I was not too surprised when a fellow FLTA from France said to me two weeks ago over dinner at the Union Station in Washington DC that the city was developed by a French person. Then, as she said so, everything had just fallen along the line of positive French stereotypes. They designed the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, they must also be the big brilliant brain behind the planning and beautiful layout of the country’s capital. It was my first time of hearing the story, and though she didn’t have the name of the said designer, I believed it.
Today, I had a different conversation with Papa Rudy who says the city was developed by a black man. Now I’m confused. I told him of my discussion with the French girl, and he insisted that a black man did the city’s design. And somewhere in the conversation, the name Du Pont came up. Now I am familiar with a DuPont Circle in Washington DC, and reading more on it this afternoon showed me that it was named after a man Samuel Francis Du Pont (from the famous Du Pont family who really were originally from France). However, he is neither black, not an architect. He was a rear admiral during the civil war. The wikipedia article on the beautiful Paris-like city does not say much about the “designers” of the city, so I’m giving up.
Or not. I now have my own theory, that the person who conceived the brilliant layout of the city with the Washington Monument obelisk standing almost in its centre, could only have been the son of Oduduwa (the fabled progenitor of the Yoruba people). That’s the only explanation that can suffice to clear the air on the similarity between the Opa Oranmiyan obelisk in Ilé-Ifè and this Washington Monument obelisk. The Opa Oranmiyan was erected at a spot once believed to have been the burial site of Oranmiyan, a grandson of Oduduwa. Archeological evidence has now shown it not to be standing on any burial spot at all, but to be just a visible memorial to the fabled progenitor whose name it bears on it’s body. On the Opa Oranmiyan, as has been since its (undated) erection is an inscription in middle-eastern letters that archeologists have accepted as corresponding in sound to “Oranmiyan”.
It’s not the same in height and size to the Washington Monument, but that’s beside the point. Sue me if you like, but the muse behind that American capital city came from Ilé-Ifè in Yorubaland. Deal with it, will you?
all taken on my first day in Washington District of Colombia. Those familiar with the famous landmarks in the city would recognize the Capitol (which houses both legislative houses of the country, and in front of which each new president takes his oath of office), the Lincoln Memorial (which houses a larger than life marble structure of President Lincoln, and in front of which Reverend Martin Luther King delivered his I Have A Dream speech), the Washington Monument (which was at one time the tallest structure in the whole world before being overtaken by the Eiffel Tower in France and later the St. Louis Gateway Arch among others. Now, it’s just the tallest structure in DC), and the White House which houses the president.
