Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Capitol to the monument grounds would be as imposing as the heroic vis-
tas of French chateaux, but it would be “bordered with gardens” and
flanked by tree-sheltered public walks. The monument grounds would be
embellished with “artfully planted trees” and the Capitol would be set
within a “garden park.” The chief executive's mansion would reside in an
area designated as “President's Park.”
10
Combining traditional antipathies
toward unimproved nature with democratic opposition to the political
symbolism of royal European parks, one critic complained that the pro-
posed woodlands around the president's house would create an “immense
and gloomy wilderness” that would contradict the image of openness and
accessibility an elected leader should strive to project.
11
The dominant view
of the political symbolism of naturalistic landscape design, however, was that
its informality, implied freedom of movement, English associations, and
absence of rigid hierarchies or a single dominant perspective represented a
democratic and egalitarian alternative to the centralized authority implicit
in the formal continental style. By juxtaposing the “natural” and formal
styles and positing a harmonious relationship between the two, L'Enfant's
proposal embodied the political tension between Jeffersonian democracy
and the more centrist Federalist interpretations of American government.
12
Inventing Washington as a formal and theoretical construct was an
imposing intellectual feat; translating the paper plan into an actual, func-
tioning city proved to be an even greater challenge. L'Enfant's proposal pro-
vided the basic blueprint, but the transformation of Washington from an
undeveloped countryside to an imposing modern metropolis was destined
to be a long, contentious, continually evolving, and inevitably incomplete
process. L'Enfant himself engendered a variety of personal and political
conflicts and was soon forced to resign. Heavily encumbered by war debts,
the young nation had little to expend on improvements to its capital city.
In 1800, when the federal government officially moved from Philadelphia
to Washington, only one wing of the Capitol had been completed and the
president's house was still under construction. Pennsylvania Avenue, the
grand connection between these two edifices, was derided as “a deep
morass, covered with alder bushes.”
13
A few groups of houses were scattered
about the unimproved streets, but contemporary visitors observed that most
of the city remained an unkempt wilderness.
During the first few decades of the nineteenth century, Washington
began to take on the appearance of an extended village, if not a capital city
to rival Paris, London, or even Boston. Clusters of development formed
