Washington, D.C.

Bound by the clause in the Constitution that grants Congress “exclusive jurisdiction” over the federal district, Washington, D.C., throughout its history has been intimately related to trends in national politics. As both capital and city, Washington has served as the object of the hopes as well as the fears associated with urban development. Its subordination to federal power has made it repeatedly the workshop of national urban policy.

The location of the federal city on the Potomac River owed much to George Washington's quiet support for an area that he believed was ideally positioned to exploit the rich resources of the western frontier, thus helping to make the city a “seat of empire.” Seeking to protect its distinct economic interests, the South sought advantage in a readily accessible capital, and the Potomac location was considered a victory for that section of the country. Carved out of the states of Virginia and Maryland, the [Page 866]new 10-mile-square district maintained the institution of slavery and assumed in its early years the mores as well as the appearance of southern culture. Its cosmopolitan aspirations to empire gained physical representation in the grand plan laid out for the city by the French engineer Pierre Charles L'Enfant. In reality, however, the city's early years failed to live up to its founder's aspirations, as Congress refused to invest in the public improvements necessary to make the city modern and efficient. Although Congress finally authorized funds to make Washington competitive with other port cities, seeking to extend its economic reach through internal improvements, by the time the Potomac and Ohio Canal opened, it was too late. Baltimore had already succeeded in tapping western markets through a rail line that proved more efficient than the canal.

As happened so frequently thereafter, Washington continued to lag behind other cities until some crisis generated the growth of the federal presence sufficiently to stimulate the city's growth as a whole. The Civil War served that function as civil and military functions expanded and masses of escaped and captured freedmen swelled the city's population. Even before Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was issued, Congress used its power over the district to end slavery. With peace, Republicans granted black men the franchise and instituted changes to assure equal treatment under the law, making Washington an early model for radical Reconstruction. Adoption of a new form of territorial government brought new investments for the city's physical development, as well as further social reforms. The experiment fell victim, however, to a backlash against Reconstruction; self-government was eliminated in favor of a presidentially appointed commission. Presaging the emergence of commission government in the Progressive Era, the three-member governing body initially drew praise from critics who found America's larger cities burdened by ward-based machine politics.

Such centralized federal control proved propitious in facilitating the city's effort to achieve a monumental physical presence equal to its growing status as a world power following the Spanish-American War. Inspired by the way the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago had demonstrated the powerful effect of grouping monumental civic buildings, a committee of the U.S. Senate appointed a commission of prominent architects associated with the World's Fair to detail a new plan for the city. Its report, released in 1901, represented the nation's first comprehensive plan, envisioning the grouping of impressive civic structures around the Mall first laid out in L'Enfant's plan, and a network of parks and parkways tying the city to its regional hinterland. Although it took a quarter century to achieve the vision, the new monumental core established the city's identity as the capital even as it set the federal presence further apart from local residents.

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