The Straight Line Hypothesis

According to the story, the commissioners asked that a 'post road' that took the easiest to build route from the Capitol to the President's House and then to Georgetown be marked on the engraved map. L'Enfant gave them Pennsylvania Avenue that, as he said, ran from the Eastern Branch to the wharves of Georgetown. Looking at the image below you can see that there was aleady an existing ferry road that connected those two places. L'Enfant just moved the end point on the river so as to straighten the avenue.

[He appears to have located the southeast end of Virginia Avenue at the 'old' ferry location. Virginia runs northwest through the location of City Hall to the Washington Monument site and Jefferson Pier.]

Today we see Penn Ave in three sections, but if we extend the top segment (Between G'town and the WH) past the White House, we see that it points to the location that L'Enfant chose on the East Branch. That is, a straight line from Georgetown to the East Branch passes through the WH location and south of the CB. The over-all alignment appears to be determined by segment 1, and not by segment 2 as Ovason suggests.

What Ovason tells us has L'Enfant choosing the site for the Capitol, then positioning the White House from there so as to align with two sunsets, then presumably connecting the WH to Georgetown and the CB to the East Branch. I suggest that the avenue was designed around a straight line from Georgetown to the Eastern Branch of the river; the WH location falls on this line but the location for the CB fell on the side of a steep hill, so it was moved due north to the closest suitable location.

The conspiracy angle on this Capitol move idea, besides Ovason's solar alignment theory, focuses on the fact that Penn and Maryland Avenues run at a 19.5 degree angle to the east-west line, meaning that in the original plan the distance between the WH and the Wash Mmt was one third of that from the WH to the CB. The sine of 19.5 degrees is .333333.

We are told that the Washington Mmt was moved 371+ feet to the east and 123+ feet south, which is also the 1:3 ratio.

We can confirm this planned location of the CB with the map. Notice how Penn and New York Aves 1) mirror each other at 16th Street, 2)meet at the WH and 3)connect two corners of the pentagram. NY Ave is also a straight line.

New Hampshire Avenue connects two corners on the left side of the pentagram, as well as pointing to Arlington. If we draw a line from where New Hampshire crosses 16th Street back through the other two corners on the right side, you can see it points to the same place as above (on the straight line south of the current CB position).

The line between the Pentagon and the 'new location' crosses 16th Street at a point the same distance from the WH as is the tip of the triangle above it. We prove this with a circle. This would be the new Jefferson Mml position, and the line is the redefined Maryland Ave.

This appears to show the White House at the center of this image.

This shows the implications for repositioning the CB. All the purple lines would be moved that radiate from there, this would move Licoln Park, The Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial to the south, changing the street angles as well.

Disregarding everything else that was positioned by the old CB, we look at what depends on the pentagram, presuming that segement 1 of Penn Ave is 'the straight line' which we project to the river. New York Avenue connects Mt Vernon Sq and the WH and eventually intersects with New hampshire providing the last corner of the rhombus on the west bank of the Potomac. Mass Ave parallels Penn Ave and Rhode Island Ave parallels New York, each connecting two corners of the pentagram and intersecting at Scott Circle, north of the WH on 16th.

You can see a grid system develop from this. Even the line from Arlington through the Lincoln Mml to the Ellipse is parallel to the grid lines generated by connecting the corners of the pentagram. This grid constitutes the 'correct' part of the original map, since it is derived from either the straight line, or a mirror of it, or parallel to it. Note the twin rhombus.

Projecting N Street east and west from Scott Circle locates two corners of another rhombus where it crosses New York and Penn Ave's. These two triangulate with the Jeff Mml, completing the Star of David.

The DC map layout accomodates an image of the Great Pyramid cross-section, Metatron's Cube and the Tree of Life, from both Egyptian and Hebrew cultures. If the CB had been located on the 'straight line', that and the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial would be in tune with the grid formed by the pentagram. The move of the Washington Monument made it possible for it to serve as a representation of the Queen's Chamber in the map/pyramid.