Washington, D.C.
Washington, the capital of the United States, is located in and coterminous (as
of 1878) with the District of Columbia, a federally owned enclave surrounded on
three sides by Maryland and across the Potomac River from Arlington and Fairfax
counties, Va. The city is the center of a metropolitan area that is the eighth
most populous in the country. The population of the city proper is 637,651
(1980), and that of the metropolitan area, 3,060,240. Washington is divided
along a north-south axis by Rock Creek, historically a barrier to east-west
movement. Additions to the city's total land area--at present 179 sq km (69 sq
mi)--have been made by adding landfill along the shores of the Potomac.
Washington has a temperate midlatitude climate with mean temperatures of 3 deg C
(37 deg F) in January and 26 deg C (79 deg F) in July. Summers are hot and
humid, and yearly precipitation totals nearly 1,016 mm (40 in).
Contemporary City
As the seat of the U.S. government, Washington plays a unique role both in
national and international life. As the only major planned city in the country,
it is also one of the eastern seaboard's most impressive. The central
northwestern portion of the city, surrounding the Mall, is the focus of
governmental activity and is defined by the structures housing the various units
of government: the
Capitol, atop Capitol Hill; the
White House, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue;
the
Supreme Court; the
Library of Congress; the State Department; the
Justice Department; the
Federal Bureau of Investigation; and
many more. Interspersed among these buildings are the
Washington Monument (163
m/535 ft; 1884); the
Lincoln (1922) and
Jefferson (1943) memorials on either
side of the Tidal Basin, around which a profusion of Japanese cherry trees
flowers each spring; and the imposing neo-Gothic facade of the
Smithsonian Institution.
The Pentagon complex lies across the Potomac in Virginia adjacent
to Arlington National Cemetery.
History
George Washington personally selected
the site of the nation's permanent capital
in 1791, and the government was officially transferred there in 1800. Located
close to the geographic center of the original 13 colonies, the area allotted
measured 259 sq km (100 sq mi) and encompassed the existing port towns of
Alexandria and Georgetown. The land west of the Potomac was returned to
Virginia in 1846. Pierre Charles L'Enfant's design (1791) for the city,
developed after 1801, was limited to the area south of the present Florida
Avenue. It consisted of a physical framework for the siting of major government
buildings (particularly the White House and Capitol) and a grid street pattern
overlaid by broad radial avenues, with a series of squares and circles reserved
for monuments.
The barely completed capital of the infant republic was captured and burned
(1814) by the British during the War of 1812, but it was soon reconstructed. By
1860 its population was 61,100. Washington's first great period of development
took place following the Civil War. The city's continuing growth, closely tied
to the expansion of governmental functions, accelerated during the 1930s and
particularly after World War II. The district's African American
population, which
averaged a quarter to a third of the city's total between 1870 and 1950, has
since 1970 represented approximately three-quarters of the population, a trend
reflecting the flight of the middle classes away from the urban center. The
result is a capital city whose residential pattern is sharply divided along
class and color lines.
Today, between the historic core Washington and its mid-20th-century suburbs,
lie a somewhat dilapidated 19th-century city east of Rock Creek, occupied mostly
by African Americans, and an early-20th-century city west of Rock Creek (which envelops the
exclusive 18th-century and early-Federal Georgetown section), occupied largely
by affluent whites. African American frustrations following the assassination of Martin
Luther King, Jr., led to major riots in Washington in 1968. The city also
served as the national center for anti-Vietnam War activity during the 1960s and
'70s, as well as for protests and demonstrations of every kind.
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