Visiting the White House in 1842, Charles Dickens had little good to say about the place, describing it as more like “an English club-house.”

When no one answered the door, he walked right in, noticing with disgust the various men spitting tobacco juice on the carpet, and met the 10th President, John Tyler, remembered for having 15 children and little else.

The author was unimpressed with the American president’s humdrum house.

Dickens was popular in America. Readers would line the docks in New York to get the latest installment of novels such as Great Expectations. But the Englishman missed the point.

Parisian-born Pierre Charles L’Enfant certainly left his mark as George Washington’s hand-picked architect of the nascent Federal City’s baroque-style blueprint for the modern DC. He was

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