On April 24, 2025, I delivered a lecture on “The City Beautiful Movement and Washington, D.C.” as part of the inaugural Teófilo Victoria Lecture Series, sponsored by the Florida chapter of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art in collaboration with the Coral Gables Museum and National Civic Art Society. The précis of my talk, which took place at the aforementioned museum:
The 1901-1902 McMillan Plan for Washington, D.C. was the first achievement, and arguably the apogee, of the City Beautiful movement. Furthering and reinterpreting the original L’Enfant Plan for the capital, the McMillan Plan replaced the Victorian landscaping of the National Mall with the east-west axis and Monumental Core as we know them: stately classical buildings and memorials and public grounds. The Plan, the creation of the Senate Park Commission chaired by Senator James McMillan, paved the way for and envisioned the Lincoln Memorial, Union Station, the Federal Triangle, and generous public parks. The Plan continues to underpin planning in the District of Columbia to so some degree, though some have called for a McMillan 2.0 to broaden the vision for the next century. What might a neo-City Beautiful plan look like?
