Pubspeaks

WIW Pubspeak: Grand Avenues

By Robert Hill, WIW Member

It was a grand night at The Front Page Restaurant in Arlington, VA., where author Scott W. Berg gave a WIW audience insight into his latest book, Grand Avenues: The Story of the French Visionary Who Designed Washington, D.C. The book examines Pierre Charles L’Enfant, whose architectural and city planning contributions left a lasting legacy on the development of Washington, D.C. Berg spoke about the rise, fall, and redemption of L’Enfant, vividly describing L’Enfant’s life from his arrival to Washington until his passing.

Berg’s interest in L’Enfant and the planning of the nation’s capital occurred while attending Saint John’s University in Northern Minnesota. Berg took a class in urban planning, although he wanted to pursue a career in writing. His two-week class in the history of urban planning focused on the design of Washington, D.C. Not much time was spent on L’Enfant but on the history of the unique design of Washington, D.C.

While freelancing for the Washington Post, Berg submitted a 3,500 word article for the weekend section, “The Modern Washingtonian Experience in D.C.” and how the vision came from one person. After he pitched the article to Joyce Jones, the editor, she told him to “go for it.” This type of article was not the norm for the weekend section.

“It is interesting; when you look for Pierre L’Enfant in the back of history books, you would be lucky to find an index. However, if you look in architectural history, you will find one or two chapters on L’Enfant.” Berg said. “After taking a tour of D.C. to get a feel of what it would look like through the eyes of L’Enfant, it made sense to me after the article was printed that this is going to make an interesting larger project.” This was the now or never opportunity to write his first novel.

Berg focused much of the discussion on how he researched, organized, and edited his book. The characters and politics for the book were so complicated that the book had to be well organized. Berg explains, “I go back to teaching my students on how to deliver the organization of their thesis in one sentence, eliminating this happens and this happens and this happens. I think the bigger the book, the better you are on reducing the complexity of the organization.”

The editorial process was also difficult since, unlike other works, Grand Avenues was contracted with a certain page count. This was not to be a full scale biography. He further explained how he worked with his editor at Pantheon to determine which pages ought to remain. The goal was to ensure that the narrative was delivered correctly. “[The editor] would push one way as an editor, and I would push back,” said Berg.

During the editorial process, Berg learned an important lesson. “After two in-house edits, I started to see how my sentences should have been constructed in comparison to what I submitted. Sometimes there would be minor remarks on the pages, and all of a sudden there would be an explosion of intense arguments in the margin. For example, ‘Why would Jefferson say or do this? Why did this happen?’ And it was probably because I did not explain why in the prose which could lead the reader in a different direction. My last edit was sent to a freelancer who did the fact checking. What took me four years to research, she did in three weeks, and I was mystified. There were commas and questions where I did not agree, but this helped to make the narrative move in a leaner way.”

In the course of Berg’s research, he read four to five volumes on George Washington and six to seven volumes on Thomas Jefferson. One thing that Berg noticed was that there was no information in any biography of Washington having met with L’Enfant. Yet L’Enfant influenced and dominated Washington’s thoughts for an entire year on the designing of the nations’ capital. While Washington shared L’Enfant’s vision of a large city with over one million residents, Thomas Jefferson held a different view. Despite Jefferson’s love of Paris, his thoughts were that the “larger the city, the more of a corrupting force it would become. Jefferson’s personal thoughts were that big cities will corrupt everyone who was not the Renaissance man Jefferson was and did not have the breadth and width of knowledge that he had.”

When the conversation turned to L’Enfant himself, Berg expressed his surprise at the speed that L’Enfant accomplished his work. “His work schedule started early in the morning where he spent 12- to 13-hour days standing at every place that would be a street. There are records of L’Enfant ordering chalk and other equipment for the surveyors lead by Andrew Ellicott. He would then go back to Georgetown, where he was staying, and start to draw what was surveyed. L’Enfant wore the hat of an entire architectural firm. Normally someone would conceive and someone would draw or, today, someone would bring up the plans on a computer. After the surveying was complete, L’Enfant worked by candlelight with his dividers, compass, erasers, and water colors. All of the drawing did not take place until night, which was another six to seven hours. So his work days were between 19 to 20 hours.”  

Despite L’Enfant’s toil and hard work, does Washington, D.C, currently reflect L’Enfant’s grand visionary? Berg responded, “I always say that this is L’Enfant’s creation and not his city. Street by street, the plan and the basic idea all look the same. Where the fort was going to be on the Anacostia is now the Navy Yard. This is also where most of the commerce was taking place on the eastern end of the city. Ships sailed on the Anacostia River because it was much deeper and slower than the Potomac. What L’Enfant had envisioned was already taking place in Alexandria and in Georgetown to a lesser degree.

“Washington, D.C., however, was designed to be a complement of villages, linked by avenues, not streets. So you were not supposed to drive through them. Instead of having Massachusetts Avenue, you would have Massachusetts Square, and South Carolina Avenue would be known as South Carolina Square. In an effort to fill the city, L’Enfant drew and reserved 13 squares for the original 13 states and one more for Vermont. The idea was to have the congressmen and representatives to live there in very sumptuous living, with the best townhomes and shops. The circles surrounding the squares would occupy other residents and their servants which are linked by avenues.

“The reason you do not see a resemblance [to his designs] is because no one continued his work in relationship to the squares, circles, and avenues. If you somehow were to fly over Washington, D.C., in the 1850’s you would see no comparison to L’Enfant’s plans. The city would not become what we know it as today until after the Civil War. But if you stand at the West Plaza of the Capitol, looking out toward the Potomac River, you can see what L’Enfant had envisioned for Washington, D.C.”

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