Canal Road (Washington, D.C.)
  
Standard markers for highways in the District of Columbia.
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| Interstates: | Interstate X (I-X) |
| US Highways: | U.S. Route X (US X) |
| State: | District of Columbia Route X (DC X) |
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The streets and highways of Washington, D.C., form the core of the city's surface transportation infrastructure. As a planned city, streets in the capital of the United States follow a distinctive layout and addressing scheme. There are 1,500 miles (2,400 km) of public roads in the city, of which 1,392 miles (2,240 km) are owned and maintained by the District government.
The District of Columbia was created to serve as the permanent national capital in 1790. Within the District, a new capital city was founded in 1791 to the east of a preexisting settlement at Georgetown. The original street layout in the new City of Washington was designed by Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant (see L'Enfant Plan).
As a planned city, Washington was modeled in the Baroque style and incorporated avenues radiating out from rectangles, providing room for open space and landscaping. At L'Enfant's request, Thomas Jefferson provided plans of cities such as Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, Karlsruhe and Milan, which he had brought back from Europe in 1788. His design also envisioned a garden-lined "grand avenue" approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) in length and 400 feet (120 m) wide in the area that is now the National Mall. The City of Washington was bounded to the north by Boundary Street (now Florida Avenue) at the base of the escarpment of the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line, to the southeast by the Anacostia River, to the southwest by the Potomac River and to the west by Rock Creek.
In March 1792, President Washington dismissed L'Enfant due to his insistence on micromanaging the city's planning, which had resulted in conflicts with the three commissioners appointed by Washington to supervise the capital's construction. Andrew Ellicott, who had worked with L'Enfant surveying the city, was then commissioned to complete the plans. Though Ellicott made revisions to the original plans, including changes to some street patterns, L'Enfant is still credited with the overall design of the city.
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