.

(Signed by)
THOMAS JOHNSON,
DAVID STUART,
DANIEL CARROLL.

L'Enfant aimed to make an original plan for the Federal City, adapted to
the topography, but he endeavored to secure ideas from plans of great
cities of Europe that might be found possible of adaptation so he wrote
to Jefferson who sent his notable reply and plans of a number of cities
that he had secured evidently while our minister to France.

"June 30th Washington noted, 'The business which brot. me to Georgetown
being finished and the Comrs. instructed with respect to the mode of
carrying the plan into effect, I set off this morning a littel after 4
o'clock, in the prosecution of my journey towards Philadelphia....'"

"Thereupon the building site for the city took on intense activity."

Pierre Charles L'Enfant was the son of Pierre L'Enfant, an artist who
painted battle scenes and also designed tapestries for the Gobelin
Works. L'Enfant himself was an artist and it was his artistic
temperament which caused him trouble. At the age of 22 he had come to
America to volunteer his services in the war against England. He became
an officer of engineers, and also helped Gen. von Steuben drill the Army
at Valley Forge, and worked on fortifications. After the war he was a
practicing architect in New York City for several years but when he
heard of the Federal City to be created he longed to be the author of
its plan and as I have said wrote to Washington asking for the job.

But it was his desire for perfection which eventually was his undoing.
There was delay in submitting the Plan to President Washington, and also
he refused to take orders from any one except Washington, whereas he was
told to take them from the three Commissioners of the District of
Columbia: Thomas Johnson, David Stuart, and Daniel Carroll. Dr. David
Stuart had become the second husband of Mrs. John Parke Custis,
daughter-in-law of Mrs. Washington. Things went from bad to worse when
the nephew of Daniel Carroll the Commissioner, Daniel Carroll of
Duddington, started to build a house which abutted into a street laid
out on the Plan and Major L'Enfant had it demolished. Also there was
delay in getting the Map engraved.

Major L'Enfant lived at Suter's Tavern during the months he was working
in George Town. But where he actually did his work of drawing his famous
Map, where Andrew Ellicott had his office as surveyor, and where the
three Comm