Trump Has His Designs on L’Enfant’s Grand Plan for Washington

From the earliest days of Washing- ton, and for generations since, the American capital has been meticu- lously designed.

Now the president wants to leave his own mark. Pierre Charles L’Enfant, 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. And for much of the city’s history, that idea has been deliberately tended — a new monument here, an expanded park there, a solemn vista aligned just so. Washington is unlike any other city in America for this ac- cumulation of carefully arranged de- tails, many quietly referencing one another.

President Trump returned in his second term eager to leave his own mark on the capital at the nation’s 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 more.

“He might be equated with Jeffer- son before he’s done in the impact that he had on the city,” said Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the president’s ap- pointed chair of the Commission of Fine Arts charged with reviewing many of these plans (Jefferson looked over L’Enfant’s shoulder and steered design competitions for the Capitol and White House). Mr. Trump, he said, could help complete L’Enfant’s plan.

His arch would be the most promi- nent 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 con- struction site, altering faraway views and the framing of iconic sites.

Many historians, architects and planners fear that a president so con- fident in his own taste could disrupt in months what has been assembled here over two centuries. It’s not that Washington shouldn’t change, they say — rather, that change should be guided with a particular care that no other American city demands.