Room for Embellishment
L'Enfant wrote President Washington in 1789, "No nation perhaps had ever before the opportunity offered them of deliberately deciding on the spot where their capital city should be fixed , and altho' 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 at any period however remote." Note especially where he says that 'the plan should be drawn to leave room for aggrandizement and embellishment'. This is important because the dry land on which the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials now stand did not exist in 1791. As we shall soon see, both L'E and Ellicott produced planning maps that feature the Tiber Creek having been filled in, which didn't occur until the mid 19th century. In other words, we know that they were 'thinking ahead' in terms of the planning for the city. The question that arises concerns just how much ahead they were thinking. Future Planning Maps made of the area in 1791-2 can be divided into two conceptual categories, one being what I will call a 'real-time' map that represent the existing features (like the topo map below), and the other being a planning map that shows an artists representation of a future time. L'Enfant produced each of these, and only the planning maps show the creek filled in. 1791 Topographic Map Click for larger image As you can see, the Mall (west of the Capitol Building) replaces the creek in this 1793 copy of the plan, all the way to the White House. The dark branching line south of the Capitol is the canal which was constructed from the creek, but was removed following the War Between the States. 1793 Planning Map It is not hard to imagine that L'Enfant produced a planning map that included all of the map as we see it today, just as he produced one that depicted the map circa 1860, in 1791. By that I mean that the extent of the landscaping that was included in L'Enfant and Ellicott's maps (like making a canal out of the Tiber Creek and filling in dry land south of the White House) was not achieved until after 1862. That is, there is more land filled in in the 1793 plan above than there is in the 1846 Morrison map below. The map hadn't yet caught up with the plan. Other than that, we see that the '46 map matches the elements in the '93 plan (with fewer plazas or squares). 1846 Map The next image is taken from the 1862 "Johnson and Ward" map of DC. As you can see nothing is changed from the 1846 map above, and the mouth of the creek still has not been filled in. 1862 Map Close-up The Washington Monument Note the position of the Washington Monument, east of the north-west line through the White House and south of the east-west line through the Capitol Building. Remember that we are told that L'Enfant intended for there to be an equestrian statue of GW where these two lines cross, but when the time came to build the monument the soil there was not suitable there, so the position was moved to it's current location. This is a close-up of that area in a planning map from 1791. Today Jefferson's Pier is located where the red lines cross above. Note that on the Wikipedia page about the pier (in a section called 'external links' at the bottom of the page), there is a link to the 1855 Colton map of Washington along with a note that the "Jefferson Pier would have been on seawall at edge of water at the entrance to Washington City Canal". Supposedly boats would 'tie up to it'. What this tells us is that the landscaping (by filling in the creek) had only gotten as far as the pier in 1846 and had progressed no further by '62, indicating that no one was in a big hurry to put a monument in that location. Unstable Ground? Remember that in order to be able to say that ground is soft or unsuitable or unstable, there has to be some ground in the first place. The cornerstone was laid where it is now in 1848. The 1846 map (above) shows that the landscaping had just reached the 'planned location' ( described as 'at the edge of the water' above) then. While the current monument is 55 feet wide at the bottom, Mill's proposal (above) centered on a circular colonnaded pantheon, 250 feet in diameter; meaning it had a larger footprint. If it had been located where the pier stands today it would have been half in and half out of the water (in '48). After considering the prospects of constructing this elaborate design, the Washington National Monument Society decided upon a simple obelisk instead. We read that, "When Pierre Charles L'Enfant first mapped out the city of Washington, the statue was to be near the shore of the river. By 1848, the plans were for a large obelisk that was much too heavy for the soft river bank" (from http://www.nps.gov/archive/wamo/memorial/design.htm); but if you look at any of the planning maps, you can see that L'Enfant intended for the entire mouth of the creek to be filled in, as eventually happens. L'Enfant does not show the monument on 'the edge of' the river. We are told that engineers found the ground unsuitable there but the trouble with that is that there was no soil there until after 1862! The position where the axiis cross is right on the waters edge, meaning that the area was not even filled enough to consider placing a monument there in '62, or when construction began in 1848. The story about un-suitable soil breaks down because they wasn't any soil there. You would think that if it was true that L'Enfant wanted to replace the creek with a canal and place a statue in a central location, and that others, in following his plan could fill in the creek, they could fill in the mouth of the creek too, so that the monument could go in that spot. We are supposed to believe that in 50 years they failed to build up around the pivotal corner of the triangle in the map? The question that arises is that if the triangle with the monument in the left hand corner was so all-impotant to the plan, why has there never been anything larger than a 2 foot monument placed there? Ovason also has suspicions about the story, and proclaims that, "When we examine the implications of this change (of the monument's position), we shall realize that it was probably not due to the official reasons given" (page 126). Ovason is questioning the 'official' story line, which consists of three premises. The first is that L'Enfant had intended for an equestrian statue dedicated to GW to be placed where the axiis cross, the second that the monument was moved from this position because "Engineers found that the spot central to the axis of the mall would not be stable enough to support such a heavy building", and the third is the location of the axis crossing was marked by Jefferson in 1804. "L'Enfant had visualized that the statue standing on the Mall. The site was marked by a pyramid of stones until well into the 19th century, and seems to have been located exactly on the meridian and the east-west point drawn up by Andrew Ellicott in 1791." (Ovason p 126) Note that for that spot to have been marked by a pyramid of stones, there would have to be dry land there. Several possibilities confront us, one being that L'Enfant did not really want to put an equestrian statue at the axis crossing spot, that the real plan called for the Washington Monument in it's current location. Another is that there were forces at work that superceded L'Enfant's plans. A Wooden Stake A NOAA website tells us that: "The Jefferson Pier marks the first meridian of the United States and was originally established in 1793 on a line due south through the center of the White House at the intersection of a line west from the center of the Capitol. The original point was marked by a wooden stake and replaced by a stone pier in 1804. The monument was removed and replaced several times until finally being restored in 1889 under the direction of Colonel O. H. Ernst, Officer in Charge of Public Buildings and Grounds. The pier, a 2 foot square granite monument extending 2 feet above the ground remains today a point of curiosity with tourists who seldom understand its significance." Or if you prefer a different government resource, you have: "The Jefferson Pier which Thomas Jefferson had had erected as a marker at the intersection of lines due south from the White House and due west from the Capitol stands about 200 feet northwest of the monument. It had been set in place the first time in 1810. It was removed subsequently but was reinstalled in 1925." From the Wikipedia pier page: "At the junction of the lines from the center of the President's House and the Capitol, on October 15, 1804, Nicholas King, Surveyor of the City of Washington, erected a small pier, covered by a flat free stone, on which the lines are drawn." The image above is entitled "The Correct Map of the City of Washington 1820". Where the red lines cross is where Jefferson's Pier is located today. Some maps from the period show more land and less creek in the area in question. The image below is a Jan 1816 image by architect BH Latrobe, which illustrates his ideas for dealing with the mall. In blue you can see the creek, while in white we see the sea walls. The red square marks the pier's location, which was described as being right on the sea wall in 1855. Click for larger image So for the sake of arguement we allow that the 'planned location' fell right on the edge of the creek and the later sea wall. This sort of defies the notion of marking the spot with a wooden stake or stone pyramid since the height of the water there varies with the tides. It defies common sense to suggest that L'Enfant wanted a statue in the spot where Jefferson marked but that no landscaping was done beyond the point of the pier for more than 70 years (92-62). The official story has broken down here, meaning that it is not literaly true that the soil was unsuitable in the planned position for the monument, but that the landscaping of the area was never carried on to an extent that it included enough area to support the structure; as was done later for the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials. The McMillan Plan It is highly conceivable to me that the planners could have made a map in 1792 that included another monument at the southern end of the 16th Street axis and one at the west end of the Mall, that they shared only among themselves, and which has served as a guide for two centuries. When writers speak of a triangle at the center of the DC landscape, they mean the 'right' triangle that has one corner where the Jefferson Pier is today, but if you look, there are really two triangles; the hypotenuse of one is Pennsylvania Avenue and the other is Maryland Avenue, the two legs of the supposed 'compass' in the map. The Monument at the end of Maryland Ave (Jeff Mml) is in the right location on the 16th Street axis, but the Washington Monument was not placed on it for some reason. The fetish about this location and concerns about the asymmetry in the map caused by the displacement of the monument continues with the McMillan Plan of 1901, where "Elaborate sunken gardens proposed for the western side of the monument attempted to correct the off-center north-south axis from the White House". Reading the supposed 'history' of the 1901 McMillan Plan for DC renovation, you will discover that it basically served to continue the task of filling in the river so that the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial could be built. If you compare the actual 'plan' from 1901 (above) with a later map (below), you see that they do not look very much alike. Note Bene the cruciform shape. "In 1901 the McMillan Commission changed the triangular core of the capital plan. The perpindicular sides of the triangle would now intersect at the Washington Monument and continue on to two new sites. This new design changes L'Enfant's triangle into a cross." Meyer p 165 As you can see the McMillan plan looks like a cross, but the current DC map does not. Also, the lines DO NOT cross at the monument, that's the whole point about symmetry. In the McMillan Plan the center is supposedly the pier, while the Wash Mmt lies to the right of that. The 1901 Plan is an attempt to impose a cross shape and symmetry on the map, which does not work. Note the circle in the 1901 Plan and the Ellipse in the current map. Sadly since the Washington Monument is located 123 feet south of the east-west line through the Capitol at the 16th Street axis, and since the Mall is aligned to that line, and the Lincoln Memorial too, we know that the point being used as a center in the 1901 plan is really south of the Jefferson Pier, which is due west of the CB. Actually the position of the Jefferson Memorial at the end of 16th Street and Maryland Avenues was a 'no-brainer' as there are two lines of sight pointing to it in L'Enfant's map; just as the proposed and curent positions of the Wash Mmt can be located by Virginia Ave. And I do not believe that the position of the Lincoln Memorial is where L'Enfant was pointing in the west. New York, Penn and Maryland form three sides of a rhombus, and the last corner is not at the LM, but west of there. "Four different sites for the memorial were considered, with the final choice going to a site in conformity with the McMillan Plan, where the axis drawn south from the White House would intersect an imaginary extension of Maryland Avenue. This decision created, or completed the cruciform plan that now constitutes the ceremonial center of Washington." Meyer 178 If all they did was drop a meridian line from the 16th Street and extend Maryland Ave, both of which L'Enfant established, then it sounds like it was in conformity with his map not the 1901 plan. If we accept that his planning map featured landscaping that was not completed for several generations, and explicitly named one monument that was to be located in an area that was not completely dry, then we can see where the map hints at more things to come. Versailles Many people point to the 1901 plan image and compare it to Versailles and proclaim that modern day DC is modeled after Versailles, without ever looking at the current map to see that the 1901 plan was never fully implimented in the form that you see in the plan for that. The product that we see today owes very little to the McMillan Comission and a lot to adding some dirt to the L'Enfant map, in places that are alluded to in his plan. Versailles Map When you stand on the west side of the Capitol Building you look across the Mall to the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial which stands on land that was taken from the river, looking a little right we are looking 'up' Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House, looking a little left down Maryland Avenue we see the Jefferson Memorial, also on reclaimed land. From the perspective of the image above, it doesn't seem like it would take a committee to determine where to put the monuments? It also doesn't require a genius to extend the lines in L'Enfant's plan and imagine what he was aimimg at. Continue

Room for Embellishment

L'Enfant wrote President Washington in 1789, "No nation perhaps had ever before the opportunity offered them of deliberately deciding on the spot where their capital city should be fixed , and altho' 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 at any period however remote."
Note especially where he says that 'the plan should be drawn to leave room for aggrandizement and embellishment'. This is important because the dry land on which the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials now stand did not exist in 1791. As we shall soon see, both L'E and Ellicott produced planning maps that feature the Tiber Creek having been filled in, which didn't occur until the mid 19th century. In other words, we know that they were 'thinking ahead' in terms of the planning for the city. The question that arises concerns just how much ahead they were thinking.

Future Planning
Maps made of the area in 1791-2 can be divided into two conceptual categories, one being what I will call a 'real-time' map that represent the existing features (like the topo map below), and the other being a planning map that shows an artists representation of a future time. L'Enfant produced each of these, and only the planning maps show the creek filled in.

1791 Topographic Map

Click for larger image
As you can see, the Mall (west of the Capitol Building) replaces the creek in this 1793 copy of the plan, all the way to the White House. The dark branching line south of the Capitol is the canal which was constructed from the creek, but was removed following the War Between the States.

1793 Planning Map

It is not hard to imagine that L'Enfant produced a planning map that included all of the map as we see it today, just as he produced one that depicted the map circa 1860, in 1791. By that I mean that the extent of the landscaping that was included in L'Enfant and Ellicott's maps (like making a canal out of the Tiber Creek and filling in dry land south of the White House) was not achieved until after 1862.
That is, there is more land filled in in the 1793 plan above than there is in the 1846 Morrison map below. The map hadn't yet caught up with the plan. Other than that, we see that the '46 map matches the elements in the '93 plan (with fewer plazas or squares).

1846 Map

The next image is taken from the 1862 "Johnson and Ward" map of DC. As you can see nothing is changed from the 1846 map above, and the mouth of the creek still has not been filled in.

1862 Map Close-up

The Washington Monument
Note the position of the Washington Monument, east of the north-west line through the White House and south of the east-west line through the Capitol Building. Remember that we are told that L'Enfant intended for there to be an equestrian statue of GW where these two lines cross, but when the time came to build the monument the soil there was not suitable there, so the position was moved to it's current location.

This is a close-up of that area in a planning map from 1791.

Today Jefferson's Pier is located where the red lines cross above.

Note that on the Wikipedia page about the pier (in a section called 'external links' at the bottom of the page), there is a link to the 1855 Colton map of Washington along with a note that the "Jefferson Pier would have been on seawall at edge of water at the entrance to Washington City Canal". Supposedly boats would 'tie up to it'. What this tells us is that the landscaping (by filling in the creek) had only gotten as far as the pier in 1846 and had progressed no further by '62, indicating that no one was in a big hurry to put a monument in that location.

Unstable Ground?
Remember that in order to be able to say that ground is soft or unsuitable or unstable, there has to be some ground in the first place. The cornerstone was laid where it is now in 1848. The 1846 map (above) shows that the landscaping had just reached the 'planned location' ( described as 'at the edge of the water' above) then.

While the current monument is 55 feet wide at the bottom, Mill's proposal (above) centered on a circular colonnaded pantheon, 250 feet in diameter; meaning it had a larger footprint. If it had been located where the pier stands today it would have been half in and half out of the water (in '48). After considering the prospects of constructing this elaborate design, the Washington National Monument Society decided upon a simple obelisk instead.
We read that, "When Pierre Charles L'Enfant first mapped out the city of Washington, the statue was to be near the shore of the river. By 1848, the plans were for a large obelisk that was much too heavy for the soft river bank" (from http://www.nps.gov/archive/wamo/memorial/design.htm); but if you look at any of the planning maps, you can see that L'Enfant intended for the entire mouth of the creek to be filled in, as eventually happens. L'Enfant does not show the monument on 'the edge of' the river.
We are told that engineers found the ground unsuitable there but the trouble with that is that there was no soil there until after 1862! The position where the axiis cross is right on the waters edge, meaning that the area was not even filled enough to consider placing a monument there in '62, or when construction began in 1848. The story about un-suitable soil breaks down because they wasn't any soil there.
You would think that if it was true that L'Enfant wanted to replace the creek with a canal and place a statue in a central location, and that others, in following his plan could fill in the creek, they could fill in the mouth of the creek too, so that the monument could go in that spot. We are supposed to believe that in 50 years they failed to build up around the pivotal corner of the triangle in the map?
The question that arises is that if the triangle with the monument in the left hand corner was so all-impotant to the plan, why has there never been anything larger than a 2 foot monument placed there?
Ovason also has suspicions about the story, and proclaims that, "When we examine the implications of this change (of the monument's position), we shall realize that it was probably not due to the official reasons given" (page 126). Ovason is questioning the 'official' story line, which consists of three premises. The first is that L'Enfant had intended for an equestrian statue dedicated to GW to be placed where the axiis cross, the second that the monument was moved from this position because "Engineers found that the spot central to the axis of the mall would not be stable enough to support such a heavy building", and the third is the location of the axis crossing was marked by Jefferson in 1804.
"L'Enfant had visualized that the statue standing on the Mall. The site was marked by a pyramid of stones until well into the 19th century, and seems to have been located exactly on the meridian and the east-west point drawn up by Andrew Ellicott in 1791." (Ovason p 126) Note that for that spot to have been marked by a pyramid of stones, there would have to be dry land there.
Several possibilities confront us, one being that L'Enfant did not really want to put an equestrian statue at the axis crossing spot, that the real plan called for the Washington Monument in it's current location. Another is that there were forces at work that superceded L'Enfant's plans.

A Wooden Stake
A NOAA website tells us that:
"The Jefferson Pier marks the first meridian of the United States and was originally established in 1793 on a line due south through the center of the White House at the intersection of a line west from the center of the Capitol. The original point was marked by a wooden stake and replaced by a stone pier in 1804. The monument was removed and replaced several times until finally being restored in 1889 under the direction of Colonel O. H. Ernst, Officer in Charge of Public Buildings and Grounds. The pier, a 2 foot square granite monument extending 2 feet above the ground remains today a point of curiosity with tourists who seldom understand its significance."
Or if you prefer a different government resource, you have:
"The Jefferson Pier which Thomas Jefferson had had erected as a marker at the intersection of lines due south from the White House and due west from the Capitol stands about 200 feet northwest of the monument. It had been set in place the first time in 1810. It was removed subsequently but was reinstalled in 1925."
From the Wikipedia pier page:
"At the junction of the lines from the center of the President's House and the Capitol, on October 15, 1804, Nicholas King, Surveyor of the City of Washington, erected a small pier, covered by a flat free stone, on which the lines are drawn."

The image above is entitled "The Correct Map of the City of Washington 1820". Where the red lines cross is where Jefferson's Pier is located today.
Some maps from the period show more land and less creek in the area in question. The image below is a Jan 1816 image by architect BH Latrobe, which illustrates his ideas for dealing with the mall. In blue you can see the creek, while in white we see the sea walls. The red square marks the pier's location, which was described as being right on the sea wall in 1855.

Click for larger image
So for the sake of arguement we allow that the 'planned location' fell right on the edge of the creek and the later sea wall. This sort of defies the notion of marking the spot with a wooden stake or stone pyramid since the height of the water there varies with the tides. It defies common sense to suggest that L'Enfant wanted a statue in the spot where Jefferson marked but that no landscaping was done beyond the point of the pier for more than 70 years (92-62).
The official story has broken down here, meaning that it is not literaly true that the soil was unsuitable in the planned position for the monument, but that the landscaping of the area was never carried on to an extent that it included enough area to support the structure; as was done later for the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials.

The McMillan Plan
It is highly conceivable to me that the planners could have made a map in 1792 that included another monument at the southern end of the 16th Street axis and one at the west end of the Mall, that they shared only among themselves, and which has served as a guide for two centuries.
When writers speak of a triangle at the center of the DC landscape, they mean the 'right' triangle that has one corner where the Jefferson Pier is today, but if you look, there are really two triangles; the hypotenuse of one is Pennsylvania Avenue and the other is Maryland Avenue, the two legs of the supposed 'compass' in the map. The Monument at the end of Maryland Ave (Jeff Mml) is in the right location on the 16th Street axis, but the Washington Monument was not placed on it for some reason.
The fetish about this location and concerns about the asymmetry in the map caused by the displacement of the monument continues with the McMillan Plan of 1901, where "Elaborate sunken gardens proposed for the western side of the monument attempted to correct the off-center north-south axis from the White House".

Reading the supposed 'history' of the 1901 McMillan Plan for DC renovation, you will discover that it basically served to continue the task of filling in the river so that the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial could be built. If you compare the actual 'plan' from 1901 (above) with a later map (below), you see that they do not look very much alike. Note Bene the cruciform shape.
"In 1901 the McMillan Commission changed the triangular core of the capital plan. The perpindicular sides of the triangle would now intersect at the Washington Monument and continue on to two new sites. This new design changes L'Enfant's triangle into a cross." Meyer p 165 As you can see the McMillan plan looks like a cross, but the current DC map does not.
Also, the lines DO NOT cross at the monument, that's the whole point about symmetry. In the McMillan Plan the center is supposedly the pier, while the Wash Mmt lies to the right of that. The 1901 Plan is an attempt to impose a cross shape and symmetry on the map, which does not work. Note the circle in the 1901 Plan and the Ellipse in the current map.
Sadly since the Washington Monument is located 123 feet south of the east-west line through the Capitol at the 16th Street axis, and since the Mall is aligned to that line, and the Lincoln Memorial too, we know that the point being used as a center in the 1901 plan is really south of the Jefferson Pier, which is due west of the CB.
Actually the position of the Jefferson Memorial at the end of 16th Street and Maryland Avenues was a 'no-brainer' as there are two lines of sight pointing to it in L'Enfant's map; just as the proposed and curent positions of the Wash Mmt can be located by Virginia Ave. And I do not believe that the position of the Lincoln Memorial is where L'Enfant was pointing in the west. New York, Penn and Maryland form three sides of a rhombus, and the last corner is not at the LM, but west of there.
"Four different sites for the memorial were considered, with the final choice going to a site in conformity with the McMillan Plan, where the axis drawn south from the White House would intersect an imaginary extension of Maryland Avenue. This decision created, or completed the cruciform plan that now constitutes the ceremonial center of Washington." Meyer 178
If all they did was drop a meridian line from the 16th Street and extend Maryland Ave, both of which L'Enfant established, then it sounds like it was in conformity with his map not the 1901 plan. If we accept that his planning map featured landscaping that was not completed for several generations, and explicitly named one monument that was to be located in an area that was not completely dry, then we can see where the map hints at more things to come.

Versailles
Many people point to the 1901 plan image and compare it to Versailles and proclaim that modern day DC is modeled after Versailles, without ever looking at the current map to see that the 1901 plan was never fully implimented in the form that you see in the plan for that. The product that we see today owes very little to the McMillan Comission and a lot to adding some dirt to the L'Enfant map, in places that are alluded to in his plan.

Versailles Map

When you stand on the west side of the Capitol Building you look across the Mall to the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial which stands on land that was taken from the river, looking a little right we are looking 'up' Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House, looking a little left down Maryland Avenue we see the Jefferson Memorial, also on reclaimed land.

From the perspective of the image above, it doesn't seem like it would take a committee to determine where to put the monuments? It also doesn't require a genius to extend the lines in L'Enfant's plan and imagine what he was aimimg at.

Continue