4 PARK SYSTEM OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. The boldness and foresight of these city makers is to be wondered at when we remember that at this period the population of the United States was about 4,600,000. The next item for solution was the location of the principal buildings and commemorative monuments, with a view to place them so as to enhance their effect and at the same time so that they would become the crowning features of the surrounding landscape. The map of Paris, as well as his personal knowledge, furnished L'Enfant suggestions for the location of palatial buildings, statuary, and monuments; but with the exception of the Champs Elysées few, if any, suggestions were found as to location of such objects of interest so that they could be seen, enjoyed, and so that they would produce the happiest effect in connection with their surroundings. The Mall, as the grand garden approach to the Capitol, would naturally have suggested itself from a study of the Champs Elysées and of the more beautiful garden approach to Versailles. How far should water effects be introduced as a feature in the new plan? L'Enfant in his request for plans of Amsterdam and Venice evidently had water effects in view, and carrying out this idea he suggests on his map a treatment of wharves, arranged for open views to the broad Potomac, and introduced a canal, with water basins and fountains, which would have added wonderfully to the beauty of the city if they had been carried out. A part of the water scheme was executed in the form of a canal, but this was turned into an open sewer and eventually arched and covered. The most unique and distinctive feature of Washington, its numerous focal points of interest and beauty from which radiate the principal streets and avenues was not suggested by any city of Europe. Three streets converging toward a building or a square being the nearest . approximation to the idea shown upon the map of any European city of that date. As I have mentioned before, after the great fire in London in 1666, Sir Christopher Wren made a design for the rearrangement of the streets, and for grouping the various important buildings in London. This unexecuted plan of Wren's was apparently the first to suggest the radiation of streets from focal points of interest, and in it he had several such centers. (Fig. 1.) Engravings of this map were published in various histories of London in L'Enfant's day. When Jefferson asked for maps of London there can be little doubt that this design was among the number sent to Jefferson and by him given to L'Enfant. When Louis XIV made Versailles one of his principal residences, Le Notre, who was the director of buildings and gardens for the grand monarch, laid out the garden of Versailles, one of the most pleasing, impressive, as well as magnificent pieces of formal landscape in existence at the present day. This was designed about 1662 and completed in 1669. |