{"id":5056,"date":"2026-06-15T22:19:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T22:19:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/?p=5056"},"modified":"2026-06-15T22:19:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T22:19:27","slug":"washington-has-been-carefully-planned-for-two-centuries-now-trump-has-his-own-designs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/?p=5056","title":{"rendered":"Washington Has Been Carefully Planned for Two Centuries. Now Trump Has His Own Designs."},"content":{"rendered":"


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Pierre Charles L\u2019Enfant, the French-born engineer hired by George Washington to lay out the new American capital, proposed an ambitious idea: the whole city as a work of civic art. His vision, visible in the city today, included sweeping sightlines to the Capitol and subtle nods to the new democracy encoded in the street network.<\/p>\n

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And for much of the city\u2019s history, that idea has been deliberately tended \u2014 a new monument here, an expanded park there, a solemn vista aligned just so. Washington is unlike any other city in America for this accumulation of carefully arranged details, many quietly referencing one another.<\/p>\n

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President Trump returned in his second term eager to leave his own mark on the capital at the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary. In this often slow-moving city, his proposals have been urgent, including a ballroom, a triumphal arch, a garden of heroes, a championship golf course, a renovated Kennedy Center and<\/a> more<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHe might be equated with Jefferson before he\u2019s done in the impact that he had on the city,\u201d said Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the president\u2019s appointed chair of the Commission of Fine Arts charged with reviewing many of these plans (Jefferson<\/a> looked over L\u2019Enfant\u2019s shoulder and steered design competitions for the Capitol<\/a> and White House<\/a>). Mr. Trump, he said, could help complete L\u2019Enfant\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n

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His arch would be the most prominent monument added to the capital in 80 years, his ballroom the greatest change to the White House grounds in at least as long. And his imprint could extend beyond any single construction site, altering faraway views and the framing of iconic sites.<\/p>\n

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Many historians, architects and planners fear that a president so confident in his own taste could disrupt in months what has been assembled here over two centuries. It\u2019s not that Washington shouldn\u2019t change, they say \u2014 rather, that change should be guided with a particular care that no other American city demands.<\/p>\n

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1791: The L\u2019Enfant Plan<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

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L\u2019Enfant envisioned a city far more extensive than what the new federal government needed in 1791. Even then, he was thinking about how the capital would tell the story of the nation.<\/p>\n

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The Capitol<\/strong> occupies a high point that L\u2019Enfant described as \u201ca pedestal waiting for a monument.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Capitol<\/strong> occupies a high point that L\u2019Enfant described as \u201ca pedestal waiting for a monument.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The streets were laid out as a grid of four quadrants<\/strong>, centered on the people\u2019s representatives, not the president\u2019s house.<\/span><\/p>\n

The streets were laid out as a grid of four quadrants<\/strong>, centered on the people\u2019s representatives, not the president\u2019s house.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Atop that grid, L\u2019Enfant drew diagonal avenues<\/strong> named for the original states. The grid and the avenues are distinct but intertwined \u2014 like the states and the federal government.<\/span><\/p>\n

Atop that grid, L\u2019Enfant drew diagonal avenues<\/strong> named for the original states. The grid and the avenues are distinct but intertwined \u2014 like the states and the federal government.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Northern states<\/strong> were generally in the northern part of the city \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

The Northern states<\/strong> were generally in the northern part of the city \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2026 the Southern states<\/strong> in the south.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026 the Southern states<\/strong> in the south.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Pennsylvania<\/strong> \u2014 site of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention \u2014 holds a central place symbolizing shared power between the legislature and presidency.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pennsylvania<\/strong> \u2014 site of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention \u2014 holds a central place symbolizing shared power between the legislature and presidency.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Through the heart of the city, L\u2019Enfant planned a grand public walk<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Through the heart of the city, L\u2019Enfant planned a grand public walk<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Where the axes from the Capitol and White House meet, he located a monument to Washington<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Where the axes from the Capitol and White House meet, he located a monument to Washington<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Beyond that monument, the Mall faced the Potomac River and the wide-open American West<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond that monument, the Mall faced the Potomac River and the wide-open American West<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Thackara & Vallance engraving of the L\u2019Enfant plan (1792), Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division<\/p>\n

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L\u2019Enfant sparred with the city\u2019s commissioners and was fired before finishing the job. But the capital that rose here largely followed his plan, and the ideas he embedded in it give Washington its distinctive feel today. Manhattan\u2019s street grid, laid out two decades later<\/a>, was divided into uniform blocks that could be easily developed by private citizens. Washington\u2019s shape, by contrast, is defined by what\u2019s public: the key civic buildings, the wide avenues and squares, the central Mall.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s a fundamental idea that the city conveys about public value being first and foremost over private interest,\u201d said Thomas Luebke, the longtime secretary of the Commission of Fine Arts, which was created by Congress in 1910 to help shepherd the city\u2019s evolution. \u201cThat idea that we<\/em> come first as a group is somehow conveyed in the scale and design of the city.\u201d<\/p>\n

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L\u2019Enfant\u2019s grand pedestrian mall, the centerpiece of his plan, became a jumble of buildings and disconnected gardens in the 19th century. The agriculture department ran experimental crop fields there. A railroad terminal was built on the Mall in the 1870s, its train tracks bisecting the green.<\/p>\n

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A monument to Washington was at last completed in 1884, although in slightly the wrong spot, off-center to L\u2019Enfant\u2019s axes (where the land could better support a giant obelisk).<\/p>\n

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By the turn of the 20th century, as the city was celebrating the centennial of the federal government\u2019s relocation here, Washington\u2019s core hardly resembled how Americans know it today. That transformation would happen thanks to the second great plan for the city.<\/p>\n

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1901: The McMillan Plan<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

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The Senate Park Commission<\/a>, proposed by Senator James McMillan of Michigan, was tasked in 1901 with unifying a new network of outlying parks and restoring L\u2019Enfant\u2019s idea of the capital as a coherent whole.<\/p>\n

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The commission, including the architect Daniel Burnham and the landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., claimed to study every part of the city. And in unveiling their proposal for its future, they warned, \u201cNo such undertaking should be allowed to invade, to mutilate or to mar the symmetry, simplicity and dignity of the one great composition\u201d of the District of Columbia.<\/p>\n

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The Senate Park Commission plan for Washington, illustrating new parkland reclaimed from the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, the new Rock Creek Park, a renewed National Mall and other neighborhood parks and parkways.<\/span> Report of the Senate Park Commission (1902), Commission of Fine Arts<\/span><\/p>\n

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To dramatize its Mall plan, the commission exhibited this rendering in pencil, ink and watercolor wash. It\u2019s more than nine feet wide.<\/p>\n

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General Plan of the Mall System by the Senate Park Commission.<\/span> Commission of Fine Arts<\/span><\/p>\n

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To appreciate its details, let\u2019s turn it on its side and look closer:<\/p>\n

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The railroad<\/strong> agreed to move off the Mall into a newly planned Union Station, clearing the main obstacle to restoring L\u2019Enfant\u2019s public walk.<\/span><\/p>\n

The railroad<\/strong> agreed to move off the Mall into a newly planned Union Station, clearing the main obstacle to restoring L\u2019Enfant\u2019s public walk.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Part of the Potomac River had by this time been filled in, enabling the commission to extend the Mall<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Part of the Potomac River had by this time been filled in, enabling the commission to extend the Mall<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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They located a future Lincoln Memorial here<\/strong>, with a reflecting pool<\/strong> linking it to the Washington Monument.<\/span><\/p>\n

They located a future Lincoln Memorial here<\/strong>, with a reflecting pool<\/strong> linking it to the Washington Monument.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Lincoln Memorial would effectively close the Mall at its western end (in an era when the American frontier had, itself, recently been declared \u201cclosed\u201d<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

The Lincoln Memorial would effectively close the Mall at its western end (in an era when the American frontier had, itself, recently been declared \u201cclosed\u201d<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A memorial bridge<\/strong> over the Potomac would symbolically reconnect the North and South \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

A memorial bridge<\/strong> over the Potomac would symbolically reconnect the North and South \u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2026 from Lincoln\u2019s memorial to Robert E. Lee\u2019s home<\/strong> on the Virginia hillside.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026 from Lincoln\u2019s memorial to Robert E. Lee\u2019s home<\/strong> on the Virginia hillside.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The commissioners identified a spot, due south of the White House, for what would become the Jefferson Memorial<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The commissioners identified a spot, due south of the White House, for what would become the Jefferson Memorial<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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They solved for the off-center location of the Washington Monument<\/strong>, which had broken L\u2019Enfant\u2019s original axes.<\/span><\/p>\n

They solved for the off-center location of the Washington Monument<\/strong>, which had broken L\u2019Enfant\u2019s original axes.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The commission tilted the spine of the Mall<\/strong>, lining up the Capitol, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on a new axis \u2014 and conforming the rest of the Mall to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The commission tilted the spine of the Mall<\/strong>, lining up the Capitol, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on a new axis \u2014 and conforming the rest of the Mall to it.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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At the center of this kite shape, the commission proposed a circular pool and garden, which were never built. But much of the rest of the plan was: Union Station, the Lincoln Memorial, the Arlington Memorial Bridge, the Jefferson Memorial, the decluttered Mall framed by American elm trees and grand civic buildings.<\/p>\n

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Those changes would take decades. As late as the 1930s, the Mall still looked like this, with temporary World War I-era buildings and even a power plant:<\/p>\n

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The Mall as it appeared by the early 1930s.<\/span> National Archives and Records Administration<\/span><\/p>\n

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Elsewhere in the city, parts of the McMillan plan and L\u2019Enfant\u2019s street grid<\/a> were disrupted by urban renewal and highway construction. But the \u201cmonumental core\u201d evolved into a place that is remarkably faithful to these two documents.<\/p>\n

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The tilted Mall is the kind of conscientious detail that now appears throughout the area. The monuments directly speak to one another. They each defer to the Washington Monument. The spaces left open are a part of the effect.<\/p>\n

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The Washington Monument in clear view from along the White House grounds.<\/span> Jack E. Boucher, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division<\/span><\/p>\n

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The U.S. Capitol viewed from near the White House grounds down Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest.<\/span> Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (1934)<\/span><\/p>\n

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Robert E. Lee\u2019s Arlington House, viewed across Arlington Memorial Bridge from the Lincoln Memorial.<\/span> Jet Lowe, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (1989)<\/span><\/p>\n

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The U.S. Capitol, viewed from Union Station.<\/span> Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (1917)<\/span><\/p>\n

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The V-shaped walls of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial point directly at the Washington and Lincoln memorials.<\/span> Jack E. Boucher, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (1996)<\/span><\/p>\n

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The more recent museums added to the Mall hardly match one another in architectural style or material. But they are unified in how they open onto a shared front lawn, and in how their similar heights convey that no one institution looms greater than the others.<\/p>\n

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Top: National Museum of African American History and Culture; Hirshhorn Museum. Bottom: National Gallery of Art, East Building; National Museum of the American Indian.<\/span> Maansi Srivastava for The New York Times, Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times, The Washington Post via Getty, The Washington Post via Getty.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cEven in the most extreme of their differences, they\u2019re tipping their hat to the context,\u201d said Elizabeth K. Meyer, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of Virginia and a member of the Commission of Fine Arts from 2012 to 2020.<\/p>\n

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In the resulting collection, much of the American story is right there on the Mall: art, war, ingenuity, protest, space exploration, the founding fathers, the great outdoors, the democratic ideal. The Mall has made space for parts of the story L\u2019Enfant and McMillan didn\u2019t anticipate (or celebrate), like Native American history. It has allowed new stories layered on top of earlier ones, like the way the Lincoln Memorial has become a civil rights symbol.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s really unparalleled where you have a single idea that lies dormant for the most part for a century,\u201d said Richard Longstreth, an architectural historian, of the L\u2019Enfant plan. \u201cThen in revised form \u2014 and aggrandized form \u2014 it slowly and with great effort takes shape as the McMillan plan, which is still the guidepost for our thinking. Until now.\u201d<\/p>\n

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2026: The Trump era<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

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President Trump returned to Washington with a distinctly different perspective from the architects, planners and preservationists who have shaped the capital. The president is a developer \u2014 and he describes his projects in the builder\u2019s logic of underutilized land and maximized value. In West Potomac Park, his chosen spot for his garden of heroes, he sees<\/a> a \u201ctotally BARREN field of Prime Waterfront Real Estate.\u201d<\/p>\n

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And he believes he has found many such spaces in D.C.<\/p>\n

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The president\u2019s arch<\/strong> would go here in Memorial Circle, what administration officials have called a vacant traffic circle.<\/span><\/p>\n

The president\u2019s arch<\/strong> would go here in Memorial Circle, what administration officials have called a vacant traffic circle.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2026 and it would become the dominant sight at the end of L\u2019Enfant\u2019s Pennsylvania Avenue axis<\/strong> linking the legislature and the presidency.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026 and it would become the dominant sight at the end of L\u2019Enfant\u2019s Pennsylvania Avenue axis<\/strong> linking the legislature and the presidency.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Trump would renovate this public golf course into a championship-level course<\/a> that locals fear would make a park established \u201cfor the recreation and pleasure of the people\u201d less accessible.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump would renovate this public golf course into a championship-level course<\/a> that locals fear would make a park established \u201cfor the recreation and pleasure of the people\u201d less accessible.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Critics argue that these projects are in tension with the history around them, rather than at one with the \u201cgreat composition\u201d of the capital. And they say there hasn\u2019t been much time or willingness to resolve that tension (a process that previously controversial projects still went through).<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe dilemma we have is we have a developer-in-chief who is object-oriented,\u201d said Charles A. Birnbaum, who leads The Cultural Landscape Foundation, which has sued over the reflecting pool and the Kennedy Center. That means the president is attuned to paint colors and column styles, he said, not symbolic axes and century-old city plans.<\/p>\n

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Mr. Trump\u2019s supporters, in response, stake a claim to history, too. Presidents have talked about wanting a ballroom for 150 years, administration officials say. And the 1924 Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission<\/a>, they note, originally called for a pair of 166-foot-tall columns in the park at the bridge\u2019s western end. The arch\u2019s 166-foot height (below the gilded statues that bring it to 250 feet) is meant to nod to that proposal.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe president is not talking about steamrolling D.C. and putting up high-rises, he\u2019s talking about additions with a history,\u201d said Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary and the chair of the National Capital Planning Commission, which also reviews these proposals. \u201cThe ballroom, the arch, putting a monument in Memorial Circle \u2014 these are old ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Being a developer, he added, means Mr. Trump can finally bring those ideas to life \u201cnot at the speed of government.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Mr. Cook, the chair of the Commission of Fine Arts, says L\u2019Enfant always intended for the capital to include something like grand arches (Mr. Cook has for years been proposing where to put them<\/a>). They\u2019re not explicit on L\u2019Enfant\u2019s drawings. But Mr. Cook believes it would have been heresy for him not<\/em> to complete his plan with such gateways to the city.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThen let\u2019s have a conversation,\u201d said Rebecca Miller, <\/strong>the executive director of the DC Preservation League (they\u2019re suing over the golf course, the Kennedy Center and Trump\u2019s plans to paint the granite exterior of the Eisenhower building white)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Let historians debate Mr. Cook\u2019s claim, and include the public, she said. Would L\u2019Enfant\u2019s arches have been 250 feet tall? Is \u201ctriumphal\u201d the right tone for the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery? Is an arch the best way to commemorate the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary?<\/p>\n

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That is the kind of raucous, public, potentially years-long process that has preceded other<\/a> major<\/a> additions<\/a> to the capital. But just months after it was introduced, the arch has already been approved by the arts commission<\/a>. The ballroom is already under construction. The president has his own deadlines \u2014 the 250th anniversary this summer, and then the end of his term<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Before Mr. Cook\u2019s commission approved the arch in May, the panel asked the architect Nicolas Leo Charbonneau to consider removing the gilded statues on top<\/a> and to add more openings to make it a less imposing mass.<\/p>\n

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The president, Mr. Charbonneau explained, elected not to adopt those revisions.<\/p>\n

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Pierre Charles L\u2019Enfant, the French-born engineer hired by George Washington to lay out the new American capital, proposed an ambitious idea: the whole city as a work of civic art. His vision, visible in the city today, included sweeping sightlines to the Capitol and subtle nods to the new democracy encoded in the street network. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5057,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}