Though Pierre L’Enfant is most commonly associated with the creation of Washington, D.C., it’s a historical fact that he wasn’t very well liked and was booted off of the project before it was even completed.

Now Christie’s is auctioning off a letter written by George Washington in 1792 to one of the three D.C. commissioners in which the city’s forefather outlines his struggles to find a replacement for the temperamental Frenchman and peppers the commissioner with questions on other candidates. Reads the announcement:

Washington search for a chief architect of the new federal city as he considers re-hiring the temperamental Pierre L’Enfant and discusses a candidate backed by Jefferson, in this lengthy, animated letter to one of the three D.C. Commissioners (David Carroll and Thomas Johnson were the others). Washington wants “a man of fertile genius, & comprehensive ideas…one who shall always reside there…a man of skill & judgment, of industry & integrity” who would have “the business constantly before his eyes,” unlike the part-time Commissioners. “But where, you may ask, is the character to be found who possesses these qualifications? I frankly answer I know not! Major L’Enfant…if he could have been restrained within proper bounds and his temper was less untoward, is the only person with whose turn to matters of this sort I am acquainted, that I think fit for it. There may, notwithstanding, be many others although they are unknown to me, equally so.”

Washington had already fired the high-handed L’Enfant at the end of February when he refused to follow the directions of the Commissioners, and even treated Washington as a subordinate, issuing him peremptory instructions to obtain–and to personally guarantee!–a $1 million loan from the Dutch to fund his grandiose design. Not surprisingly, Washington is eager to consider alternative candidates, including one recommended by Thomas Jefferson. “Mr. [Samuel] Blodget seems to be the person on whom many eyes are turned, & among others who look that way, are some of the Proprietors. He has travelled, I am told, a good deal in Europe…Mr Jefferson has a high opinion of Mr Hallet”–Ètienne Sulpice (Stephen) Hallet–“but whether Mr Hallet has qualities, & is sufficiently known to fit him for a general Superintendency I cannot pretend even to give an opinion upon.” Washington hopes the appointment will act as “an antidote…to the poison which Mr. F____s C___t [Francis Cabot] is spreading, by insinuations, that the accomplishment of the Plan is no more to be expected than the fabric of a vision, & will vanish in like manner.”

The letter will be auctioned off on December 7 in New York, and is expected to fetch between $250,000 and $400,000. Kickstarter, anyone?