangements, the breadth of the streets and avenues, the beauty of the prospects cleverly taken into account, the quantity of ground set apart for gardens and parks, the display of waters, the plan was a unique monument. The selection of the place for what we call the Capitol and the White House, which were then called the Federal House and the Palace for the President, near which the ministerial departments were to be built, had been the result of a good deal of thinking and comparing. "After much menutial [sic] search for an eligible situation, prompted, as I may say, from a fear of being prejudiced in favor of a first opinion, I could discover no one so advantageously to greet the congressional building as is that on the west end of Jenkins heights, which stand as a pedestal waiting for a monument.... Some might, perhaps, require less labor to be made agreeable, but, after all assistance of arts, none ever would be made so grand." On that very pedestal now rises the Capitol of the United States.

As for the "Presidential Palace," L'Enfant made his choice with the object, he says, of "adding to the sumptuousness of a palace the convenience of a house and the agreeableness of a country seat," which are the three main qualities actually combined in the present White House. He selected a spot which Washington had himself noticed as a convenient one, at some distance from Congress, it is true, but that would not matter much, L'Enfant thought, with his old-world notions of etiquette, for "no message to nor from the President is to be made without a sort of decorum which will doubtless point out the propriety of committee waiting on him in carriage, should his palace be even contiguous to Congress." Since it was a question of driving, it little mattered whether the drive was to be a little more or less long.

For different reasons President Washington approved of that distance; major e longinquo amicitia, he apparently thought. "Where and how," he once wrote to Alexander White, "the houses for the President and other public officers may be fixed is to me as an individual a matter of moonshine, but ... the daily intercourse which the secretaries of the departments must have with the President would render a distant situation extremely inconvenient to them; and not much less so would one be close to the Capitol, for it was the universal complaint of them all, that while the legislature was in session they could do little or no business, so much were they interrupted by the individual visits of members (in office hours) and by calls for papers. Many of them have declared to me that they have often been obliged to go home and deny themselves in order to transact the current business."[121] In that respect, carriage or no carriage, distance would have its merits.

L'Enfant's letters and the notes accompanying his plans show that everything in the future city had been devised, indeed, with an intention: ever-flowing fountains and a cascade for health and beauty; an avenue of noble buildings, leading from the Capitol to the Presidential House, and increasing the dignified appearance of both: "The grand avenue," he wrote, "connecting both the Palace and the Federal House will be most magnificent and most convenient," with a number of handsome monuments, a very characteristic one being a temple for national semireligious celebrations, "such as public prayer, thanksgivings, funeral orations, etc., and assigned to the special use of no particular sect or denomination, but equally opened to all." It would also be a pantheon for the illustrious dead, "as may hereafter be decreed by the voice of a grateful nation." A column, as yet never built, was "to be erected to celebrate the first rise of a navy, and to stand a ready monument to consecrate its progress and achievements." The squares were to be allotted, one to each of the States forming the Union: "The centre of each square will admit of statues, columns, obelisks, or any other ornaments ... to perpetuate not only the memory of such individuals whose counsels or military achievements were conspicuous in giving liberty and independence to this country, but also those whose usefulness hath rendered them worthy of general imitation, to invite the youth of succeeding generations to tread in the paths of those sages or heroes whom their country has thought proper to celebrate." This was a way, L'Enfant considered, of fortifying the Union and of giving to the very city that educational value to which he attached so much importance.

Chief among those patriotic objects was to be, at some distance north of the place where the Washington monument now rises, "the equestrian figure of George Washington, a monument voted in 1783 by the late Continental Congress." And L'Enfant must certainly have hoped that the author would be his illustrious compatriot, the sculptor Houdon, on whose behalf we have seen him writing to Congress, in 1785, as to the probable cost.

Distant views and prospects were, of course, to be used to the best advantage: "Attention has been paid to the passing of those leading avenues over the most favorable ground for prospect and convenience." But, above all, L'Enfant was persistent in his request that, on no account, the grandeur of his conception be in any way curtailed: it was to remain commensurate with the greatness of the United States of future times. The plan "must leave to posterity a grand idea of the patriotic interest which promoted it."[122] He foresaw much opposition to some of his ideas, but besought the President to stand by him, and especially to prevent any dwarfing of his views: "I remain assured you will conceive it essential to pursue with dignity the operation of an undertaking of a magnitude so worthy of the concern of a grand empire ... over whose progress the eyes of every other nation, envying the opportunity denied them, will stand judge."[123]

To make a man of that temper and enthusiasm, having a reason for each of his propositions, accept hints and change his mind was almost an impossibility. In vain did Jefferson object "to the obligation to build the houses at a given distance from the street.... It produces a disgusting monotony; all persons make this complaint against Philadelphia." In the same record of his views, however, and much more to his credit, Washington's secretary of state is seen foreseeing the sky-scraper and its dangers: "In Paris it is forbidden to build a house beyond a given height, and it is admitted to be a good restriction. It keeps down the price of grounds, keeps the houses low and convenient, and the streets light and airy. Fires are much more manageable when houses are low,"[124] as was only too well evidenced since in the fires at Chicago, Baltimore, and San Francisco.

As for the President himself, he had well-determined, practical ideas on some points, such as the befitting distance between the places of abode of Congress and of the chief of the state, and, what was of more import, the necessarily large extent of the ground to be reserved for the building of the future capital.[125] On the rest, with his habit of trusting those who knew, he seems to have left free rein to L'Enfant. Submitting to him certain suggestions, some from Jefferson, he allows him to use them or not, as he pleases, and he personally seems to incline toward not: "Sir, although I do not conceive that you will derive any material advantage from an examination of the inclosed papers, yet, as they have been drawn under different circumstances and by different persons, they may be compared with your own ideas of a proper plan for the federal city.... The rough sketch by Mr. Jefferson was done under an idea that no offer worthy of consideration would come from the landholders in the vicinity of Carrollsburgh, from the backwardness which appeared in them, and therefore was accommodated to the grounds about Georgetown."[126]