Divided City
A Short History of Washington
Part Two
1791-1801
After President George Washington designated the site of the federal district and outlined the extent of the federal city to be built inside that district for the reception of the federal government in 1800, he left it to Andrew Ellicott and Pierre L'Enfant to complete the tasks of surveying the district and planning the city. Ellicott, then geographer general of the United States, showed a fine sense of the opportunity presented by the project. He hired one of the foremost mathematicians in the country, Benjamin Banneker. This gentleman, an old friend of the Ellicott family, was a Maryland-born "free Negro," as African Americans who were not slaves were then called. Banneker's contribution and its significance were soon noted by the Georgetown newspaper. However, Banneker was nearly sixty years old and the work was better done by younger men. He left the project soon and returned to Baltimore to publish his own almanac, certainly a more valuable contribution and use of his talents than what he might have done if he had stayed in the federal district, where the good intentions of many men were soon thwarted by intrigues and turmoil. Ellicott continued to use African Americans on his crew, and one, Jerry Holland, would earn a special commondation in 1795.
While the work of Ellicott was important, all eyes were on Pierre L'Enfant, the city planner. L'Enfant's highly regarded renovation of Federal Hall in New York City made him an obvious choice for the job of planning the city. During the Revolution, Washington had formed a close relationship with Lafayette and other Frenchmen, who like L'Enfant, had come to fight in America. L'Enfant recognized the historic opportunity Washington offered him. The design of the city was only the beginning. Washington wanted L'Enfant to design the president's house and the Capitol as well. While Ellicott camped in the woods near the lines he surveyed, L'Enfant lived in Georgetown where he got along well with most of the land owners who were anxious to see how the city plans would effect their holdings. Before leaving, Washington had indicated roughly where he wanted the president's house and Capitol to be. Each was placed to placate the two factions that had vied for the honor of donating land to the city. The president's house would be toward Georgetown and the Capitol on the hill in the eastern end of the city. In the same spirit of accommodating many interests, L'Enfant placed significant public buildings and sites throughout the city,and he connected those sites with broad avenues which cut diagonally through a grid of streets. He was also mindful of Washington's sense of the commercial importance of the city. A centerpiece of his design was a canal to make it easier for river boats to come down from Georgetown, through the city to warehouses and a deep water port on the Eastern Branch, as the Anacostia River was then called. This would save shippers the trouble of negotiating the taxing tides and sand bars in the river just below Georgetown.
When Washington returned to the city in late June, he made some changes in L'Enfant's siting of the principal buildings, bringing the president's house even closer to Georgetown. He was enthusiastic about L'Enfant's design. Meanwhile, the three city commissioners, who came to Georgetown to meet once a month, prepared deeds and paid expenses generated by Ellicott and L'Enfant who had to hire more men to cut surveying lines. Again with an eye to the commercial importance of the city, Washington directed that work begin on the canal through the city, and while L'Enfant's plan was not officially approved, work on surveying the important avenues and squares began. The inability of the state of Virginia to forward much of the $120,000 promised for the job did not cause consternation. A portion of Maryland's share of $72,000 was sent to the commissioners and plans were made for a fall auction of lots which all thought would be the principal means of raising the million dollars needed to prepare the buildings and grounds.
In late August L'Enfant took his completed plan to Philadelphia. The president approved it and asked L'Enfant to have in engraved. In September Washington sent Jefferson and Madison to meet with the commissioners in Georgetown. The name of the city, Washington, was made official, the system of naming the streets agreed upon, and the date and lots for the auction determined. Ellicott and L'Enfant who were responsible for laying out building lots in the designated area near the future president's house, soon had qualms about the auction. Given the choas of clearing trees off future streets, L'Enfant did not believe that prospective buyers could truly appreciate his plan. Meanwhile, printers in Philadelphia did not engrave and print copies of his plan, perhaps, Washington feared, deliberate sabotage by people in Philadelphia who wanted the federal city to fizzle so that Philadelphia would remain the capital.
Washington only attended the first day of the three day auction so he was not there when L'Enfant decided not to show his plan to any of those attending. The bidding continued, with L'Enfant himself buying a lot, but L'Enfant's refusal to show the plan caused some confusion and angered Washington. Yet, to many, the purpose of the auction was primarily to establish a price of a city lot. Proprietors did quick arithmetic and determined that if indeed all lots went for the average auction price of $80, then they would indeed be rich. The lots were only 60 by 120 feet. Each proprietor would eventually own hundreds of them once the surveying was complete. Several proprietors immediately sought to raise money to improve their property by mortgaging lots to secure loans from British banks. The commissioners, while a little disappointed by the low volume of sales, were encouraged that several Boston gentlemen expressed interest in buying lots in bulk after the auction.
To L'Enfant, however, the auction simply added to the confusion. He reasoned that lot sales would be much more successful if the infrastructure of his plan were in place first. He wanted the grounds of the president's house and Capitol cleared and even planted, as well as the principal avenues, so that buyers could see the true grandeur of his conception. He suggested that before more lots were sold that a million dollar loan be arranged to improve the grounds of the city. L'Enfant was frustrated that the commissioners and certain landowners did not seem to understand the plan. Despite his request that construction be delayed, Daniel Carroll of Duddington, the nephew of one of the commissioners, Daniel Carroll of Rock Creek, began building a house on one of the future streets of the city. With so much space alotted for the city and the impossiblity of all the lots being surveyed in the near future, some land owners did not see why their immediate particular needs could not be accommodated. When Carroll refused to remove his half built house, L'Enfant had his crew tear it down. While this angered the commissioners and distressed Washington, the president understood why L'Enfant did it. He scolded both L'Enfant and Carroll and told the commissioners to pay damages to the latter.
L'Enfant soon found that he could not work with the commissioners. L'Enfant developed a good relationship with his workers; the esprit de corps was remarkable. The commissioners, all slave owners, did not appreciate that style of organizing work and did not like the added expenses, like the chocolate butter L'Enfant gave to his crews for breakfast. L'Enfant knew that he had been appointed by Washington and not the commissioners, and that he cleared all major decisions with the president. The commissioners were on the scene infrequently and seemed to have no conception of his plan. Washington told L'Enfant that he must work under the commissioners. L'Enfant refused. When Washington learned that L'Enfant was showing others his plans for the president's house and did not show him, and that L'Enfant was withholding his plan of the new city from engravers, Washington gave up trying to accommodate him. L'Enfant dismissed the ultimatum that he work with commissioners and so he was fired. The land owners in Georgetown did not like the commissioners either and feared that L'Enfant's dismissal would mean that his grandiose plan would be toned down and done cheaply. But they could no effect a reconciliation.
Washington knew that L'Enfant's leaving could destroy the momentum generated thus far. He charged Jefferson with the task of keeping the project alive. Jefferson turned to Ellicott and one of the Boston landowners attracted to the auction, Samuel Blodget. Ellicott amended the L'Enfant plan slightly and had it engraved. Blodget became superintendent of the city and soon dazzled the proprietors and commissioners with schemes to raise money for developing the city. His major effort was to raise a loan. However he failed to do this. With L'Enfant out of the picture there was no one designing the public buildings, so Jefferson advertised a contest. A design submitted by an Irish-born, South Carolina builder, James Hoban, for the president's house, pleased everyone. He won the prize and was also hired to build the house. It took longer to find a winning design for the Capitol but finally Washington picked one submitted and amended by Dr. William Thornton, a West Indian born gentlemen then residing in Philadelphia.
Despite relying more or slave labor, hiring out slaves by the year from neighboring slave owners, and ending work on the canal, the commissioners saw that they would soon run out of money. A second auction of lots, while maintaining the high price of a lot, did not generate a large volume of sales. While Blodget could not raise a loan he interested another speculator, James Greenleaf, in the city. Greenleaf was reputed to have made a million dollars speculating on the American debt in Holland. He approached Washington and then the commissioners with a scheme to buy one-quarter of the public lots, some 2500. He also agreed to build seven houses a year. The problem with all lot sales thus far had been collecting money. All buyers were given three years to pay and easy terms. Greenleaf agreed to pay the commissioners $72,000 a year for the next seven years. The commssioners made the deal thinking that at last they would have a regular infusion of cash and the private development that the original landowers, for various reasons, were not carrying out. With renewed optimism work continued on the president's house and both wings of the Capitol. Ellicott, who was too slow a surveyor, was fired and a local man took over the task.
The project became a focal point for visionary men. Greenleaf brought a newly invented brickmaking machine. Another inventor offered a special crane. Blodget carried on privately with the largest lottery ever organized in America in an effort to raise money for a grand hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue. Unfortunately, these machines and schemes proved abortive. Decisions by the cost conscious commissioners also backfired. The newly erected wall of the south wing of the Capitol collapsed because of shoddy workmanship by a crew hired at a cut-rate. Then there were the predictable problems with the design of complex buildings. Thornton's drawings proved unworkable and Stephen Hallet, a trained architect, had to refashion them. Then came the slowly unfolding castastrophe that placed a cloud over development of the city for the next fifty years.
Shortly after making his deal with the commissioners, Greenleaf joined two prominent land speculators, Robert Morris and John Nicholson, in a scheme to virtually control the settlement of western New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. They contracted to buy some six million acres. They planned to pay for and develop those lands from the profits made on the sale of Washington lots and houses. Greenleaf was able to pay the first year's installment to the commissioners, and built several houses south of the Capitol in what became called Greenleaf's Point. (He chose that area to flatter Washington's belief in the commercial importance of the city.) He made an important sale to Thomas Law, a British bureaucrat who made a fortune in India. However, his effort to raise money in Holland failed. Greenleaf defaulted on his payments to the commissioners. He transferred most of his Washington holding to Morris and Nicholson. Morris's reputation embolden many interested in the city to speculate on Morris's and Nicholson's debt to the city, thus keeping those two gentlemen afloat. In a spectacular and rather modern display of urban development, those gentlemen organized the building of 20 buildings on Greenleaf's Point using modern building methods and modern designs for store fronts. But they soon defaulted on all their obligations. The thousands of lots Greenleaf, Morris and Nicholson owned served as security for numerous financial transactions. So any attempt by the commissioners to reclaim title to the lots was complicated by the demands of other creditors. Court cases continued, many fueled by Greenleaf who felt he still owned some lots, into the 1840s.
With the failure of Greenleaf and the cloud thrown over clear title to lots in the city, the commissioners, with Washington's blessing, went to Congress asking for a loan guarantee. They also scaled back their operations. Once the shell of the president's house was completed, they stopped work on it and concentrated on the north wing of the Capitol. This raised speculation that both buildings would not be ready in 1800 and rekindled the rivalry between factions of land owners in the western end of the city, led by Benjamin Stoddert, and the eastern end, led by Thomas Law. Washington vainly tried to mend matters regularly visiting a step-grand daughter who married Thomas Peter, son of a major land owner in the west end, and then visiting a step-grand daughter who married Thomas Law. He also bought lots on both ends as well as a commercial lot at Greenleaf's Point. Mindful of the need to house congressmen, he finally decided to build a house near the Capitol, which only inflamed the suspicions of Stoddert and his allies.
Just as the elite in the city were divided so were the workers. While work continued on the two public buildings a rivalry developed between James Hoban, supervising work at the president's house, and Collen Williamson, supervising work at the Capitol. Hoban's intrigues to get Williamson fired led to bad feeling and lawsuits. The commissoners continued to rely on about a fifty-fifty mix of slave and free labor, and always looked for an opportunity to lower wages for the free laborers. The discontent of the whites led to fears of riot by the slaves, and of course, the deadline on the work and the scarcity of labor in the region made it impossible to cut wages and continue the work. There were a handful of skilled stone masons and carpenters who, properly paid and respected, did creditable work.
When Washington retired as president, there were fears that his predecessor John Adams would ignore the city. Adams, however, had never liked Philadelphia, and while he would prefer to move the capital back to New York, he knew that his re-election depended on the vote of Maryland, so he supported moving the federal government south in 1800. Meanwhile, Philadelphia had built its own president's house so it would be position to keep the government in 1800. However, yellow fever epidemics in 1793, 1797, 1798, and 1799, the latter two forced the complete evacuation of the govenment offices from August through November. Yellow fever epidemics flourished in crowded cities so the rural charms of the federal city were attractive to many.
Limping along with a direct loan from Congress and a loan from the state of Maryland, the commissioners were able to bring the president's house and Capitol to a sufficient state of completion. With the belated efforts of Daniel Carroll of Duddington, and Thomas Law's continued building, enough houses were up around the Capitol to bed and board 112 congressmen, though with sometime two or more to a room. A building to house the Treasury offices was completed and private houses hired to house the War and State Department clerks. Most of the "temporary" houses, probably more like shacks, that housed workers had to be torn down since they were so close to the public buildings, but in disperate areas throughout the city, principally on high ground above Pennsylvania Avenue, houses were available. And congressmen, clerks, and cabinet officers also lodged in Georgetown. Most of the congressmen coming to the city had homes in rural areas. The distances and rustic charms of the new city, even its ever present mud after rain, were nothing new to them. The two principal public buildings, both larger than any then existing in the United States, proved to be grandeur enough at the stage in the nation's development. Washington wrote before he died on December 14, 1799, that the city's day of eclat would come in 100 years. He was not far off the mark. L'Enfant was disappointed in what his plan had wrought, yet not unmindful of the achievement thus far. He petitioned Congress for compensation for the publishing and distribution of his plan, asking for upwards of $100,000.
Bob Arnebeck