BGuthrie Photos: DC -- GWU -- Museum and Textile Museum -- Exhibit: Seat of Empire

DC -- GWU -- Museum and Textile Museum -- Exhibit: Seat of Empire:

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Description of Pictures: Seat of Empire: Planning Washington, 1790–1801
March 21–October 15, 2015
Washington, D.C. was the result of political compromise and artistic imagination. In 1792, George Washington charged French-born architect Peter L’Enfant with a momentous task: to envision the capital of a new nation from a swath of private properties and plantations at the confluence of two rivers. Seat of Empire: Planning Washington, 1790–1801 presents historical maps and related images that tell the story of this early experiment in urban design that shaped the landscape of our nation’s capital.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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[1] GWMSEA_150418_001.JPG	[2] GWMSEA_150418_004.JPG	[3] GWMSEA_150418_010.JPG	[4] GWMSEA_150418_012.JPG	[5] GWMSEA_150418_020.JPG
[6] GWMSEA_150418_024.JPG	[7] GWMSEA_150418_026.JPG	[8] GWMSEA_150418_029.JPG	[9] GWMSEA_150418_033.JPG	[10] GWMSEA_150418_035.JPG
[11] GWMSEA_150418_039.JPG	[12] GWMSEA_150418_043.JPG	[13] GWMSEA_150418_049.JPG	[14] GWMSEA_150418_051.JPG	[15] GWMSEA_150418_053.JPG
[16] GWMSEA_150418_060.JPG	[17] GWMSEA_150418_065.JPG	[18] GWMSEA_150418_068.JPG	[19] GWMSEA_150418_070.JPG	[20] GWMSEA_150418_073.JPG
[21] GWMSEA_150418_076.JPG	[22] GWMSEA_150418_079.JPG	[23] GWMSEA_150418_081.JPG	[24] GWMSEA_150418_085.JPG	[25] GWMSEA_150418_089.JPG
[26] GWMSEA_150418_093.JPG	[27] GWMSEA_150418_096.JPG	[28] GWMSEA_150418_099.JPG	[29] GWMSEA_150418_103.JPG	[30] GWMSEA_150418_106.JPG
[31] GWMSEA_150418_110.JPG	[32] GWMSEA_150418_112.JPG	[33] GWMSEA_150418_119.JPG	[34] GWMSEA_150418_122.JPG	[35] GWMSEA_150418_125.JPG
[36] GWMSEA_150418_128.JPG	[37] GWMSEA_150418_129.JPG	[38] GWMSEA_150418_131.JPG	[39] GWMSEA_150418_137.JPG	[40] GWMSEA_150418_141.JPG
[41] GWMSEA_150418_148.JPG	[42] GWMSEA_150418_151.JPG	[43] GWMSEA_150418_154.JPG	[44] GWMSEA_150418_164.JPG	[45] GWMSEA_150418_167.JPG
[46] GWMSEA_150418_176.JPG	[47] GWMSEA_150418_180.JPG	[48] GWMSEA_150418_186.JPG	[49] GWMSEA_150418_188.JPG	[50] GWMSEA_150418_195.JPG
[51] GWMSEA_150418_203.JPG	[52] GWMSEA_150418_209.JPG	[53] GWMSEA_150418_212.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. GWMSEA_150418_001.JPG: Seat of Empire Planning Washington 1790-1801
2. GWMSEA_150418_004.JPG: The Planning of Washington, 1791 Garnet W. Jex, 1931
3. GWMSEA_150418_010.JPG: George Washington believed that a national university at the seat of federal government would break down sectional differences and strengthen the Union. He wanted to locate it on the twenty-acre federal land north and west of Constitution Avenue and Twenty-third Street. President Washington repeatedly called on Congress to establish the university, but members saw it as a threat to existing colleges in their states and refused. In 1821, more than two decades after Washington's death, Congress chartered what became The George Washington University.
4. GWMSEA_150418_012.JPG: George Town and Federal City, or City of Washington George Beck, 1801 This landscape is an early, and not very accurate, depiction of Washington. It portrays the Potomac River, the already built-up Georgetown (left), the bridge over Rock Creek, and Analostan (now Roosevelt) Island, site of the summer home of John Mason, son of statesman George Mason. In the somewhat foreshortened distance are the buildings of the Federal City.
5. GWMSEA_150418_020.JPG: Seat of Empire Planning Washington, 1790-1801 The design for Washington, DC began with a man, a map, and a grand vision. In March 1791, thirty-six-year-old Continental Army Major Peter Charles L'Enfant stopped along a creek and looked up towards a gentle terrace. Here a house for the President would rise. One mile east was Jenkins Hill, the future site of the US Capitol. L'Enfant called it a "pedestal waiting for a monument." That day marked the start of a visionary plan for the capitol of a young country. There was no design competition, and no budget. This exhibition focuses on George Washington and Peter L'Enfant's attempt to lay the foundation for the capital during the 1790s. L'Enfant's vision as unusually grand for planned cities of the time -- its six thousand acres were as large as New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia combined. Some disagreed about the vision and what its scale suggested about the ambitions of the new federal government. Thomas Jefferson's supporters saw the plan as a Federalist attempt to empower the federal government at the expense of the states. When Jefferson assumed the presidency in 1801, he stopped funding the plan's implementation. Yet L'Enfant's vision had already become known around the Atlantic world. It took L'Enfant only fourteen days to complete his vision. It would take another one hundred years to see it realized. This is the story of its beginnings: a spacious stage for a new empire.
6. GWMSEA_150418_024.JPG: George Washington On January 24, 1791, less than two years after George Washington's inauguration as the first President, he announced his selection of a diamond-shaped tract of land at the Potomac and Eastern Branch Rivers as the site for the new seat of government for the United States. The announcement settled a multi-year debate over where the government should meet, with Washington personally choosing the spot and appointing Peter C. L'Enfant to design the new city.
7. GWMSEA_150418_026.JPG: Benjamin Banneker Benjamin Banneker was a free African American who helped survey the location of the nation's capital. A self-taught mathematician and astronomer, Banneker recorded the positions of the stars each night and noon. He also maintained the surveyors' delicate astronomical instruments. Based on his reports, Andrew Ellicott located the district's boundaries.
8. GWMSEA_150418_029.JPG: Peter C. L'Enfant Peter C. L'Enfant, an aristocratic French student of architecture and drawing, joined the American Revolution in 1777 and saw combat. His artistic talents and personal ambition led to commissions to design patriotic emblems and public buildings for the new nation. In March 1791, President Washington appointed him to plan the new seat of government. L'Enfant's elegant plan, with the Capitol at its center, created the grand avenues, vistas, and ceremonial spaces of today's national capital.
9. GWMSEA_150418_033.JPG: Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson, diplomat, founding father, and statesman, wanted the seat of government to be simple "federal town" as befitting a republic. Washington and L'Enfant instead created plans for an elaborate "Federal City" worthy of becoming "the Capital of this vast Empire." Jefferson nearly won, however, when, as the third US President, he cancelled building funds. As a result, almost a century elapsed before L'Enfant's city was realized.
10. GWMSEA_150418_035.JPG: The Albert H. Small Washingtoniana Collection The Albert H. Small Washingtoniana Collection was born in 1949, when Mr. Small visited a small shop in New York City. There he purchased a notebook detailing the boundary stones that defined the District of Columbia in 1791. The collection now contains more than one thousand objects and an extensive reference library. Its maps, manuscripts, letters, prints, books, and documents tell the history of Washington as both city and nation's capital. The collection was donated to The George Washington University Museum in 2011.
11. GWMSEA_150418_039.JPG: The Land The Residence Act of 1790 provided for a federal district of up to one hundred square miles. George Washington chose the location, just south of the deepest penetration of tidewater on the eastern seaboard. It lay at the precise geographic center of the United States, when considered from north to south. For at least half a millennium, the indigenous Anacostians had resided in villages on what they called the "Petomek" -- "a trading place" or "a place to which tribute is brought." In 1633 English explorer Henry Fleete described the area as a place of abundance and health. After 1660, Maryland's proprietors made speculative land grants in the area, which soon carried such colorful names as Rome, New Troy, Scotland Yard, Widow's Mite, and Cuckold's Delight. People thought that the area was destined for commercial greatness. Landowners soon planned to create towns and sell lots. Georgetown, laid out in 1751, was a major part for exporting tobacco. Two new towns, Hamburg (Funkstown) and Carrollsburg, were planned just before the Revolutionary War.
12. GWMSEA_150418_043.JPG: Rendition of John Frederick Augustus Priggs's "A map of the Eastern branch of the Potomack river." Engraving, Daniel Bell, 1790
13. GWMSEA_150418_051.JPG: "[T]he most pleasant and healthful place in all this country and most convenient for habitation... It aboundeth with all manner of fish... And as for deer, buffaloes, bears, turkeys, the woods do swarm with them, and the soil is exceedingly fertile." -- Henry Fleete, 1632
14. GWMSEA_150418_053.JPG: Map Showing Tracts of Land in Prince George's County, Maryland, Conveyed for the Federal City in 1791 Research by Priscilla W. McNeil. Graphics by Don Hawkins, Cynthia Elliott and Sheila Waters, 1991, 2013 More than two centuries ago, landowners in Prince George's County, Maryland, transferred their property to the US government for its new Federal City. In the 1980s, historian Priscilla McNeil spent more than a decade studying land surveys at the Maryland State Archives to discover the names of those property owners and the boundaries of their holdings. Plotted here are the outlines and owners of the tracts overlaid with a map of the city's streets drawn in the 1790s by James Dermott. Commissioned for this exhibition, this map updates the original 1991 map. It includes for the first time the boundaries of properties beyond the limits of L'Enfant's Federal City but still within the District of Columbia.
15. GWMSEA_150418_060.JPG: Plan of the City Intended for the Permanent Seat of the Government of the United States Peter Charles L'Enfant, 1791 Peter L'Enfant's 1791 concept for the seat of government was the most ambitious city plan of its time. L'Enfant boldly assumed that a new, overwhelmingly agrarian nation could and would create a capital to rival the great metropolises of Europe. Grand avenues in the French Baroque tradition suggested rays of light emanating from the Capitol toward the rest of the continent. The plan created a primary east-west axis (today's National Mall) stretching from the Capitol, situated on a high point, to the banks of the Potomac near 17th Street. A secondary north-south axis ran from the President's House south to the river. Where the two axes converged, L'Enfant intended to place a congressionally authorized equestrian statue of Washington as commander-in-chief. While some design elements drew from European precedents, L'Enfant avoided allusions to any city specifically. This was to be a city all its own -- geographically sensitive and highly symbolic, expressing the optimism of a new and expansive nation.
16. GWMSEA_150418_065.JPG: Grid: Over grand diagonals (eventually named for the originally thirteen states), L'Enfant superimposed a grid like those found in colonial towns recently developed by the British, French, and Spanish. In contrast to common practice, L'Enfant's grid used blocks that varied in size. This combination granted an unusual and pleasingly varied definition to the imagined urban space.
17. GWMSEA_150418_068.JPG: The Mall: The immense park, what L'Enfant called the Grand Avenue, was to be the symbolic heart of the city and the focus of public interaction. L'Enfant called for it to be lined with cultural institutions and to include an equestrian statue honoring his patron, George Washington.
18. GWMSEA_150418_070.JPG: Squares: Had all of the details of L'Enfant's plan been realized, individual states would have sponsored a settlement on each square. The states would have filled their squares with monuments and civic buildings that brought grandeur to the seat of government while facilitating commerce and cultural interactions among the citizens of the new nation.
19. GWMSEA_150418_073.JPG: Symbolic Relationships: L'Enfant planned that the Congress House (Capitol) and President's House (White House) and other activity centers would spur development. Though joined by an immense T-shaped park (part of which would become the Mall), their geographic separation symbolized the independence of the branches of government that shared legislative and executive power.
20. GWMSEA_150418_076.JPG: Commerce and Industry: In addition to the Congress and President's Houses, L'Enfant's also planned centers for routine commercial and industrial functions, such as a market square linked to the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers by a canal. L'Enfant allocated spaces for the Navy Yard, a ship-building factory, and a port along the Anacostia River.
21. GWMSEA_150418_079.JPG: "[T]o change a Wilderness into a City, to erect and beautify Buildings... to that degree of perfection necessary to receive the Seat of Government of so extensive an empire, in the short period of time that remains to effect these objects is an undertaking vast as it is novel." -- Peter C. L'Enfant to Thomas Jefferson, February 26, 1792
22. GWMSEA_150418_081.JPG: Marketing the City: Investors in the land designated for the Federal City widely distributed L'Enfant's plan in the 1790s. They worked hard to find buyers for city lots. The proceeds from the sale of lots would fund the development of roads, public buildings, and other amenities. The plan was printed and reprinted, not only in the United States, but in European cities as well, including Berlin, London, Edinburgh, Vienna, and Amsterdam. The large number of reproductions demonstrates the international interest in this novel design. Few yet-to-be-realized plans had ever received such widespread attention.
23. GWMSEA_150418_099.JPG: A Description of the Situation and Plan of the City of Washington, Now Building for the Metropolis of America, and Established as the Permanent Residence of Congress after the Year 1800 George Walker, 1793 Published in London to promote the sale of Federal City lots in Europe, George Walker's 1793 description of L'Enfant's plan is the most detailed that survives. Walker, a Georgetown merchant, deserves credit as the father of Washington City. He first proposed the site, and the means of finance the construction of a city upon it, in a January 1789 newspaper article. He signed it with the pseudonym "A Citizen of the World," suggesting that he was a detached observer. He convinced L'Enfant to support the large site when the planner arrived at Georgetown in March 1791. L'Enfant then persuaded Washington, who had envisioned a much smaller city adjacent to Georgetown or the Anacostia River.
24. GWMSEA_150418_119.JPG: Potomac Fever George Washington inherited "Potomac Fever," an obsession with the grandeur and commercial potential of the Potomac River. It emerged among established Virginia and Maryland families residing on the river in the early 1700s. Certainly well before 1790, and possibly as early as 1775, Washington had become convinced that centering America's political and commercial emporium on the Potomac would cement the Union and, with it, his own legacy. Washington envisioned a capital of beauty and magnificence. From 1791 until his death in 1799 he supported the implementation of the L'Enfant Plan and micromanaged the development of the city. His greatest regret was that the District commissioners could not embrace the details of L'Enfant's plan, causing a series of disagreements that ended in L'Enfant's resignation in 1792. By 1795 Washington and the city had become so entwined that former District Commissioner Thomas Johnson told him, "the success of the City has now become important to your Reputation."
25. GWMSEA_150418_122.JPG: "A Century hence... will produce a City... not excelled for commanding prospect, good water, salubrious air, and safe harbour by any in the world; & where elegant buildings are erecting & in forwardness, for the reception of Congress in the year 1800." -- George Washington to Sarah Cary Fairfax, May 16, 1798
26. GWMSEA_150418_128.JPG: Who is the Man in the Shadows?
27. GWMSEA_150418_129.JPG: The man on the right in the Savage painting might be one of the enslaved people George Washington inherited or acquired through marriage. The figure has traditionally been identified as William Lee, who served by Washington's side during the Revolutionary War and was the only one of his slaves whom Washington freed in his will. Based on his apparent age, though, it may be Christopher Sheels, a relative of Lee. Another possibility is that this was not a depiction of a particular person, but rather an artistic tradition that Savage would have learned in Europe -- the inclusion of a figure in service to a gentleman sitter. A final interpretation suggests that including the figure was Savage's statement about slavery's looming threat to the dream of a republican empire.
28. GWMSEA_150418_131.JPG: Washington Family Edward Savage, c 1840s This painting, reproduced widely in the nineteenth century, captures the popular idea of an American empire moving westward. The Washington family is arranged around a table on which is displayed the L'Enfant Plan; behind them is the westward-pointing, commerce-laden Potomac River. Washington rests his arm on his step-grandson George Washington Parke Custis, symbol of a rising generation, who in turn rests his hand on a globe that is turned to show the west coast of North America and the Pacific Ocean beyond. For centuries, the inclusion of the globe in paintings had been a symbol of empire.
29. GWMSEA_150418_141.JPG: Monro-Lenox Portrait of George Washington Gilbert Stuart, c 1800 This life-size portrait, referred to as the Monro-Lenox for its first owners, depicts the former president as an authoritative figure. He is dressed in a sober black waistcoat rather than a military uniform, and his hand points to a document. References to the new republic abound. The eagle carvings on the table leg are designed in the form of the Roman "fasces," or bundle of rods surrounding an axe that symbolized power in ancient Rome. The books under the table are American Revolution and Constitution of the United States, with the Constitution pushed slightly forward, emphasizing the rule of law. Rather than crowns or royal dress of monarchy, the new symbols of authority in a republic are quills and books.
30. GWMSEA_150418_148.JPG: A Dream Deferred The vision of a magnificent American capital that George Washington, Peter L'Enfant, and the governing Federalist Party advocated nearly died in 1801. That year, Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican opposition, which had attacked the Federal City in the 1790s was too grand and expensive for a republic, took over the presidency and both houses of Congress. Jefferson, an opponent of the L'Enfant Plan since first seeing it, discarded the plan and, with it, Washington's grand vision. Although the basics of the L'Enfant Plan already were visible in the landscape -- especially the system of roads and the key public buildings -- Jefferson refused to fund any further implementation. From then until 1869, when President Ulysses S. Grant and the Republican Party revived Washington's dream, it was a modest town known merely as the seat of federal government, not as the federal capital. Soon thereafter the L'Enfant Plan was rediscovered, and in the early twentieth century it was officially made the basis for development in the core of the original Federal City.
31. GWMSEA_150418_151.JPG: Floor Plan, Correspondence, George Washington's Houses George Washington, Artist, 1798 William Thornton, Architect, 1798 Washington hired the architect of the Capitol, William Thornton, to supervise the construction of two houses for "the accommodation of Congress" on lots Washington purchased on Capitol Hill. Somewhat an architect himself, Washington drew this floor plan for the houses. The letter from Thornton conveys the architect's design advice. The letter is framed with the address page showing. Thornton's comments are a photocopy.
32. GWMSEA_150418_164.JPG: Check for a House on Capitol Hill (1799) Check, May 31, 1799 George Washington invested in the city financially. He carefully selected building lots that reflected his vision for the capital. Two next to the Capitol would support the political role of the city. Four on the Anacostia River would support its commercial role. And, underscoring the city's future as a cultural center, he purchased all of Square 21 (near what would become the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts) for a botanical garden. This check, payment to William Thornton for supervising construction of George Washington's two Capitol Hill houses, is one of the few personal checks written by Washington to survive.
33. GWMSEA_150418_176.JPG: Vue de la Ville de Washington, en 1800
34. GWMSEA_150418_180.JPG: Washington City in 1801 Don Alexander Hawkins, 2014 This map, based on the historical cartographer's topographic study of the area in 1791, shows the cultural and natural geography of Washington City shortly after Congress arrived.
35. GWMSEA_150418_186.JPG: These three letters illustrate Washington's role in the development of the Federal City, helping to keep the processing moving despite clashes of personality among designer Peter L'Enfant and the three commissioners assigned to supervise the process.
36. GWMSEA_150418_188.JPG: George Washington to District Commissioner David Stuart November 20, 1791 This letter shows Washington's faith in L'Enfant. He only regrets that "men who possess talents which fit them for peculiar purposes should almost invariably be under the influence of untoward dispositions."
37. GWMSEA_150418_195.JPG: George Washington to District Commissioner David Stuart November 30, 1792 This letter to Stuart, who was also the president's step-son-in-law, is a private message written after L'Enfant's resignation. Washington writes about the need to hire a superintendent to execute the commission's decisions and regrets that L'Enfant could not be that person. He also suggests that surveyor Andrew Ellicott ready L'Enfant's plan for engraving, thus launching the development of the seat of government.
38. GWMSEA_150418_203.JPG: George Washington to Daniel Carroll of Duddlington November 28, 1791 L'Enfant was engaged in a bitter dispute with Carroll, whose Capitol Hill house was under construction and extended six feet into where New Jersey Avenue would be built. In this letter Washington solved the stalemate in L'Enfant's favor, declaring that Carroll should remove the house immediately or finish it, but expect that it would be torn down later by the federal government.
39. GWMSEA_150418_209.JPG: Seat of Empire Planning Washington, 1790-1801 The design for Washington, DC began with a man, a map, and a grand vision. In March 1791, thirty-six-year-old Continental Army Major Peter Charles L'Enfant stopped along a creek and looked up towards a gentle terrace. Here a house for the President would rise. One mile east was Jenkins Hill, the future site of the US Capitol. L'Enfant called it a "pedestal waiting for a monument." That day marked the start of a visionary plan for the capitol of a young country. There was no design competition, and no budget. This exhibition focuses on George Washington and Peter L'Enfant's attempt to lay the foundation for the capital during the 1790s. L'Enfant's vision as unusually grand for planned cities of the time -- its six thousand acres were as large as New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia combined. Some disagreed about the vision and what its scale suggested about the ambitions of the new federal government. Thomas Jefferson's supporters saw the plan as a Federalist attempt to empower the federal government at the expense of the states. When Jefferson assumed the presidency in 1801, he stopped funding the plan's implementation. Yet L'Enfant's vision had already become known around the Atlantic world. It took L'Enfant only fourteen days to complete his vision. It would take another one hundred years to see it realized. This is the story of its beginnings: a spacious stage for a new empire.
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