A Capitol Plan: An Important first Municipal Plan for an American City

by Justin Reich
Known now as the Noble Plan, the basic plan for Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States was devised by Pierre-Charles L’Enfant, a French-born American engineer, architect, and urban designer. L’Enfant was a Major under the direction of George Washington during the Revolutionary War. When Washington became President he asked the Frenchman to construct a new capital for a new nation. Washington wanted a European feel like that of the 17th century French in Italian architecture, “The primary influence, as suggested, was the late French Baroque, with its tradition of broad axial relationships, symmetrical balance, and superimposed on a grand scale”(Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban Design By Roger Trancik p. 157).

Pierre-Charles L'Enfant's 1791 plan for the city of Washington is one of the great landmarks in city planning. It was, designed from its inception to serve as the framework for the capital city of the new nation beginning in the year 1800. The proposal of broad radiating avenues connecting significant focal points, its open spaces, and its grid pattern of streets oriented north, south, east, and west is still the plan against which all modern land use proposals for the Nation's Capital are considered.