page_title: Pierre Charles L'Enfant
section_title: Honors
hierarchical_section_title: Pierre Charles L'Enfant / Honors
caption_attribution_description: Text in oval near the west end of Freedom Plaza. The oval contains the title legend of L'Enfant's original plan for the City of Washington. The title legend identifies the plan's author as "Peter Charles L'Enfant".
context_page_description: Pierre Charles L'Enfant, self-identified as Peter Charles L'Enfant while living in the United States, was a French-American military engineer who designed the basic plan for Washington, D.C. known today as the L'Enfant Plan.
context_section_description: In 1942, an American cargo-carrying "Liberty" ship in World War II, named the S.S. "Pierre L'Enfant" was launched, part of a series of almost 2,000 ships mass-produced in an "assembly-line" fashion from eleven coastal shipyards. In 1970, she was shipwrecked and abandoned.
  L'Enfant Plaza, a complex of office buildings (with the 1972 headquarters of the United States Postal Service), with an adjacent L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, an office building and an underground parking garage and a long series of underground corridors with a shopping center centered around an esplanade ('L'Enfant Promenade") in southwest Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 1968. Meeting rooms in the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel bear the names of French artists, military leaders, and explorers. The central portion of the plaza contains an engraved map of the city by Pierre L'Enfant from 1791. Within the city map is a smaller map that shows the plaza's location.
  Beneath the L'Enfant Plaza is one of the central rapid transit busy Metro subway stops in Washington, D.C., the L'Enfant Plaza station.
  In 1980, Western Plaza (subsequently renamed to "Freedom Plaza") opened in downtown Washington, D.C., adjacent to Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. A raised marble inlay in the Plaza's surface depicts parts of L'Enfant's 1791 plan for the City of Washington. The inlay contains an oval bearing the title of the plan followed by the words "By Peter Charles L'Enfant".
  In 2003, L'Enfant's 1791 Plan for Washington was commemorated on a USPS commemorative postage stamp. The diamond shape of the stamp reflects the original 100 square miles (259 km²) tract of land selected for the District. Shown is a view along the National Mall, including the Capitol, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial. Also portrayed are cherry blossoms around the "Tidal Basin" and row houses from the Shaw neighborhood.
  The Government of the District of Columbia has commissioned a statue of L'Enfant that it hopes will one day reside in the U.S. Capitol as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection centered in the old chamber of the United States House of Representatives. As Federal Law currently only allows U.S. states (and not federal territories, commonwealths, districts or other possessions) to contribute statues to the Collection, the District of Columbia's Delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, Eleanor Holmes Norton, is attempting to have the Congress change the law to permit the installation of the statue to represent the District in the Statuary Hall. The statue is presently displayed in the historic John A. Wilson District Building for the municipal government offices on Pennsylvania Avenue.
  Since 2005, the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. has held an annual "L'Enfant Lecture on City Planning and Design" to draw attention to critical issues in city and regional planning in the United States.
  The American Planning Association (APA) has created an award named in L'Enfant's honor which recognizes excellence in international planning.
caption: Image of oval inscribed in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., containing the title of the L'Enfant Plan, followed by the words "By Peter Charles L'Enfant". (2006)
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