From: Dustin Hurt
Date: 2/21/00
Time: 8:31:30 PM
Remote Name: 155.247.31.30
Dustin Hurt History 67 21 February, 2000
When the founders of America imagined a capital city they imagined one that contained the best parts of several European models. In Jefferson’s letter to L’Enfant he refers to the cities of Frankfort-on-the-Mayne, Carlsruhe, Amsterdam, Strasburg, Paris, Orleans, Bordeaux, Lyons, Montpelier, Marseilles, Turin, and Milan, as cities that he likes. He even goes as far as providing the designer with detailed maps with observations on each. The city was to be a where the government would be centrally located and easy to get to. It would have a deep port for commerce and public parks for convenient everyday recreation. The "Mall", as one such park was called, was to contain "public buildings to house government offices, museums, theaters, and foreign embassies, providing "...all such sort of places as may be attractive to the learned and afford diversion to the idle."" The man that founders turned to was Pierre Charles L'Enfant. He was an engineer from France who had earned the recognition of George Washington during the Revolutionary War. L'Enfant had worked on projects such as Federal Hall in New York City before being appointed to design a new capital city in 1791. A year later he was let go from the project because of a disagreement with the committee that Washington had appointed to oversee the new capital.