Masonic symbols in the buildings of Washington: documented facts and myths
The Capitol cornerstone, the obelisk, the House of the Temple: what is truly Masonic in the architecture of Washington and what is merely myth.
Few cities have been the subject of as many esoteric theories as Washington. It has been said that its streets draw pentagrams, squares and compasses, that the obelisk conceals a solar cult, that the capital of the United States is a great talisman designed by a secret society. Separating facts from legends reveals a more sober but still interesting story, in which Freemasonry played a well-documented public and ceremonial role.
The cornerstone of the Capitol
On 18 September 1793 George Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol in a Masonic ceremony. He wore a lodge apron and used ritual tools such as the silver trowel, while the brethren poured corn, wine and oil on the stone, according to a ceremonial custom typical of foundations. Washington had been initiated in 1752 in the lodge of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and several founders of the republic belonged to lodges.
At that time, moreover, the Masonic laying of foundation stones was a common practice for public buildings in Britain and America, including bridges, churches and courthouses. It did not indicate a secret plan, but the prestige of a fraternity that looked back to the builders of cathedrals and celebrated architecture as a moral art, a symbol of man's work upon himself. Contemporary accounts describe the ceremony openly, as a public event.
L'Enfant's plan and the supposed pentagrams
The plan of the city was drawn in 1791 by the French engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant, who combined an orthogonal grid with great diagonal avenues converging on the Capitol and the presidential residence. His models were European Baroque gardens and cities, such as Versailles. The geometric figures some people see on the map, such as five-pointed stars or squares, are obtained by arbitrarily choosing certain intersections and ignoring others.
There is no document by L'Enfant or by the commissioners that speaks of Masonic symbols in the layout. Moreover, L'Enfant is not known with certainty to have been a Freemason, and his plan was partly modified by Andrew Ellicott, who replaced him after his dismissal in 1792. Theories about the occult design of the city arose largely in the twentieth century, often starting from modern maps rather than from the original drawings.
Obelisks, temples and pyramids
The cornerstone of the Washington Monument was laid on 4 July 1848, also with a Masonic rite. The form of the obelisk took up an Egyptian model much loved in Neoclassicism, used all over Europe for commemorative monuments. More explicitly Masonic is the House of the Temple, headquarters of the Scottish Rite, designed by John Russell Pope and completed in 1915 on the model of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. In Alexandria, not far away, the George Washington Masonic National Memorial was dedicated in 1932.
The pyramid with the eye, which has appeared on the reverse of the Great Seal since 1782 and on the one-dollar bill since 1935, is often called Masonic, but its designers did not use it as a ritual symbol in that sense. The Eye of Providence was a Christian image that had long been widespread in European art.
Washington thus shows a real Masonic presence, made up of public ceremonies, of lodges frequented by politicians and of buildings openly dedicated to the brotherhood. The rest belongs to a modern mythology, fed by novels, documentaries and popular books, that says a great deal about the contemporary imagination and little about the history of the city. Looking carefully at its monuments also means learning to distinguish the declared symbol from the attributed one.