Among the pathetic figures of the early days of the Capitol City is that of Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant, who was selected by Washington to draft plans for the new city.

L'Enfant was a skilful engineer who had come to America with Lafayette in 1777. He did not go back to France with his countrymen in 1783, but remained in this country, and was employed by Washington as an engineer in several places.

He devoted the summer of 1791 to planning, not the capital of a small nation, but a city which could be sufficiently enlarged should this continent be densely populated from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

There was no other man in this country at that time who had such knowledge of art and engineering as Major L'Enfant. Plans of Frankfort-on-the-Main, Carlsruhe, Amsterdam, Paris, Orleans, Turin, Milan, and other European cities were sent to him from Philadelphia by Washington, who had obtained the plan of each of these cities by his own personal effort.

Washington himself desired the new city planned somewhat like Philadelphia, a plain checkerboard, but L'Enfant, while making the checkerboard style the basis, diversified, beautified, and complicated the whole by a system of avenues radiating from the Capitol as the centre and starting-point of the whole system. The streets running east and west are designated by letters. They are divided into two classes or sets—those north of the Capitol and those south of it. Thus, the first street north of the Capitol is A Street North, and the first street south of it is A Street South, the next is B Street, North or South, as the case may be, and so on. These distinctions of North, South, East, and West are most important, as forgetfulness of them is apt to lead to very great inconvenience.

The streets are laid off at regular distances from each other, but for convenience other thoroughfares not laid down in the original plan have been cut through some of the blocks. These are called "half streets," as they occur between, and are parallel with, the numbered streets. Thus, Four-and-a-half Street is between Fourth and Fifth streets, and runs parallel with them.

The avenues run diagonally across the city. New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware avenues intersect at the Capitol, and Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, and Connecticut avenues intersect at the President's house. Pennsylvania Avenue is the main thoroughfare. It is one hundred and sixty feet wide, and extends the entire length of the city, from the Eastern Branch to Rock Creek, which latter stream separates Washington from Georgetown. It was originally a swampy thicket. The bushes were cut away to the desired width soon after the city was laid off, but few persons cared to settle in the swamp. Through the exertions of President Jefferson, it was planted with four rows of fine Lombardy poplars—one on each side and two in the middle—with the hope of making it equal to the famous Unter den Linden, in Berlin. The poplars did not grow as well as was hoped, however, and when the avenue was graded and paved by order of Congress in 1832 and 1833 these trees were removed. Pennsylvania Avenue is handsomely built up, and contains some buildings that would do credit to any city. The distance from the Capitol to the President's house is one mile, and the view from either point along the avenue is very fine.

Every circle, triangle, and square dedicated to monuments bears testimony to the taste of the original design. So little respect, however, was held for Major L'Enfant's plans that Daniel Carroll, one of the original owners of the land, was in the act of building a handsome house right across New Jersey Avenue. L'Enfant ordered it torn down. This was done, much to the disgust of Carroll and to the indignation of the commissioners. The government rebuilt the house for Carroll, but was careful to place it in a more suitable location. The old Duddington House, on Capitol Hill, was long a landmark of the early Washington architecture.

There were some other acts of irritability on the part of L'Enfant, acts which now show his just appreciation of his own great work. He was paid $2,500 for his services and dismissed. He believed he should have been pensioned, as would have been done in Europe.

Afterward he saw the city expand as the nation grew strong, while he, a disappointed, poverty-stricken man, wandered, a pathetic figure, about the Capitol until 1825, when he died. He had lived for years on the Diggs farm, about eight miles from Washington, and was buried in the family cemetery in the Diggs garden, and when the dead of that family were removed his dust was left in an unmarked grave.

Mr. Corcoran, the great banker of Washington, who died in 1888, said he remembered L'Enfant as "a rather seedy, stylish old man, with a long green coat buttoned up to his throat, a bell-crowned hat, a little moody and lonely, like one wronged." The heart of a stranger in a strange, ungrateful land.

The City of Washington is his monument. No one can now rob him of that honor. Let us hope that he has awakened in His likeness and is satisfied.

Could the Colonial Dames or the Daughters of the Revolution do a more beneficent and popular act than to mark the resting-place of Peter Charles L'Enfant, who drew the original plans of that city which is to become the most beautiful city in the world?^[1]

The letters of General Washington abound in references to the difficulty of obtaining money to fit the new city for capital purposes. Virginia made a donation of $120,000 and the State of Maryland gave $72,000. Afterward the latter State was induced to loan $100,000 toward fitting the city for a capital.

The City of Washington was officially occupied in June, 1800. Since then it has been the ward of Congress. Strangers, even at this late day, often comment on the long distance between the Capitol building and the Executive Mansion; but Washington strongly impressed upon the mind of Major L'Enfant that the latter must be at a considerable distance, so that members of Congress should not fall into the habit of coming too frequently to call upon the President, and thus waste the time of the executive head of the nation.

It is not the purpose in these sketches to dwell too much on the history of Washington, but rather to make a picture of the city as it is in the first decade of the twentieth century. A glimpse of it, however, in the summer of 1814 is really necessary to complete our references to the early days of the nation's capital.

In 1814 the city was captured by a small British force under General Ross, and both wings of the Capitol building, with its library and almost all the records of the government up to that date, were destroyed by fire, also the White House, as the Executive Mansion was even then called, and most of the departments, including the Navy-yard.

Mrs. Madison, in a letter to her sister, gives a graphic picture of the time:

"Dear Sister,—My husband left me yesterday morning to join General Winder. He inquired anxiously whether I had courage or firmness to remain in the President's house until his return on the morrow or succeeding day, and on my assurance that I had no fear but for him and the success of our army, he left me, beseeching me to take care of myself and of the Cabinet papers, public and private. I have since received two despatches from him, written with a pencil; the last is alarming, because he desires that I should be ready at a moment's warning to enter my carriage and leave the city; that the enemy seemed stronger than had been reported, and that it might happen that they would reach the city with intention to destroy it.

"Three o'clock.—Will you believe it, my sister? We have had a battle, or skirmish, near Bladensburg, and I am still here within sound of the cannon. Mr. Madison comes not—may God protect him! Two messengers, covered with dust, come to bid me fly; but I wait for him.... At this late hour a wagon has been procured; I have had it filled with the plate and most valuable portable articles belonging to the house; whether it will reach its destination, the Bank of Maryland, or fall into the hands of British soldiery, events must determine. Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and is in a very bad humor with me because I insist on waiting until the large picture of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall. This process was found too tedious for these perilous moments. I have ordered the frame to be broken and the canvas taken out; it is done, and the precious portrait placed in the hands of two gentlemen of New York for safe-keeping. And now, my dear sister, I must leave this house, or the retreating army will make me a prisoner in it by filling up the road I am directed to take. When I shall again write to you, or where I shall be to-morrow, I can not tell."

We all know the story of Mrs. Madison's flight, of her return in disguise to a desolated, burned, ruined home. She would have been without shelter except for the open door of Mrs. Cutts, her sister, who lived in the city. From that point she visited the ruins of all the public buildings while she awaited her husband's return.

We are apt to think of the White House as a place of teas, receptions, gayly dressed people, light, music, flowers, and laughter; but it, too, has seen its tragedies.

Fifty years after the burning of the city the famous Stuart picture of Washington, referred to in Mrs. Madison's letter, was retouched and hung in the East Room, and still constitutes one of the few ornaments of the Executive Mansion.

During Mr. Roosevelt's administration (1902-1903) extensive alterations and additions were made to the Executive building.

The conservatory, so long an object of enjoyment to the public, was removed to give place for a long white esplanade on the west, forming the approach to the Executive offices, while on the east side a white colonnade now provides a most desirable entrance for large crowds on public occasions.

It has been a matter of regret to D. A. R. women, and to all the patriotic women of the nation, that the portraits of the ladies of the White House have been remanded to the basement corridors. Here are now the portraits of Mrs. Van Buren, Mrs. Tyler, Mrs. Polk (presented by ladies of Tennessee during Mr. Arthur's administration), Mrs. Hayes (presented by the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union during Mr. Hayes's term), and Mrs. Benjamin Harrison (presented by the D. A. R.), and the portrait of Mrs. Roosevelt, by Chartran.