A Monument to Democracy
The L'Enfant Plan of 1791
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FIGURE 2: The L'Enfant Plan of 1791. At George Washington's request, Pierre L'Enfant drew up
a plan for a city 10-miles square and centered on the Congress House (Capitol).
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Pierre L'Enfant laid out the plan for the Nation's Capital as a physical embodiment of the newly ratified U.S. Constitution. The Capitol Building marked the city's center and highest spot. Broad diagonal avenues named for the 13 colonies overlaid a grid of residential streets. Pennsylvania, site of the Constitutional Convention, gave its name to the avenue connecting and separating -- the Capitol and White House. Circles and rectangles formed at the intersections of avenues and streets were to be sites for monuments, memorials, and public buildings.
Within this vision of great symbolic spaces, vistas, and public buildings, L'Enfant planned the Mall as a 400-foot wide Grand Avenue, extending from the Capitol westward to the Washington Monument at the banks of the Potomac River. He described the Mall as a "place of general resort" and, echoing Thomas Jefferson, a "public walks", a tree-lined promenade flanked by public buildings such as theaters, academies, and assembly halls.
Next: The McMillan Plan
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