| Washington, the District of Columbia, is not only our nation’s capital, but it is also one of the world’s few planned cities. President George Washington had Pierre Charles L’Enfant design a ‘Plan of the City intended for the Permanent Seat of the Government of the United States’ for the new capital city in 1791. His goal was to design a city that represented the highest ideals of the new nation exemplified in the name: United States of America. Today, Washington’s urban plan is known for its expansive avenues named for the nation’s states along with monuments and memorials located at key intersections. While many think the radiating pattern of avenues generated the proposed layout geometrically, actually L’Enfant examined the topography first and located fifteen public squares on the higher elevations designating each to a state in the union, with a few to spare. Avenues were then laid out connecting the squares and these links united the city visually. L’Enfant further proposed that the land around the squares be developed by each state in a manner that represented it, although speculators subverted this good intention. This presentation overlays eighteenth-century terrain maps with L’Enfant’s design to show how his concept demonstrated a new nation’s ideal of independent unity in a built reality, and explains how the final design that still controls Washington’s plan took shape. |