Who Designed the Confusing Streets of Downtown DC?

Officially founded in 1790 and sited along the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, Washington, DC is designed around a grid system, with the Capitol building in the center and diagonal streets radiating out from various points. It’s these diagonal streets, which are named after U.S. states, that give rise to the famously confusing layout of the capital city. How did this come about?

When George Washington chose the region that would eventually bear his name, he appointed a French-American engineer named Pierre Charles L'Enfant to plan it out. Through his design, L’Enfant sought to express the grandeur of his native Paris, and more particularly, the Gardens of Versailles. He wanted to bring attention to important buildings, ceremonial spaces and common squares, and he wanted it all tied together in a coherent arrangement around sacred geometry.

For the central point of L’Enfant’s design, he chose Jenkin’s Hill, which is now known as Capitol Hill. Interestingly, it is at this point, where the Capitol building now sits, and not the White House, that L’Enfant chose to symbolically represent the very center of American democracy: in the legislative branch of the federal government, not in the executive branch.

L’Enfant then used a method of drawing three circles from this center point -- the second circle’s left edge aligned to the center of the first, and the third circle’s left edge aligned to the center of the second -- and whose diameters were determined by the golden ratio. He then divided the circles by connecting five points around the circumference of each, in the shape of pentacles, each one pointing to the east. Finally, he used the sides of these pentacles to align the avenues.

L’Enfant’s grand design, however, is hidden today because it was only partially realized. In 1792, only a year after Washington appointed L’Enfant, things got a bit messy. A surveyor named Andrew Ellicott, who had been helping to map out the territory that would eventually set the boundaries for the new “Federal City,” began to complain that L’Enfant hadn’t provided him with the original plan, but was instead putting forward various other versions. Frustrated, Ellicott revised the plans in his possession to rearrange and straighten out some avenues as he saw fit, and it was around this time that Washington dismissed L’Enfant and Ellicott’s modified plan formed the basis of the Washington, DC we have today.

But that wasn’t the end of the planning. In around 1880, people began complaining about the poor state of architecture and public spaces in and around DC. These complaints culminated in 1902 with the drafting of The Improvement of the Park System of the District of Columbia by the Senate Park Commission, also known as the McMillan Plan. Over the following decades, and over much contention, various civil projects were undertaken to redesign the city, from parks and buildings to roadways and bridges. In fact, the McMillan Plan still undergirds planning today, with many aspects of the plan yet to be implemented.

The mixed up history of planning in Washington, DC has resulted in monumental traffic jams and confusion today, both of which tend to cause accidents. “Traffic circles and one-way streets can relieve some problems of traffic congestion, and even reduce fatalities, but they can also result in accidents due to driver confusion,” says Sherry Cross, an attorney with Simmrin Law Group. Clearly, this problem was not in view for DC’s first designers, whose mode of transportation was literally powered by horses.