DC Layout

At times we have trouble looking for a building we need, because there are no numbers on houses. Not normally. Why is that? Our interpreters-facilitators Michael Melitonov and Vadim Erent – both came to the US in their preteens – are very helpful and have answeres to all our questions. I asked them if absence of Arabic numbers is an aftermath, or rather a slippery slope, of 9/11 events. For the first time, they looked puzzled and said they did not know.

Congress established the District of Columbia in 1792 on the land ceded by the states of Virginia and Maryland. The city was designed by a French-American architect Pierre-Charles L'Enfent.
New York is unimaginatively planned in such a way that you cannot possibly get lost. All streets and avenues are perpendicular. (I hope to write about it later.) DC was originally planned to copy NY. Streets running from East (from the Capitol) to West have letters, and those running from North to South have numbers. Our Topaz Hotel is roughly at the intersection of street N and street 17. However, "perfection leaves no room for development" (O.Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest), and on an afterthought, architects of DC introduced diagonal streets to make the orientation even faster and more efficient. That was the big killer. Diagonal streets ruin the otherwise perfectly planned city. A short cut to your hotel may turn out to be a long cut to a place which you had no intention to visit.