This Day in Architectural History (Pierre L'Enfant, Visionary Capital Planner, Dies Lonely Death)

June 14, 1825— Major Pierre L'Enfant, an architect who designed the capital of the new American republic only to miss out on his chance for credit and compensation, died at age 70 in Prince Georges County, Md., destitute and ignored by the seat of government he had helped conceive.

A trained painter who, like the Marquis de Lafayette, left his native France in a burst of youthful idealism to join the American colonies in their fight for freedom, L'Enfant caught the attention of George Washington with his draftsmanship skills while serving in the Continental Army Corps of Engineers. He not only endured the brutal winter at Valley Forge but suffered a grievous leg wound at the Battle of Savannah and spent six months as a prisoner of war after being captured at the Battle of Charleston.

After the war, L’Enfant worked on the insignia and diploma for the Society of Cincinnati and the design for New York’s Federal Hall. In 1789, even before Congress had formally approved a capital district for the nation, L’Enfant was lobbying Washington with his proposal for creating it.

Only 11 months after obtaining his prestigious architectural commission, L’Enfant was off the project—depending on who you believe, having resigned or been fired. In a way, the manner of his departure doesn’t matter, because, following continual clashes with the three supervisory commissioners of the new federal District of Columbia, he would have been gone in just a matter of time.

Perhaps taking a cue from his adored commander in the war, Washington, L’Enfant had neither requested nor been given a salary for his work in planning the district. But, as the years went by and his income from other projects dwindled, he felt the urgent need to press his claims.

It did not help that when he had left, he had annoyed many with his egotism, his overbearing ways, and his failure to adequately communicate his vision. He had ordered the demolition of a property belonging to a prominent resident; delayed producing a map for the sale of city lots; spoke and wrote English poorly; and, when he walked away from the project in a huff, taken all the plans with him.

For his last 15 years, the unmarried and childless L’Enfant lived as a charity case on the estate of his benefactor, William Dudley Digges. Long before he was buried in an unmarked grave on the plantation, he had haunted key figures in the city he designed through rambling letters and appearances, wearing his blue Continental Army uniform, in which he fruitlessly pressed his case for proper remuneration for his work. (He wanted $95,000 for his architectural services; Congress would go no higher than $3,800.)

The fulfillment of L’Enfant’s vision for the city—and his honor for creating it—did not occur until early in the 20^th century. The centennial celebration of Washington’s founding led the McMillan Commission—a panel of architects and planners appointed by the U.S. Senate—to consider how to beautify a metropolis that had fallen victim to decentralized, private land development.

The commission members sought to adapt L’Enfant’s original scheme in the light of the “City Beautiful” movement coming into being.

At the same time, a parallel movement grew to remember L’Enfant in the fashion he craved during life. His remains were exhumed, transported in in a casket draped with the American flag to the U.S. Capitol (where he became the first foreign-born man to lie in state) before being taken by military escort to Arlington National Cemetery. There he was buried overlooking the city he had created.

Some aspects of L’Enfant’s plan, such as a waterfall flowing down Capitol Hill, never came to fruition. But others eventually were adopted, including:

*the seat of government on Capitol Hill;

*the mall connecting Capitol Hill to what he called “The President’s House” and we call the White House;

* a four-quadrant grid, with north-south and east-west streets crossed by grand diagonal avenues, creating public squares and beautiful buildings in what consisted of hills, forests, marshes and plantations.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Advise and Consent,’ on ‘A Washington Kind of Lie’)

 

Johnny Leffingwell [played by Eddie Hodges]: “The phone—Senator Munson.”

Robert Leffingwell [his father, played by Henry Fonda]: “Tell him I've gone out.”

Johnny: “Why?”

Robert: “Because, Johnny, he'll want to do some things that might obligate me.”

Johnny: “I mean, why do you want me to lie? If you're in, you're in; if you're out, you're out.”

Robert: “Son, this is a Washington, D.C. kind of lie. It's when the other person knows you're lying, and also knows you know he knows. You follow?”— Advise and Consent (1962), screenplay by Allen Drury and Wendell Mayes, adapted from the novel by Drury, directed by Otto Preminger

Photo of the Day: A Black Reconstruction Senator’s Residence in Washington, DC

The striking property here—2010 R Street, Northwest—might look much like any other in DC’s elegant Dupont Circle neighborhood. But the marker outside indicates another story.

When I passed by while on vacation in November 2015, I never could have anticipated that the life and times of Blanche Kelso Bruce—born on this date in 1841—might possess even more relevance now than it did when I read the inscription explaining why his home had been selected as part of the African American Heritage Trail in our nation’s capital.

Bruce was one of the most striking figures in the Reconstruction Era, the post-Civil War period when freedmen sought greater economic opportunities and achieved fleeting political equality with whites. In an era of polarization, with racism and reaction ever-present threats to his gains and those of the base that propelled him to prominence, he was obliged to step carefully through multiple political minefields.

This past week, I saw a meme on Facebook questioning the need for Black History Month. The remarkable rise of Bruce—the second African American to serve in the U. S. Senate and the first to be elected to a full term—and his equally astonishing fall back into relative obscurity demonstrate that there might be more need for this collective commemoration than many Americans would care to admit.

A runaway slave from Virginia, fathered by his white master, Bruce made his way west of the Mississippi, where during the Civil War he taught black children in Kansas and Missouri. After the conflict he worked as a steamboat porter out of St. Louis, then moved down to Mississippi in hopes of finding more opportunity. His business sense proved acute, as he turned an abandoned cotton plantation into a thriving property over the next decade.

Large, imposing, and gifted with a strong voice, Bruce possessed a charisma that attracted the attention of the Republican Party. Soon he was accumulating political IOUs along with his real estate fortune, holding simultaneous Bolivar County offices as sheriff, tax collector and superintendent of education. With the help of Black Republicans and Gov. Adelbert Ames, Bruce was selected by the state legislature to serve a term in the U.S. Senate.

With both blacks and whites suffering in the economic collapse brought on by the Civil War, Bruce sought to work in the interests of both groups and forge a biracial electoral coalition. For whites, he advocated for internal improvements and financial incentives, including federal funding to control flooding and the creation of a channel and levee system for parts of the Mississippi’s edge. For blacks, he ardently promoted black servicemen, including pressing for integration of the armed forces.

But as an “aristocrat of color,” Bruce lost some favor with his African American base, and whites were not generally inclined toward him to begin with, even though even the likes of fellow Mississippian Lucius Q. C. Lamar, a former secessionist, acknowledged his intelligence and moderation. With Democratic forces gathering strength back at home in an attempt to suppress the African American vote, Bruce didn’t even try for a second term, stepping down in March 1881.

After several years of continuing participation in Mississippi politics, Bruce returned to the nation’s capital. serving as register of the U.S. Treasury and recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia. He and wife Josephine—the first black teacher in the Cleveland public schools and the daughter of a prominent mixed-race dentist before she wed the Senator—remained fixtures on the local social scene, living at their R Street property from 1890 to 1898.

Bruce’s career is a reminder of how far all Americans can rise when they are presented with adequate opportunities to match their own drive and ambition. It is also evidence of how those gains may be lost when powerfully entrenched forces mobilize to exploit fears of an uncertain new political and social environment.

Photo of the Day: Woman’s National Democratic Club, Washington, DC

I had no idea what this building was about when I visited Washington back in November 2015; I merely thought the exterior would make for an interesting photo. I did not have an opportunity to enter the building. But a plaque in front of this structure on New Hampshire Avenue, just off DuPont Circle, gave me some clues to its history and its present purpose.

The Woman’s National Democratic Club (WNDC) is located in the Whittemore House, which, like much of the surrounding neighborhood, began as an elegant 19^th century mansion. Whittemore House takes its name from Sarah Adams Whittemore, a descendant of President John Adams.  An opera singer, she had enough wealth to create a home to accommodate her passion, so the acoustics inside are reputedly first-rate.

The home was built between 1892 and 1894 by architect Harvey Page, who also reconfigured another DuPont Circle residence, the Phoebe Hearst House. Over the next three decades, Whittemore House was rented by several prominent Washingtonians, including Sen. John Dryden, a founder of Prudential Insurance; banker John W. Weeks, who became a Republican congressman, senator and Secretary of War; and Ms. Whittemore’s son Walter Wilcox, an explorer, travel author, and photographer.

In 1927, Whittemore House was purchased by the five-year-old WNDC, the first socially acceptable meeting place for Democratic women in the nation’s capital. It has continued its mission to “provide a forum where Democrats meet to study, discuss and act upon current issues, to further the participation of women in the political process, and to help build an effective and compassionate political party.”

Amid a setting furnished with antiques, art and political memorabilia, club members over the years have been able to attend twice-weekly programs featuring speakers such as Madeleine Albright, Rosalynn Carter, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Tom Daschle, Jim Lehrer, Vernon Jordan, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Loretta and Linda Sanchez, Mark Kennedy Shriver, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The library, on the second floor, is of particular interest to aficionados of First Ladies, as it was the site where Eleanor Roosevelt held women-only press conferences at a time when female journalists battled discrimination.

Whittemore House, listed on the National Register of Historical Places in 1973, was granted museum status in 2000. It has been used for a variety of events, from conferences to weddings—and, of course, to empower women.

Photo of the Day: Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historic Park, Washington DC

I took this photo from a tour bus while vacationing seven years ago this month in Washington, DC. This portion of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historic Park is in the Georgetown section of our nation’s capital.

Construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio began in 1828, only three years after the wild success of the Erie Canal sparked serious interest in what we now call “infrastructure” in the United States. It was not finished until 1850. At its height in the early 1870s, more than 500 boats were in frequent operation on the canal.

Thereafter, a series of blows—floods, a depression, and competition from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad—undermined the canal’s effectiveness and business. No repairs were made following yet another flood in 1924, and 14 years later the canal was sold to the U.S. government and placed under the National Park Service.

Unlike most canals built in the 1800s, the canal remains virtually unbroken for its entire 185-mile length, from Rock Creek Park into Maryland. It is a picturesque reminder of an important era in the nation’s commerce.

Photo of the Day: Daniel Webster Statue, Washington DC

When I visited Washington in November 2013, I didn’t have to look at the base of this standing bronze statue at Bataan Street NW that I photographed to know that it depicted the great American orator and Union advocate Daniel Webster.

It wasn’t only in the great sweep of the folds of his clothing captured by sculptor Gaetano Trentanove, but the details of the craggy face that I’ve focused on in this closeup: the penetrating eyes and fierce demeanor that froze listeners in their place even before he uttered a single word.

One of the bronze relief panels on the granite pedestal shows the audience in the speech for which he is best known, the 1830 “Reply to Hayne” that included these words once memorized by countless American schoolchildren: “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!”

Despite his faults (a fondness for liquor, a too-close financial attachment to the Second Bank of the United States), Webster was a more towering figure in the life of the nation than even many Presidents. In a way, I wish some author would write an extended essay/short biography titled, Why Webster Still Matters.

If pressed, I would start by saying his career offers an example to Americans of our time of how what Senators say and do can make a difference in the life of the nation—if only Senator do not engage in gridlock and senseless posturing.

But equally important, I would point to his remarkable recognition in a June 1, 1837 address in Madison, Ind., of where damage to our country might come from:

“I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe…. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing.”

Photo of the Day: World War II Memorial, Washington DC

The debt owed by Americans to the Greatest Generation is enormous. The scope of World War II—a global conflict requiring an all-out effort on the homefront, the service of 16 million members of the U.S. armed forces, and the ultimate sacrifice of more than 400,000 of these Americans—is staggering.

So is the World War II Memorial, designed by the former chief of the Rhode Island School of Design, Friedrich St. Florian, and dedicated in 2004. I visited it nine years later, when I took this photo of its Rainbow Pool with its impressive fountains.

In keeping with this sprawling conflict, this DC site is immense, with 24 bronze bas-relief panels and granite columns telling the story of the Atlantic and Pacific Theaters.

I particularly like this quote inscribed in this stone architecture by President Harry S. Truman, in an address broadcast to the armed forces on Apr. 17, 1945:

“Our debt to the heroic men and valiant women in the service of our country can never be repaid. They have earned our undying gratitude. America will never forget their sacrifices.”

Photo of the Day: ‘Hancock the Superb,’ War Hero—and Presidential Also-Ran

In thinking of an image for today, Election Day, I thought of sites in Washington, DC, that might represent the stakes this country has faced and its best values. The usual buildings—the Capitol Dome, the Supreme Court, the Washington Monument—didn’t quite do it for me.

Then, in sorting through photos I took in November 2015 while on vacation, I was struck by this bronze equestrian statue at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and 7th St., N.W. From everything I’ve read, sculptor Henry Jackson Ellicott captured the inspirational presence of General Winfield Scott Hancock on the battlefield.

It has been over 30 years since I visited Gettysburg, so I don’t recall the statue in his honor there. And I have never seen the bust of him in New York’s Hancock Park, at St. Nicholas Avenue, Manhattan Avenue, and West 123rd Street. But it’s hard for me to imagine a more uplifting tribute than the one I saw in DC.

Have you ever heard of a more laudatory nickname than “Hancock the Superb”? In Civil War battlefields stretching from the Peninsula Campaign to the Siege of Petersburg, this career U.S. Army officer lived up to his reputation. Brave but not rash, confident but not egocentric, he gave heart to men with the deafening din of cannons and crack of rifles in their ears.

If you’ve seen the epic 1993 movie Gettysburg or read the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel it was based on, The Killer Angels, you might know of his part in that pivotal battle of the war: how he scouted out the terrain, prepared the “fishhook” defense of the Union Army, and rallied his II Corps to make its crucial stand against Pickett’s Charge.

As that furious assault took place, Hancock was wounded—badly enough that he had to recuperate for six months afterward—but he remained on the field until victory was secured.

Cool-headed in victory, Hancock displayed equanimity in defeat. In 1880, he was beaten decisively by another former Union general, James Abram Garfield, in the Electoral College, but lost the popular vote by only 7,000—the slimmest margin ever for an also-ran.

At least one candidate today might regard Hancock as a “loser,” but he was unfazed by what others would perceive as heartbreaking. “It has been a complete Waterloo for you,” his wife said the next morning in waking him with the bad news. “That is all right,” he responded. “I can stand it.”

Hancock died five years later. In 1889, the appropriation for the proposed DC statue in his honor—$50,000—was considered steep for the time. But a grateful Congress thought the tribute worth it, and allocated the sum.

Ulysses S. Grant gave a characteristically concise but astute assessment of his corps commander in his Personal Memoirs:

“His name was never mentioned as having committed in battle a blunder for which he was responsible. He was a man of very conspicuous personal appearance. Tall, well-formed and, at the time of which I now write, young and fresh-looking, he presented an appearance that would attract the attention of an army as he passed. His genial disposition made him friends, and his personal courage and his presence with his command in the thickest of the fight won for him the confidence of troops serving under him. No matter how hard the fight, the 2d corps always felt that their commander was looking after them.”

Throughout most of American history, losing candidates are often forgotten. This is one who should not be. It was because of him and service personnel of similar fiber that you and I still have a country.