L'Enfant's Slow March To Statuary Hall

Pierre Charles L'Enfant is one step closer to being memorialized in the US Capitol's Statuary Hall. The House of Representatives on 16 December passed a bill introduced by District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton that would allow DC to place a statue of a prominent District resident in the hall, an honor usually reserved for the states.

Should President Obama sign the bill into law after Senate passage--still an uncertainty--a L'Enfant statue could move into Statuary Hall immediately. The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities in 2006 tapped area artist Gordon Kray to sculpt a L'Enfant statue in anticipation of eventually being granted the right to place a DC statue alongside those of other American luminaries in the Capitol. Since its completion in 2007, the L'Enfant statue has stood in the lobby of a city government building located at 1 Judiciary Square (pictures below), a few steps away from a statue of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, also commissioned by the city for eventual placement in the Capitol.

If the current version of the bill (which only grants DC one statue in the hall) clears remaining legislative hurdles, the District will be forced to select either the L'Enfant or Douglass sculptures for placement in the Capitol.

Gordon Kray's L'Enfant statue at 1 Judiciary Square

The statue's profile appears to adhere closely to the only known contemproary likeness of L'Enfant, which was a silhouette executed by Sara DeHart in 1785 and today hangs in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the State Department. Attached to L'Enfant's lapel is a medallion denoting his membership in the Society of the Cincinnati, an organization whose membership was limited to officers who had served at least three years in the Continental Army or Navy. L'Enfant designed the society's medallion in the early 1780's.

A compass in L'Enfant's hand

Oddly enough, the map in L'Enfant's hand does not appear to be his plan for the city, but the one Andrew Ellicott slightly altered and engraved after L'Enfant's dismissal from the federal city project in 1792. (note the similarities between the title of this map and the Ellicott version found here)

Southwest One

Taking a small camera for picture-making and a canvas bag swung across the shoulders containing maps, compass, and other necessary equipment, and accompanied by either an agreeable friend or a chance acquaintance, the writer has traversed many a weary mile under the warm rays of a midsummer sun or the chilly winds of early autumn, and has garnered with the pictures of the old boundary stones a few items which may not be wholly devoid of interest to others.

-Fred Woodward, “With a Camera Over the Old District Boundary Lines,” 1908.

Mile marker one along the District of Columbia’s original southwest boundary line stands under a tree in the corner of a front yard on a quiet residential street in Alexandria, Virginia.

Approximately 100 years after Ellicott’s team finished its survey of the District’s original boundary line, area residents began taking an interest in the boundary stones’ condition and upkeep. The first known quest to visit each stone and record their condition for the public was undertaken by Marcus Baker, who began searching for them in June 1894 and spent “many delightful hours between four o’clock and sundown” doing so. Baker compiled notes on each stone’s condition between 1894 and 1897, eventually publishing his observations in 1897 in Volume I of the Records of the Columbia Historical Society. He wrote:

...inspection must be made from time to time and the inspection must be in turn followed by repairs and renewal when necessary if permanency is to be secured. The results of the inspection here described make plain the need of renewal in some cases and of repairs in others. The closing years of the century seem an opportune time to draw the attention of the proper authorities to the matter with a view to having this work done.

Baker was perhaps the first to appreciate the stones for their historical rather than utilitarian purpose, and though his 1897 call to preserve these early federal monuments had no immediate impact, the idea itself would be put forward by others who replicated his journey in the ensuing decades.

Baker’s observation of mile marker one (known as Southwest 1 or “SW1” for its position along the southwestern edge of the old District line) was fairly limited and straightforward. He wrote that the stone stood behind the house of Oscar Baggett and appeared “slightly seamed.” A more detailed description of each of the remaining 39 boundary stones was provided a few years later in 1906 by Fred Woodward, who was probably the first person to photograph all of them. Woodward found SW1 in good condition, “not seriously scarred or warn.” According to Woodward, SW1 was uprooted around 1904 or 1905 from its original location in a garden near Baggett's house where Baker had observed it and deposited on its side 225 feet away by a high picket fence at the edge of an open field adjoining Baggett’s property. When he visited it, Woodward had the stone raised upright so he could photograph its several sides, probably the only opportunity he had throughout his entire survey to view a stone in its entirety rather than just the part exposed to the elements.

SW1 (not SW2 as the photo incorrectly implies) as Woodward found it in 1906.

Writing in Volume 11 of the Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Woodward notes:

From this picture one gets an accurate idea of the original shape and size of the milestones, the lower half being left rough as it was quarried, while the remaining part of the stone was accurately sawed one foot square, the top being beveled for four inches.

SW1 was sometime after Woodward’s 1906 visit re-set into the ground but placed facing the wrong direction, turned 45 degrees from its original 1791 orientation so that the side denoting Virginia's jurisdiction actually faces in toward what was until 1846 considered the jurisdiction of the federal government.

One anomaly that Woodward noted but did not attempt to explain is the size of the letters on the side of the stone that would have originally faced inward toward the District (and, as seen in his photo above, reads “Jurisdiction of the United States -- 1 mile”) which are of a different size and script than all of the other stones. Edwin Nye, who wrote about SW1 in volume 48 of the Records of the Columbia Historical Society in 1972, surmised that the smaller, shallower, and less artistic script visible on SW1 indicates that it was carved by a different stonecutter than the rest of the boundary markers, leading him to speculate that Ellicott’s team was unhappy with this stonecutter’s work and hired another man to carve the remaining markers.

Aside from being the first to photograph all of the boundary markers, Woodward’s survey was instrumental because it led to increased awareness in the public at large not only of the stones’ existence, but also of their dilapidated and deteriorating states. Echoing Baker’s plea of the previous decade, Woodward recommended that each be surrounded by an iron fence “four or five feet square” so that these monuments would be preserved “for the benefit of those who come after us.”

Woodward’s advocacy on behalf of the stones in 1915 prompted local chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR)--a lineage-based women’s membership organization dedicated to promoting historic preservation, among other things--to in essence adopt one or several stones, collect funds for their protection, and raise further awareness for their preservation. Arrangements were made with a an iron-worker in late 1915 or 1916 for the creation of suitable iron fences “about 3 feet by 3 feet in size and 5 feet high” to be placed around each stone at a price of $18 each, equivalent in value to about $363 in 2009. According to DAR records, SW1 is the responsibility of the Mount Vernon Chapter--which also oversees the preservation (or lack thereof) of the South Corner Stone at Jones Point. A man who lives a few doors down from SW1 told me that the iron fence surrounding the stone was recently painted by the homeowner on whose property the stone is located, and that the Mount Vernon Chapter had no idea that it existed.

As the warm rays of the midsummer sun give way to the chilly winds of an early autumn, and with camera for picture-making and accompanied by either an agreeable friend or a chance acquaintance, I follow on in Woodward's footsteps (having traded his compass and maps for my GPS), continuing my search for the old District of Columbia boundary stones.

SW1, enclosed in its iron fence at the corner of Wilkes and Payne Streets in Alexandria, VA.

Top view

"1791," the year when Ellicott's survey team placed the boundary marker.

The inscription reads "Jurisdiction of the United States -- 1 mile," noting its position 1 mile from the South Corner Stone at Jones Point. This side would have originally faced inward toward territory that until 1846 was under federal government control. As will be seen, the script carved into the stone here is smaller and of a different style than on all the other stones. Edwin Nye suggests that this indicates Ellicott's survey team hired a different stonecutter from the man who carved SW1 to create the remaining boundary markers.

Close-up view of the above inscription.

"Virginia." Opposite the side that reads "Jurisdiction of the United States," this side would have originally faced out toward the Commonwealth of Virginia, but it was rotated 45 degrees sometime after Fred Woodward found it lying on its side near its present location in 1906.

‘Var.0°30’ W,’ the variation of the compass needle at this place in 1791.

SW1 shenanigans.

L'Enfant's City

Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the man credited with designing Washington, is buried among the United States’ most revered on a prominent hill in Arlington Cemetery, overlooking the city he conceived. His impressive burial plot--positioned just above John F. Kennedy’s eternal flame and in the shadow of Robert E. Lee’s Arlington House--belies his ignominious twilight years, which he spent living destitute on the outskirts of the project he envisioned but was prevented from seeing through to completion. When he died in 1825 in Prince George’s County, Maryland, in the home of a family who had taken him in, L’Enfant had little more to show for a life devoted to engineering, architecture, and urban planning than a few surveying tools and other possessions worth approximately $46.

Today we remember L’Enfant as the visionary who designed the national capital (or maybe even just the person after whom L’Enfant Plaza was named). Indeed, the inscription on his grave in Arlington, which first appeared when his remains were transferred there in 1902 from an inauspicious grave in Maryland, simply states that he was responsible for designing the Federal City under the direction of George Washington.

While “L’Enfant’s City” (the area between Florida Avenue and the Potomac, and bounded by the Anacostia in the east and Rock Creek Park in the west) largely resembles how the architect originally conceived of the area, L’Enfant only worked on the project for about a year. In designing the Federal City, L’Enfant displayed his usual penchant for the extravagant and exhibited an uncompromising nature that put him at odds with his direct superiors. His propensity to eliminate any obstacles in the drive to realize his grandiose vision (including entirely razing buildings that encroached on yet-to-be-built avenues) and his insistence that the city be realized as a whole rather than piecemeal eventually forced him from the project. L’Enfant’s imposing vision for a Federal City on the Potomac--what he prophesied would be the heart of a continental empire--outpaced the finances, patience, and political ambition of the still nascent republic. The tempestuous nature of L'Enfant's stint as chief designer of Washington was repeated throughout the rest of his career, forcing him to lurch from one unfinished project to the next.

Certainly, L’Enfant’s vision for the capital significantly influenced its final look and shape (as well as its specific location), but the actual plan that was engraved and utilized to build the city was one that Andrew Ellicott, geographer general of the United States, altered and changed without L’Enfant’s knowledge or consent. In his final days, after a handful of British invaders sacked the city in 1814, L’Enfant often roamed the uninhabited spaces of “his” capital city, traversing the empty, broad avenues that he conjured up two decades prior, “deploring the slightest deviation from his original design," as French diplomat Jean Jules Jusserand later wrote.

As the city grew throughout the course of the 19th century, little heed was paid to L’Enfant’s original plan. It wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century, in the midst of the City Beautiful movement, when interest in L’Enfant’s original vision for the city was revived. In January 1902, a Senate committee examining the improvement and development of Washington concluded that “The original plan of the city of Washington, having stood the test of a century, has met universal approval. The departures from that plan are to be regretted, and wherever possible, remedied.” Shortly thereafter, L’Enfant was reinterred in Arlington Cemetery, and the planner who died nearly penniless and in obscurity achieved the near-mythical status he had sought but failed to obtain.

L’Enfant’s fall from grace is largely forgotten today. What remains of the L’Enfant legend are mostly tales that sprung up following his death. Some of the more widespread include the notion that the city’s broad avenues and several circles and plazas were designed to better defend against invading armies or that they came about after the planner’s beer glass left several rings on his unfinished sketches. Another holds that he designed the city with no “J Street” because of his feud with the first Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Jay, and that Benjamin Banneker, the free African-American who helped survey the boundaries of the Federal District for a few months in 1791, recreated L’Enfant’s map from memory after the architect refused to hand over the plans around the time of his dismissal in early 1792.

While folktales are generally innocuous and perpetuated with no harm in mind, their usefulness as a means of communicating the past is insufficient. The mission of this blog, therefore, is simple: investigate the past and bring to light the history that we encounter daily in and around the District of Columbia.

By doing so, Colleen, Andrew, and I (and, anyone else inspired by our mission) hope to give Washingtonians a better understanding and greater appreciation for a city that is largely regarded with antipathy beyond (and, sadly, within) the Beltway. With former Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s disparaging remarks in mind (he recently described Washington as “the worst city in the world,” and once likened living here to "an intellectual lobotomy”) we set out not necessarily to add to the historical record, but to instead to make it more accessible and better understood.

“Excelsior!”