The Sacred Geometry of Washington, D.C.: The Integrity and Power of the Original Design

In 1791, a new city took shape on the Potomac. It was planned to bring the political center of the emerging nation down from New York and Philadelphia to an unspoiled place with no prior history, a place where the opening chapter might be written on America’s blank page.

French-born Pierre Charles L’Enfant, was appointed by George Washington to be its planner and architect. L’Enfant wished to inscribe in his design the flourishing and triumphant principles of the Enlightenment. He also wanted to bring classical shape to his city: rational geometric patterns and Pythagorean golden sections, like those inscribed in the great cities of past civilizations. These patterns, he believed, held not only powerful symbolic significance but tapped into actual spiritual forces and cosmic energies as well.

As it turned out, through the intercession of Thomas Jefferson and others, the city was built with major modifications to the original design. One of these 1793 modifications gave much more emphasis in the city’s axes to the position of the White House—only completed in 1800—than to the Capitol building at the center of L’Enfant’s design. Did moving the "zero meridian" west to the White House express a desire, perhaps, to give greater emphasis to executive power than to legislative?

What happened to L’Enfant’s remarkable conception? Why and how was it altered? Did Freemasonic ideas play any appreciable role in the original or amended design? What can we learn today from the intended design, in terms of the role of spiritual forces embedded in geometric patterns? NicholasR. Mann shares with readers the genius of the original design and the significance of the modifications to Washington as built.