Lecture: The L'Enfant Plan from Idea to Landscape March 14, 2006

Architect and architectural historian Don Alexander Hawkins will present a fresh thesis about the origins of Pierre L'Enfant's plan for the capital city of the new American federal republic.

He will demonstrate that L'Enfant did not imitate Baroque gardens and city plans such as those at Versailles, London, Paris, and Madrid but instead conceived of an entirely original plan inspired by Alexander Hamilton's ideas about the relationship between American government and commerce.

Hawkins will also discuss the surveyors' sequential laying out of the plan
on the site.

This lecture complements the exhibition Washington: Symbol and City, which will be open for viewing and for which Hawkins was the guest curator.

Admission: $15
Members of the Museum and the Latrobe Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians, and students $10
Reservations: Required
Phone: 202-272-2448
Online: Register at www.nbm.org