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In 1791, shortly after the United States won its independence, George Washington personally asked Pierre Charles L’Enfant—a young French artisan turned American revolutionary soldier who gained many friends among the Founding Fathers—to design the new nation's capital. L’Enfant approached this task with unparalleled vigor and passion; however, his imperious and unyielding nature also made him many powerful enemies. After eleven months, Washington reluctantly dismissed L’Enfant from the project. Subsequently, the plan for the city was published under another name, and L’Enfant died long before it was rightfully attributed to him. Filled with incredible characters and passionate human drama, Scott W. Berg’s deft narrative account of this little-explored story in American history is a tribute to the genius of Pierre Charles L'Enfant and the enduring city that is his legacy.
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“A lively and literate view of Washington's early history, with liberal dashes of intrigue for good measure.” –Kirkus
“L’Enfant’s idiosyncratic personality interfered with his complete success yet only serves to make this biography a fascinating read.” –Booklist
“A welcome narrative… Berg performs sterling service in excavating this little-known story from the archives.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“The reader never will be able to walk the streets of Washington again without envisioning the haughty genius of Major L'Enfant on horseback, oblivious to the rain and cold, looking down from Jenkins Hill, and with a vision of pre-revolutionary Paris in his mind's eye, seeing one of the world's great capital cities spread out before him.” –Buffalo News (New York)
“Scott Berg has created a readable portrait of Pierre Charles L’Enfant that shows the artist in full, with both his great gifts and his Icarus-like ambition. It is fascinating to speculate how America’s federal government might have emerged differently over the centuries if it had been seated in Thomas Jefferson’s simple ‘federal town’ rather than in L’Enfant’s grandiose city. The character of the capital city today is inseparable from its designer’s personality and vision.” –David A. Price, author of Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
Scott W. Berg holds a BA in Architecture from the University of Minnesota, an MA from Miami University and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University where he is now teaching non-fiction writing and literature. Since 1998, Berg has published over 60 pieces in the Washington Post on various subjects, many of them historical, including a lengthy feature story about L'Enfant out of which GRAND AVENUES grew.
Scott W. Berg is the author of 38 Nooses: Lincoln, Little Crow, and the Frontier's End (2012) and Grand Avenues: The Story of Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the French Visionary Who Designed Washington, D.C. (2007), both published in hardcover by Pantheon Books and in paperback by Vintage Books. Born and raised in Minnesota's Twin Cities, Scott received a BA in Architecture from the University of Minnesota, an MA in English from Miami University of Ohio, and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University, where he now teaches nonfiction writing and literature. Since 1999, he has also been a contributor to The Washington Post and other publications.
Scott's principal research interests include place origins, architectural history, urban history, and the intersections of lesser-known individuals with history's more famous figures. His feature writing for the Washington Post has ranged widely, covering topics as diverse as civil rights history, classical theater, the sport of cricket, the digitization of history, the role of monuments and museums in Washington, D.C., and airplane restoration efforts at the Smithsonian Institution, to name just a few. He regularly speaks to media outlets and to groups large and small in the Washington metro area and around the country about his books and related topics. A list of his upcoming and previous speaking engagements can be found on the "Events & Media" link of his website, www.scottwberg.com.
Scott lives in Reston, Virginia with his wife and their two sons, ages 10 and 7. He can be reached via his website or by using his e-mail address directly: scottwberg@scottwberg.com
i loved this book--i had the good fortune to find it in the national gallery bookstore while in washington DC and read most of it before i left the city. it is a fascinating story that has been explicated in extreme detail by berg. l'enfant was incredible--a big dreamer with the connections to get much (but not all) done. my only complaint, and it is a petty one, is that the book is overwritten. berg has much to say and a vast vocabulary in which to say it, but too often he uses 40 words when 10 will do. it made the journey a bit taxing; a bit of editing and trimming would easily make this a 5 star book. very interesting tale--if you have the time and inclination to learn about the origins of washington DC and about late 18th century history, definitely read this book.
Grand Avenue reads like a novel. It not only gives the reader a background into the evolution of Washington DC, but reminds us of the foibles of the founding fathers and their internecine squabbles. Pierre Charles L'Enfant's genius was at the mercy of the times, only to be resurrected in later years by another man with a vision F.L. Olmsted.
I love Washington DC as it is, but I see through this book how it could have been. However impossible his personality, he was used hardly and unappreciated until a later day. The book was well written; it was just difficult to read the complete disappointment (to him) of his vision. He was right about the means of funding of the building of Washington DC. What a difference that would have made.
