Washington, D.C. street design conspiracy theory

The street layout of Washington, D.C. is the subject of numerous conspiracy theories, usually asserting that the Freemasons or the Illuminati designed the street layout of Washington, D.C. to deliberately incorporate occult symbols, including an inverted pentagram with the bottom pointing directly at the White House. 
Ed Decker (an anti-Masonic Christian) writes: "The satanic pentagram under which the White House sits is an open door through which Satan has access to our president."Decker, Ed. The Question of Freemasonry, Lafayette, LA: Huntington House, 1992, as quoted in Woodrow, Ralph. Reckless Rumors, Disinformation, Doomsday Delusions, Palm Springs, CA: Ralph Woodrow Evangelistic Association, 2000. Jesus-is-savior.com hosts a video by Texe Marrs making the same claim about a pentagram in the street-design pointing to the White House, and further finding other symbols like a hexagram, a "Knights Templar" (actually a ) cross, and a Masonic square-and-compass logo in the streets, and a street layout around the U.S. Capitol building resembling an owl or a pagan goddess statue. This webpage and video also claim buildings like the Washington Monument, the Pentagon, and the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials all have pagan or occult building-designs enabling dark forces to have free rein in that city."Satanic Occult Symbols in Washington D.C." Jack Chick makes the same claim about obelisks, like the Washington Monument, in his anti-Masonic tract "The Curse of Baphomet" (an obelisk is a Masonic symbol of a male sex organ right out of Baal-worship — and God hates it!)"The Curse of Baphomet", 1991
Another site, Freemasonry Watch, has much the same material and adds that the neighborhoods of Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, and Scott Circle each have six streets intersecting, placing the stamp of 666 on the city.Freemasonry Watch (Dupont Circle is D.C.'s historically gay district, providing further evidence of the effectiveness of this!)
Other promoters of this conspiracy-theory include the usual suspects, Peter J. Peters, Alex Jones, and David Icke. Hail, hail, the gang's all here. The video D.C. Street SorceryDC Street Sorcery seems to take this claim further, finding that "many occult symbols have been designed and overlaid, one upon another". Peters promotes the claim, asserting: "The purpose is to control not only the country of the United States and its people, but the entire world through sorcery."Scriptures for America website, main page.
Somewhat more mainstream sources incorporating this conspiracy theory include the three-hour DVD Riddles in Stone: The Secret Architecture of Washington, D.C., and the bestselling novel The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer.
A Capital City With The Devil in the Details?, Washington Post
Dan Brown also makes some passing references to this insanity in The Lost Symbol.
==Debunk==
One can easily refute the claims about the D.C. street layout just by looking at an actual map of the city. Conspiracy literature will show Rhode Island Ave., Vermont Ave., Massachusetts Ave., Connecticut Ave., and K Street making up five lines of a pentagram. A look at the actual street mapGoogle Maps - Washington DC shows that Vermont and Connecticut Avenues do not extend south of H street, so there is no point below that, and ergo, no bottom point of any pentagram pointing at the White House. Further, Rhode Island Ave. does not extend west of Connecticut Ave., so not only does this alleged "pentagram" not have five points, it doesn't even have four. It is purely the product of someone's overactive imagination.
As to whether Masonic symbols such as the square and compass can be found in the street layout, this would seem to be conceivably possible, given that many of the Founding Fathers were Freemasons. In actuality, the city's street layout was designed by Pierre Charles L'Enfant, a French-born architect appointed by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to design the city. L'Enfant's design somewhat resembled that of Karlsruhe, Germany. But even if Freemasonry was an influence on the street layout, so what? Most street intersections everywhere resemble a Christian cross — is this evidence of a Christian conspiracy to control the world?Granted, if it is, the usual American nuts probably wouldn't be inclined to complain.
There is also the question of whether symbols and buildings can somehow harbor or channel demonic forces, witchcraft, or other supernatural powers, solely because of their design. This is one nutter belief piled on top of another; one has to first believe in the supernatural, and then believe that man-made things can have the power to harbor or channel that supernatural, and then further believe that this can somehow place an entire city under occult control or provide a direct line of communication between Satan and the President of the United States. This is all patent bullshit.
Finally, remember that Washington was a planned city. The streets were intended to be laid out on a diamond-shaped grid with both numbered streets and streets named after letters intersecting them. Traversing the whole city are streets named after various states and figures in American and local history, running on diagonals. As a result, things that look like pentagrams, Masonic t-squares, and compasses in an overhead view were inevitable. Finally, there have been many changes and revisions to L'Enfant's original design as the city has grown over the years.
==See also==
*Denver Airport conspiracy theories
*Ley lines
*Pareidolia
==References==
==Notes==
Category:Conspiracy theories
Category:Satanism