Little-Known Facts About Our Hometown: Washington, D.C

This December will mark the 240th anniversary of what was a big month for one of this country’s biggest heroes, George Washington. On Dec. 4, 1783, after the end of an eight-year war of independence against the British, Gen. Washington, as he was then known, bid farewell to fellow officers in a Manhattan tavern. Weeks later, on Dec. 23, he officially resigned as commander in chief in Annapolis, Maryland, then headed home, to his estate in Mount Vernon, Virginia, for a well-deserved rest.

But Washington’s service was far from over. In 1787, he served as president of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and, in 1789, was elected the first President of the United States.

One reason these details are significant is, a year later, Washington oversaw the passage of the Residence Act, which established a relatively uninhabited, 61-square-mile swath of land — a mix of farms, forests, and hills divided between Maryland and Virginia — as the seat of a new national government. Not only would it be named for Washington; but it also happens to be our hometown.  

The story behind the design of Washington, D.C., as noted in an earlier post, is a fascinating tale of collaboration, politics, and patience. It’s also replete with little-known facts about the nation’s capital, which, to those not living there, may seem like a one-note, two-party town, but is really much more.  

So as we approach the Big Man’s big month, we’d like to rehash D.C.’s origin story and share some of its fascinating, not-so-well-documented details.

First, Some Background

Just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, it took Washington, D.C., we’re all acquainted with a long time (more than 100 years) to see the light of day. While its design and construction were the result of a series of collaborative efforts, two gentlemen in particular were crucial in kicking off the project.

One was a Frenchman, Pierre Charles L’Enfant. Born in Paris in 1754, he later studied at the prestigious Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, where his father was a teacher, and, in 1776, volunteered to fight alongside colonist forces in America’s Revolutionary War. Serving primarily as a draftsman and surveyor, he created drawings for the American army’s first training manual and, at one point, drew a portrait of Gen. George Washington, with whom he served at Valley Forge.

In 1779, L’Enfant was wounded in battle and, a year later, taken as a prisoner. But as the result of a prisoner swap, he was released and continued to serve under Washington.

By the time the war ended, he’d attained the rank of major in the Corps of Engineers and completed several high-profile design projects, winning favor with Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Later, while working in a New York City architectural firm, he designed coins, medals, furniture, houses, and a church altar. In 1788, he was commissioned to redesign NYC’s Federal Hall, which, at the time, housed the national government.  

So it only made sense, in 1791, that Washington would assign L’Enfant with the task of creating a design for the city. What our first president didn’t know was that as brilliant as L’Enfant was, he didn’t always get along with others.   

The Rest of the Team

Designing the nation’s capital was, of course, much more than a one-person job. So two other gents, both Marylanders, were brought in to help. An engineer named Andrew Ellicott was charged with surveying, or mapping out, the set-aside land in detail, a task he shared with his assistant, Benjamin Banneker, a Black man whose background, at the time, was exceedingly unique.

Maryland was a slave state in the 18th century, but Banneker, the son of a former slave who’d been given his freedom and a woman of mixed race, was born free in 1731. While growing up on the family’s 100-acre farm, he also excelled at school and read books voraciously. He went on to become a true Renaissance man who, among other feats, taught himself astronomy, built an irrigation system for the farm, and authored a popular series of almanacs.

Like Ellicott, he was also a big fan of the plan L’Enfant had come up with. Inspired by his hometown of Paris as well as other European cities, L’Enfant combined a conventional grid of streets with an extensive network of broad, diagonal axes featuring wide boulevards, public squares, and spaces reserved for government buildings. He also set aside a sizable chunk of open space for what would later become the National Mall.

Decidedly non-European was the absence of a palace. Instead, L’Enfant’s D.C. centerpiece was the headquarters of the elected members of Congress—the U.S. Capitol. He proposed that it sit on a hill overlooking the city’s landmarks, including, at the other end of Pennsylvania Ave., what would later be known as the White House.

Washington Did Not Sleep There

One quick note about the White House, and George Washington. While he chose the site for the president’s residence in 1791 and oversaw some of its construction, he never moved in. In fact, Washington’s tenure as chief executive ended in 1797, and he passed away in 1799, one year before the federal government officially moved from Philadelphia to D.C., which was still very much a work in progress. While president, Washington resided in both Philly and New York City.

The first president to live in the White House was the nation’s second, John Adams. Even then, the residence was unfinished, and over the next 150 years—thanks to wars, wear and tear—it would be rebuilt and refurbished several times before coming to resemble what we see today.

So, yes, the one place George Washington didn’t ever sleep was the White House. But let’s get back to L’Enfant and Banneker.

Trouble in Paradise

Everybody agreed: L’Enfant’s was a great plan. But seeing it come to fruition, was a bit more complicated.

Long story short, L’Enfant was neither easy to get along with nor politically minded. So even though three DC design commissioners were in charge of the project, L’Enfant refused to answer to anyone but Washington. After stepping on several toes, he got himself fired and was so distraught, that he reportedly took the plan with him.

“Reportedly” because the next part of this story is the subject of dispute. Some claim that Ellicott saved copies of L’Enfant’s plan, while others say it was Banneker, who, thanks to his prodigious talents, was able to sketch the plan from memory.

Whatever the truth, a version of L’Enfant’s plan was used to launch the construction of the district project at the start of the 19th century. But the D.C. we know today would be put on hold for another hundred years.

About Those Blossoms

Before we finish the story, a clarification for anyone who might think otherwise. One of D.C.’s biggest tourist attractions, the springtime arrival of its cherry blossoms, was not part of L’Enfant’s plan. It wasn’t until 1885 that an American writer and world traveler set in motion a chain of events that would result in what’s now the 111-year-old National Cherry Blossom Festival.

Her name was Eliza Scidmore, and upon returning to D.C. after a trip to Japan, she proposed to the equivalent of the Parks and Recreation Department that it plant Japanese cherry trees along the Potomac River. But her request was ignored, again and again, for about 25 years.

Finally, in 1909, she sparked the interest of then-First Lady Helen Taft, who’d lived in Japan and knew of the trees. When she, too, expressed an interest in having them planted, visitors from Japan caught wind and then reached out to Tokyo’s mayor.

After fits and starts, including one shipment unknowingly infected with insects, more than 3,000 trees arrived in D.C. in March 1912 and were planted along the banks of the Tidal Basin. During a sparsely attended ceremony, Mrs. Taft returned the gesture by giving a bouquet of “American Beauty” roses to a Japanese representative. And so began the festival, which, today, draws more than a million people and, depending on peak bloom times, takes place between late March and mid-April every year.

So, now, let’s finish our design story.

L’Enfant’s Plan Finally Realized

For a host of reasons—L’Enfant’s dismissal, the vagaries of the real estate business, the Civil War—it took time to fully realize L’Enfant’s vision of Washington, D.C. By 1900, the city was still mostly populated by farms and cattle and a “mall” that was a mishmash of parklands. It was far from what everyone involved in the original plan had intended.

So in 1901, a Congressional commission began work on what would become “The McMillan Plan,” named after the commission’s chairman, Sen. James McMillan. It essentially realized L’Enfant’s vision and, over the next few decades, served as a blueprint for the construction of the National Mall, museums, monuments, and government buildings standing today.

L’Enfant himself, of course, was long gone by then. He’d died poor, at age 71, in 1825 and was buried on the farm of a friend. But with his reputation now restored, his body was exhumed in 1901 and moved to a place where American heroes are buried, Arlington National Cemetery.

The hallowed ground is located just across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., and his grave site, marked by a monument, lies on a hill overlooking the city he’d once envisioned.

As for George Washington—the victorious general, the country’s first president, the man who set the whole D.C. project in motion—his final resting place is where he’d hoped to retire after the war: Mount Vernon.