Evening Star Newspaper, March 3, 1929, Page 62

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, / D. €, MARCH. 8 1929—PART 7. L’Enfant Vision of Future Was/Forecast of Beauty: of Capital [ BY JOHN CLAGETT PROCTOR. F the many thousands of visi- tors who are here today and who will remain here tomor- row to witness the inauguration / of Herbert Hoover as Presi- dent of the United States, and who will in their spare moments g thtseeing around our attractive city, there am & very few, indeed, who have ever heard the story of the French en- gineer whose mind conceived the plan for the greatest and most beautiful capital city in all the world—Washing- ton. ‘Thers is no question as to where Gen. Wumn‘tl: al placed, though was astute enough not open- ly to make known his ference in edvance for the Potomac site, However, once the measure of July 16, 1790, was a law—permitting the selection of a site “on the River Potomac, at some -place between the mouths of the East- em Branch and the Connogocheague— he lost no time appoint commis- eloners as provided for, and, inciden~ tally, citizens who undoubtedly would carry out his wishes in the matter. Having determined upon the site, the next thing the first President did was to find some competent person to de- sign and plan the city, and some one to survey and lay it out. For the for- mer, Maj. Plerre Charles L'Enfant was selected, and for the latter Maj. An- drew Ellicott was employed. Maj. L’Enfant’s qualifications well fit- ted him for the duties he was called uxan to perform. He had been educat- ed in the best military schools of France, coming to America in the Fall of 1777, with M. Ducoudray, having served abroad as lieutenant in the French Provincial Service. Soon after his arrival in this country he was pro- moted to a captaincy of Engineers, Feb- Tuary 18, 1778, and after the war was granted the rank of major by brevet ‘upon his own application, May 2, 1783. His war record was one to be proud of, he having been wounded on the bat- tlefleld of Savannah. made a prisoner under Sir Henry Clinton and paroled May, 1780, by Maj. Stuart, commission- er of prisoners; exchanged at New York on January 17, 1782. He did excellent service, too, during the period of the ‘War for Independence, when his serv- ices were available, in teaching the Americans how to plan and rear forti- fications. * ok ok x AP'I‘ER the close of the war, he re- modeled and fitted up the City Hall in New York for the use of the First Congress, and his subsequent sim- ilar treatment of the Federal House in Philadelphia reflected much eredit upon his ability as an architect and designer. Hence it was but natural that Washing- ton should turn to him for the plan of the city he hoped to see grow on the banks of the Potomac, only 16 miles morth of his beloved Mount Vernon. Indeed, L’Enfant was quite desirous of drawing the plans for the new city, in which he saw so many possibilities— a great and a golden opportunity for everlasting fame for himself. And so as early as September 11, 1789, nearly a whole year prior to the passage of the so-called resident act, he addressed & letter to Washington, soliciting for himself the appointment to design the Capital City when Congress had pro- vided for the same. His letter to the , first President reads: “The late determination of canfiul %o lay the foundation of & city which §s to become the Capital of this vast empire offers so great an occasion of ecquiring reputation to whoever may be appointed to conduct the execution of the business that your excellency will not be surprised that my ambition and the desire I have of becoming a useful citizen should lead me to wish & share in the undertaking. “No_nation, perhaps, had ever be- | bulldin, fore the opportunity offered them of «deliberately deciding on the spot where ,their capital city should be fixed or of combining .every necessary considera- Final Recognition of His Service to Nation Came When' Century-Late Cortege Bore His Remains to Arlifigton— Patriot of Revolution Decorated at Present Grave by Society of Cincinnati. §~ PIERRE CHA\RLBS L'ENFANT. tion in the choice of situation, and although the means ‘now within the power of ‘thé country are not such as to pursue the design to any great ex- tent, it will be obvious that the plan should be drawn on such a scale as to leave room for the aggrandizement and embellishment which the increase of the wealth of the Nation will permit it to c’&urs\u at any period, however re- mote. Reviewing the matter in this light, I am fully sensible of the extent of the undertaking, and under the hope of a continuance of the indulgence you have hitherto honored me with I now presume to solicit the favor of being employed in this business.” * k% X MONTH and & half prior to the luin, of the corner stone of the District of Columbia, which took place on April 15, 1791, Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, addressed the following letter to Maj. L’Enfant: “Sir: You are desired to proceed to Georgetown, where you will find Mr, Ellicott employed in making a survey and maps of the Federal Territory. ‘The special object of asking your aid is to have the drawings of the particu- lar grounds most likely to be approved for the site of the Federal town and gs. You will, therefore, be pleased to begin on the Eastern Branch and proceed from thence upward, lay ing cown the hills, valleys, morasses and waters between that, the Potomae, (Reproduced from an ald engraving.) the Tyber and the road leading from Georgetown to the Eastern Branch and connecting the whole with certain fixed points on the maps Mr. Ellicott is preparing. Some idea of the height of the lands above the base on which they stand would be desirable. For necessary assistance and expenses be pleased to apply to the mayor of Georgetown, who is. written to on this subject. I will beg the favor of you to mark to me your progress abou twice a week, by letter, say every Wed- nesday and Saturday' evenings, that I may able in proper time to draw your attention to some other objects which I have not at this moment suffi- cient information to define. “I am with great esteem, sir, your most obedient humble servts., ¢ ; he following two As will be seen by the follo: items, published in the Georgetown Weekly er of March 132, 1791, both Maj. Andrew Ellicott and Maj. L'Enfant were on the ground, and, indeed, Ellicott had aiready made much progress in running the four lines of the Federal Capital. Of the two men the Ledger says: “Some time last month arrived in this town Maj. Andrew Ellicott, & gentle- man of superior astronomical abilities. He was appointed by the President of the Unif States to lay off a tract of land 10 miles square on the Potomac for the use of Congress. He is now en- gaged in this business and hopes soon to accomplish the object of his mission. He is attended by Benjamin Banniker, an Ethiopian, whose abilities as a sur- veyor and astronomer clearly prove that Mr. Jefferson’s conclud men were void of mental endowments was without foundation. “Wednesday evening arrived in this town Maj. umg:nt. a_French gentle- man, employed by the President of the United States to survey the lands con= Georgetown where the ‘Fed- that race of the obstruction, it was orders November - 23, Board Commissioners supreme control of time a plat of u:'n. parcel of land before | miss the upon his arrval in this town.” L'Enfant was very enthusiastic over the site selected, no doubt, &t the dic- tates of Washington,. and on March 11, two days after his arrival in George- town, wrote to Mr. Jefferson & letter, in which he said: A e 3 on many which appeared to me really beautiful and wi seem 1o te with each other who command. the most ex- tensive pi 't on the water the grad- ual rising of the ground from Carroll- borough toward Ferry road, the level and extensive gound from there to the bank of the Potomac as far as Goose Oreek present a situation most ad- vantageous to run streets and prolon them on grand and far distant poin| of view.” * ok ok % Maj. L'Enfant it may truth- folly be sald, that he was & man of most wonderful foresight and vision. He had no idea of building a Capital QCity for 13 States and 3,000,000 of peo~ ple, but he bullded for the future—a great republic of 50 States with possible population of 500,000,000. le viewed the site selected from many points on the Potomac River, from the lofty elevations of Georgetown and from the Anacostia hills, in order to determine the best location for the public bulldings and to arrange th best treatment for the streets, av nues and parks he had in contempla- tion. L'Enfant's ideas were original He realized the opportunity and wanted to meet it. | “It is not the regular assemblage of houses lald out in squares and forming streets, all parallel and uniform,” he says, “that is so necessary, for such a plan could do on a well level plain, and where no surrounding object being in- teresting it becomes indifferent, which way the opening of the streets may be directed. Such a regular plan is but & mean continuance of some cool imag- ination wanting a sense of the real grand and truly beautiful, only to be | met with when nature contrbutes with art and diversify the objects.” He rllnn.d for the placing of the Cnfllto Building on Jenkins Hill, where it is today, and in one of his letters we find him referring to this particular location by saying: | “After much menutial search for an eligible situation, prompted, I may eay, from a fear of being prejudiced in fa-| vour of a first opinion, I could discover | no one so advantageously to greet the Congressional bullding as is that on the west end of Jenkins heights (Cap- itol HI), which stand as a pedestal waiting for & monument, and I am confident, were all the wood cleared from the ground, no situation could| stand in competition with this. So might perhaps ire less be rendered agreeable, but after all as- sistance of arts none ever would be made so grand and al other would appear but of secondary nature.” Added to this is his reference to the placing of the White House, which is| especially interesting just now: “That were I to determine the seat of the dential palace, in its differ- | ence of nature, mng be view of ad- vantageous to the object of adding to the sumptuousness of a palace of co! venience of a house and the agreeable- ness of country seat situated on that ridge which attracted {n ntion at the first inspection of the ground on the west side of the Tiber entrance it will see 10 or 12 miles down the Po- towmack front the town and harbor of Alexandria, and stand to the view of the whole city and have the most improved part of it made by addition to those grand improvements for which the ground in the dependently of the palace is to proper.” * ok ok X TH‘I beginning of the end of L'En- fant's connection with the design- ing of the District came before Presi- dent Washington had submitted to Con- gress on December 13, 1781, the record of his plans. It was then that Wash- ington directed to clear away all om;gnom in the way of his survey- 08, ough a genius in some respects, yet L'Enfant demonstrated right here . He must know, he_continues, “there is a line beyond whidh he will not be suffered to go. Whether it is zeal—an impetuous te; or other motive that leads him into such blam- able conduct I will not take upon myself to decide, but be it what it will, it must be ch or we shall have no Com- missioners.” In another letter on the same subject he makes the broad asser- tion that “I know not where another to be found who could supply his piace A matter even more serfous' than this and which caused the dismissal of L’Enfant about February 27, 1792, was his failure to have engraved plans in readiness for the advertised sale of lots which were scheduled to bey on October 17, 1791, L'Enfant’s reason for refusing to turn over the plans to the Commissioners to be engraved was his bellef that if published the plan would be made use of by speculators to pur- | chase the best locations in his “vistas and architectural squares and raise huddles of shanties which would per- manently disfigure the city.” It was then that Washington dismissed Maj. L'Enfant and_appointed in his place Maj. Andrew Ellicott, who made a plan of close imitation to L'Enfant's which was secured by the Government after the lattter's death and now is safely stored in the lonal Library. Glenn Brown tells us—and we all know it to be true—that: “The plan was not NXM from any existing city. The radiating streets and vistas of modern Paris were all Pl ‘WASH. devised under the two Napoleons and L'Enfant’s and Washington's plan was | drawn in 1791 L 'HE question of compensation was taken up by President Washington, who suggested that Ma). L'Enfant be offered for his services “500 guineas and a lot in & good part of the city.” The Commissioners adopted the Presi- d-nt’s idea and made the offer to Maj. | L'Enfant, but he declined to accept it | s being erftirely inadequate. As a mat- ter of record, his total amount of com- pensation for planning the beautiful City of Washington was $600 from the | city funds, plus his expenses; $1,394.20 granted him by Congress in 1810 and $200 due on a lot purchased by him from the city funds, making in all a total of a little over $2,000. He was at one time tendered a position as an instructor at West Point, but declined it, possibly feeling that an acceptance would prejudice his claim for compen- sation as the designer of the city. It may be said here that President ‘Washington himself unreservedly gave L'Enfant the credit for designing the Capital and only parte¢ with his services when there was no other way out of the peculiar and unfortunate situation. After the burning of Washington the British on August 24, 1814, L'Enfant was placed in charge of restoring Fert RUNNING THE LINES OF THE Washington, on the Potomac, it having been blown up and abandoned by the cowardly American officer in charge when he learned of the approach of the enemy. This was probably L'Enfant’s last Kr.:fesslonll engagement and from this time on he was practically s subject of charity. He was born in France on August 2, | 1755, and is said to have been 6 feet tall {and of military bearing. For a time | subsequent to the American Revolution | he lived for a while with the Calverts, near Marlboro, Md. Some years before his death, which occurred June 14, 1825, he was invited by William Dudley Digges to come and live with him at his estate, near Chillum, Prince County, Md., and it was here away at the age of 70 led on the te. Here all that was morta) the great engineer reposed in an unmarked grave until removed to Arlington just 20 years ago. | I THE CITY OF WASH SURVEYOR'S TRANSIT USED BY MAJ. ANDREW ELLICOTT IN DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AND LATER IN LOCATING THE BOUNDARY LINES BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE SPANISH POSSESSIONS. THE INSTRU- MENT IS ON EXHIBITION AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. In 1884, John A. Kasson, an ear! ident of the Columbis Histori ety of Wi , D, C, then a member of the States of | been the fariand Tepied that nothing seems | Senator Bacon then took from the to hawe been nearly a fourth of a century later, when the sundry civil bill of 1908, thro the persistent efforts of the Columl Historical Society, contained the follow- ing clause: ‘One thousand dollars is made avail- able for the Commissioners of the Dis- trict of Columbia to remave and render accessible to_the public the grave of Ma)j. Plerre Charles L'Enfant.” LI estate. | oHE disinterment of the body which had lain on the Digges farm for so many years took place on April 22, 1909, in the presence of Henry B. F. Macfar- land, then Commissioner of the Dis- trict of Columbia; Dr. James Dudley Morgan, & grandson of William Dudiey Digges, who befriended L'Enfant; Dr. William Tindall, who for many years served as secretary to the Commission- ers, and Mr. George Howard, a grand- son of George Riggs, the then owner of Green Hill,” under the supervision of the quartermaster general's department of the United States Army, Of the reinterment of the body of Maj. L'Enfant, Dr. James Dudley Mor- rln.'fl in the records of the Co- umbia ical Bociety, has this to say: “The tall, slender tree which marked the spot where the Franco-American hhey“nmg Which had been planted at the of the e Mount Olivet Cemetery, where it lay until the morning of 28, when it was taken, under milll escort tailed from the 2d Battalion, Corps of Engineers, Capt. Michael J. M h commanding, to the rotunda of the Olfiwl. where it lay in state from 9 until 12 o'clock. Frenchman's name, thousands who have praised the broad avenues of the Capital City, yet knew not whose hand designed them or in whose brain the scheme of the city was born, learned that the name of L'Enfant had been blazoned at the top of the roll on which are graven those illustrious names whose memory will last as long as the beauti- ful city with which they are L’ “The long J“" of obscurity and lack of appreciation which sarouded the fame of the Revolutionary hero and hm architect were rolled away in the tol rotunda, as the Ambassador from Erance, the Vice sands had passed on which reposed the casket, draped the American flm&flm men and women, school o history Pt et casce ¥a: on » e grea was lifted by eight sturdy sergeants of the Engineer Corps and borne to the cais- son of an artillery gun, and a long de- layed triumphal ‘march which should have been L'Enfant’s nearly a centur; 8g0, was begun to Arlington. “L'Enfant’s membership in the Cin- cinnati, for which society he designec the badge and the certificate, was em rhuued by two incidents. As the Pres dent of the United States entered th rotunda, the blue and silver banner c insignia or emblem of the soclety hac casket. Mr. Mac- there had not been lape’ of the Cincinnat’ and, handing of his coat the ba which he was h | to Mr. Macfarland, requested him to de- g\t it In the grave with the remains is commission Chairman Macfarlanc eiwecukd Just before the grave wa: Closed ™ ‘Those who have the time to visit Ar- lington while here attending in- augural exercises, or at other time: rhm;l:gmn( the m".fl will find ‘hfil rrt Ing in & most fitting spot just ir front of the mansion house, overiookin: 3 ve is marked witi tal g:g which are depicte: the outlines of the city he designatec and at least lived to see partly on i way toward the great capital it is toda TON IN 1800, AS VIEWED BY L'ENFANT. | 1929 Inaugural Period Is Centenary of Old Hickory’s Triumph : 1 BY VICTORIA FABER STEVENSON. T was just a 100 years ago that Washington broke out in spon- taneous enthusiasm over the hero of New Orleans. “Hurrsh for Jack- son!” became the cry of the streets from the time “Old Hickory” drove into ‘Washington on February 11, 1829, until sfter the ceremonies of Inauguration day. In order to be sure of reaching the Capitadl and looking over the political field by the day that Adams’ term was to expire and his own begin, Jackson ville, Tenn,, Janugry 17. Perhaps the account of cne general trip to Washington as President-elect emphasizes more than any other nar- . Then the 1 o nf n 12.000.0% At that ducted to the hotel, which was crowded with visitors until we left at 10 o'clock at night.” * ok ok K WHEN the party arrived at Wheeling there was another large gather- ing to honor the distinguished traveler, here the party of the President-elect coaches to travel over the old ’cumberhnd road and on to Wash- on. t old pike between Wheeling and Cumberland, built by the Federal Gov- ernment at a cost of seven million, was the pride of the Nation as far as roads went. It was the highway over which the products of the South and the then Southwest were brought East. It was the only path by which settlers were already moving from the Eastern States to the Western lands known today as Ohio, Tennessee, Indiana, Ill- inols, Michigan, Kentucky and Missouri. Droves of cattle from beyond the Alleghany Mountains were driver *-| Eastern markets over it, and pr- of covered wagons were takin " and their household goods . the new homes in the West over ihe the | wide trail. Coach drivers did a thriv- E il i ing business conveying passengers East and West, and those who ' Lught such men as Henry chy.h'rhnnms Bemn and Davy Crockett Congress k pfl%n !nvt,ha "chlls' of their patrons. low in honor of the President-elect, edged his way in to speak to Jackson. Upon asking the general what he like to have served for his supper he received the response, “Ham and " As he was surprised, he repeat question, only to receive the same ane wer, * 2ok % F the .presidential party had not ar- rived in Washington four hours ahead of schedule, the entrance would the general had reached Frederick, Md. So without telling any one he went out to mmmmd i 7o him into town to ational Hotel. adiar 1 B ke o ay, organi prominent personages.to meet the Presi- dent-elect out in Maryland and accom- any him to the Capital with the sa- ute of cunnon. As soon as it became ~wn_toat Andre'd.uouon had ar- ns roared and drummers aided mveleomu to the hero of New orl 7 P‘h ident Adams, who waited by day for the general to call at the House. was disappointed. He even sent .| Tradition relates that James Reeside, | THO who owried several wagons and coaches of th‘g.m tel:tdby'fln: A Tackrons on election, Ir‘l‘mmn’lflm acl Adams, he déclined remained away weeks H k4 fgi i £ o g g A i g i ge TH| B ] an escort of | 1 ANDREW. JACKSON. {Reproduction from an old engraving.) Many of those who came to the Cap- biatantly declared that he had delivered the !t:‘h’o of Pennsylvania to Jackson, * xR WIDNBDAY. March 4, 1829, the day of the inauguration, was heralded by blasts of cannon. Streams of people turned out in the Springlike weather. wagons and dirt carts passengers tcuched each other as they rumbled down Pennsyl- avenue, where crowds hurried to- ward the Capitol. At that time were 20, ts in . ¢ front of those Wl that 1s true, all ‘Washington must have R B23E ot Il mansion. In the attempt to serve re- freshments, which had been provided for out-of-town visitors, fine giass and china were broken and the crowds which might have crushed him. Fortunately, he was able to leave the Executive Mansion early in the aft- ernoon and retreat to by's. LR R AN'DRIW JACKSON, as the admired, loved and honored President was joined with the visitors in the | the tion. BEEEE it : gi = siaadh 7 : g EE i | i : 5 g & i ] »F: o 44 2 B2 Donelson, was in affluent circumstances, she took boarders for the protection they gave her against the Int It tel During the next five years & earned his share of the wi [ ol 5! : E H A HA 8 1 B8y I i E i § if -1 % ) i H e % s ;5%‘ ]