THE CAPITAL OF THE UNITED STATES.*

WASHINGTON CITY, the capital of the United States of America, and the seat of the Federal Government since 1800, is situated on the eastern bank of the Potomac River, 106 miles above its mouth, and 105 miles in a straight line west of the Atlantic Ocean, in 38° 53′ 39′′ N. lat., and 77° 2′ 48′′ long. W. of Greenwich. The population of the city in 1875 was 125,000 (estimated).

Washington is almost alone among the capitals of great nations of modern times in the fact of its creation for the sole purpose of a seat of government, apart from any questions of commercial greatness or population. While London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Madrid are respectively the commercial capitals and the most populous cities of the nations they represent, Washington never was, and probably will never be, the leading city of the United States, or the great metropolis of a commercial and a manufacturing population. In trade and manufactures it is overshadowed, no doubt permanently, by the neighboring great commercial capitals of Baltimore and Philadelphia, from which it is distant only 39 and 137 miles respectively, while New York is but 227 miles distant by railway. There are those who maintain that superior advantages result to Washington as a pleasant, salubrious, and perennially attractive residence, from the absence of all manufacturing establishments, so fruitful in smoke and other drawbacks to health and comfort.

The history of the selection of Washington as the seat of government shows that there was a protracted conflict in the Congress of the Republic over the claims of rival localities, and that the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia was finally selected as a compromise. After the cession to the United States by Maryland in 1788, and Virginia in 1789, of a Federal district ten miles square, the site of the city and the location of the public squares and buildings were selected by President Washington in person on the Maryland side of the Potomac, in accordance with the act of Congress of March 30, 1791. At the time of this location, the city was almost

From Johnson's New Universal Cyclopædia, 1877.

precisely in the geographical centre between the northern and the southern limits of the Union. On April 15th, 1791, the corner-stone of the Federal territory was laid by three commissioners appointed by the President, together with the officials of Alexandria, Va.; and in the following year the lines of boundary directed by the President's proclamation were permanently marked by square milestones. The place was called "the Federal City" by Washington, and in the records of the time, until September 9, 1791, when the commissioners directed that the Federal district should be called "the Territory of Columbia," and the Federal city" the City of Washington." Major L'Enfant, a French engineer, prepared the topographical plan of Washington City, under the direction of President Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State. L'Enfant took as a basis for his design the topography of Versailles, the seat of the government of France, and introduced the scheme of broad transverse avenues intersecting the main streets of the city, with constantly recurring squares, circles, and triangular reservations, which form at this day the main features of the plan of the city. Having determined upon the location of the capitol as the initial point, a true meridian line was drawn through it, crossed by another due east and west line, by the accurate measurement of which the acute angles were determined, and the avenues and streets laid down by strict measurement. The ideas of the founders of the city proposed a seat of government of ample territorial proportions, and provided for the future wants of a swarming population, as well as for the embellishment of the fine natural features of the city by the aid of art. The grand scope of the superficial design, contrasted with the poverty of the results achieved in the shape of public improvements for many years, led to the proverbial designation of Washington as the "city of magnificent distances." Thus, the public streets throughout were projected on the scale of 160 feet down to 70, no street in the city being less than the latter width. The aggregate length of the streets and avenues is 264 miles, and they are wider than those of any other city in the world. There are 21 avenues in all, which bear the names of various States in the Union. Pennsylvania Avenue, the principal street of Washington, is a magnificent thoroughfare, 160 feet wide (just double the width of Broadway, New York), running from the Capitol to the Treasury Department, where it is deflected to the north, and continued past the President's house westward to Georgetown, at the width of 130 feet. On the other side of the Capitol it runs 160 feet wide to the Anacostia River. This avenue was originally laid out in three roadways, with a double row of Lombardy poplars, planted at the instance of Mr. Jefferson, between the central or main street and that on each side. These trees were cut down in 1832, and the avenue thrown into one broad thoroughfare, now (1877) paved with smooth concrete, consti

tuting the most splendid and attractive corso or driveway in the country. Massachusetts Avenue is over four and a half miles long, running in an unbroken course 160 feet in width, from the northwest boundary of Washington at Twenty-second Street to the Anacostia, beyond Lincoln Park. The other avenues are named—Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. To these must be added the newly laid out Executive Avenue, which starts from Pennsylvania Avenue at the President's House,' and follows a serpentine course through the Washington Monument grounds, in full view of the Potomac, till it reaches the grounds of the Department of Agriculture, whence it passes through the Smithsonian reservation and the Mall to the Botanic Garden at the foot of the Capitol. Executive Avenue affords a fine drive about two miles in length, and will soon be adorned with shade-trees through its whole extent, as it now is in the grounds of the Smithsonian Institution. The Mall, through which the drive runs, was originally cov. ered with majestic oaks, which were cut down about 1820, under an unwise agreement of the commissioners of Washington with the proprietors, that they should be entitled to all the wood on the lands reserved by the United States. East Capitol Street, running at a uniform breadth of 160 feet from the east front of the Capitol to Lincoln Park, was originally designed to be the chief street of the city, and has recently become one of the most attractive, many fine residences having been located upon it. K Street, 148 feet wide, extending from Rock Creek, the Georgetown boundary, to the Anacostia, is one of the most splendid thoroughfares of the city. Sixteenth Street, 160 feet wide, runs from Lafayette Square, opposite the President's house, due north to the boundary, where it climbs the heights towards Columbian College, presenting a fine view of the city and environs. Boundary Street, running along the northern limit of the city, is also a fine driveway or boulevard.

Every grand transverse avenue was laid out 160 feet wide. The crossings of the streets and avenues created opportunity for frequent parks or reservations as centres of attraction, interspersed with business blocks and dwelling-houses. Besides these fractional reservations, there were set apart more extensive parks or squares, including the following: The Capitol grounds, 52 acres; President's grounds, 20 acres; Lafayette Square, 7 acres; the Park, or Mall (not yet fully opened), about 100 acres; Judiciary Square, 19 acres; the Arsenal grounds, 44 acres; the Navy Yard, 27 acres; Farragut Square, 1 acres; McPherson Square, 1 acres; Franklin Square, 4 acres; Rawlins Square, 1 acres; Lincoln Park, Capitol Hill, 6 acres; Stanton Place, Capitol Hill, 31 acres. Besides these are numerous smaller squares and several circular plots of ground,

the most conspicuous of which are Washington Circle, midway be tween Washington and Georgetown; Fourteenth Street Circle, at the corner of Massachusetts and Vermont Avenues; Scott Circle, at the junction of Massachusetts Avenue and Sixteenth Street; Nineteenth Street Circle, at the intersection of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire Avenues with P Street; and Thirteenth Street Circle, at the junction of Rhode Island and Vermont avenues. Numerous triangular reservations at the intersections of streets and avenues have been enclosed and beautified with trees and shrubs.

Notwithstanding the magnitude and farsightedness of the original plans for the laying out of the Federal capital, more than half a century was suffered to elapse before any portion of the city could be said to have assumed the beauty and attraction due alike to its natural advantages and to the liberality of the schemes for its adornment. The narrowest views of economy prevailed in Congress, and all attempts to expend even the smallest sums of public money upon making the Federal capital attractive, or even of contributing to its salubrity as a residence by draining its numerous marshes, or rendering its muddy streets and avenues accessible by suitable pavements, were steadily defeated. The descriptions which have come down to us of the appearance of Washington in early days concur in representing it as a gigantic failure. Mrs. John Adams, the first occupant of the White House, A.D. 1800, has described, in letters familiar to the public, the rude and uncomfortable condition of the city, when Congress first came to occupy the new capital. For ten years before the public offices were removed from Philadelphia, the area of the future capital embraced scarcely 500 inhabitants. Oliver Wolcott wrote in 1800, “The Capitol is situated on an eminence near the centre of the immense country here called the city. There is one good tavern about forty rods from the Capitol, and several other houses are built and erecting." John Cotton Smith, Congressman, wrote, "The Pennsylvania Avenue was then nearly the whole distance a deep morass, covered with elder bushes." The place was simply a backwoods town in the wilderness, and Senators and Representatives in Congress were for years in the habit of finding such comfort as they could in lodgings in Georgetown, three miles distant, though within the District of Columbia. Yet the nascent capital of the republic was not without its experiences of the soaring ambition of the early owners of land in the vicinity of the capital, that was to arise in such magnitude out of the primitive swamps and forests which had so long occupied the site of Washington. When the bluff overlooking the Potomac was selected as the site for the Capitol, the owners of lots on the plateau facing eastward, where the edifice was to front, immediately put up the prices of their lots to 75 cents or $1 a square foot. The result was that settlers in Washington, avoiding Capitol Hill, purchased land and erected their houses in the

swampy district lying between the Capitol and the Potomac, where lots could be obtained at the low price of from 10 to 25 cents a square foot. Thus it came to pass that the broad plateau of Capitol Hill, the highest, most commanding, and most salubrious portion of Washington, remained unsettled for more than half a century, save by a small straggling population. The shops and residences of the citizens grew steadily in the northwestern direction, following the valley on either side of Pennsylvania Avenue, and extending slowly towards the northern limits of the city, as well as westward towards Georgetown. In 1839, George Combe, the British traveller, wrote. of Washington, "The town looks like a large straggling village reared in a drained swamp." It was not until the year 1851 that any thing was done towards laying out or adorning the numerous public parks and reservations contemplated by L'Enfant sixty years before. In that year A. J. Downing, the landscape gardener, was employed by President Fillmore, pursuant to a small appropriation by Congress; and his plans for roadways planted with a picturesque selection of trees, were partially carried out in the park occupied by the Smithsonian Institution. The death of the artist in 1852, and the neglect of Congress, suspended these needed improvements for twenty years longer. All visitors to Washington before 1871 cannot fail to remember the crude and unkempt condition of the Capitol grounds, and the neglected aspect of the approaches to all the noble public buildings which adorn the capital. The streets and avenues were in a chronic state of neglect, the drifting of dust alternating with the deepest mud, and the thoroughfares of the city being at times almost impassable. At length, in 1871, under. the combined influence of a more liberal spirit in Congress, and the energetic determination of some of the private citizens, a new order of things was inaugurated. Congress having abolished the municipal governments of Washington and Georgetown, and created for the District of Columbia a Territorial government, with a governor, legislature, and board of public works, the latter body became invested with exclusive power over the streets, sewers, and avenues of Washington and Georgetown, with authority to improve the same on a comprehensive plan. Endowed with these great powers, and the ability to raise money by tax and loan, the new government went vigorously into the business of improving the Federal city. An extensive system of sewerage and of street pavements was drawn up, through which the greater portion of the city was reclaimed from neglect and filth, the great ditch known as the Washington Canal was filled up, and about 160 miles of streets and avenues were paved with stone, wood, or concrete. Many streets were completely re-graded, the public squares were all fenced and planted with shade-trees, while in the streets and avenues about 29,000 umbrageous trees have been set out. These comprise elm,