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Map of Washington, D.C.
A capital laid out with a ruler before it had any houses. In 1791 Pierre Charles L'Enfant drew a grid for Washington and, on top of it, a network of great diagonal avenues meeting at round squares. More than two centuries later the plan is still there, and from above it is a lesson in geometry.
What you see on the map
Two overlapping patterns. The streets in a grid, north to south and east to west, and on top of them the avenues cutting across diagonally, many named after states. Where they meet they leave wedge and triangle blocks, which is what makes the map unmistakable.
The circles. Dupont Circle, Logan Circle and other traffic circles are the knots of the network: on the map, small green rounds with streets running out like spokes.
The National Mall. The great green strip running from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, with the museums lined up along its sides and the Tidal Basin to the south.
The Potomac. The river closes the city to the south-west, with Theodore Roosevelt Island in the middle and the bridges to Virginia.
Which scale and paper suit it
1:30,000 on a 30 cm square, as in the picture, takes in the whole centre, from the Potomac to Capitol Hill. At that scale the city is drawn as blocks, here with their outline, which is what lets the wedges formed by the diagonals read cleanly.
1:10,000 on A3 goes down to detail: the Mall with every building, or a neighbourhood like Georgetown with its houses one by one.
Circle or square. The diagonals run off in every direction, and a balanced format gives them room to breathe.
Make it yours
Open the example and put the centre wherever you like: Georgetown, to the west, has an older, more irregular pattern that contrasts with the rest; Capitol Hill, to the east, is the grid at its most residential.
Change all the colours at once with a theme (black ink, sepia, night, blueprint) and download it as PNG. With a free account, also element by element, at 600 dpi, as vector PDF and as SVG.
