Georgetown, Washington, D.C.

The familiar golden dome of Washington's once venerable Riggs Bank, now amalgamated into PNC Bank, at the northeast corner of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street NW.

Georgetown in red

Georgetown is a neighborhood located in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C., along the Potomac River waterfront. Founded in 1751, the city of Georgetown substantially predated the establishment of the city of Washington and the District of Columbia. By 1776, Georgetown was one of the largest cities in Maryland, and retained its separate municipal status until 1871, when it was annexed by the City of Washington. Today, the primary commercial corridors of Georgetown are M Street and Wisconsin Avenue, which contain high-end shops, bars, and restaurants. Georgetown is home to the main campus of Georgetown University, as well as the embassies of France, Mongolia, Sweden, Thailand, and Ukraine.

History

The Old Stone House, the oldest original building in Washington, D.C.

Georgetown around 1862. Overview of the C&O Canal, Aqueduct Bridge at right, and unfinished Capitol dome in the distant background.

First settled by Europeans in 1696, Georgetown was incorporated as a town and first regularly settled in 1751, when the area was part of the British colony of the Province of Maryland (initially in Frederick County and later in Montgomery County), later one of the 13 colonies. Situated on the fall line, Georgetown was the farthest point upstream to which oceangoing boats could navigate the Potomac River. It grew into a thriving port and became a key point for transferring goods, particularly tobacco, from boats on the Potomac to boats on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.

Origin of the name

Georgetown was founded in 1751 in Frederick County, Maryland (in a section later to become Montgomery County) by George Beall and George Gordon as the Town of George. Given the curious coincidence of the both of the founders' first names and that of the English king at the time, historians dispute the source of the name of the town: One theory suggests that it was designated to honor King George II, while another argues that it was named for its founders.^[1]

Early history

George Washington frequented Suter's Tavern in Georgetown, and worked out many land deals from there to acquire land for the Federal City. In the 1790s, City Tavern, the Union Tavern, and the Columbian Inn opened and were popular throughout the 19th century. Of these taverns, only the City Tavern remains today, as a private social club located near the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street.

The home of Francis Scott Key was in Georgetown. Dr. William Beanes, a relative of Key, captured the rear guard of the British Army while it was burning Washington during the War of 1812. When the mass of the army retreated, they retrieved their imprisoned guard and took Dr. Beanes as a captive to their fleet near Baltimore. Key went to the fleet to request the release of Beanes, was held until the bombardment of Fort McHenry was completed, and gained the inspiration for "The Star-Spangled Banner".

P Street NW, in Georgetown, features conduit streetcar tracks installed in the 1890s.

Merger with Washington

After the American Revolution, Georgetown became an independent municipal government of the federal District of Columbia, along with the City of Washington, the City of Alexandria, and the newly created County of Washington and County of Alexandria (now Arlington County, Virginia). It was officially known as "Georgetown, D.C."

In 1862, the Washington and Georgetown Railroad Company began a horsecar line running along M Street in Georgetown and Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, further integrating the two cities.

Georgetown was not formally annexed by the City of Washington until 1871, and remained nominally separate until 1895. The streets in Georgetown were then renamed to conform to the street names in use in Washington.

Later history

Many African Americans moved to Georgetown following the Civil War, establishing a thriving community, but an 1890 flood and expansion of the railroads brought destitution to the C&O Canal, and Georgetown became a depressed slum. As a result, many older homes were preserved relatively unchanged. Alexander Graham Bell's earliest switching office for the Bell System was located on a site just below the C&O Canal, and it remains in use as a phone facility to this day.

The waterfront area retained its industrial character in the first half of the 20th century. Georgetown was home to a lumber yard, a cement works, the Washington Flour mill, and a meat rendering plant, and its skyline was dominated by the smokestacks of a garbage incinerator and the twin stacks of the power generating plant for the D.C. Transit streetcar system, located at the foot of Wisconsin Avenue. In 1949, the city constructed the Whitehurst Freeway, an elevated highway above K Street, to allow motorists entering the District over the Key Bridge to bypass Georgetown entirely on their way downtown.

Gentrification

Shops along M Street.

As the only existing town at the time, Georgetown was the fashion and cultural center of the newly-formed District of Columbia. As Washington grew, however, the center of social Washington moved east across Rock Creek to the new Victorian homes that sprang up around the city's traffic circles, and to the Gilded Age mansions along Massachusetts Avenue. While many "old families" stayed on in Georgetown, the neighborhood's population became poorer and more racially diverse by the early 20th century. Its demographics started to shift again when gentrification began during the 1930s, as a number of members of the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved into the area. By the 1950s, a wave of new post-war residents arrived. Many of these new residents were well-educated, from elite backgrounds and they took a keen interest in the neighborhood's historic nature. At about the same time, the Citizens Association of Georgetown was formed.

The area reached the height of fashionablity when Georgetown resident John F. Kennedy was elected president. Kennedy lived in Georgetown in the 1950s as both a Congressman and a Senator. Parties hosted by his wife, Jackie, and many other Georgetown hostesses drew political elites away from downtown clubs and hotels or the upper 16th Street corridor. Kennedy went to his presidential inauguration from his townhouse at 3307 N Street in January 1961. During the late 1960s and 1970s, the neighborhood was a popular venue for hippies and street people. During the 1980s and the 1990s, Georgetown once again acquired a reputation as a center of wealth and style in the capital.

Present day

Christmas decorations

Many leading figures in politics, media, and commerce reside in this upper-bracket community. Current inhabitants include Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, past Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee, Washington Post Watergate reporter and current assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos, and Montana Senator Max Baucus, among others. High-end developments and gentrification have revitalized Georgetown's formerly blighted industrial waterfront. The District's old refuse incinerator and smokestack, preserved for years as an abandoned but historic landmark, was redeveloped in 2003 to become the most pronounced feature of a new Ritz-Carlton Hotel. The Whitehurst Freeway has been proposed for demolition.

Geography

C&O Canal in Georgetown

M Street on a snowy Winter night

Georgetown is bounded by the Potomac River on the south, Rock Creek to the east, Burleith and Glover Park to the north, with Georgetown University on the west end of the neighborhood. The neighborhood is situated on bluffs overlooking the Potomac River. As a result, there are some rather steep grades on streets running north-south. The famous "Exorcist Steps" connecting M Street to Prospect Street were necessitated by the hilly terrain of the neighborhood.

The primary commercial corridors of Georgetown are M Street and Wisconsin Avenue, whose high fashion stores draw large numbers of tourists as well as local shoppers year-round. There are also several high-end developments on K Street, on the waterfront, featuring outdoor bars and restaurants popular for viewing boat races. Between M and K Streets runs the historic Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, today plied only by tour boats; adjacent trails are popular with joggers or strollers.

Historic landmarks

Georgetown is home to many historic landmarks including:

The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, begun in 1829.
The Forrest-Marbury House, where George Washington met with local landowners to acquire the District of Columbia.
Dumbarton Oaks, where the United Nations was outlined in 1944.
The Old Stone House, built in 1765, located on M Street is the oldest original structure in Washington, D.C.
Mount Zion Cemetery, which offered free burials for Washington's earlier African-American population.
Tudor Place and Dumbarton Court
The Oak Hill Cemetery, a gift of William Wilson Corcoran whose Gothic chapel and gates were designed by James Renwick, is the resting place of Abraham Lincoln's son Willie and other figures.
The City Tavern Club, built in 1796, is the oldest commercial structure in Washington, D.C.

Transportation

Francis Scott Key Bridge across the Potomac River, connecting Georgetown to Rosslyn, Virginia

Georgetown's transportation importance was defined by its location at the eastern end of the Aqueduct Bridge (and later, the Francis Scott Key Bridge), at the juncture of the Alexandria Canal and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, just below the fall line of the Potomac River. The C&O Canal, begun in Georgetown in 1829, reached Cumberland, Maryland in 1851, and operated until 1924. Wisconsin Avenue is on the alignment of the tobacco hogshead rolling road from rural Maryland. The city's oldest bridge, the sandstone bridge which carries Wisconsin Avenue, N.W. over the C&O Canal, and which dates to 1831, was reopened to traffic on May 16, 2007, after a $3.5 million restoration. It is the only remaining bridge of five constructed in Georgetown by the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Company. Several streetcar line and interurban railways interchanged passengers in Georgetown. The station was located in front of the stone wall on Canal Road adjacent to the "Exorcist steps", and the former D.C. Transit car barn at the end of the Key Bridge. Four suburban Virginia lines, connecting through Rosslyn, Virginia, provided links from the D.C. streetcar network to Mount Vernon, Falls Church, Vienna, Leesburg, Purcellville, Fairfax, and Great Falls. Streetcar operations in Washington, D.C. ended January 28, 1962. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad built a branch line from Silver Spring, Maryland to Water Street in Georgetown in an abortive attempt to construct a southern connection to Alexandria, Virginia. It served as an industrial line to a power plant on K Street (now razed) until at least 1982. The abandoned right-of-way has since been converted into the Capital Crescent Trail, a rails-to-trails route.

It has long been speculated in Washington that the well-to-do and influential residents of Georgetown scuttled the placement of a planned Metrorail stop in their neighborhood. However, as described in The Great Society Subway by Zachary M. Schrag, the planners of the Metro never seriously considered locating a station in Georgetown. According to Schrag, this decision was due to several factors, a primary one being the engineering issues presented by the extremely steep grade from the Potomac River (under which the subway tunnel would run) to the center of Georgetown. Indeed, when the subway was being planned, Georgetown had not yet developed into the popular commercial district is has now become. It is true that some Georgetown residents wrote letters against a Georgetown station, but no serious plans for a station were ever drafted in the first place.

Since then, there have been discussions about adding an additional subway line and tunnel under the Potomac to service the area, though no plans are currently being discussed. Three stations are located roughly one mile from the center of Georgetown: Rosslyn (across the Key Bridge in Arlington), Foggy Bottom-GWU, and Dupont Circle. Georgetown is served by the 30-series, D-Series, and G2 Metrobuses, as well as the DC Circulator.

Education

Georgetown University

Georgetown Visitation

Colleges and universities

Georgetown University's main campus is located in Georgetown.

Primary and secondary education

Public schools

District of Columbia Public Schools operates area public schools.

The neighborhood is zoned to:

Hyde Elementary School (located in Georgetown)
Hardy Middle School
Wilson High School

Private schools

Throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries the concentration of wealth in Georgetown sparked the growth of many private college preparatory schools in and around the neighborhood including; Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, National Cathedral School, St. Albans School, and several others. Georgetown Preparatory School, while founded in Georgetown, moved in 1915 to its present location several miles north of Georgetown in unincorporated Montgomery County, Maryland.

Popular culture

Exorcist Steps

Several movies have been filmed in Georgetown. The most notable of these may be the 1973 horror film The Exorcist, which was set in, and partially filmed, there. In the movie's climactic scene, the protagonist is hurled down the 75-step staircase at 36th Street, N.W., connecting Prospect Street with M Street below. The staircase, perhaps predictably, has come to be known as the "Exorcist Steps".

The 1985 Brat Pack film St. Elmo's Fire was set in Georgetown, though the campus fraternity row portions were filmed at the University of Maryland campus in College Park. (Like most Jesuit colleges, Georgetown University does not recognize fraternities or sororities, though several exist.) The 1987 film No Way Out featured a Georgetown Metro stop as a plot device, even though no such station exists; the subway station shots were filmed in Baltimore, Maryland. Chase scenes for the film were shot on the Whitehurst Freeway. Other films with memorable scenes in Georgetown are Chances Are, The Recruit, The Girl Next Door, The Man with One Red Shoe, Dave, and Election. The West Wing shot a scene in which the president's daughter was kidnapped in a night club on K Street, NW, beneath the Whitehurst Freeway.

References

^ http://www.rootsweb.com/~dcgenweb/earlyday.html

Other references

Historical Overview of Georgetown, from the Georgetown Partnership.
Griffith, Gary. "Whitehurst Freeway Coming Down?" at WestEndGuide.us
King, Leroy O. 100 Years of Capital Traction - The Story of Streetcars in the Nations Capital, Taylor Publishing Company, Dallas, Texas, Third printing, 1989, ISBN 09600938-1-8.
Slovick, Matt. "D.C. Movies: The Exorcist," The Washington Post.
Georgetown's Hidden History, from the Washington Post, by Andrew Stephen, July 16, 2006
Georgetown's early history
Weiss, Eric M., "Public Works - Oldest Bridge Reopens", Washington Post, Thursday, May 17, 2007, page B-5.