Plan of the City of Washington in the Territory of Columbia, ceded by the States of Virginia and Maryland to the United States of America, and by them established as the seat of their government after the year MDCCC.
Published in Philadelphia by Thackara & Vallance in 1792. Size: 21 3/4 x 29 inches. This was the first “official” plan of Washington, D.C.
In 1790, as part of the compromise brokered by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, Congress authorized the capital of the new United States to be designed and built at a site along the Potomac River. Commissioners to oversee the project were appointed and planning the new federal city began immediately.
In 1791, President Washington appointed Frenchman Pierre Charles L’Enfant, who had served as Captain of Engineers on his staff during the American Revolution, to design the layout of the city. Basing his plan partly on the gardens of Versailles, L’Enfant submitted a draft to Washington in the summer of 1791which incorporated many of the elements of the final plan: streets laid out in grids with diagonal avenues intersecting at rectangular plazas, large public spaces, and with the President’s House connected to Congress via a grand avenue. L’Enfant, however, ran into conflicts with the commissioners and delayed the project. In February 1792, surveyor Andrew Ellicott, who had been appointed by the commissioners to survey district lines in the region, was tasked with preparing L’Enfant’s plan for engraving and L’Enfant was dismissed.
In a 23 February 1792 letter to the commissioners, Elliot wrote about L’Enfant’s refusal to allow him access to the original plan, but that his work was proceeding successfully based on a copy of it. He hired Philadelphia engravers Thackara and Vallance to engrave the plan. While Thackara and Vallance proceeded with their engraving, Samuel Hill of Boston was given the same task and rushed a version of the plan to print, issuing it in the summer of 1792, but without soundings, canals, and other important details. In September 1792, however, Thackara and Vallance’s superior version was completed. Larger in size and more detailed than the Hill version, the Thackara and Vallance edition would be used by the commissioners and is since known as the “official” plan of Washington.
The original copper plate for the map survived into the 19th century, and later restrikes were made on wove paper; the originals are on laid paper.
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