Symbologists, like myself, assert that the DC street map contains images with symbolic significance, as noted above, while David Ovason (author of The Secret Architecture of our Nation's Capital) and others, claim that the streets (mainly Pennsylvania Avenue) are aligned to celestial events such as the setting of the sun or rising of a star. The suggestion is made that Pennsylvania Avenue was designed with a bend in it in order to align the street with a star or the sun on the horizon (that is rising or setting).

When the planning commissioners asked L'Enfant to include a post road connecting the Congress House, the President's House and Georgetown, he gave them Pennsylvania Avenue, which as he said 'connected the East Branch to the wharves of Georgetown'. (Georgetown is in the northwest and the East Branch is in the southeast.) Looking at a DC topographic map of 1791 we see that L'Enfant basically 'took the kinks out' of the Ferry Road, which you can see as the brown line in the image. ( Perhaps this is what de Hoyos meant when he said that L'Enfant appears to have followed the furrows and trails crisscrossing the terrain? But many times?) The locations of the WH and CB are also marked.

Pennsylvania Avenue runs from Georgetown (in the northwest) to the Eastern Branch of the Potomac by way of the White House and the Capitol Building, but the line formed by the avenue is not a straight one. Today Penn Ave is composed of three segments all aligned diferently. David Ovason suggests that the orientation of the middle section of the avenue was determined by picking a location for the CB then placing the WH in the position that produced the desired solar alignment between the two.

[Note how this illustration shows Penn Ave as being straight from Georgetown all the way to the CB and all labeled as 23.5 degrees, when you can clearly see from the image above that the avenue is in three distinct sections.]

While Ovason proposes that the alignment of the section of Penn Ave between the CB and the WH is purposely oriented to an August sunset, I recommend that the current position of the Capitol is not where the planners would have like for it to have been, and has nothing to do with the Virgo constellation. I contend that the location that the plan dictated for the CB fell on the side of a steep hill (Jenkins Heights) and the city planners didn't have the time to do the landscaping for that, so they moved the building due north (maintaining the same E-W distance between the WH and CB), to its current location.

[Note that while the base angle of the big triangle in the map is ~52 degrees like the Great Pyramid, the angle of this diagonal is 23+ degrees like the tropics.]

You can see from the image above that the 'straight line' location fell on the steep side of the hill. (Note that the lines each indicate 10 feet of elevation change.) We can confirm this straight line location of the CB by connecting the dots on the right hand side of the pentagram in the map (as shown above). That line passes through the blue rectangle seen here.

The straight line hypothesis augments the thesis about the pyramid being depicted in the map and answers questions about the bend in Pennsylvania Avenue by suggesting 1) that the (red) line from Georgetown to the White House and the East Branch is the prime diagonal in the map, and 2) that the Capitol Building was displaced from a location on that line for topographic reasons.

The fact is that had the CB been been located a bit to the south, the avenue would have been straight all the way to the river, as I believe that the planners would have liked it. Note that moving the CB would also move East Capitol Street and Lincoln Square (east of the CB); and that realigning Penn Ave would also realign Maryland and Virginia Avenues and change the locations of the National Archives Building, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Mml., and the Jefferson Mml. Straightening Penn Ave improves the fit between the map and the pyramid cross-section and brings it more in line with the Cube and the Tree images, since Penn Ave serves as one of the diagonals of Metatron's Cube.

The map helps us confirm this ideal location for the CB. 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 (on the straight line south of the current CB position).

[I repeat, the right side of the 'triangle' points, not to the CB, but south of there, on a spot confirmed by a straight line from Georgtetown (through two points of the pentagram) as well as one from the Pentagon, inspite of what is implied in this image, which shows the line running straight to the CB and labeled as 52 degrees as is the left side; but as you can see above the triangle does not point to the CB, so the angles can't be 52 or 23.5 degrees from the CB. He still has this on that page, "the Capitol Building is right on the spot where the other 52-degree line ends at the base"; meaning of the triangle.]

The Pentagon

Believe it or not, one side of the Pentagon (completed in 1943) appears to be pointed at this location too rather than at the Capitol Building. I have not been to DC to survey this, but you can easily tell with a big map that it is NOT aligned with the Capitol. According to Nicholas Mann, "Although the Pentagon is situated so that its axes are oriented on the White House and on the Capitol... its location has no direct relationship to the geometry of the original plan of the city". If two axes were oriented to the two most prominent buildings wouldn't that be called a direct relationship? Looking at the big map you can see that while the 'top' corner of the Pentagon Building aligns with the White House, the 'front' side aligns with the ideal and not the real location of the CB.

Note how in the big map the line from the Pentagon to the CB appears to parallel Memorial Drive from Arlington to the Lincoln Memorial and the Ellipse, New York and Rhode Island Avenues in the pentagram above the WH. If the straight line segment of Penn Ave (from the WH toward Georgetown) is running 23.5 degrees north of due west, and the line from the CB to the Pentagon reflects Penn Ave perfectly, the angle between PA and that line at the CB should be 47 degrees, and the front of the Pentagon is oriented 23.5 degrees north of due east. (Mann's solution to the bend in Penn Ave is to move the WH north, mine is to move the CB south.)

If the CB had been located further south, the line to the Pentagon from there would have been Maryland Avenue that locates the Jefferson Memorial and the memorial would have been located where that line crossed 16th St. We can use a circle centered on the WH to show that this point and the apex of the triangle are equidistant from the WH. That is, the Pentagon helps indicate the ideal location of Maryland Ave, the Capitol and the Jefferson Memorial.

Once again we might ask why the Capitol was not placed on the location to the east that is forty feet higher than where it was positioned? Also, if Ellicott was a co-partner in the design of the aligment of Penn Ave (as David Ovason suggests), why do we hear stories that he argued for moving the CB to this high place to the east, after he replaced L'Enfant.

We will presume that just like with the White House location, the Capitol was not located on the closest high spot because it was marking a meridian location, a north south line, where it was. When it was discovered that the ideal position for the CB fell on the side of a steep hill, it was simply moved north about 600 feet, putting a bend in Penn. Ave. while keeping the E-W distance between the CB and WH the same.

You will note that this notion is diametrically opposed to Ovason's explaination for why Pennsylvania Ave has a bend in it. I suggest that the planners established a straight line from Georgetown to the East Branch of the Potomac that they intended as one of their base lines, along with 16th Street and East Capitol Street. Unfortunately, the location that was chosen for the Capitol fell on the side of a steep hill and there wasn't time to do the landscaping necessary to place it there. It was moved about 600 feet north, and Penn. Ave. is now three segments.

Ovason suggests that the location of the Capitol on the edge of Jenkins Heights was chosen, then the White House was located along Penn Ave in order to highlight an early August sunset. He proclaims that Penn Ave was aligned to "one sunset on one day", but that simply isn't true. The sun also sets there in May, but people don't talk about that much?

Also the Virgo constellation is the second largest in the sky, so if the avenue were straight and the alignment was three days off, it would still be visible in the sky for months. You don't have to be there on August 10 or miss the Virgo in the southwest sky. And the triangle in the sky that he claims is represented by the federal triangle has a 36 degree angle while the one on the ground is 20 degrees.

. . .

Ironically, for every person pointing to symbols in the DC landscape, there is someone, usually a Mason (or Masonic apologists), 1) naively denying their existence or 2) denying that they have Masonic significance. For instance, Nicholas Mann, in the recently published book The Sacred Geometry of Washington, D.C., boldly proclaims that "there was no deliberate intention to form a pentagon" in the map (p 112); while the website for the Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon suggests that "There is no question that the intersections of Massachusetts Ave., Road Island Ave., Connecticut Ave., Vermont Ave. and K Street NW form a five-pointed star... Look at a map; the observable presence of a pentagram is not controversial or even in question. The real question is whether or not this is significant... the pentagram is not an exclusively satanic symbol nor does it have any particular masonic significance".

If you know anything about what is being called Sacred Geometry, you probably know that as the lines that make up the pentagram cross each other, they produce line segments that are in the phi relationship to one another; that is, the pentagram is the quintessential symbol of phi. Given the relationship between Masonry, Geometry and Architecture, I would have to say that it is foolish to suggest that the pentagram doesn't have any particular masonic significance. I also suggest that it is foolish, after having looked at the DC map, to suggest that the planners didn't intend for there to be a pentagram north of the White House.

Consider this from Freemason Christopher Hodap in Solomon's Builders: Freemasons, Founding Fathers and the Secrets of Washington, D.C., "The real question is whether the pentagram actually appears in Washington's street plan at all. The answer is sort of...but not really" (p 169). He is referring to the fact that one line segment is missing in the southwest corner of the pentagram. This is by far the lamest arguement about the D.C. map in general, that a missing line segement disqualifies this figure from being a pentagram.

The drawing's not completed. The
outer angle, you may see, is open left

You will note that Faust used a broken pentagram to capture Mephistopheles. "Inspect the thing: the drawing's not completed. The outer angle, you may see, is open left".

. . .

Here I quote well-known author and the Grand Archivist and Grand Historian of the Supreme Council of the Southern Jourisdiction of the Scottish Rites Arturo de Hoyos from the Scottish Rites Journal,

"Pierre Charles L'Enfant is not known to have been a Mason, and in many cases, in addition to using Paris in his native France as a model, he appears to have followed the furrows and trails crisscrossing the terrain now occupied by the District of Columbia when he planned the streets of the Federal District." This is three claims, 1) that L'Enfant was not a Mason, 2) that he used Paris as the model for the map, and 3) 'in many cases' followed pre-existing trails.

This is the 'there was only one Mason on the committee' arguement for why the plans aren't Masonic for both the map and the Great Seal. Earlier in the article, when writing about the House of the Temple, de Hoyos suggests that, "Although architect John Russell Pope was not a Mason, his plans naturally integrated much Masonic symbolism." Why can't this arguement work for the map and seal plans as well? And why do we see in Solomon's Builders that "L'Enfant and Ellicott were not Masons, so designing any sort of Masonic symbolism into the street plan would have been a neat trick for them." (p 168)

Consider this statement from above, "L’Enfant .. in many cases, appears to have followed the furrows and trails crisscrossing the terrain now occupied by the District of Columbia when he planned the streets of the Federal District." David Ovason points out on page 42 of Secret Architecture that "it is clear from Ellicott's working notes that the actual roads and avenues on the site were marked out to accomodate contours and that this in itself fed back ammendments to the form of the map." Nicholas Mann goes so far as to suggest that L'Enfant 'imposed no grid or preconceived mental order on the landscape'.

Ask yourself this before going on, how do straight lines or figures composed of straight lines accomodate contours? One answer is, by bending. Look again at the map and note how few bent lines there are, then ask yourself how many times did L'Enfant follow a trail or furrow in his plan?

In his book, The Secret History of Freemasonry (p 77), Jeremy Harwood claims that - while "the decisive feature in the positioning of major buildings was topography", and while there is a pentagram to be found in the U.S. Capital map, "it is far more likely this was coincidence rather than a Masonic conspiracy," (as if those were the only possibilities). We are confronted with a total of four arguements concerning the pentagram: 1) that there is no pentagram in the map, 2) that there is one but it is coincidental or accidental, 3) there is one but it has no significance and 4) there is one that has symbolic significance to the designers and builders involved in this long term project.

Topography means 'the lay of the land', and the 'major buildings' that he refers to are primarily the Capitol Building and the White House (although we presume that he intends to include the circles and monuments found in the map as well). The implication of Harwood's statement, which was offered without any supporting evidence, is that the lay of the land somehow helped determine the locations of elements of the DC map layout. The simplest form of this myth is that the White House and Capitol Building were placed on the highest spots in their repective areas, but this is just not true.

The Capitol was located on the edge of Jenkins Heights, west of a spot 40 feet higher that was preferred by Ellicott. After L'Enfant left the project Ellicott and others argued that the CB be moved east, away from the edge of the hill to the high spot. Ellicott's first complaint was that the land was unstable there, which has proven to be true. The other problem was that if it were placed there, the 40 foot rise to the east would block the sunrise view half the year; suggesting that would be a better spot. In the end, GW decided not to move the CB. This, on the surface, appears to rule out Ellicott as an 'inside' idea person.

A pentagram is a five pointed star. Please take a look at the image below and tell me - 1) what about the topography of the area do you imagine suggested a pentagram? and 2) how can a pentagram in a map landscape ever be coincidental?

A Coincidental Pentagram?

As was shown above, connecting the corners of the pentagram generates a triangle with base angles the same as the cross-section of the Great Pyramid. Are we to presume that is coincidental as well? Or a product of topography somehow?

Can we not agree that this approaches what we'd call intelligent design? That the pentagram in the map probably isn't coincidental; that someone simply designed a pentagram into the DC layout that produces a triangle identical to the cross-section of the GP? [It reminds me of the story about the bricklayer at the Boston City Hall Building who made figures of birds and things when he layed his bricks, just on a larger scale.] Personally, Masons wanting to leave a symbolic mark on the physical DC landscape also reminds me of Christians building churches in the shape of a cross, but does this constitute a conspiracy?

You will note that while there is no coherent myth describing how they got together and planned the map, there are plenty of stories about discord between the different players such as Washington, Jefferson, L'Enfant, Ellicott and the DC planning commissioners; some of whom were Masons, and some were not.

If you take seriously the notion that the map was designed containing symbols as complex as the pentagram or metatron's cube, you will realize that there probably wasn't much room for dissention amongst the planners, and you may not always want to just 'move it over there to that high spot'. This, of course refers to the story above about the CB as well as the one that Washington, after viewing the June version of the planning map, suggested that there would be fewer diagonals and that the White House would be moved to the west 'for the advantage of higher ground'.

This story appears to be explicitly about topography, suggesting that the President opposed L'Enfant's location in favor of a location that would be on higher ground; but if you look at the 1791 topo map above it appears as if the White House was never moved. If you compare the June map to the March 1792 map you will confirm that the WH was not moved as the story suggests, still there is no end to legends about both buildings being located on the two highest spots in the area. The secondary message here is about conflict of ideas.

If you consider the map below you may notice that the E-W distance between the White House and the Capitol Building is the same distance as between the wide points of the rhombus created by the pentagram. This sets the East-West scale in the map. 8th, 16th, and 23rd St's equally divide the 32 blocks from the CB to Georgetown. The rythm is continued in the eastern side of the map. In order for this to work, the WH (and 16th St), the Capitol, and the pentagram all need to be just where they are (east and west wise).

Notice that Scott Circle is half-way between the WH and the 'point' of the triangle in the map, and that K St provides the long axis of the rhombus. It looks as if the Jefferson Memorial was supposed to be the same distance from the WH as the tip of the triangle, but that it was moved north when the CB was moved, for whatever reason. Note the large rhombus outlined by the WH, CB and JM.

The plan that was approved in 1792 did not explictly include the Jefferson Memorial (completed in 1943), which is on land that didn't exist in 1800, but which is integral to the make up of the Tree of Life and Metatron's Cube (seen below) in the map. That means, if today's map was designed by L'Enfant et al. including the pyramid, TOL and Metatron's Cube, then that plan was held secret from the public, in someone's hands.

L'Enfant and Ellicott's first maps showed a lot of landscaping around the proposed position for the equestrian statue of Washington but not in the area of the Jefferson Memorial. Any plan that included that has not been revealed yet. But the location of everything that has been added to the DC landscape since 1800 was indicated in the first plan. The Lincoln Memorial was located by extending 23rd Street south until it interesected the line from the CB through the Washington Monument. (In my opinion a better place for a monument is opposite the Capitol Building on the west bank of the Potomac - the missing point on the map cube.) All that was needed was some landscaping.

All 11 (red) spheres of the Tree of Life (including Daath) are indicated
in the 1792 map, as are 12 of the 13 (blue) points of Metatron's cube.

The difference between the map tree and cube is that the tree uses the top two points of the pentagram, and the tree doesn't use Daath (at Scott Cr). The cube also features the four outer circles, the corners of the rectangle. In the map this rectangle is bounded by N Street (through Scott Circle and Georgetown) in the north, by N Capitol Street in the east and 32nd Street in the west in Georgetown.

[* Notice that the Capitol Building is located north of the (red) line created by connecting the right points of the pentagram, the right side of the red triangle. This means that it is not true that the Capitol sits at the base of the triangle in the map as some suggest. The end of the red line in the image above indicates where the Capitol needed to be in order for Pennsylvania Avenue to have been straight.]

1) The implication of this is that the 1792 map was just Phase One of the Development Plan, containing hints of what was to come later. It also points to a sucession of keepers of the plan symbology, what you might call hidden hands that directed the development of the city. Now that may sound like a conspiracy to you.

2) Projecting Virginia (blue) to 16th locates the Wash Mmt., the focus of Phase 2. The placement of the monument provided the last (above ground) element for the map/pyramid. (We are told that) the planned location of the Washington Monument was moved because of supposedly 'unstable ground', such that in its new position, it better depicts the Queen's Chamber, and it still falls on Virginia Ave.

3) Projecting Maryland Ave (also blue) to 16th locates the Jeff Mml for Phase 3. The House of the Temple, the National Archives Building and the Jefferson Memorial were the last three elements in the map tree/cube, and all were designed by one man, JR Pope. its hard for me to imagine that L'Enfant didn't make a plan that showed the monument at 16th St and Maryland Ave, with or without a tree.

Not only do I suggest that the DC map contains symbols embedded in the landscape, but that the map as we see it today, including the Tree, Cube and Pyramid images, was probably designed in 1791, but the fully landscaped version was never unveiled.

To me it seems more likely that the Tree of Life, the Cube, and the Pyramid were invisible parts of the 1792 planning map, than that somone else added elements to the plan later- the claim that is made of the 1901 McMillan Plan. It doesn't take a committee to see where the monument goes at the southern end of 16th St; L'Enfant aimed a street at it. The only significant monument that does not fit this scheme, the Lincoln Mml., is a product of the McMillan Plan.

While the McMillan Commission were able to extend the lines in L'Enfant/Ellicott's map to decide the location of other structures, they appear not to have been completely 'inside the design loop'. Remember that the triangle in the map was shortened producing a shortenened pentagram and hexagon, so the figure that fits this progression is an ellipse (a shortened circle). If you look at the 1901 plan you will see a circle south of the White House, not an ellipse as exists today.

. . .

Geometry, etc.

The Pentagram - Symbols mean what the users want them to mean and meanings change.

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