Washington, D.C

History

In the early years of the Republic, Congress met in more than half a dozen cities before arrangements were made for a permanent capital. The nation's lawmakers eventually proposed the construction of an entirely new city, to be built expressly for the purpose of serving as capital of the fledgling country. The choice of a location necessitated compromises between the different regions of the new country. The Potomac River was settled on as the general region, and George Washington was appointed to select the exact site, to be no larger than 26 square kilometers (ten square miles) in area.

French military engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant was hired to design the city, and in 1791 he laid out the capital's pattern of broad avenues radiating outward from central circles and squares graced by monuments and fountains. Unfortunately, L'Enfant proved difficult to work with; the Frenchman was fired after one year, and his plans were completed by surveyor Andrew Ellicott, with the aid of Benjamin Banneker, an African-American mathematician and astronomer. By 1800 one wing of the Capitol building had been completed. Abandoning the previous capital site in Philadelphia, the Congress moved into its new quarters, and President John Adams moved into the Executive Mansion.

The city was incorporated in 1802, and a local government—whose structure and operations were to change many times over the years—was formed. However, it took many years until the muddy swampland on the shores of the Potomac conformed to the dreams of the city's founders. The city received a major setback soon after its founding when many of its buildings—including the Capitol building and the executive mansion—were burned down by the British in the War of 1812. Citizens were determined to rebuild, however, and the charred walls of the executive residence were painted white, giving the building its present name, the White House.

Development of the region remained slow in the first half of the nineteenth century, and foreign diplomats and other visitors regularly chided the Americans for the provincial nature of their capital city. During the Civil War (1861–65), the capital became an important supply center for the Union army, as well as a medical base and a refuge for former slaves. Wartime traffic doubled the city's population, from 60,000 to 120,000. At the war's end, Washington was also the scene of one of our great national tragedies, as President Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865; president 1860–65) was assassinated while attending a performance at Ford's Theatre in April 1865.

Washington underwent significant improvement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, thanks largely to the efforts of two men. Alexander "Boss" Shepherd, an influential

political figure during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885; president 1868–77), and governor of the District of Columbia from 1873, was the driving force behind major infrastructure improvements, including street paving and lighting, sewer construction, and the creation of city parks. In the early 1900s, Michigan Senator James McMillan was instrumental in establishing a commission charged with completing the great monuments and public spaces envisioned a century earlier by the city's original planners. The McMillan Commission (which included noted landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted [1822–1903] and architect Charles McKim [1847–1909], among others—was responsible for numerous improvements. The city's park system was expanded; the Lincoln Memorial and other buildings were designed; the Mall was improved; and Union Station was designed and built. In 1910 President William Howard Taft (1857–1930; president 1909–13) appointed a Commission of Fine Arts to design the monuments and fountains called for in the initial plans drawn up by L'Enfant. The construction of public buildings in the capital received a further boost from the creation of the Works Progress Administration during the 1930s.

World War II (1939–45) brought further expansion to the capital, and as the postwar decades unfolded, Washington, now a major urban center, began to experience some of the same problems as its counterparts—crime, budget problems, and flight to the surrounding suburbs. The capital also became a focal point for major public controversies. Thousands marched on Washington to protest racial inequality in 1963 when the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–68) delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial; race riots erupted after the assassination of King in 1968; and the city became the scene of massive public demonstrations against the Vietnam War (1954–1975).

Washington's local government has been attended by scandal and controversy with the mayoral terms of Marion Barry, Jr., who was returned to office in 1994 after serving time in prison for drug possession. The city's financial woes, which have brought it to the brink of bankruptcy, have resulted in federal control of its finances since 1995. However, in spite of its problems, Washington remains a vital and much-visited city. It added the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Korean War Veterans Memorial to its roster of major public commemorative sites in the 1990s.