How is it that this capital city of the new United States is so rich in Masonic history and symbols? How could a New World American city be planned with castles and crypts, obelisks and temples? Americans are taught that the city of Washington was constructed out of nothing, not unlike the Russian St. Petersburg of Peter the Great. In January of 1791, George Washington chose the land in Maryland that is now the District of Columbia, and a smaller section across the Potomac in Virginia. In the same year Virginia and Maryland (some see a hidden Virgin Mary Land) officially ceded the territory for the city. In September 1791, the new city commissioners met with the Secretary of State (and later President) Thomas Jefferson to choose the name for the city. It came as no surprise that the new city would bear the name of the man who had been “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Pierre Charles L’Enfant who was responsible for the concept and design of the city first suggested “Washingtonople,” explicitly recalling the glory of the great Constantinople, but that choice was rejected. The commissioners also named the ten-mile square of the Federal District “Columbia,” a Latin-sounding term derived from Christopher Columbus, representing the Goddess of Democracy.
Washington engaged Major Andrew Ellicott to survey the District in February and commissioned L’Enfant to design the new city. Washington frequently met and dined with others, as did his commissioners, at Suter’s Fountain Inn at the intersection of 31st and K streets in Georgetown. John Suter, Jr., proprietor of historic Suter’s Fountain Inn, was Senior Warden of Maryland Masonic Lodge No. 9, and the Inn was the meeting place of the Masonic lodge that President Washington, the Marquis de LaFayette, and Major L’Enfant all attended.
Ellicott, the original surveyor and himself a Mason, laid the symbolic cornerstone of city at Jones Point with commissioner Daniel Carroll with the traditional Masonic offerings of corn, wine, and oil on April 15, 1791. This Masonic ritual of the cornerstone laying would become a tradition and established custom for marking the dedication of important sites and constructions in the new nation.
The commissioners instructed L’Enfant to number and letter his streets in the way that we still recognize today. The city was originally intended to be a ten-mile-byten-mile square placed diamond-like on a map marking land between Maryland and Virginia, with the Potomac River flowing through the city. Unlike most cities, construction of Washington began with a comprehensive plan. The grid of streets running from north to south were numbered and today are identified by quadrant, such as 14th Street N.W. (for North West). Those streets running from east to west bore the names of the letters of the alphabet, such as K Street or M Street. These all are intersected on a diagonal by major avenues carrying the names of the first states. To appease those who hoped to locate the country’s capital in Philadelphia, one of the city’s major thoroughfares was named Pennsylvania Avenue. All of this fascinates students of geography and geometry, especially when squares and circles are added to the mix. Triangles, squares, star-shaped pentagons, and hexagons can be overlaid onto the map resulting in an architect’s and conspiracy buff’s dream world. The emerging shapes continue to fascinate students of conspiracy and the occult. The most famous of these is the upside-down pentagram reported to be Lucifer’s own imprint on the city. But Langdon (and Brown) wisely dismiss these allegations of any diabolical design or overlay on the map.
Even the casual observer, however, can identify the geometrical perfection created by the main points of the city that begin at the White House and look south toward the Washington Monument. From the monument, looking east across the Mall, one sees the majestic outline of the U.S. Capitol, and every four years the Inaugural Parade completes the triangle when the new President proceeds northwest along Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol back to the White House. What a shame that in 1836 the Treasury Building designed by a Mason, Robert Mills, who was also the architect of the Washington Monument, now blocks what once was an unobstructed view between those two seats of power.
L’Enfant’s Design
L’Enfant’s original master plan called for three main focal points: the President’s House (today the White House), the Congress House (the Capitol), and a place for a monument to George Washington (site of the Washington Monument). L’Enfant was a master designer, but not a very clever politician and/or businessman. He quarreled with landowners, and his lack of consideration for financial matters would eventually lead to his downfall. He had visions of streets 100 to 110 feet wide and avenues like Pennsylvania 160 feet wide! When Washington fired him in January 1792, he was offered $2,500 and a plot of land near the White House, which he refused. He died embittered and penniless in 1825. Only in the twentieth century were his remains given the honor of a military burial in Arlington Cemetery.
ORIGINAL PLAN FOR WASHINGTON, D.C.,
www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/tri001.html
STREETS ANDS HIGHWAYS OF WASHINGTON, D.C.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streets_and_highways_of_Washington,_D.C.
THE LOST SYMBOL IN WASHINGTON, D.C
washington.org/visiting/experience-dc/the-lost-symbol
DAVID OVASON VIDEO
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXlYHjQJZ4Y
LUCIFER IN D.C.
www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_tapestra11.htm