Fall 2001 HONR Course Descriptions - HONR 288I

HONR 288I Washington City as a Work of Art
Tuesday 6:00 - 8:30 p.m.
Dr. Douglas Lewis, Lecturer in University Honors; Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Art, National Gallery of Art

The concept of Washington City as an immense Federal capital, to be created ex novo on the unpromising site of a tidal swamp (equidistant between the small eighteenth-century Potomac river ports of Alexandria and George-Town), is perhaps the most visionary and, in its outcome, one of the most successful of the global planning enterprises of the age of "Romantic Classicism." Even more memorably than its European counterparts--the redesigned Nancy and Lisbon, or contemporary master plans such as those of Petrograd (St. Petersburg), Edinburgh, or Karlsruhe--the L'Enfant design for Washington brilliantly incorporated natural features, open vistas, and a subtly modulated grid plan intersected by radial avenues, to establish a magnificent framework for integrating monuments, public buildings, and civic sculpture within a matrix of residential streets and parks. The result incorporates some of the finest city planning visions of modern times, together with one of the densest populations of commemorative sculpture, within an architectural context at once intimate and humane, yet also monumentally grand and impressive.

This round-table discussion course will be based (for student projects) on field research into aspects, areas, or buildings of Washington City; it will involve several short writing assignments and a mid-term hour test, in addition to a term project worked out--as above--in consultation with each student.

Selected Readings:
Frederick A. Gutheim, The Federal City: Plans and Realities
James M. Goode, Capital Losses: A Cultural History of Washington's Destroyed Buildings
-----, Best Addresses: A Century of Washington's Distinguished Apartment Houses
Carol M. Highsmith, Union Station: A History of Washington's Grand Terminal
The Mall in Washington, 1791-1991: Studies in the History of Art

CORE: History/Theory of Art