Washington Has Been Carefully Planned for Two Centuries. Now Trump Has His Own Designs.


The streets were laid out as a grid of four quadrants, centered on the people’s representatives, not the president’s house.

Atop that grid, L’Enfant drew diagonal avenues named for the original states. The grid and the avenues are distinct but intertwined — like the states and the federal government.

The Northern states were generally in the northern part of the city …

… the Southern states in the south.

Pennsylvania — site of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention — holds a central place symbolizing shared power between the legislature and presidency.

Through the heart of the city, L’Enfant planned a grand public walk.

Where the axes from the Capitol and White House meet, he located a monument to Washington.

Beyond that monument, the Mall faced the Potomac River and the wide-open American West.

Part of the Potomac River had by this time been filled in, enabling the commission to extend the Mall.

They located a future Lincoln Memorial here, with a reflecting pool linking it to the Washington Monument.

The Lincoln Memorial would effectively close the Mall at its western end (in an era when the American frontier had, itself, recently been declared “closed”).

A memorial bridge over the Potomac would symbolically reconnect the North and South …

… from Lincoln’s memorial to Robert E. Lee’s home on the Virginia hillside.

The commissioners identified a spot, due south of the White House, for what would become the Jefferson Memorial.

They solved for the off-center location of the Washington Monument, which had broken L’Enfant’s original axes.

The commission tilted the spine of the Mall, lining up the Capitol, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on a new axis — and conforming the rest of the Mall to it.

… and it would become the dominant sight at the end of L’Enfant’s Pennsylvania Avenue axis linking the legislature and the presidency.

Mr. Trump would renovate this public golf course into a championship-level course that locals fear would make a park established “for the recreation and pleasure of the people” less accessible.



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