Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
from the structure and underscoring the institution's symbolic importance.
Many of the lesser circles and junctions were also placed to take advantage
of subtle differences in elevation and prospect.
While L'Enfant looked for design cues in the local landscape, he viewed
nature as subservient to man's needs and showed no compunction in radi-
cally transforming existing natural features to enhance the splendor of his
grand design. L'Enfant's most radical idea was to reinvent the stream known
as Tiber Creek as a spectacular and emphatically artificial water feature that
would rival the hydraulic extravagances of European gardens. He proposed
to divert the stream into an underground conduit at the city boundary and
route it to the base of the Capitol, where it would emerge as a man-made
cascade 100 feet wide and 40 feet high. Between Capitol Hill and the
Potomac, the Tiber would be transformed into an ornamental canal defin-
ing the north edge of a grand central promenade. A continuation of this
canal would extend through the southern part of the city and empty into
the Anacostia. Several lesser streams would be enclosed in culverts and
buried without a trace to accommodate the geometric street plan and
increase the amount of usable land.The water from these streams would be
diverted to create impressive fountains, cooling the air in summertime and
providing festive adornments throughout the year.
The striking geometrical quality of L'Enfant's plan together with the
broad and barren expanse of the current Mall creates the impression that
the French designer was rigidly opposed to the picturesque landscapes that
later theorists often cast as more natural and organic. Close examination of
L'Enfant's plans and writings reveals that the original design called for sig-
nificant expanses of picturesque landscaping, however.This mixture of for-
mal and informal elements was entirely in keeping with contemporary
practice; it seems unusual only because of the twentieth-century emphasis
on the Mall's broader formal aspects. The picturesque style in landscape
gardening had come to the fore in England by the time L'Enfant com-
posed his design and was beginning to influence developments elsewhere.
L'Enfant also knew that even the grandest Baroque compositions, such as
Versailles and Vaux-le-Vicomte, contained densely wooded and naturalistic
segments to help delineate and complement their dominating formal
elements.
L'Enfant's desire to balance formal and picturesque elements was evident
in the terminology he used to describe features of the plan. At 400 feet
wide and close to a mile long, the “Grand Avenue” extending from the
