Washington, D.C.

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Cityscape
See also: Streets and highways of Washington, D.C., List of neighborhoods of the
District of Columbia by ward, and List of tallest buildings in Washington, D.C.
L'Enfant's plan for Washington, D.C., as revised by Andrew
Ellicott (1792)

Washington, D.C. is a planned city. The design for

the City of Washington was largely the work ofPierre
(Peter) Charles LEnfant, a French-born architect,
engineer, and city planner who first arrived in the
colonies as a military engineer with Major General
Lafayette during the American Revolutionary War.[d] In 1791, President Washington
commissioned L'Enfant to plan the layout of the new capital city. L'Enfant's plan was
modeled in the Baroque style and incorporated avenues radiating out from rectangles,
providing room for open space and landscaping. [26] His design also envisioned a gardenlined "grand avenue" approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) in length and 400 feet (120 m) wide
in the area that is now the National Mall.[54]
In March 1792, President Washington dismissed L'Enfant due to his insistence on
micromanaging the city's planning, which had resulted in conflicts with the three
commissioners appointed by Washington to supervise the capital's
construction. Andrew Ellicott, who had worked with L'Enfant surveying the city, was then
commissioned to complete the plans. Though Ellicott made revisions to the original
plans, including changes to some street patterns, L'Enfant is still credited with the
overall design of the city.[55] The City of Washington was bounded by what is now Florida
Avenue to the north, Rock Creek to the west, and the Anacostia River to the east. [26]

By the start of the 20th century, L'Enfant's vision of a capital

with open parks and grand national monuments had become
marred by slums and randomly placed buildings, including a
railroad station on the National Mall.[26] In 1900, Congress
formed a joint committee, headed by SenatorJames
McMillan, charged with beautifying Washington's ceremonial
core. What became known as the McMillan Plan was
finalized in 1901. It included the re-landscaping of the Capitol
grounds and the Mall, constructing new Federal buildings and monuments, clearing
slums, and establishing a new citywide park system. Architects recruited by the
committee kept much of the city's original layout, and their work is thought to be largely
in keeping with L'Enfant's intended design.[26]
Washington, D.C. is divided into four quadrants.

After the construction of the twelve-story Cairo Apartment Building in 1894, Congress
passed the Heights of Buildings Act, which limited building heights in the city. The Act
was amended in 1910 to restrict building height to the width of the adjacent street plus
20 feet (6.1 m).[56] Despite popular belief, no law has ever limited buildings to the height
of the United States Capitol or the Washington Monument.[57][58] Today the skyline
remains low and sprawling, in keeping with Thomas Jefferson's wishes to make
Washington an "American Paris" with "low and convenient" buildings on "light and airy"
streets.[56] As a result, the Washington Monument remains the District's tallest structure.
[59]
However, Washington's height restriction has been assailed as a primary reason why
the city has limited affordable housing and traffic problems as a result of urban sprawl.
[56]
Not subject to the District's height restriction, a number of taller buildings close to
downtown have been constructed across the Potomac River in Rosslyn, Virginia.[60]
The District is divided into four quadrants of unequal area: Northwest (NW), Northeast
(NE), Southeast (SE), and Southwest (SW). The axes bounding the quadrants radiate
from the U.S. Capitol building.[61] All road names include the quadrant abbreviation to
indicate their location. In most of the city, the streets are set out in a grid pattern with
eastwest streets named with letters (e.g., C Street SW) and northsouth streets with
numbers (e.g., 4th Street NW).[61] Some Washington streets are particularly noteworthy,
such as Pennsylvania Avenue, which connects the White House with the U.S. Capitol,
and K Street, which houses the offices of many lobbying groups.[62] Washington hosts

174 foreign embassies, 59 of which are located on a section of Massachusetts

Avenue informally known as Embassy Row.[63]