ABSTRACT
Historians have paid little attention to the quest for the City Beautiful at the opening of the twentieth century. The subject has mainly attracted commentators upon urban and architectural design who have emphasized two themes, the City Beautiful’s devotion to classic-Renaissance taste in the building arts-the Boston and New York Public Libraries are noted examples—and its commitment to monumental city planning. The McMillan Plan for Washington, D.C., issued in 1902, epitomizes the latter. An updated version of the then neglected L’Εnfant layout, the McMillan Plan made possible the Washington so familiar to tourists today—the vast, tree-lined Mall; the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, each terminating grand vistas; and the cluster of classic-style buildings near the U.S. Capitol. The ascendancy of this pattern of taste, observers have repeatedly asserted, derived largely from the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, the famous White City. That spectacle with its great water basin framed by white palaces reminiscent of Ancient Rome and Renaissance Italy dazzled the multitudes, stamped the new style upon the nation, and unveiled the virtues of large-scale civic design. 1
