When the Roman Emperor Augustus made up his mind to transform a city of brick into a city of marble, he employed Greek architects whose predecessors had designed the temples that still stood, like cool dreams in marble, on the hills of Attica and Sicily. When Francis I of France wanted palaces designed, he summoned Leonardo da Vinci. George Washington, after the fever of a war, set out to build a capital in a wilderness. He employed a Frenchman,* Pierre Charles L'Enfant, to blue-pencil the streets and domes that lobbyists and starlings...
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