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

Chapter 1. City of Failed Intentions

City of Failed Intentions To change a Wilderness into a City, to erect and beautify Buildings &ca.to that degree of perfection,necessaryto receive the Seat of Governmentof so extensive an Empire, in the short period of time that remains to effect these objects is an undertaking vast as it is Novel,and reflectingthat all this is to be done under the many disadvantages of opposing interests which must long continue to foment Contention amongthe variousBranches of the Union-the only expedient is to conciliate, and interest the Minds of all Ranks of People of the propriety of the Pursuitby engagingthe nationalFame in its Success,evincingin its progressthat utility and Splendor,capable of rendering the Establishment unrivalled in greatnessby allthosenow existing,by holdingout forcibleinducementsto all Ranks of People. Pierre Charles L'Enfant to Thomas Jefferson, February 26,1792 The establishment of a permanent capital for the new nation in 1790 was an event of immense importance. Forged at a critical point in the early nation-building process, the compromise that located the federal district on the Potomac River after years of contention between the states promised , as George Washington put it, to unify the country by creating a port city capable of exploiting to national advantage the rich agricultural hinterland of the western frontier. As it emerged from the wilderness, this new city could aspire to the status of New York or Philadelphia, or even London and Paris eventually.But even more was anticipated. By castingWashington as a symbol for the nation, the city's designer, the French architect and engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant, expected it to inspire national pride through the beauty of its buildings and magnificence of its physical plant. Exemplifying national aspirations for grandeur, Washington would prove viable enough economically to serve federal needs for years to come. Beauty would be yoked to enterprise. In fact, nothing like that happened in Washington's earlyhistory, and in this failure lay the central contradiction in the founders' hopes for the new capital. Created as a city to inspire respect through the realization of an aesthetically powerful and inspiring physicalpresence, Washington instead fell victim to the constraints of its peculiar political culture, a city of magnificent but hopelessly failed intentions. Washington's symbolic role followed most powerfully from L'Enfant, whom George Washington called upon in 1790 to design the new capital. Imbued with America's revolutionary fervor out of his own participation as a military volunteer in the conflict, L'Enfant described to Congress in 1784his hopes for a capital sufficient "to give an idea of the greatness of the empire aswell asto engravein everymind that sense ofrespect that is due to a place which is the seat of supreme sovereignty." Five years later he wrote President Washington of the unprecedented opportunity for America to choose its own site for a capital. Noting that the nation as yet lacked the means "to pursue the design to any great extent," he nonetheless urged that any plan "should be drawn on such a scaleas to leave room for that aggrandizement and embellishment which the increase of the wealth of the Nation will permit it to pursue at any period however remote."' L'Enfant's first surveys of the area generally designated for the new capital immediately impressed him with the beauty of the site and convinced him of the importance of building on that advantage. As he wrote Washington's chief agent in the area, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, his intent was to "unite the usfull with the comodious & agreable viewing ."* To do this, he conceived of making ornamental even such a basic urban function as a canal intended to link shipping activities in the existing town of Georgetown with the superior deep water port envisioned for the Potomac's Eastern Branch, or Anacostia River. Other uses of water would help beautify and embellish the capital in ways equal to the leading urban centers of Europe. A great avenue would extend from Georgetown to the Anacostia "laid out on a dimension proportioned to the greatness which .. .the Capital of a powerful Empire ought to manifest."' Given the excuse to plan a large city at the heart of the federal district, appropriately named after Washington himself,4 L'Enfant conceived of creating strong relationships between the two central nodes of government. In locating the Capitol a mile and a half distant from the president's house and other public buildings, L'Enfant raised some practical concern about the difficulty of conducting federal...