biography
| name: |
L'Enfant, Pierre Charles
|
pronunciation:
[lãfã]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1754–1825)
|
| biography:
| Architect and city planner, born in Paris, France. He trained as an artist at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, and went to America (1777) to fight the British in the American Revolution. In New York after 1786, he designed ceremonial and monumental works, introducing symbolic and allegorical European decorative motifs to America, and remodelled Federal Hall (1788–9), where Washington took the presidential oath. At George Washington's invitation he submitted a plan (1791) for the new federal capital in the District of Columbia. Its integration of the natural features of the site and the symbolism and placement of the major buildings made it an influential model of urban planning and helped popularize the Federal style. Although L'Enfant's output was modest and he spent his last years in straitened circumstances, his plan for the capital assured his reputation for posterity. |
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