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: