Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C.

Part I. Locus Of The New Republic

Locus of the New Republic The polluted Washington City Canal in 1860,an affront to L'Enfant's hopes for an aesthetic waterway at the foot of the Capitol . CourtesyNational Archives. In determining to fashion a new capital out of the wilderness, the founders of Washington, D.C., had the opportunity to mold a place entirely to their liking. At an early stage, they thought boldly. They embraced a grand plan for a new city at the heart of the federal district, anticipating that its advantageous location on the Potomac River would generate the commerce and subsequent growth necessary to achieve the expectations of that plan. Success demanded a close partnership between federal and local interests, and that seemed assured from the active role George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other leaders of the new republic played in the capital. Almost from the start,however, those high expectations were compromised. Despite the best intentions of its founders, Washington less than its rivals benefited from government largess in the early republic. Elsewhere city governments and state legislatures promoted urban growth, aggressively supporting internal improvements to hasten trade and investing in the physical plant of cities. While Congress maintained a relationship to Washington akin to that between other cities and their states, it lacked the same loyalty to its urban constituents. By delaying investments in internal improvements, the federal government dampened Washington's prospects for economic self-sufficiency With the city lacking the anticipated revenues of trade, Congress assured its dependency on federal funding for physical improvement. But lacking the will to pay for services not directly related to its own functioning,the government proved doublyparsimonious. As a result,while the nation clungto hopes that abeautiful and magnificent city would soon emerge, Washington retained the reputation more of an unkept village. Even as Congressremained reluctant to spend money on the new city,it played an active role in Washington's affairs, not the least in attempting to regulate race relations. In accepting the prevailing laws along with the land ceded to the new federal district by Maryland and Virginia, Congress assured at the capital not only a significant black presence but the practice of slavery.Sincethe capital's location had been tied from the start to slaveryby those seeking to protect their interests from government interference, the issuewas bound to affect Washington as it more bitterly divided the nation. Under pressure from those who saw Congress's power of exclusivejurisdiction as a means of securing one measure of socialjustice through the emancipation of slavesheld in the District of Columbia, the capital became quite a different symbol than the city's founders had envisioned. By the time of the Civil War neither the concerns of race nor physical development had been resolved fully. It remained clear through Washington's early history only that the two issues would remain inseparably linked. ...