Capital's Birthday

One hundred and fifty years ago Pierre L'Enfant. Revolutionary War veteran and city planner, laid out the only completely planned city in the U.S.: Washington. D.C. Last week well-planned Washington had become the prime U.S. example of the weaknesses of permanent city planning. With housing facilities overflowing, wide avenues glutted, its normal population (500,000) swelled to 1,000,000, war-tan-gled Washington had forgotten to celebrate the 150th anniversary of L'Enfant's plan.

At Manhattan's Architectural League last week, Architect Lorimer Rich (designer of the Unknown Solidier monument at Arlington Cemetary) belatedly celebrated it with an exhibition of maps models and photographs. Architect Rich's exhibition showed what a beautiful job an unfettered planner can do with a city. It also showed that, in a fluid age of mechanical progress, cities must be planned, not like timeless monuments, but like elastic military campaigns.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.