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The capital of the United States, on the Potomac River between Virginia and Maryland and coextensive with the District of Columbia. It was designed by Pierre L'Enfant and became the capital in 1800. In the War of 1812 the British captured and sacked (1814) Washington, burning most of the public buildings, including the Capitol and the White House. Population: 588,000.
For more information on D.C. Washington, visit Britannica.com.
Most Americans think of Washington, D.C., their national capital, as either a marble-columned theme park for visiting high-school civics classes or a cluster of government palaces housing activities so corrupt that aspirants to federal office regularly seek advantage over their incumbent rivals by accusing them of having spent too much time in Washington. To a degree, Washington is both of these things, yet it is also a real city, home to more Americans than is Wyoming, and (with Baltimore) a nucleus of the nation's fourth-largest metropolitan area. For Washingtonians, the presence of the federal government is both a blessing and a curse, for the city's status as capital provides steady employment and unparalleled cultural institutions but strips its people of basic rights of citizenship taken for granted by the residents of the fifty states.
Founding and Early History
For most of the War of Independence, Congress met in Philadelphia, the largest city in the thirteen colonies. Fearing urban mobs and not trusting the Pennsylvania government to control them, in 1783 Congress decided to create a new capital apart from any state, and in 1787 the framers of the Constitution provided for a capital district of up to 100 square miles in which Congress would "exercise exclusive legislation." For the next three years, Congress considered promising river ports up and down the Atlantic Coast, with northerners favoring a site on the Delaware or Susquehanna while southerners heldout for the Potomac. Finally, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison brokered a deal by which the South would agree to federal assumption of state war debts in return for a southern capital. President George Washington, himself a Potomac man, chose the exact spot for the square, straddling the river and embracing the towns of George town, Maryland, and Alexandria, Virginia.
Rather than seating the federal government in either town, Washington called for a brand-new city to be built on the low land between the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers. To plan it, he turned to the thirty-six-year-old Pierre-Charles L'Enfant, a French artist and veteran of the Continental Army. L'Enfant, deeply influenced by the baroque plan of Versailles, began by emphasizing the site's topography. He reserved the most prominent hills for the Capitol and President's House (later nicknamed the White House), then gave each building a spectacular vista over an open, green Mall. To connect these and lesser nodes he drew a grand design of wide, diagonal avenues, superimposedon a practical American grid. Though L'Enfant was fired after a tiff with a local landowner, his plan provided the basic layout for Washington City (its name chosen by three presidentially appointed commissioners) within the larger territory of Columbia. In December 1800, the government arrived.
Washington and L'Enfant had hoped that the capital would grow into a major commercial city, a point of transshipment between the inland, Potomac trade, and seagoing vessels moored in an Anacostia harbor. But congressional neglect, rivalry among Georgetown, Alexandria, and Washington City, and the difficulty of opening the Potomac to navigation stifled the city's growth. When, in 1814, British troops raided the city, they found little worth torching except the White House and the Capitol. Congress did subscribe funds for the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, designed to make Washington the Atlantic port for the Ohio River valley, but the city had bet on the wrong technology. Baltimore put its money into Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, outpacing the canal and making that city the dominant port of the Chesapeake. L'Enfant's enormous avenues remained unpaved and undeveloped.
Politically, the capital did not fare much better. Congress did grant elected municipal governments to Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria, but to a large degree the District remained a congressional pawn to be pushed back and forth across the board. This was particularly true in the matter of the slave trade. In the 1830s, northern abolitionists flooded Congress with petitions to abolish slavery in the District, and southern congressmen responded by ruling that such petitions would be automatically tabled. Finally, in 1846, Congress returned the portion of the District on the right bank of the Potomac to Virginia. Since this included the city of Alexandria, the District's major slave market, retrocession helped make possible the Compromise of 1850, which banned the slave trade in the remaining portion of the District, now only sixty-seven square miles.
Ten years later, as the Compromise collapsed into secession, Washington turned into an armed camp, surrounded by slave states. Northern troops rushed into the city, both to secure it for the Union and to use it as a base of operations against the Confederate capital of Richmond, only 100 miles away. The Capitol, Patent Office, and other government buildings were pressed into service, first as emergency barracks, then as emergency hospitals as wounded soldiers staggered back from Bull Run and points south. The Army of Northern Virginia threatened the city during its 1862 and 1863 invasions of the North, and in 1864 General Jubal Early actually entered the District before being repulsed at Fort Stevens.
Following the war, triumphant Midwesterners spoke of relocating the capital to the interior of the country, perhaps to St. Louis. Instead, in 1871, Congress decided to remain in Washington and modernize the city, merging the jurisdictions of Washington City, Washington County, and Georgetown, and giving the newly unified District a territorial government—the same form used by aspiring states. In just three years as vice president of the Board of Public Works and later as territorial governor, "Boss" Alexander Shepherd rebuilt the city's public spaces, paving streets, installing sewers, and planting tens of thousands of trees. But he also massively overdrew the city's Treasury account. In 1874 an appalled Congress abolished territorial government, and in 1878 it passed the Organic Act, which provided for government by three presidentially appointed commissioners, one of them an officer in the Army Corps of Engineers. To compensate District residents for their lost franchise, Congress promised to pay half of the District's budget, a promise that gradually eroded in subsequent decades.
Reinventing Washington
With the approach of the capital's centennial in 1900, a group of architects, eager to promote their profession, saw a chance to revive L'Enfant's baroque vision for the Mall, which had been cluttered with winding carriage roads and a dangerously sited train station. At the request of Senator James McMillan, the architects Daniel Burnham and Charles McKim, the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., and the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens proposed a City Beautiful plan of green, open spaces and white neoclassical buildings. The railroad station on the Mall was demolished and its trains rerouted to Burnham's monumental Union Station north of the Capitol. The plan was capped in 1922, with the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial on land reclaimed from the Potomac.
Ironically, Lincoln's temple overlooked a racially segregated city. Woodrow Wilson, the first southern-born president since Andrew Johnson, encouraged racial discrimination within the civil service. Though libraries and public transit were integrated, the city's schools, restaurants, theaters, and hotels remained rigidly segregated. Despite these restrictions, Washington was home to a thriving black community. Howard University, founded during Reconstruction, and some of the nation's top black high schools attracted African American intellectuals from across the country. Blacks built their own theaters, clubs, and hotels along U Street, north of downtown. The author Jean Toomer and the musician Duke Ellington were born and raised in the neighborhood, and the many other artists, scholars, and activists who spent time in the area made Washington second only to Harlem as a center for black culture.
The expansion of the federal government during the New Deal and World War II made Washington a boomtown. In 1942 alone, more than 70,000 new comers arrived to work in temporary buildings on the Mall, in the newly built Pentagon, or wherever they could find space for a typewriter. Thanks to the cold war, the federal government did not contract after victory, but it did disperse. Concerned about atomic attack and traffic congestion, federal planners scattered the new agencies—the Atomic Energy Commission, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the like—to suburban campuses miles from downtown. Private employers, particularly high-tech defense contractors, followed them, as did many families. These were good jobs, and by 1949 the region had the highest mean salary per family of any major metropolitan area.
Though the cold war boom turned metropolitan Washington into the nation's fastest-growing metropolitan area, the District's population, which had peaked in the 1950 census at over 800,000, fell to 764,000 by 1960. For the first time the District housedless than half of the metropolitan region's residents. The bulk of Washingtonians moving to the suburbs were white, while most new comers were black, so in 1957 Washington became the nation's first major city to be majority African American.
Home Rule
With an almost all-white Congress and a southern-dominated House District of Columbia Committee ruling over a mostly black city, the civil rights element of home rule for the District became more pressing than ever. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon each took up the cause. Kennedy appointed the first African American district commissioner, as well as the first White House advisor on national capital affairs, while Congress approved the Twenty-third Amendment, allowing District residents to vote for presidential electors. Johnson, unable to get a home rule bill through Congress, nevertheless replaced the three commissioners with an appointed mayor, deputy mayor, and city council, a training ground for District leaders. Meanwhile, the District gained the right to send a nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives. Finally, with Nixon's support, in 1973 Congress passed a home rule act. In 1974, the city—by now three-fourths black—held its first elections for top municipal office in a century.
The 1970s were rough on the city. Crime rates rose, downtown streets were torn up for subway construction, and the city lost its major-league baseball team. Escaping congressionally imposed height limits in Washington itself, developers took their skyscrapers, and jobs, to Virginia. In contrast, the 1980s were boom years. Metro, the flashy new regional rapid transit system, brought commuters and investors back to the center, and Mayor Marion Barry gained a reputation as a business-friendly leader. There was even talk of granting the city full representation in Congress, either through statehood or a constitutional amendment. But Republicans had no desire to let the majority-black, and overwhelmingly liberal, city send two new Democrats to the Senate. Moreover, the city's image—and its claim to political maturity—suffered when federal agents videotaped Mayor Barry smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room, amplifying criticism that he had bloated the city's bureaucracy with patronage jobs. Combined with unfinished business from home rule, Barry's misadministration left the District essentially bankrupt. In 1995, Congress established an appointed Control Board to oversee the government until the city could balance its own budget.
At the start of the twenty-first century, the city had climbed out of insolvency. Though the year 2000 census count of 572,059 was lower than the 1990 figure, it was significantly higher than projected, suggesting that the population had bottomed out in the early 1990s and was climbing again. With a respectable mayor, a healthier economy, and encouraging demographics, local activists were ready to try again to gain voting representation in Congress and an end to congressional meddling with the city's laws and budget. They even persuaded the city council to replace tourist-friendly slogans on the District license plates with the defiant motto: "Taxation without Representation." But as the newly elected president George W. Bush shrugged off their demands, it seemed unlikely that Washingtonians would become full American citizens anytime soon.
Bibliography
Abbott, Carl. Political Terrain: Washington, D.C., from Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
Bowling, Kenneth R. The Creation of Washington, D.C.: The Idea and Location of the American Capital. Fairfax, Va.: George Mason University Press, 1991.
Cary, Francine, ed. Urban Odyssey: A Multicultural History of Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996.
Gillette, Howard, Jr. Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
Green, Constance McLaughlin. Washington. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962–1963.
Lessoff, Alan. The Nation and its City: Politics, "Corruption," and Progress in Washington, D.C., 1861–1902. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Reps, John William. Washington on View: The Nation's Capital Since 1790. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
United States National Capital Planning Commission. Worthy of the Nation: The History of Planning for the National Capital. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977.
Washington has long been a gateway for African Americans emigrating from the South, and since the 1960s has had a (now diminishing) black majority. Many citizens live in poverty, and social problems have been exacerbated by the transient nature of the governmental workforce and the District's lack of political power.
Transportation facilities include a subway system that connects the city with many suburbs. The main rail and air hubs are Union Station and Ronald Reagan Washington National and Dulles International airports (both in Virginia). Nearby military installations include Fort McNair, Fort Myer, Andrews Air Force Base, and Bolling Air Force Base.
Landmarks
The city spreads out over 69 sq mi (179 sq km), including 8 sq mi (20.7 sq km) of water surface, with tree-shaded thoroughfares and many open vistas. Numerous impressive government buildings near the city's center are built of white or gray stone in the classical style, and there are many fine homes. Among other attractive buildings are the embassies and legations of many foreign countries, many of them lining “Embassy Row” on Massachusetts Ave. The larger of the city's fine parks are West Potomac Park, which extends S from the Lincoln Memorial and includes the Tidal Basin, flanked by the famous Japanese cherry trees; East Potomac Park, an area of reclaimed land jutting S from the Jefferson Memorial; Rock Creek Park, with almost 1,800 acres (728 hectares) of natural woodlands and extensive recreation facilities, and the adjoining National Zoological Park; and Anacostia Park, adjacent to the National Arboretum.
Besides the Capitol and the White House, other important government buildings and places of historic interest include the Senate and House of Representatives office buildings, the Supreme Court Building, the Pentagon (in Virginia), the Federal Bureau of Investigation building, the Library of Congress, the National Archives Building, Constitution Hall, the Ronald Reagan Building, The Watergate apartment complex, the State Department (“Foggy Bottom”), and the headquarters of the World Bank. Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln was shot, has been restored. In 1974 the Admiral's House at the U.S. Naval Observatory became the official residence of the vice president. Of historic interest is Fort Washington (built 1809, destroyed 1814, rebuilt by 1824).
Best known of the city's many statues and monuments are the Washington Monument, at the western end of the long grass-covered National Mall; the Lincoln Memorial, with its reflecting pool; the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial; the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; the Korean War Veterans Memorial; the World War II Memorial; and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, overlooking the Tidal Basin. Among Washington's famous churches are Washington National Cathedral (Episcopal), which was completed in 1990; and the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Roman Catholic church in the United States. The city also contains Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, the home to major-league baseball (the Nationals arrived in 2005) and formerly to football (the Redskins departed in 1997 for nearby Raljon, Md.); the Capitals (hockey) and Wizards (basketball) play in the new MCI Center.
The Arlington Memorial Bridge across the Potomac connects the capital with Arlington National Cemetery. Also in Arlington is the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial, one of the largest statues ever cast in bronze, and the U.S. Air Force Memorial. In the Potomac itself lies Theodore Roosevelt Island, thickly wooded and with many foot trails.
Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Institutions
The city's many institutions of higher education include American Univ., the National Defense College, the Catholic Univ. of America, Georgetown Univ., George Washington Univ., Howard Univ., and the Univ. of the District of Columbia. Among many cultural attractions are the National Gallery of Art, the Freer Gallery of Art, and the other centers under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution; the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts; the Corcoran Gallery of Art; the Phillips Collection; and the Folger Shakespeare Library. Major visitor draws on the Mall include the National Air and Space Museum and the Holocaust Museum.
The U.S. Naval Observatory, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, the Smithsonian Institution, the Brookings Institution, the National Institutes of Health, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington are among the institutions dedicated to scientific research and education. Also in Washington are Walter Reed Army Medical Center, including the Army Medical School and Walter Reed Army Hospital, and the U.S. Soldiers Home (1851). Nearby are the National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, Md.) and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture research center (Beltsville, Md.)
Government
The present system of government (in operation since 1975) provides for an elected mayor and city council but reserves for Congress veto power over the budget and legislation and direct control over an enclave containing most of the federal buildings and monuments.
The Twenty-third Amendment (1961) to the Constitution gave inhabitants the right to vote in presidential elections; the District of Columbia was accorded three electoral votes, the minimum number. In 1970 legislation authorized election of a nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives. There have been several unsuccessful attempts by the District of Columbia to gain statehood and achieve full representation in Congress.
With the city facing insolvency in 1995, Congress created a financial control board with a mandate to supervise municipal finances. Granted virtual authority over the city, the board concentrated on reducing the municipal workforce, paring services and programs, stimulating the economy, retaining a middle-class presence, and transferring prison and other costly operations to the federal government; it continued its oversight until the District had four successive balanced budgets (2001).
History
In 1790 the rivalry of Northern and Southern states for the capital's location ended when Jefferson's followers supported Hamilton's program for federal assumption of state debts in return for an agreement to situate the national capital on the banks of the Potomac River. George Washington selected the exact spot. The “Federal City” was designed by Pierre L'Enfant and laid out by Andrew Ellicott. Construction began on the White House in 1792 and on the Capitol the following year.
John Adams was the first president to occupy the White House. Congress held its first session in Washington in 1800, and Thomas Jefferson was the first president to be inaugurated in the new capital. In the War of 1812 the British sacked (1814) Washington, burning most of the public buildings, including the Capitol and the White House.
The city grew slowly. Even after 1850 it was still “a sea of mud,” and not until the 20th cent. did it cease to be an unkempt rural city and assume its present urban aspect. Though strongly manned during the Civil War, it was several times threatened by the Confederates, notably by Gen. Jubal A. Early in 1864. In 1871, Washington lost its charter as a city and a territorial government was inaugurated to govern the entire District of Columbia. Congress took direct control of the District's government in 1874, providing for a mayor appointed by the President and a commission chosen by Congress; the residents were disfranchised. After 1901, Washington was developed on the basis of the resurrected L'Enfant plan—a gridiron arrangement of streets cut by diagonal avenues radiating from the Capitol and White House, with an elaborate system of parks.
Through the years the city has been a focus for national political activity. In 1932 Bonus Marchers lived in its parks until they were evicted by the army. In the 1960s and early 70s hundreds of thousands demonstrated for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam, and massive rallies have become a recurrent part of Washington life.
Washington's population has declined steadily since the 1950s; much of the outmigration has been to affluent suburbs in Virginia and Maryland. In Apr., 1968, the assassination in Memphis, Tenn., of Martin Luther King, Jr., touched off riots in Washington, and population loss accelerated. The long mayoralties (1980–91, 1995–98) of Marion Barry were fraught with corruption and controversy, which retarded attempts by the city and by federal authorities to resolve economic and social issues. The Washington metropolitan area was shaken in Sept., 2001, by a terrorist attack on the Pentagon and reports that the White House had been among the terrorists' possible targets.
Bibliography
See C. M. Green, Washington: A History of the Capital (1976) and Washington: Capital City, 1879–1950 (1976); S. Smith, Captive Capital (1974): D. Duncan, Washington: The First One Hundred Years, 1889–1989 (1989); J. W. Reps, Washington on View: The Nation's Capital since 1790 (1991).
The capital of the United States. Located in the District of Columbia.
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Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States, situated within the District of Columbia (abbreviated as "D.C."). The city and the district are located on the banks of the Potomac River and bordered by the states of Virginia (to the west) and Maryland (to the north, east and south). The city was planned and developed in the late 18th century to serve as the permanent national capital; the federal district was formed to keep the national capital distinct from the states. The city was named after George Washington, the first President of the United States. Columbia in this context is an early poetic name for the United States, a reference to Christopher Columbus, an early European explorer of the Americas. The city is commonly referred to as Washington, The District, or simply D.C. In the 19th century, it was called the Federal City or Washington City.
The centers of all three branches of the U.S. government are in the District. Also situated in the city are the headquarters for the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization of American States, the Inter-American Development Bank, and other national and international institutions including labor unions and professional associations. Washington is the frequent location of political demonstrations and protests, large and small, particularly on the National Mall. A center of American history and culture, Washington is a popular destination for tourists, the site of numerous national landmarks and monuments, the world's largest museum complex (the Smithsonian Institution), galleries, universities, cathedrals, performing arts centers and institutions, and native music scenes.
The District of Columbia and the city of Washington are governed by a single municipal government and for most practical purposes, are considered to be the same entity. This has not always been the case - until 1871, when Georgetown ceased to be a separate city, there were multiple jurisdictions within the District.[3] Although there is a municipal government and a Mayor, Congress has the supreme authority over the city and district, which results in citizens having less self-governance than residents of the states. The District has a non-voting at-large Congressional representative. In the financial year 2004, federal tax collections were $16.9 billion[4] while federal spending in the District was $37.6 billion.[5]
The population of the District of Columbia is about 581,530 persons.[1] The Washington Metropolitan Area is the eighth largest in the United States with more than five million residents, and the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area has a population exceeding eight million. If Washington, D.C., were a state, it would rank last in area (behind Rhode Island), 50th in population (ahead of Wyoming), first in population density, and 35th in gross state product.
The District of Columbia, founded on July 16, 1790, is a federal district as specified by the United States Constitution. The U.S. Congress has ultimate authority over the District of Columbia, though it has delegated considerable authority to the municipal government. The land forming the original District came from the state of Maryland and Commonwealth of Virginia. However, the area south of the Potomac River (39 square miles or about 100 km²) was returned, or "retroceded," to Virginia in 1847 and now is incorporated into Arlington County and the City of Alexandria. Since 1847, the remaining land that forms the area now known as the District of Columbia is exclusively "sitting" on land that belongs to Maryland (defunct land in the state of Maryland since 1790).
A Southern site for the new country's capital was agreed upon at a dinner between James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, hosted by Thomas Jefferson. The site was part of the deal that led to the new national government's assumption of debts from the Revolutionary War.[6] (The southern states had largely paid off their war debts; collectivizing debt was to northern advantage, so a southern capital was a compromise) The city's plan was largely the work of Peter (Pierre) Charles L'Enfant, a French-born architect, engineer and city planner who first arrived in the American colonies as a military engineer with Major General Lafayette. L'Enfant drew up a basic plan for Washington, D.C. in 1791; the city layout owed much to the Baroque style, which was the dominant style in many North American and European planned cities of the day. The plan incorporated broad avenues and major streets which radiate out from traffic circles, providing vistas towards important landmarks and monuments. While all of the original colonies had avenues named for them, the most prominent states received more prestigious locations under Andrew Ellicott's later plan for the city. Massachusetts Avenue was the northernmost of three principal east-west arteries, Virginia Avenue the southernmost, and Pennsylvania Avenue was given the honor of connecting the White House to the planned Capitol building. In the original plan, all three roads reached neighboring Georgetown.
The initial plan for the "Federal District" was a diamond, measuring 10 miles (16 km) on each side, totaling 100 square miles (256 km²). The actual site on the Potomac River was
chosen by President Washington. Washington may have chosen the site for its natural scenery, believing that the Patowmack Canal would transform the Potomac into a great navigable waterway leading to the Ohio and the
American interior. The city was officially named "Washington" on September 9,
1791.[7] Out of modesty,
George Washington never referred to it as such, preferring to call it "the Federal City."[8] Despite choosing the site and living nearby at
Initially, the District of Columbia included four distinct sections, of which the city of Washington was only one. The others were Alexandria County, Georgetown and the County of Washington. Georgetown occupied its current boundaries. Alexandria County included parts of the present-day City of Alexandria, as well as the current Arlington County, Virginia. Washington City occupied much of its current area but ended at present-day Rock Creek Park on the west and Florida Avenue and Benning Road on the north. Florida Avenue was then called "Boundary Street." The remainder of the district was Washington County.
In 1791–92, Andrew Ellicott and Benjamin Banneker surveyed the border of the District with both Maryland and Virginia, placing boundary stones at every mile point; many of these still stand.
The cornerstone of the White House, the first newly constructed building of the new capital, was laid on October 13, 1792.[9] That was the day after the first celebrations of Columbus Day in the United States.[10]
On August 24, 1814, British forces burned the capital during the most notable raid of the War of 1812 in retaliation for the sacking and burning of York (modern-day Toronto) during the winter months, which had left many Canadians homeless. President James Madison and U.S. forces fled before the British forces arrived and burned public buildings, including the Capitol and the Treasury building. The White House was burned and gutted. The Washington Navy Yard was also burned — by American sailors — to keep ships and stores from falling into the hands of the British. The home of the Commandant of the Marine Corps, located at the Marine Barracks, was one of the few government buildings not burned by the raiding British soldiers out of a sign of respect and is now the oldest public building in continuous use in the nation's capital. The Patent Office was also spared, as a result of the Superintendent of Patents pleading with British soldiers and contending that destroying the store of knowledge therein would be a disservice to mankind. Civilians were not directly targeted and, initially, the British had approached the city hoping to secure a truce. However, they were fired upon, triggering frustration and anger among the British, which ultimately led to the sacking of government buildings.[11]
During the 1830s, the District was home to one of the largest slave trading operations in the country (see Alexandria, Virginia).
In 1846, the population of Alexandria County, who resented the loss of business with the competing port of Georgetown and feared greater impact if slavery were outlawed in the capital, voted in a referendum to ask Congress to retrocede Alexandria back to the Commonwealth of Virginia. Congress agreed to do so on July 9 of that year. The slave trade, though not slavery, in the capital was outlawed as part of the Compromise of 1850.
Washington remained a small city — the 1860 Census put the population at just over 75,000 people — until the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. The significant expansion of the federal government to administer the war and its legacies such as veterans' pensions led to notable growth in the city's population, as did a large influx of freed slaves. By 1870, the District population had grown to nearly 132,000.
In July 1864, Confederate forces under General Jubal Anderson Early made a brief raid into Washington, culminating in the Battle of Fort Stevens. The Confederates were repelled, and Early eventually returned to the Shenandoah Valley. The fort is located near present day Walter Reed Army Medical Center in northwest Washington. This was the only battle where a U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln, was present and under enemy fire while in office.[12]
In the early 1870s, Washington was given a territorial government, but Governor Alexander Robey Shepherd's reputation for extravagance resulted in Congress abolishing his office in favor of direct rule. Congressional governance of the District would continue for a century.
In 1878, Congress passed an Organic Act that made the boundaries of the city of Washington coterminous with those of the District of Columbia. This effectively eliminated Washington County; Georgetown, technically made a part of the city, was allowed to remain nominally separate until 1895 when it was formally combined with Washington.
The Washington Monument, with construction stalled by other priorities, finally opened in 1888. Plans were laid to further develop the monumental aspects of the city, with work contributed by such noted figures as Frederick Law Olmsted and Daniel Burnham. However, development of the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial and other structures on the National Mall, and construction of Potomac Park did not begin until the early 20th century.
The many Depression relief agencies created by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, followed by World War II, brought a great increase to the city's population. Roommates doubled up in scarce apartments and competed for space on buses and trolleys, as reported in David Brinkley's book. The District's population peaked in 1950, when the census for that year recorded a record population of 802,178 people.[13] At the time, the city was the ninth-largest in the country, just ahead of Boston and close behind St. Louis. The population declined in the following decades, mirroring the suburban emigration from many of the nation's older urban centers following World War II and the racial integration of public schools.
The Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on March 29, 1961, allowing residents of Washington, D.C. to vote for president and have their votes count in the Electoral College as long as Washington, D.C. does not have more electoral votes than the least populous state.
After the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., in Memphis, on April 4, 1968, riots broke out in some sections of the city. The violence raged for four days, and buildings were burned. At one point, the rioters came within two blocks of the White House. President Lyndon Johnson ordered over 13,000 federal troops to occupy the city--the largest occupation of an American city since the Civil War. It took years for the city to recover.
One of the most important developments in bringing people back downtown was the building of the subway system. The first 4.6 miles (7.4 km) of the Washington Metro subway system opened on March 27, 1976. Today the system knits together Washington and its suburbs with a network of 86 stations and miles ( km) of track.
In 1973, Congress enacted the District of Columbia Self-Rule and Governmental Reorganization Act, providing for an elected
mayor and council for the District. As a result, Walter Washington became the first
elected mayor of the District in 1975.
During the 1970s, many in the District referred to it as "Chocolate City," in honor of the city's African-American culture and to promote cultural awareness. Popularized by two local disk jockeys, the nickname was also a reference to the 1975 album "Chocolate City" by Parliament-Funkadelic. While the nickname never caught on permanently, it was a poignant reminder of the contributions to the city over the years by such icons as Duke Ellington, Chuck Brown, and other African-American performers.[14]
On September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 a Boeing 757 was hijacked and deliberately crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37AM, just across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia, causing a partial collapse of one side of the building. Al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah told American officials while under interrogation that the White House was the intended target,[15] while Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh have said that the United States Capitol Building was the intended target[16] of the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93.
On September 29, 2004, Major League Baseball officially relocated the Montreal Expos to Washington for the 2005 season, despite opposition from Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos. The new team was christened the Washington Nationals. Controversy between the city council and MLB threatened to scuttle the agreement until December 21, 2004 when a plan for a new stadium in Southeast D.C. was finalized. The Nationals will play at R.F.K. Stadium until the new stadium is ready on the Anacostia River waterfront in 2008.[17]
Additionally, the city has experienced tremendous growth in the areas of Massachusetts Avenue, NoMa (North of Massachusetts), the Southwest Waterfront, the Shaw/U Street Corridor and H Street, with tens of thousands of condos, apartments and retail shops opening. This growth has been dubbed gentrification by many, as the areas experiencing growth had been blighted for many years prior.
Washington, D.C. is located at (the coordinates of the Zero Milestone, on the Ellipse). According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 68.3 square miles (177.0 km²). 61.4 square miles (159.0 km²) of it is land and 6.9 square miles (18.0 km²) of it (10.16%) is water.
Washington is surrounded by the states of Maryland (on its southeast, northeast and northwest sides) and Virginia (on its western side); it interrupts those states' common border, which is the Potomac River's southern shore both upstream and downstream from the District. The Potomac River as it passes Washington is virtually entirely within the District of Columbia border because of colonial riparian rights between Maryland and Virginia.
The District has three major natural flowing streams: the Potomac River, the Anacostia
River and Rock Creek. The Anacostia River and Rock Creek are
tributaries of the Potomac River. There are also three man-made
The highest point in the District of Columbia is 410 feet (125 m) above sea level at Tenleytown. The lowest point is sea level, which occurs along all of the Anacostia shore and all of the Potomac shore except the uppermost portion (the Little Falls - Chain Bridge area). The sea level Tidal Basin rose eleven feet during Hurricane Isabel on September 18, 2003.
The geographic center of the District of Columbia is located near 4th Street NW, L Street NW and New York Avenue NW (not under the Capitol Dome, as is sometimes said).
Geographical features of Washington, D.C. include Theodore Roosevelt Island, Columbia Island, the Three Sisters Islands and Hains Point.
Washington is in the northern periphery of the humid subtropical climate
zone. Its climate is typical of Mid-Atlantic U.S. areas removed from bodies of
water, with four distinct seasons. Summer tends to be hot and humid with daily high temperatures in July and August averaging in
the high 80s to low 90s (in °
The average annual snowfall is 15 inches (381 mm) and the average high temperature in January is 41 °F (5 °C); the average low for January is 27 °F (-3 °C). The highest recorded temperature was 106 °F (41 °C) on July 20, 1930 and August 6, 1918 and the lowest recorded temperature was -15 °F (-26 °C) on February 11, 1899.[20]
| Monthly Normal and Record High and Low Temperatures | ||||||||||||
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
