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 (17889), 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.
L'Enfant designed the first street plan for the Federal City in the United States, now known as Washington, D.C. Shortly thereafter, as a result of his connections, L'Enfant was appointed by George Washington (who had become the first President of the United States) to design a new federal capital city under the supervision of three commissioners that Washington had appointed to oversee the planning and development of the 10 mile square of federal territory that would later become the District of Columbia.Because of his temperament and insistence on the city being realised as a whole, L'Enfant's plan for the Federal City was only partially executed during his lifetime. As a result of L'Enfant's frequent conflicts with the commisioners, George Washington dismissed L'Enfant from the project before L'Enfant was able to find a publisher for his plan. However, George Washington retained a copy of one of L'Enfant's original plans, which is now in the possession of the U.S. Library of Congress. The last line in an oval in the upper left hand corner of the plan identifies its author as "Peter Charles L'Enfant".
Following L'Enfant's dismissal, the commissioners placed the planning for the capital city in the hands of the surveyors, Andrew and Joseph Ellicott, who had earlier conducted the original boundary survey of the future District of Columbia. Andrew Ellicott then revised L'Enfant's plan and, unlike L'Enfant, succeeded in having his own version of the plan engraved, published, and distributed.
L'Enfant was not paid for his work and fell into disgrace, spending much of the rest of his life trying to persuade Congress to pay him what he felt he was owed. L'Enfant died in poverty and was buried at the farm of a friend in Prince George's County, Maryland.
In 1901, the McMillan Commission used L'Enfant's plan as the cornerstone of its 1902 report, which laid out a plan for a sweeping National Mall. In 1909, after a ceremony at the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, L'Enfant's remains were reinterred in Arlington National Cemetery, on a hill overlooking the city that he had partially designed. Engraved on the monument is a portion of L'Enfant's own plan, which Andrew Ellicott had later superceded.
L'Enfant's decade-long relationship with Richard Soderstrom began in 1794. In 1801, Soderstrom billed L'Enfant for his share of their living expenses, and a legal dispute followed
In 1942, a United States Liberty ship named the SS Pierre L'Enfant was launched.
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