Welcome

Welcome
John William Tuohy lives in Washington DC

The ghosts of Washington: Lafayette Park (Presidents park)

 


Andrew Ellicott: President Jefferson later appointed Ellicott to teach survey work to Meriwether Lewis, of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Ellicott Circle (At Pa. and the Anacostia Freeway) and Ellicott Street are named for him.


 

The spirits of the dead hallow a house, for me. Mark Twain

 

It’s been said that Lafayette Square, the small park that sits across the street from the front of the White House, is ground zero for spirits in Washington DC. , because it is widely considered the most haunted area in the city.  Almost all of the homes that adjoin the park, including the White House, have a tragic history as does the actual park itself.


                                                                        Lafayette

Lafayette Square or Lafayette Park (Outside of the tourist brochures put on by the government, I have never once heard it referred to as The President Park) is named for Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the hero American Revolutionary War.

It seems the Major’s spirit seemingly wanders the streets and buildings of Washington at large, demanding payment for his work in designing Washington,  but oddly enough, had never been spotted in this small but distinguished plot of land that bears his name. 

L'Enfant was a French-born architect and civil engineer who laid out the master design for the city of Washington. He was recruited by Pierre by the French (A friend of the American colonies) to join in the American Revolution against the British.  He took to the American way of life he dropped the name Pierre for the more Yankee “Peter” but it never really caught on.

Wounded at the Siege of Savannah in 1779, he recovered and served on George Washington's staff as a Captain of Engineers for the remainder of the Revolutionary War. As well he should have since the young L'Enfant (He was 24 years old when he arrived in America) had had training in both art and architecture, something that almost no other American at the time could claim.

After the war, L'Enfant moved to New York City and became a very successful civil engineer and redesigned the City Hall in New York for the First Congress in Federal Hall. In 1791, President George Washington appointed L'Enfant to design the new capital city.

L'Enfant delivered a bold plan. There would be a "Congress house" (The Capitol and would be located on a longitude designated as 0:0.)  built on Jenkins Hill, one of the three major hills within the city but the only one in close proximity to what he called the "President's house" (the White House).

L'Enfant President’s house would have massive public gardens and monumental architecture and the house itself, he envisioned, would be the largest in all of North America. 

He called for a city that would be laid out in a grid that traveled a north-south direction. (Diagonal avenues later named after the states of the union crossed the grid.) He also saw a garden-lined "grand avenue" (The National Mall which was designed in “The new American state of mind” meaning any at all could walk on the mall, regardless of class or wealth, unheard of in France at that time) and a central street.  (Pennsylvania Avenue) which would connect the Congress house with the President's house. He also dotted the city plan with a plethora of parks and public squares and grand.

 What L'Enfant had not planned for was the very vicious backstabbing politics that dominated the new federal government.  That, combined with L'Enfant's genius temperament, his lack of tact, and his inability to take a direct order, caused him to fall into bad graces.  Eventually, he was replaced in favor of Benjamin Ellicott, brother of Andrew Ellicott, who had been conducting the original boundary survey of the future District of Columbia.

His grand plans for a grand capital city were mostly abandoned.  His mall was built, true, but a railroad was built across it, with switching tracks and ugly coal storage yards and a rail passenger station.

L'Enfant was not paid for his work designing the federal city and his firing at the hands of George Washington diminished his reputation and badly harmed his business.  Undaunted, L'Enfant walked the hall of Congress for decades, demanding payment for his work since he was virtually bankrupt.  Eventually, he was paid, but only a fraction of what he had been promised, and all of that was taken by his creditors. 

L'Enfant died in 1825 in poverty and was buried at the Green Hill farm in Chillum in Prince George's County, Maryland. His mere earthly possessions included three watches, three compasses, a few books, maps, and his surveying instruments, all of it valued at less than $200, at the time.

In 1909, mostly due to the work of Jean Jules Jusserand,  a French ambassador to the United States, L'Enfant's was officially recognized by the United States, a nation he so loved and a people he so admired. L'Enfant's remains were laid in state at the Capitol rotunda and he was re-interred in the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, on a hill overlooking the city he designed.