America’s Main Street America : From the Capitol to the White House, strolling Pennsylvania Avenue may be the perfect way to catch the spirit of Washington and to understand the planner’s original design

WASHINGTON —  Stroll these stately avenues on the right morning, humble yourself before the marbled halls and towering monuments, and you can almost believe that this city is a legacy of careful and consistent planning.

But that, as others in this neighborhood have noted on other occasions, would be wrong.

Nothing happens as planned here. Presidents zig, then zag. Congress professes concern about the budget, then kites checks. Even the cherry blossoms are unreliable, opening in late March one year, mid-April the next, soon abandoning the effort and floating to the city’s floor within a week or so. This year’s are long gone. It all seems to be part of the capital cycle: an idea is born, lives briefly, then mutates or dies.

So it was with the ideas of Pierre Charles L’Enfant, the man who designed Washington in the late 18th Century and whose spirit came to dominate my visit to the city earlier this month.

L’Enfant chose the sites for the Capitol and the White House and instructed that the view between them along Pennsylvania Avenue should remain unobstructed, a symbol of balance and coordination between the legislative and executive branches of government.

It was a noble sentiment, and it lasted about 40 years--until President Andrew Jackson got antsy to find a home for the Treasury Department and plunked it down at 15th Street and Pennsylvania, where its headquarters squats today like a great, gray referee between the President and Congress. All sightlines are blocked. The President and Congress, it could be argued, haven’t seen things the same way since.

The city’s designer also had definite ideas about the Washington Monument. He wanted a man on horseback. What we got, of course, was an entirely unequestrian 555 1/2-foot marble tower.

L’Enfant had a rough time all around. And in this year of impatience with those who govern us, his tale may offer capital visitors the perfect bicentennial moment for 1992: It’s now 200 years since the man who laid out Washington, D.C., was fired.

While that city was waking to the spring of ‘92, I spent four days on L’Enfant’s trail, bypassing upscale Georgetown, the enticements of restored Union Station, the eateries of Adams Morgan and most of the Mall museums. While the locals clucked over primaries, caucuses and doomed incumbencies, I took tours and prowled Pennsylvania Avenue.

The summertime hordes and August humidity had not yet arrived. The wind was brisk. And the magnolia blooms, which precede and often outlast the cherry blossoms, festooned the museums and monuments in pink and white, bountiful as semicolons in a transportation bill. It was as if someone had planned every detail, almost.

L’Enfant started with the Capitol. He was 36 at the time, having fled his comfortable family in France to fight for George Washington in the Revolutionary War. For years after independence, he entreated Washington for a chance to design the new nation’s capital, and finally Washington broke down.

In 1791, the Frenchman singled out Jenkins’ Hill, an idle rise in the swampy patch of wilderness and plantation land that would be Washington, and persuaded President Washington that it was “a pedestal waiting for a monument.”

There Congress would sit. From there would emanate broad avenues, including one leading to the president’s home. The radiating avenues would be overlaid upon a grid pattern of streets, producing scores of strangely angled intersections and properties that could only be used for monuments and parkland. All this came to pass, leaving the city with befuddlingly complicated traffic patterns that enrage thousands of Washington drivers daily. That rage, in turn, inspires wise tourists to rely on the subterranean Metro system and taxis.

L’Enfant also envisioned a pedestrian promenade that would run from the Capitol to the Washington Monument (you know, the president on horseback), as the National Mall does today. L’Enfant, however, expected foreign embassies to line the grassy length of the promenade; instead, they line Massachusetts Avenue, and various museums of the Smithsonian Institution dominate the Mall.

L’Enfant was convinced that a canal along the Mall would ease transportation and underscore the city’s prominence as a shipping center. Instead, it promoted the breeding of bugs and was filled in during the 19th Century. In the 167 years since L’Enfant’s death, the Lincoln and Vietnam memorials, among others, have been added to the Mall. Washington has remained unprominent as a shipping center.

I started with the Capitol, too. But instead of swampy wilderness, I had Cheryl to contend with. She was a tour guide, brisk and bedecked in a red-orange blazer.

“The American Capitol is probably the most recognized building in the world today,” she announced to about three dozen of us.

She went on to note that the cornerstone was laid in 1793, that the Brits burned the place down in 1814, that various architects have had a hand in expanding and amending since then. Above us, the building towered, gleamed, sparkled, resounded and spoke for itself.

My thoughts ran to the Taj Mahal, the Egyptian pyramids, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben--all buildings evidently unaccounted for in Cheryl’s archeology. She scarcely slowed, though, as she ran us through the Statuary Hall, where heroes from various states are arrayed in stone likenesses (Junipero Serra stands for California); the unoccupied crypt beneath the rotunda (George Washington’s family decided to bury him elsewhere), and the old chambers, where, the story goes, strange sonics allowed early congressmen to eavesdrop on whispering colleagues across the room.

The tour was free, but so brief, rushed and shallow that it was still a bad bargain. If you have time and Congress is in session, it makes more sense to bypass the tour, get a visitor’s pass from one of your elected officials’ offices and watch the Senate or House of Representatives at work, on your own timetable.

But either way, when you’re done with the Capitol, you’ll be confronted with the wide swath of Pennsylvania Avenue, and more unplanned history.

From the Capitol to the White House, the avenue covers just over a mile--the nation’s original corridor of power. Local leaders like to call it America’s Main Street.

“It’s a dogleg piece of road,” authors Carol M. Highsmith and Ted Lamphair have written, “dog-eared, too, by a couple of centuries of hooraying and weeping and flooding and any number of rehabilitatings.”

Forty-some presidents have followed inaugural parades up Pennsylvania Avenue. When the Civil War ended in 1865, the tattered Union troops marched here for final review.

White House-bound on Pennsylvania, you pass a succession of American treasures: on your left, the National Gallery of Art, soon followed by the monumental, column-fronted home of the National Archives, where repose the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, Richard Nixon’s resignation and so on. Then there’s the Department of Justice, with the Internal Revenue Service lurking another block over.

On your right, there are the stark, modern walls of the 1975 J. Edgar Hoover FBI building--a building so ugly, local historians say, that it scared authorities into setting higher standards for pedestrian friendliness among buildings along the avenue.

The FBI building does have at least one redeeming quality, however: a free tour calculated to absorb even the most monument-weary child. I followed Brendan and Ryan Wagner, ages 14 and 12, of Marin County, one early morning, and looked over their shoulders at the death mask of John Dillinger, the current “most wanted” list and a promotional display for “Silence of the Lambs.”

There are displays on how drugs will kill you, hurt you or get you thrown in jail, followed by another showing the trappings of wealth seized from fallen drug lords. (At least one drug convict out there is a fan of bronze sculptures with Old West themes.) In the laboratories upstairs, a man in a white coat slowly opened a mysterious dark trash bag; Brendan and Ryan pressed against the glass, only to see a cardboard box revealed.

Then came an earnest discussion of the bureau’s 1990 decision to switch from .357 revolvers (six shots before reloading) to 9-millimeter automatic pistols (21 shots). The children nodded approval. And finally, the shooting: a real live FBI agent filling a man-shaped cardboard figure with bullet-sized holes, to applause from the audience. Ryan had only one quibble on the way out.

“Those handguns weren’t very loud,” he said.

Further along the avenue toward the White House, there is the Willard Inter-Continental Hotel, where tenant Ulysses S. Grant is said to have coined the word “lobbyist,” and where in 1861 Julia Ward Howe wrote the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

One hundred and two years after Julia Ward Howe, on the night before the Poor People’s March on Washington, Martin Luther King composed his “I Have a Dream” speech in another room there. The place fell into idleness for years after that, however, and only reopened in 1986. These days, double-occupancy rates begin at $165, and if you have no songs or speeches to write, you may prefer to settle for a $3 pot of afternoon tea, poured through a silver strainer in the second-floor tearoom.

From the beginning, L’Enfant wanted this stretch of Pennsylvania to be a ceremonial mile; that’s why he made it 160 feet wide.

But downtown Washington filled out fitfully, partially because of scarce money for the work, perhaps also because of its designer’s attitude.

L’Enfant, who is nowhere remembered as a friendly fellow, is said to have accepted orders only from the President, largely ignoring the three Washington friends who were designated commissioners of the fledgling District of Columbia. When the nephew of one commissioner started putting up a mansion that didn’t conform to the city’s proposed street scheme, L’Enfant had it demolished.

“To render him useful,” wrote Thomas Jefferson of L’Enfant, “his temper must be subdued.”

That evidently wasn’t possible. In February, 1792, less than a year after formally hiring his capital city planner, Washington fired him. Surveyor Andrew Ellicott pursued the mapping of capital-to-be, omitting L’Enfant’s name from early engravings. It was years before the federal government authorized payment to L’Enfant for his services, and then, some historians say, it was less than $2,500.

Pennsylvania Avenue, meanwhile, went overlooked and unimproved for decades. Even when federal buildings arose there early in this century, they were neighbored by idle storefronts, rude ironies all around. At 7th Street, facing the Temperance Fountain (built in the 1880s by crusading California teetotaler Henry Cogswell), the Apex liquor store slaked urban thirsts for years.

“Once Washington was laid out and working,” Daniel Patrick Moynihan has written of the street, “presidents pretty much lost interest in the place.”

Jeanne Fogle, a local historian and tour guide, remembers that her mother would only take her to matinees at the National Theatre at 13th Street because by night “it was too dangerous. Too many muggings.”

Called by President Kennedy to clean the area up in the early 1960s, a blue-ribbon committee called the avenue “a scene of desolation.”

But the same committee started a long-term redevelopment campaign that, after various bureaucratic twists and turns, emerged as the federally funded Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corp. After more than $100 million in spending by that agency, and another $1.5 billion in private investment, the avenue these days is more inviting.

At 4th Street stands the Canadian Embassy, a 1988 marble wonder with a whispering fountain and gallery area open to the public.

At the old Apex liquor store site is a Sears office.

At 8th Street there’s the 1987 Navy Memorial, a global map set into the sidewalk and flanked by two rounded buildings.

At 12th, The Pavilion at the Old Post Office serves modern commerce and architectural heritage. It’s an 1899 building renovated in 1983, with a flashy modern mall on the bottom floors, federal offices stacked around the massive atrium and the 315-foot-high Post Office Tower above.

That tower is worth remembering. While thousands of tourists wait daily in hourlong lines to ride the Washington Monument’s elevator, the wait for the free Old Post Office Tower elevator, run by the National Park Service, is usually a matter of minutes. Once they have ascended, visitors have more room to stand than those in the Washington Monument and a much wider vista. Drawbacks: The mall monuments are farther away, and the tower can be windy.

Between 13th and 14th streets, just a couple of blocks from the White House, skateboarders cavort in Freedom Plaza, a 1980 project that includes a stylized stone inscription of L’Enfant’s original street scheme and several quotes from prominent Washingtonians.

The plaza, designed by Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown, was supposed to include vertical elements as well, but local leaders, in keeping with city tradition, stepped in and amended the plans.

You can’t go to Washington and overlook the White House. Recognizing that duty, and expecting little, I arranged through my representative in Congress to get the V.I.P. tour.

The V.I.P. tour, open to all who make arrangements well in advance, is no lingering affair: It’s usually a 30- to 45-minute stroll through five of the building’s 132 rooms, instead of the more common 15-minute sprint.

I arrived between 7 and 8 a.m., stood in the cold at the front of a line for about an hour, then was ushered into the best tour of my stay.

Joe Phillips, a Secret Service tour guide, was in charge. He spoke rapidly but clearly, relished details and managed to simultaneously charm 70 children and grown-ups of widely disparate backgrounds. There were cynics like me, for instance, and then there were cynics like the drawling Southerner in front of me. (We are an alienated electorate.)

“If I had to keep this yard,” the drawler told his wife on the way in, “I wouldn’t want to live here at all.”

We learned that there were 46 reclining chairs in the White House movie theater, 29 fireplaces in the building, 11 bedrooms and 67,000 square feet. We peered into china cabinets and were advised that Barbara Bush had crossed partisan lines to express her preference for china selected by Jackie Kennedy. We discovered that Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fireside chats were delivered in a room that at the time had no fireplace.

Stepping into the Green Room, we paused while our guide pulled a flower from a vase and presented it to a 2-year-old girl. We were informed that President Taft weighed 340 pounds and once got stuck in a White House bathtub.

“Oh me,” said the drawler. “He does make it interesting.”

Then the guide finished up, we delivered a short burst of applause and I was back on the street, contemplating monuments, shuffling through museums, rubbing shoulders with the high, the mightly and the homeless.

One of them was a bedraggled woman seated beside a dirty bedroll. She seemed lost in her thoughts, then spoke up and startled a buttoned-down bureaucrat striding past.

“You don’t know anybody who needs a housekeeper,” the woman asked, “do you?”

This was not one of those mornings when the city looked like a legacy of perfect and consistent planning. But of all the unplanned phenomena occupying L’Enfant’s city these days, the homeless might surprise him least.

Back in 1806, the Washington artist and architect Benjamin Latrobe wrote that “daily thro’ the city stalks the picture of famine . . . and his dog . . . He is too proud to receive any assistance, and it is very doubtful in what manner he subsists.”

Latrobe had discovered Pierre Charles L’Enfant, 15 years removed from the project of his life, a vagrant in his own city.

GUIDEBOOK

Capital Ideas

Where to stay: With so many national and international visitors, Washington has an unusually large number of high-end hotels. I sampled the recently refurbished Sheraton Carlton (923 K St. N.W.; 800-325-3535), which lies two blocks from the White House and charges $230-$270 for double-occupancy rooms (suites began at $350.) But I was equally comfortable amid the less opulent furnishings of the Dupont Plaza Hotel (1500 New Hampshire Ave. N.W.; 800-421-6662) at fashionable Dupont Circle, where double-occupancy prices run $145-$185, more for suites. Veteran capital visitors speak highly of the 40-room Tabard Inn (1739 N St. N.W.; 202-785-1277), where double-occupancy rooms run $79 (shared bath, breakfast included) to $129 (your own bathroom, and more room).

For more hotels, contact the Hotel Assn. of Washington (202-289-3141). Where to eat: To dine among power lunchers in “the oldest saloon in Washington,” try The Old Ebbitt Grill (675 15th St. N.W.; 202-347-4800); reservations vital on weekdays, with times strictly enforced). Lunch entrees run $7.95-$9.95, and if you want atmosphere, beware of banishment to the back patio, where unserious eaters are sometimes sent. For an elegant dinner, and the likely presence of an elected official or two, there is La Colline near Union Station. (400 N. Capitol St. N.W.; 202-737-0400). Dinner entrees run $16.25-$19.75. A tasty Italian meal, in much more casual surroundings, can be had at Trattoria Alberto (506 Eighth St. S.E.; 202-544-2007). Dinner entrees there run $10.95-$17.50. And for a dinner that might well evolve into drinks and a late night, there is the Dubliner (520 N. Capitol St. N.W.; 202-737-3773), whose bar offers live Irish folk music nightly. Entrees run $8-$15, but I sampled only the Bass ale (on tap at $3.95 a pint).

Tours and museums: To view Congress in session, visit the office of your senator or representative (if you don’t know that name, call the House of Representatives switchboard at 202-225-3121) and ask for free gallery passes, which are good for a year. Senate and House meetings are listed daily in the Washington Post. Free tours of the Capitol begin about every five minutes in the building’s rotunda, from 9 a.m. to 3:45 p.m., seven days a week. Tours usually last 20-25 minutes. For more information, call (202) 225-6827.

White House VIP tour tickets can also be had from your senator or representative, but demand is high and requests should be made months in advance. Standard White House tours are held Tuesday through Saturday mornings, with free ticket distributions beginning at 8 a.m. in a booth on the Ellipse, behind the White House. Expect to spend time standing in line--up to two hours in the summer months. For more information, call (202) 456-7041.

The FBI tour is a high-demand, first-come, first-served affair (except for large groups that mail in for reservations a year in advance on letterhead stationery), with lines forming on E Street between 9th and 10th streets N.W. Though the lines usually begin forming about 7 a.m., the building’s doors don’t open until 8:30, and the free hourlong tours are offered from 8:45 a.m. to 4:15 p.m., Monday through Friday. For more information, call (202) 324-3447.

Many more tours are offered by public and private agencies. Among those with the best reputations: the federal Bureau of Engraving and Printing (202-447-0193) and the Library of Congress (202-707-5458).

Any first-time visitor to the capital should consider spending several days on Smithsonian Institution’s 13 museums (they’re all free), most notably the National Air & Space Museum (6th and Independence Ave S.W.), the National Museum of Natural History (10th and Constitution N.W.). The east and west wings of the National Gallery of Art (6th and Constitution Avenue N.W.; 202-737-4215) take some visitors a day each. For more museum information, call the Smithsonian at (202) 357-2700. Also, for visitors interested in architecture or District of Columbia history, the 7-year-old National Building Museum (401 F St. N.W.; 202-272-2448) offers “Washington: Symbol and City,” a top-notch permanent exhibit on the city’s past and present. Good museum store, too.

Seasonal offering: On May 9, Goodwill Industries sponsors its 46th-annual embassy tour, a rare opportunity to get inside buildings usually closed to the public. This year’s event, which costs $25 in advance and $30 on the day of the tour, runs 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., including the embassies of Ecuador, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, Pakistan and Venezuela, and the garden of the United Kingdom’s embassy. (For more information, call 202-636-4225.)

For more information: D.C. Committee to Promote Washington (202-724-4091); Washington, D.C. Convention and Visitors Assn. (202-789-7000).

Washington D.C. 1. Capitol 2. Canadian Embassy 3. National Gallery of Art 4. National Archives 5. Navy Memorial 6. FBI Building 7. Pavilion of the Old Post Office 8. Freedom Plaza 9. Willard Hotel 10. U.S. Treasury 11. White House 12. Washington Monument 13. Vietnam Veterans Memorial 14. Lincoln Memorial