Immigrant Patriots of the American Revolution

Pierre Charles L’Enfant

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we are featuring the foreign-born patriots of the American cause.  Today, we honor Pierre L’Enfant, a Revolutionary War military engineer, architect, urban designer, artist, and the person largely responsible for the design of Washington, D.C.

Pierre Charles L’Enfant was born in Paris, France, on August 2, 1754. His mother was the daughter of a French military officer.  His father was a renowned painter and professor at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. In fact, the senior L’Enfant was his son’s instructor when he attended the Royal Academy as a young man.

In 1776, he enlisted in the Continental Army and served as a military engineer under Major General Lafayette. While in America, he changed his first name to the anglicized “Peter.”

Later, he was assigned to General Washington’s staff as the army wintered at Valley Forge. During his service, he painted and sketched several portraits of the commander-in-chief and his officers. His body of work contained at least two panoramic paintings of Continental Army encampments.

Interestingly, he also contributed his artistic skill by creating the drawings of camp and troop formations for General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben’s Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States.

His exploits in the army were not only artistic. He was in the field and served under General Casimir Pulaski during the Siege of Savannah in 1779. There, he was seriously wounded in the leg.

A few months later, at the Siege of Charleston, he became one of the over 3,300 prisoners of war following the American defeat. After six months, he was part of a prisoner exchange and paroled; he returned to serve under General Washington.

At the Revolutionary War’s end, L’Enfant was mustered out with the rank of brevet major.

Now a civilian, Peter L’Enfant, made his living as an architect in New York City. He was engaged to redesign City Hall, which would become the home of the First Congress of the United States.

L’Enfant advocated to President Washington that he be given the commission to design the planned new federal district. After it was determined that the national capital would be built on the shores of the Potomac River, Washington appointed him as planner of “Federal City,” which would ultimately become the District of Columbia. However, after much consternation and challenges, Washington dismissed L’Enfant from the project. Still, while other designs superseded the original L’Enfant Plan, his groundbreaking urban design envisioned many elements of our nation’s capital as it is today.

In his later years, L’Enfant worked at West Point as a professor of engineering and was responsible for the redesign and reconstruction of Fort Washington.

Peter L’Enfant died on June 14, 1825, in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where he was buried. In 1909, his body was exhumed and reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery. The monument above his grave bears his original design for Washington, D.C.

Here are other immigrant patriots: