THE CITY OF WASHINGTON. 



153 



acquisition of such additional spaces as are deemed necessary to create 

 a modern park S5^stem ; and of selecting for purchase and improvement 

 suitable connections between the various park areas. 



If Washington were not a nation's capital, in which the location 

 of public buildings is of the first importance, and if the city itself 

 were not by its very plan tied to a historic past, the problem would 

 be less complicated. The very fact that Washington and Jefferson, 

 L 'Enfant and Ellicott, and their immediate successors, drew inspira- 

 tion from the world's greatest works of landscape architecture and of 

 civic adornment made it impera- 



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tive to go back to the sources of 

 their knowledge and taste in order 

 to restore unity and harmony to 

 their creations and to guide fu- 

 ture development along appropri- 

 ate lines. Indeed the more the 

 commission studied the first plans 

 of the Federal City, the more they 

 became convinced that the greatest 

 service they could perform would 

 be done by carrying to a legitimate 

 conclusion the comprehensive, in- 

 telligent, and yet simple and 

 straightforward scheme devised by 

 L 'Enfant under the direction of 

 Washington and Jefferson. 



L 'Enfant 's plan shows that he 

 was familiar with the work of Le- 

 notre, whose examples of landscape 

 architecture, not only in France 

 but also in Italy and England, are 

 still the admiration of the world. 

 We know, also, that L 'Enfant had the advantage of those maps of 

 foreign cities, 'drawn on a large and accurate scale,' which Jefferson 

 gathered during his public service abroad, and we learn from Jeffer- 

 son's letters how he adjured L 'Enfant not to depart from classical 

 models, but to follow those examples which the world had agreed to 

 admire. In order to re-study the same models and to take note of the 

 great civic works of Europe, the commission spent five weeks of the 

 summer of 1901 in foreign travel, visiting London, Paris, Eome, Ven- 

 ice, Vienna, Budapest, Frankfort and Berlin. Among the many prob- 

 lems with which the commission is called upon to deal, there is not one 

 which has not been dealt with in some one of the cities mentioned, and 



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7 



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Part OF L'Enfant Map of Washington 

 (1791). 



