History of Washington D.C.

Washington D.C. was actually not the original state that the Capital was in. It was actually split up between two other states. They were located in New York City and Philadelphia. The Capital bumped into a few issues having it be this way so they later decided to move to D.C. They have been there to this day and that location has grown. They moved to Washington D.C. around 1800.

There was an Act that was signed in 1789 to make the area of D.C. the Capital city. This was the Residence Act and it made a set location along the Potomac River for the Capital to be put. Now that it was made official, it was then time to start designing the layout. They needed to hire many people to make this plan possible and that included appointing somebody to design the city. This man was Pierre L’Enfant. He had a very important job to do. In fact, the Capital City was designed inspired by two other cultures. Can you guess what cultures by these pictures?

 

That Capital building and many other buildings in D.C. were designed inspired by the Greek and Roman cultures. When I learned this, I went and looked back at pictures of the buildings and the structures make so much more sense. I think that having different cultures incorporated into the design is very interesting. To me the pillars at the front of the buildings remind me of the Roman structures. The round part at the top of the Capital building I could see it being inspired from the Greek culture as well. The roads and paths were also originally laid out in a grid like pattern and it was very structured with some main buildings for each part of government.

But going back to the original designer of the city, he didn’t last very long. George Washington basically fired him and replaced him with a man named Andrew Ellicott because he ran into some issues with the plans of the Capital with Pierre. But as you can tell to this day the Greek and Roman cultures stayed incorporated into the design layout.

They also had to hire people to oversee the whole construction of the Capital. Congress hired three men to do this job. Those men were Thomas Johnson, David Stuart, and Daniel Carroll. So you can probably imagine how many other people they had to hire to accomplish all the other jobs that had to be done.

Ever wonder why the state is called D.C.? Maybe you thought it was to distinguish the difference between the two Washington states we have in the country. Believe it or not I thought that same thing…. Up until now of course. I always knew that it had to stand for something I just didn’t know what. Well the D stands for District or Federal District. The C stands for Columbia. I got really excited to finally know the definition behind those two letters. When the Capital was officially put into Washington D.C. it was placed under jurisdiction of Congress. This was done by the District of Columbia Organic act in 1801.

Here’s a fun fact. John Adams was the first president to live in the President’s House. In fact while he was president a terrible thing happened in the city. The British invaded. This led to them burning lots of buildings and causing terror in the area. The Capitol Building and the President’s House were some of the structures that were burned. Luckily, they didn’t burn completely because they were made of brick. That was a great decision on the designer’s part. But, the building of course didn’t look that great since the British tried to burn it down. To save money they painted the President’s House white. That is how that building got its name the White House.

Since then there has been many memorials built in the city and people love to go visit all of the remarkable buildings. I have yet to go there but I hope that someday I can. This lesson has now been one of my favorite history lessons because I got to learn the background of our Capital. I knew very little about the city and now I can say I know a lot more about it.