INVENTING NATURE IN WASHINGTON, D.C. - Inventing for the Environment - page 74

of Selected Construction Locales Along the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway (US Depart-
ment of the Interior, National Park Service, 1985); Herman Friis, Geographical Recon-
naissance of the Potomac River Tidewater Fringe of Virginia from Arlington Memorial Bridge
to Mount Vernon (Association of American Geographers, 1968), 6; Nan Netherton,
Donald Sweig, Janice Artemal, Patricia Hickin, and Patrick Reed, Fairfax County,Vir-
ginia: A History (Board of Supervisors, Fairfax County,Virginia, 1978), 20.
4. Frederick Gutheim and National Capital Planning Commission, Worthy of the
Nation:The History of Planning in the National Capital (Smithsonian Institution Press,
1977), 15-22; Junior League of Washington and Thomas Froncek, eds., The City of
Washington: An Illustrated History (Knopf, 1977), 9-36.
5. Despite its location almost exactly midway between Maine and Georgia, the
Potomac site of the nation's capital was seen as favoring Southern interests, who
returned the favor by backing Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton's pro-
posal for federal assumption of the states' Revolutionary War debts, which South-
ern politicians initially opposed. Washington and Jefferson were familiar with the
proposed site and used their influence to ensure its selection. For a detailed account
of the site of the nation's capital, see Kenneth R. Bowling, The Creation of Washing-
ton, D.C.: The Idea and Location of the American Capital (George Mason University
Press, 1990). For brief summaries, see John Reps, The Making of Urban America: A
History of City Planning in the United States (Princeton University Press, 1965),
240-245; Reps, Monumental Washington:The Planning and Development of the Capital
Center (Princeton University Press, 1965), 1-4; Gutheim, Worthy of the Nation, 14.
6. For a detailed and sophisticated analysis of the L'Enfant plan and its precedents,
see Pamela Scott, “ 'This Vast Empire': The Iconography of the Mall, 1791-1848,”
in The Mall In Washington, 1791-1891, ed. R. Longstreth (National Gallery of Art,
1991), 37-58. See also Reps, The Making of Urban America, 240-262; Reps, Monu-
mental Washington, 1-25.
7. L'Enfant, quoted in Reps, The Making of Urban America, 248.
8. Ibid.
9. L'Enfant, quoted in Therese O'Malley, “ 'A Public Museum of Trees': Mid-
Nineteenth Century Plans for the Mall,” in The Mall in Washington, 71.
10. Scott, “This Vast Empire,” passim.
11. See “President's park,“ “Congress Garden,” and “bordered with gardens” in the
legend to L'Enfant's plan, reprinted in part in John Reps, Washington on View: The
Nation's Capital since 1790 (University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 22; “artfully
planted trees,” quoted in Scott, “This Vast Empire,” 43.