Evening star., 1939-01-29
WildL'Enfant
Vision Saved
City Millions
Street Widening Is
Freed From Cost
Others Face
Bv Paul Walsh.

BY Paul Walsh.
Maj. Pierre Charles LEnfant,
dead for more than a century, saved
the District of Columbia some two
million dollars in 1888.
The visionary French engineer,
who followed La Fayette to America,
remained here to design the worlds
most beautiful Capital City, and
then died in broken hearted and
penniless obscurity, had one obses-
sion-beauty. That mania, reviled
and ridiculed when Pennsylvania
avenue was still swampy and Capt.
tol Hill little more than acreage, is
paying dividends in dollars and
cents today.
Commissioned by President WASH
ington to plan the new Federal City.
L'Enfant envisioned Capital of a
grandeur and majesty far beyond
the capacity of normal imagina-
tions to appreciate, Capital so am
bilious and pretentious as to seem,
in the 1790s, ludicrously inconsis.
tent with the poverty and impotence
of the infant Republic. He drew a
Capital for the distant future, when
the 13 States would have grown and
prospered into the worlds richest
and most powerful Nation.
LEnfant marked out on his city
plan vast areas for parks, much
more than ample space for public
buildings, decorative circles and
plazas, and wide boulevards. They
weren't just streets, mere thorough
fares, which the French engineer.
artist planned; they were long, broad
vistas. designed for beauty's sake
and with an eye to the future as
we'll as for ordinary vehicular and
pedestrian usages. Avenues as wide
as 400 feet he mapped out: others,
many of them $50 feet and wider.
That in a day of horseback and
buggy, of meandering lanes which
passed for streets in Philadelphia
(from which city the Federal Gov
ernment was moving! The land
owners went wild. And LEnfant
was fired.
Those landowners, of course, had
a personal interest in the LEnfant
plan. BY the agreement entered
into with President Washington
they stood to make some money.
That agreement included the pur-
chase by the Government of such
ground as was required for public
buildings and the like for s67 an
acre. The landowners agreed to do
nate land for public thoroughfares
The balance was divided into build
ing lots, the alternate lots to be sold
for the benefit of the owner and the
Federal Government. The Govern
ment's share of the income from the
lots would be used to pay for its own
acreage purchases.
When the LEnfant plan, with its
wide streets and seeming waste
spaces. was produced, the landown-
ers saw red. Three e-hundred-foot
streets when 35-foot width would
do for the horse and buggy! Hun
dreds of acres of valuable subdivi-
sion land snatched from the real
estate men just for a dream city!
Poor LEnfant didn't last long as a
city planner after such and similar
complaints.
But his plan, for the most part.
did The deal went through with
wide streets, not 400-foot streets by
any means, but with ample 200-foot
widths. But they still were much
too wide for those and subsequent
days in the Capitals development.
And Sc, encroachment and abutment
by private property owners onto
rights of way resulted. Property
owners built right up to the property
lines, usurping District (street-way)
property for front yards. The prac-
tice was allowed by District officials
through the years, because even
with such encroaching there still
remained plenty of room for streets
and sidewalks and tree space be-
tween.
The District of Columbia discov-
cred, as have large cities throughout
the country, that wider streets were
necessary to handle the modern
traffic. That problem elsewhere
gives city fathers headaches. It
means that the city must buy the
necessary depth of street frontage
from the adjoining property own
ers, undertake condemnation pro-
ceedings, worrisome litigation, and
generally pursue tedious, expen-
sive program for acquisition of the
land necessary for the street widen
ing. In these other cities the
ground between the property line
and the building line is private
municipal regulations or
restrict building some dis
tance back from the property line
except in high-value downtown sec
tions.
In shington-thanks to L'En.-
fant-there are no such headaches
for the District legal and fiscal
staffs, there is no litigation and no
worry about the financing of the
purchase of necessary ground for
street widening. Because the Dis
trict already owns many feet on
both sides of the downtown streets.
Street widening, then, becomes
merely an engineering and trafac
problem.