Pierre Charles L'Enfant brought artistic training and military engineering experience to the design of the United States capital. Arriving from France in 1777 to join the American Revolution, he served in the Continental Army and worked on fortifications. His later commissions included the Society of the Cincinnati's insignia and the remodeling of New York's City Hall as Federal Hall, where the new federal government assembled in 1789.

In 1791 George Washington commissioned him to plan the federal city on the Potomac. L'Enfant arranged broad diagonal avenues across a street grid, using prominent sites and long views to connect public buildings and open spaces. He placed the legislative and executive buildings at separate focal points linked by Pennsylvania Avenue. Public grounds extending west from the Capitol and south from the President's House anticipated the city's monumental landscape, although their eventual appearance involved later designers and decisions.

His ambitions went beyond a collection of government offices. The plan provided a framework for a growing commercial city, with squares, avenues, and proposed water connections serving public and practical purposes. The design adapted European planning to the topography and aspirations of the republic. Its geometry made the relationships among government buildings visible across the landscape.

L'Enfant's insistence on control brought disputes with the commissioners supervising the project and with property owners. Washington dismissed him in 1792. Andrew Ellicott continued the surveying and produced the published plan, incorporating and adjusting L'Enfant's scheme. Payment remained a difficulty for L'Enfant, who died in poverty in 1825. The capital developed unevenly, but renewed attention to his design influenced the McMillan planning effort of 1901–1902. His reburial at Arlington in 1909 gave public recognition to a contribution that had outlasted his brief employment on the project.