Behind The City - Original Plans

In 1790 then President George Washington commissioned three men: Daniel Carrol, Thomas Johnson and David Stuart to create the nations capitol the personally handpicked area on the Potomac river in between Virginia and Maryland to be known as the District of Columbia in which the nations capitol city, Washington, would sit. The area can be seen in the figure to the right. It is important to note that Washington D.C. is not a state, nor is it a piece of either the state of Maryland or Virginia. The district of Columbia is a separate entity which encompasses the city of Washington, Arlington and Alexandria.

French born civil engineer Pierre L'Enfant was picked to plan the creation of what would become the worlds first planned capitol city. L'Enfant served as part of the army core of engineers during the American Revolution as well as was part of re-designing New York's city hall. His original plan now housed in the Library of Congress can be seen in the figure to the left. With progress not going at the rate President Washington desired L'Enfant fell out of favor with the President and his partner Andrew Ellicot took over to continue the plan while adding a few changes. The diagonal roads were left as part of the plan to create "nodes" for the creation of national monuments to someday sit in the open areas.

By the time Abraham Lincoln became president the nations capitol planners had struggled to continue with the over arching plan of placing monuments among the federal buildings throughout Washington. those areas had now turned into bad areas where poverty had taken over and the cities image was undesirable to say the least. The "City Beautiful" plan was enacted with the creation of the Washington monument and the Nations capitol that we know today.

The City Beautiful plan lead the to Senate appointed McMillan Commission in the early 1900s. This commission went back to the original ideas of L'Enfant and attempted to follow the European cities of Paris and London. Major pieces of this plan was to remove the slums around the capitol area of the city and replace them with new monuments to historic figures of the nations past. although many projects were completed during this time, the creation of the national mall and Lincoln monument in 1922 has said to have been the completion of this process.

Why is the history of the city important to the Washington D.C. we know today?

Without so many people pouring in resources and time into the creation of the nations capitol city there is no way it could be the tourism hot spot that it is today. From the very beginning with President Washington the idea was held that our nations capitol had to be a testament to the nation, a place where one could see the nations major accomplishments in its architecture and monuments. this idea was held through President Lincoln all the way to the McMillan commission.