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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. |