The “Mad” Engineer: L'Enfant in Early National Philadelphia
2014; Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Volume: 138; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/pmh.2014.a923344
ISSN2169-8546
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Education Studies Worldwide
ResumoTHE PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY Vol. CXXXVIII, No. 3 (July 2014) I thank Kenneth Bowling,Charles Brownell,Jonathan Farnham,François Furstenberg,Tamara Gaskell, Edward Lawler, Douglas Mooney, Mark Rubenstein, the anonymous readers for the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, and the staffs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Library Company of Philadelphia,the Library of Virginia,the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, the Maryland Historical Society, and the Winterthur Library for their assistance with this article. The "Mad" Engineer: L'Enfant in Early National Philadelphia T HROUGHOUT ITS HISTORY, Philadelphia has boasted the work of notable architects and builders. Yet hardly any were so controversial or left such a mixed legacy as the self-styled "engineer of the United States" during the nation's founding, Peter (Pierre) Charles L'Enfant. From 1793 to 1800, while the city served as the federal seat of government, L'Enfant lived in Philadelphia and applied his hand to a range of ambitious projects. This period followed his sudden, acrimonious departure from laying out the grand new city on the Potomac. And as in this earlier appointment, nearly all L'Enfant's subsequent projects were marked with difficulty. Indeed, the climax of L'Enfant's efforts in Philadelphia saw his masterwork pulled down and demolished by the citizens themselves to make way for more practical construction of a different character. Nor was L'Enfant's personal life in the city any easier, as he found himself beset and bullied by his housemate, Richard Soderstrom, the Swedish consul. As a result, despite his singular creativity and talents, L'Enfant's energies in the city would largely be forgotten. It is worth recalling, though, that memories of L'Enfant became likewise obscure in the District of Columbia until his name and city plan were resurrected at the turn of the twentieth century by a range of design professionals, government officials, and local boosters. Since then, studies of L'Enfant have centered on that earlier episode of the engineer's life. L'Enfant's unique plan for the city of Washington, with its radiating avenues, strategic vistas, and monumental sites, commanded belated admiration , and the French-born engineer's resignation (or dismissal) from RYAN K. SMITH 270 July 1 Among those responsible for the revival of interest in L'Enfant in the District of Columbia at the turn of the twentieth century were James Dudley Morgan, an area physician who had come into possession of L'Enfant's papers; landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.; President Theodore Roosevelt; the French ambassador Jules Jusserand; the American Institute of Architects; and the Senate Park Commission. Major studies of L'Enfant's career and legacy include J. J. Jusserand, With Americans of Past and Present Days (New York, 1916), 137–98; Fiske Kimball, "Pierre Charles L'Enfant," in Dictionary of American Biography, ed. Dumas Malone, vol. 6 (New York, 1933), 165– 69; H. Paul Caemmerer, The Life of Pierre Charles L'Enfant, Planner of the City Beautiful, the City of Washington (Washington, DC, 1950); Kenneth R. Bowling, Peter Charles L'Enfant: Vision, Honor, and Male Friendship in the Early American Republic (Washington, DC, 2002); and Scott W. Berg, Grand Avenues: The Story of the French Visionary Who Designed Washington, D.C. (New York, 2007). Berg's excellent study noted in traditional form the timing of L'Enfant's fall: "Every task L'Enfant took on after his final exchange of letters with George Washington in February 1792 went wrong" (208). This may be true, but it was not apparent to L'Enfant nor to his audiences at the time. the project in February 1792 became equally storied. Biographers and art historians then tended to gloss over his years afterward in Philadelphia as a curious, embarrassing postlude.1 But the engineer himself did not see it that way upon his arrival. He entered the city, then the cosmopolitan center of the nation, still sure of his abilities and his future. Only later, after attempting a fort, a dancing hall, and, most importantly, a monumental town house in the Quaker City, among other projects, did the trajectory of his career take a decided fall. He departed...
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