THE GRID: Washington and Utopia Part 2

A Versailles for the People

What the States required was a common social contract, a means to bind these individual entities into a cohesive whole. The foundation of a capital was crucial to this, as it manifested the creation of this new world in physical terms; the translation of utopia into reality. However, an American visual language had not yet formed. The only real option was to import values from Europe and reinterpret them to better suit American thinking. Jefferson saw in classicism the means to achieve this goal. Its heroic connotations of a glorious pinnacle in human development established a myth that could be re-figured for American minds. The weight of history would validate the new civic institutions, but to work as values these classical imports needed to embody an accessible social dimension (Tafuri 1976).

An example of this can be seen in Jefferson’s design for the Richmond Capitol in 1786 (Brownell 1992). Aside from changing the exterior order of the columns, the Maison Carée was lifted readymade into Virginia. The use of a Roman temple allowed for the glorification of democracy, by alluding to the archetypal republic (Tafuri 1976). Its literal transposition into a virgin landscape emancipated the model from the historical baggage accreted in Europe. Selectively contextualised antiquity became the resource for the new world. Therefore the proposal for Washington DC was entirely political in motive. The nation’s isolation and new social agenda meant that European values and models could be carefully selected and shaped autonomously. Their sole purpose then became the political construction of the US and subsequently manufacturing authority and credence for its ideals. It transcends the District of Columbia and establishes itself as the generator of the whole nation’s values. 

Richmond Capitol & Maison Caree. Or is it the other way around?

This utopian ambition manifests itself in several ways. Firstly, L’Enfant’s scheme expands the Roman metaphor at Richmond to an urban scale. Replacing the Tiber is the Potomac; like Rome, the city is surrounded by hills. With the majority of the city held within the meander of the river, the Potomac provides the salient geographical feature possessed by ‘true cities’. Ancient Rome developed a fabric of dwelling around the central Campo Marzio district. This district formed both the secular and religious centre to Rome and by extension the rest of the Empire. L’Enfant’s plan does the same thing morphologically. The street patterns weave a fabric of urbs, to accommodate the government workers and their families. At the functional and metaphorical heart of the plan is the Mall. This reinterpretation of the Roman Forum condensed the US into a single point, with all the armatures of its power arranged around a monumental park. With a monument to the first president as a fulcrum, the Capitol and White House set the primary axes and imply a zone for all other government buildings.  A critical difference between the Mall and Forum is the notable absence of religious buildings on the former. The National Cathedral (initially designed by L’Enfant in 1791), supposedly a prerequisite of ‘cityhood’ and the centre of many European cities, was banished to the periphery. Instead, temples to the secular age, like the Botanic Gardens, the National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian Museums, populate the gaps left by the democratic institutions.

Nolli’s survey of Rome superimposed with L’Enfant’s plan of Washington

Secondly, the plan employs two grids. In Washington the colonial grid defines a substrate, an initial imprint into which the symbolism of the plan can be inserted with the empirical rigour demanded by rationalism. It also perhaps reinforces the Roman paradigm and entrenches the concept of urbs (Aureli 2011). Cut across it are broad avenues that emanate diagonally from the Mall. These boulevards define the Capitol and White House as focal points and their intersections create public squares. The generative effect of these grids on the form of the city sits at odds with the ‘planless’ form of Rome, both ancient and contemporary (Aureli 2011). Whilst the Eternal City is defined by a juxtaposition of monumental forms where streets become incidental (Corbusier 1931), the root of the Washington plan is infrastructural and was based upon contemporary principles of urban planning. This lifts the plan above mere historicist metaphor and highlights the priority Jefferson et al placed when importing culture. The importance lay in the values espoused, rather than the forms created. Washington is not a copy of Rome. It is a descendant, built to manifest the same ideals but accepting of its temporal distance.

Aerial Image of Washington DC Capitol with radial and orthogonal grids superimposed

The grids also form vital elements in another strand in creating the capital of the US. A synthesis of their principles provided the counter-position necessary in formation of a new democracy.  Both these grids are inherently European: the first used to impose supremacy over new territories, whilst the second reinforced aristocratic supremacy of the domestic. Furthermore, they are polar opposites, their governing principles and underlying meanings appear to contradict one another. Whereas the isotropic gridiron removes any hierarchy from the city, the radial grid is predicated on such hierarchies. The gridiron defines the expansion of and movement through the city. The radial grid prioritises the city’s concentration into key nodes and the axes that frame these main points. This is beautifully exemplified at Versailles. Though not strictly a city plan, the landscaping performs a similar duty to street patterns. The message is very clear: the king of France sits at the centre of his universe, second only to God (Tafuri 1976). The radial grid is therefore the ultimate regressive metaphor. It uses progressive ideas put forward during the Renaissance and Enlightenment to enforce the medieval construct of absolute monarchy. This model exemplifies the despotism and inequality endemic to Europe that spawned both the French Revolution in 1789 and the American Revolution before it. 

Aerial images of Washington and Versailles. Democratic and autocratic form seem eerily similar 

Washington’s radial grid is therefore highly subversive, but not because its use in city planning was particularly radical. Examples can be found in Wren’s proposal for London, in Karlsruhe and in Paris before any conception of Washington (Tafuri 1976). Indeed, the formal ideas expressed in the capital form the vanguard of contemporary urban thought. Essentially the grid does the same things here as in Europe, focusing attention and placing symbolic importance on the objects at their nexus. The subversion derives from replacing the autocratic palace at Versailles and Antoinette’s decadent ‘farm’ with the Capitol building and the White House. The diagonal Pennsylvania Avenue connects these symbols of legislative and executive power. Outwith the Mall the intersections of radial and colonial grid create spaces intended for general public use, fifteen to represent the members of the US as of 1792. Apparently gimmicky, this move is crucial to understanding the symbolism behind Washington’s morphology. These squares encircle the Mall, sitting within the mundane fabric of the colonial grid. They are connected back to the Mall and one another by the radial grid. One could find a route using the orthogonal streets, but the most direct (and most symbolic connection) is formed by the diagonal boulevards. Therefore each state has a relationship to the other and they all relate back to the central government, i.e. the Capitol. The national government is at the centre of this universe and, with it, democracy.  

Idyllic views of Washington

The realisation of Washington DC was entirely due to a collective need for cohesive political identity, an identity that was ultimately misleading. The intention of generating new ideals, rather than representing existing ones, using something as fixed as a city, placed L’Enfant’s plan squarely within utopian territory. This highlights the fundamental flaw of Washington DC. It does not relate to the actuality of American culture and its development. Instead it represents a single strand of thought about the potential of this new country and the need to validate that existence on comparable terms with the European powers. What Tafuri calls America’s ‘bad conscience’, Washington DC became a political monument to values that were being rapidly eroded by the vicissitudes of the economic and industrial development that actually defined recognisably American urban planning (1976). The grid here is propaganda.