The Capitol

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Chapter 1

Grandeur, Simplicity,
and Beauty

1790-1794

In Thomas Jefferson's opinion, there was something about the map of the new Federal city that wasn't quite right.

There was no denying it was capably, even elegantly drawn by its draftsman, Pierre L'Enfant, a talented thirty-six-year-old French-born military engineer who had served with distinction on the staff of General George Washington during the American Revolution. Now, eight years after independence, with the nascent nation still learning to appreciate and navigate the nuances of its newly installed Constitutional government, President Washington had personally assigned L'Enfant the task of mapping out a home for that same government along the banks of the Potomac River.

In truth, L'Enfant had practically begged for the job. When the opening session of the first Congress had met in New York City in March 1789, it had been L'Enfant who had converted the city's old courthouse into a tasteful meeting place worthy of the new legislative body, earning the admiration of the Congress, New Yorkers, and George Washington himself. Emboldened by his rave reviews, L'Enfant, in his usual shaky English, wrote to Washington in September 1789 asking that he be assigned the task of designing the new, still unnamed Federal city, along with any buildings that might be needed to house the president and the Congress. It was an opportunity, he explained with faux modesty, to enhance his own reputation with a high-profile project. "Your Excellency will not be surprised that my ambition and the desire I have of becoming a useful citizen should lead me to wish to share in the undertaking," he wrote.

Perhaps against his better judgment-there were other, more accomplished and qualified architects who had also presented to the president their own enthusiastic letters of introduction-Washington handed L'Enfant the job. While L'Enfant had come highly recommended by well-placed friends like Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and Secretary of War Henry Knox, Washington had selected L'Enfant largely on the merits of two points in his favor: one, he was a relatively quick draftsman, and two-and perhaps even better-he was available immediately.

And Washington was in a hurry. Since he had settled on the location of the new Federal district in the summer of 1790-a decision that, for now, had resulted in an uneasy détente between Northern and Southern interests-skeptics were already convinced that the project was nothing more than an expensive boondoggle never to be completed. Some strongly suggested that the new seat of government remain in Philadelphia, where it had moved after vacating New York City in August 1790.

Washington, then, was determined not only to get the new district mapped out, but also to get to work as quickly as possible designing and constructing government buildings-especially the President's House and the workplace for the Congress. When it came to "projecting public works; and carrying them into effect," wrote Washington, L'Enfant was "better qualified than anyone who had come within my knowledge." Not the most ringing endorsement exactly, but Washington was sending a clear message: L'Enfant was his man, and his man had better get to work now.

As L'Enfant arrived in the Federal district in March 1791, the formal boundaries were still being surveyed and staked out by Andrew Ellicott, a skilled and amiable Pennsylvanian who was a clockmaker by training but a surveyor and astronomer by profession. Ellicott, like L'Enfant, had been recommended to Washington by well-heeled friends-in his case, it was Benjamin Franklin-and as he had done with L'Enfant, Washington put Ellicott quickly to work, sending him out into the Maryland countryside to mark the boundaries of the new Federal district.

It was a project that came with a pedigree like perhaps no other in American history; the specifications, after all, had been explicitly laid out in 1787 in the text of the United States Constitution. Under Article I, Section 8, Clause 17, the Congress of the United States was given explicit authority over a federal "District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may . . . become the Seat of Government of the United States." Ellicott's marching orders had come directly from the Founders themselves.

George Washington, too, had taken a personal interest in the landing spot for the Federal city, preferring the location on the Potomac not only for its convenience for Congressmen from Southern states-no one south of Maryland liked that long trip to New York City-but also for its proximity to his home at Mount Vernon, about twenty miles away in northern Virginia. After personally selecting the site along the Potomac for the new Federal district, then, Washington directed that the region be surveyed and marked starting on the Virginia side of the river, at the tip of a cape called Jones Point. And so Ellicott-with the help of a free Black surveyor and astronomer named Benjamin Banneker-proceeded from there, marking out the boundaries of the Federal district in a tilted square straddling the Potomac, placing boundary stones every mile-thus "milestones"-along each ten-mile side.

While Ellicott and Banneker were off surveying in the distant woods, L'Enfant's job was to focus on the layout of the Federal city itself, keeping it huddled close to the banks of the Potomac, well inside the borders of the new district. After consulting with Washington, L'Enfant began riding the hills within view of the river, closely examining the grounds just east of the busy port of Georgetown, cradled between Rock Creek to the west and the Anacostia River to the east.

He liked what he saw. While Washington, D.C., would later suffer the indignity of being derided as a city built on a swamp, that descripton wouldn't be apt for at least another century, when portions of the District's waterfront were filled and graded to extend the city beyond its natural boundaries. In 1791, the Federal city was mostly a series of low wooded hills rolling north in increasingly steeper steps from the Potomac, with low cliffs along the river's edge. On March 11, L'Enfant wrote to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson informing him that he had seen "many spots which appeared to me really beautiful"-so beautiful, in fact, that he was having a hard time deciding where to put the capital's two showcase buildings.

After further consideration, L'Enfant found the ideal location for the Congressional building along the western end of a thickly wooded hill with sweeping views to the south and west; L'Enfant called the area Jenkins Heights-he would also casually refer to it as Jenkins Hill, a name that stuck. Why L'Enfant attached the name "Jenkins" to the site is still unclear; more accurately, it should probably have been called "Carroll Hill," as the land L'Enfant was eyeing for the Capitol was within a five-hundred-acre parcel of land belonging to Daniel Carroll of Duddington, a well-heeled Marylander with relatives whose signatures could have been found on the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. After surveying the area, L'Enfant enthusiastically reported to Washington that Jenkins Hill-and most of Carroll's land-was perfect; he "could not discover one [location] in all respects so advantageous." In fact, he told the president, Jenkins Hill was practically "a pedestal waiting for a superstructure."

For the President's House-and the French-born draftsman couldn't help but refer to it as a "presidential palace" in his correspondence-L'Enfant would select a flat spot a little more than a mile west of Jenkins Hill, which put it about halfway between the Congressional building and Georgetown. With the key sites now selected, he began sketching a map of the Federal city around them. L'Enfant's design was strongly influenced by the layout of the French town of Versailles, with streets laid out on a grid and intersected diagonally by avenues radiating away from the presidential palace and the Congressional building, each of which L'Enfant now clearly labeled on his map as "President's House" and "Congress House." While L'Enfant promised he'd share drawings of the two key buildings with everyone in due time, he actually had no plans, not even rough sketches. It's unlikely that they existed anywhere but in L'Enfant's head-he would, in fact, never produce a single drawing, no matter how much George Washington badgered him.

In front of Congress House, L'Enfant envisioned rerouting the shallow Tiber Creek to the foot of the building and having it flow prettily down Jenkins Hill-an ambitious plan and another design piece he had lifted from Versailles. Then, at the base of the hill itself, he had drawn what he identified as a "Grand Avenue, 400 feet in breadth, and about a mile in length" extending due west toward the Potomac. This public avenue-the primitive precursor to today's museum-and memorial-lined Mall in Washington, D.C.-would be edged mostly by gardens and end directly in front of the President's House with a public square featuring at its center a gigantic equestrian statue of George Washington-to be designed by L'Enfant, of course.

The president was impressed with L'Enfant's plan-so much so that after receiving the map at his home at Mount Vernon in June 1791, he made very few corrections. There was a bit of fussing with some of the boundary lines as well as a slight scooting of the President's House to give it a better view of the river-and L'Enfant would later note with amusement that the president had deliberately and perhaps symbolically faced the house to look almost directly south toward Mount Vernon. After completing his own review, Washington next handed the map over to Jefferson for further evaluation.

Thomas Jefferson-a lifelong student of architecture and planning who had already spent more than two decades designing and constructing his perpetually unfinished neoclassical home near Charlottesville, Virginia-also approved of L'Enfant's work, at least for the most part. "I am happy that the President has left the planning of the town in such good hands," he wrote to L'Enfant, "and have no doubt it will be done to general satisfaction." But Jefferson wasn't satisfied. Something, he thought, still wasn't quite right.

Jefferson began lightly marking up L'Enfant's plan, striking through several wordy descriptions of roads and rivers. Where L'Enfant had identified the river with the more archaic name "Potowmack"-an already corrupted spelling of the name of the nearby Patawomeck tribe-Jefferson slashed out the "w" and changed the spelling to "Potomac." He then turned his attention to his real source of annoyance: the central portion of the map, where L'Enfant had carefully located and labeled the "Congress House."

Jefferson considered the words closely; something about calling it a "Congress House" wasn't right. Most states operated their legislative bodies out of a "statehouse." But the United States was something new. As a nation rooted in the ideals of a democratic republic, it deserved more than just another public office building; it demanded a seat of government that reflected its hard-won place at the center of a republic governed by the people.

In a deliberate nod to the Roman temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, which stood as the focal point of that ancient republic's cultural and civic life from its perch on Capitoline Hill, Jefferson scratched out every mention of "Congress House" and wrote in its place a more majestic and, he thought, a much more appropriate term.

Capitol.

★★★


Conflict and controversy are built into the very foundation of the United States Capitol building. Like the nation it embodies, the Capitol was founded and built on debate and compromise, heated arguments and bruised egos, hurt feelings and loud disagreement-and often violence and chaos. Our own imperfections as a nation and as human beings have shaped its structure since it was little more than a proposal or a pencil sketch. In the beginning, perhaps because of the way eighteenth-century Americans preferred to be governed-mostly regionally, nearly always frugally, and overly deferentially to the authority of individual states-the construction of the Capitol and the governance of the new capital city were left mostly to determination, imagination, and improvisation.

Even the location of the city itself was a matter of furious, and fiercely regional, debate and passionate political compromise. While the U.S. Constitution had explicitly authorized the creation of a new Federal district, independent-or so it was hoped-of the whims and politics of state legislatures, it had provided no guidance on where exactly to put it.

In 1784, during the waning days of the Articles of Confederation-under which the cobbled-together alliance of newly independent states were shakily governed after the American Revolution-the Congress had selected New York City as its capital city, mostly because of its existing infrastructure and easy access to a large port. However, with the formal ratification of the Constitution in June 1788-and the very specific marching orders in that document to create a new Federal district-several Congressional delegations immediately began lobbying to relocate the national capital to their home states. Members feverishly pled their cases for locations like Baltimore, Philadelphia, Trenton, or Dover-but with no site able to muster a clear majority, Congressman James Madison, stalling for time, convinced his fellow Congressmen-and they were all men-to keep the capital in New York and pick up the conversation again later.

George Washington, who still very much wanted the capital in a more southern location, initially blanched at that strategy-but Madison assured the president that New York remained an unpopular and impractical site and that it would be easier to convince members to move the capital away from New York City than it would be to rip it from a sentimental favorite like Philadelphia. Madison was certain the Congress would take up the issue again when the first session of the new Congress met in March 1789, but he warned Washington, "The business of the seat of government is become a labyrinth."

That was putting it mildly. The bickering began soon after Congress convened in its New York quarters, with every faction suspecting the others, fairly or not, of subterfuge and backroom conspiracies that would steal the capital away to their state. Eventually, two lead contenders emerged: Pennsylvania, with a site on the banks of the Susquehanna, and Virginia, which was hoping to locate the new Federal district somewhere on the river Jefferson would later rename the Potomac. With President Washington aligned with the interests of Virginia, Pennsylvania Senator William Maclay was certain the fix was in. "It is in fact the interest of the President of the United States that pushes the Potomac," Maclay fumed in his diary. "He by means of Jefferson, Madison . . . and others urges this business."

But when the Congress adjourned in autumn, most members went home believing Pennsylvania had the inside line, although there had been some dithering over the details. Before adjourning in the fall, the House of Representatives had approved the Residence Act, formally recommending the district be moved to the tiny town of Columbia, Pennsylvania, about eighty miles west of Philadelphia but easily accessible from the Susquehanna River; the Senate, meanwhile, had gone off script and suggested Germantown, a small town located just north of Philadelphia but nowhere near the Susquehanna River. Thanks to Madison, the final bill would again be postponed-but as Congress reconvened in early 1790, it seemed clear that the Federal district was going to go somewhere in Pennsylvania.