MAJ. PIERRE CHARLES L’ENFANT
Maj. Pierre Charles L’Enfant was born in Paris August 2, 1754, the son
of an academician, who was “Painter in ordinary to the King in his
Manufacture of the Gobelins,” with a turn for landscape and especially
for battles, as is shown by the collections at Versailles and Tours.
Trained as a French military engineer, young L’Enfant at the age of 23
obtained a commission as a volunteer lieutenant in the French colonial
troops, serving at his own expense.
[Illustration: MAJ. PIERRE CHARLES L’ENFANT]
L’Enfant preceded Lafayette to America by a month. Arriving in 1777,
he entered the Continental Army at his own expense. In February 1778
he was made a captain of engineers and as such proved his valor in
battles about Charleston, where he was wounded and was included in the
capitulation and exchanged. He was made a major in 1783.
He was “artist extraordinary” to the Army, drawing likenesses
(including one of Washington at Valley Forge), decorating ballrooms,
and building banquet halls. Then by turn he became a drillmaster, like
Von Steuben. When peace was declared he made a brief visit to France
to see his father and, incidentally, to establish the Society of
the Cincinnati in France and procure the gold eagles he had designed
as insignia of the organization. Then he returned to remodel the New
York City Hall for the reception of the first Congress of the United
States, a building of such beauty never before having been seen by the
assembled representatives of the people. L’Enfant was an artist, and
this Washington knew when he selected him to design the Federal City.
He was imbued with the artistic development of Paris, with its fine
central composition from the Tuileries to the Arch of Triumph, the
beauty of the Champs Elysees, the Place de la Concorde and adjacent
great buildings as the Louvre; and with Versailles, built by Louis XIV,
with its fountains, terraces, gardens, and parks, which still thrill
thousands of visitors each year. He understood the art of city planning.
L’Enfant was long maturing in his mind the plan he so quickly put on
paper. In September, 1789, while yet the idea of creating a capital
city was still in the air, he wrote to President Washington asking to
be employed to design “the Capital of this vast Empire.” The nations of
Europe wondered at the probable future of the new Republic. Visualizing
the future, L’Enfant wrote:
No nation ever before had the opportunity offered them of
deliberately deciding upon the spot where their capital city should
be fixed, or of considering every necessary consideration in the
choice of situation; and although the means now within the power of
the country are not such as to pursue the design to any great extent,
it will be obvious that the plan should be drawn on such a scale as
to leave room for that aggrandizement and embellishment which the
increase of the wealth of the Nation will permit it to pursue to any
period, however remote.
Major L’Enfant, a man of position and education and an engineer of
ability, was also familiar with those great works of the master Le
Nôtre, which are still the admiration of the traveler and the constant
pleasure of the French people. Moreover, from his well-stocked library
Jefferson sent to L’Enfant plans “on a large and accurate scale” of
Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfort, Carlsruhe, Strasburg, Orleans, Turin,
Milan, and other European cities, at the same time felicitating himself
that the President had “left the planning of the town in such good
hands.”
Thereupon the name of L’Enfant became, and has since remained,
inseparably associated with the plan and development of the Nation’s
Capital. He was gifted but eccentric, a characteristic that got him
into many and serious difficulties.
President Washington had high regard for him and wrote of him as
follows:
Since my first knowledge of the gentleman’s abilities in the line of
his profession, I have viewed him not only as a scientific man, but
one who added considerable taste to professional knowledge, and that,
for such employment as he is now engaged in--for projecting public
works and carrying them into effect--he was better qualified than
anyone who had come within my knowledge in this country, or indeed in
any other, the probability of obtaining whom could be counted upon.
I had no doubt at the same time that this was the light in which he
considered himself; and of course he would be tenacious of his plans
as to conceive they would be marred if they underwent any change or
alteration. * * * Should his services be lost, I know not how to
replace them.