Capital Drawings: Architectural Designs for Washington, D.C., from the Library of Congress

The architectural illustrations by themselves are worth the price of the book. I can't seem to find a count of all the architectural drawings, but there are about 40 pages of color plates and then probably around 200 or so black and white drawings (maybe more, it's a rough guess, there are a lot of drawings). I especially like seeing the other proposals that weren't selected for monuments and government buildings. There are almost 40 pages devoted to just the Capitol, 30 pages on the White House, and 60 pages on DC itself. This book very much is about DC and the metropolitan area around it.If you're a fan of architectural drawings, then I don't think this book would disappoint you.

Washington DC is one of the few major cities in the world that was designed from the start to be a city. Built on ten square miles of land donated to the nation by Maryland and Virginia, the city was conceptually laid out by L'Enfant. The streets were designed to be wide, straight and long instead of the meandering cow paths of the older cities.Along with the general plan, the early presidents, Washington and Jefferson especially) recognized the expressive power of the capital's buildings and monuments. The major Government buildings and monuments: the White House, the Capital building, and the Washington monument have become recognized around the world.This beautiful book consists of drawings from the Library of Congress illustrating these and other buildings in Washington. Some of these are historican and reflect various plans submitted before the final design was chosen. Some are more recent, reflecting the fact that the originals were lost.This book illustrates the impact that the architecture of Washington has had on American architecture around the country.

I purchased this book based upon its title and cover imagery; I was disappointed in that many if not most of the images and drawings contained in the book are NOT located in Washington, DC, as the title would have you believe. It's ok to illustrate other images by the same architect or draftsman, but the book includes tens of dozens if not hundreds of illustration that are located thousands of miles away from Washington, DC, the city. A better title would have been "architectural drawings at the Library of Congress" and leave out the reference to the actual City of Washington, which is not well represented.