Washington, its sights and insights [1909]Monroe, Harriet Earhart
History
Washington, its sights and insights [1909]
Monroe, Harriet Earhart
Washington (D.C.) -- Description and travel
Every circle, triangle, and square dedicated to monuments bears
testimony to the taste of the original design. So little respect,
however, was held for Major L'Enfant's plans that Daniel Carroll, one of
the original owners of the land, was in the act of building a handsome
house right across New Jersey Avenue. L'Enfant ordered it torn down.
This was done, much to the disgust of Carroll and to the indignation of
the commissioners. The government rebuilt the house for Carroll, but was
careful to place it in a more suitable location. The old Duddington
House, on Capitol Hill, was long a landmark of the early Washington
architecture.
There were some other acts of irritability on the part of L'Enfant, acts
which now show his just appreciation of his own great work. He was paid
$2,500 for his services and dismissed. He believed he should have been
pensioned, as would have been done in Europe.
Afterward he saw the city expand as the nation grew strong, while he, a
disappointed, poverty-stricken man, wandered, a pathetic figure, about
the Capitol until 1825, when he died. He had lived for years on the
Diggs farm, about eight miles from Washington, and was buried in the
family cemetery in the Diggs garden, and when the dead of that family
were removed his dust was left in an unmarked grave.
Mr. Corcoran, the great banker of Washington, who died in 1888, said he
remembered L'Enfant as "a rather seedy, stylish old man, with a long
green coat buttoned up to his throat, a bell-crowned hat, a little moody
and lonely, like one wronged." The heart of a stranger in a strange,
ungrateful land.
The City of Washington is his monument. No one can now rob him of that
honor. Let us hope that he has awakened in His likeness and is
satisfied.
Could the Colonial Dames or the Daughters of the Revolution do a more
beneficent and popular act than to mark the resting-place of Peter
Charles L'Enfant, who drew the original plans of that city which is to
become the most beautiful city in the world?[1]
Footnote 1:
On April 28, 1909, the body of Major L'Enfant was moved to the
National Cemetery, at Arlington, where a suitable memorial will soon
be erected.
The letters of General Washington abound in references to the difficulty
of obtaining money to fit the new city for capital purposes. Virginia
made a donation of $120,000 and the State of Maryland gave $72,000.
Afterward the latter State was induced to loan $100,000 toward fitting
the city for a capital.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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