Washington, D.C. Tourist Attractions

The city is the central element in a conurbation with a population of 3.75 million which also includes five counties in Maryland and five in Virginia, in which the hundreds of thousands of federal employees live. Almost 70% of the inhabitants of Washington are Afro-Americans, who live mainly in the south-western, south-eastern and north-eastern quadrants of the city, while the north-western quadrant is mainly occupied by whites. Behind the sumptuous façade of Washington, within a short distance of the Capitol, is another world of poverty and unemployment.The city was founded and built for one purpose alone, to provide an independent place for the work of government. The site selected, 100 miles/160km above the outflow of the Potomac into Chesapeake Bay, has a climate which does not make work particularly agreeable in summer, when it is so hot and sultry that most of the staff take off their jackets except when they are working in their air-conditioned offices. Accordingly the best times for a visit to Washington are spring and autumn.Washington DC strikes visitors as an atypical American city, for there are no skyscrapers, which indeed are prohibited by law. The townscape of Washington is one of Classical-style buildings, some of them of giant size, laid out along the avenues of enormous width which have earned Washington the name of the "city of magnificent distances". Most of the 20 million people who visit Washington annually are Americans anxious to see the incarnation of American democracy in stone and the sites which are so familiar to them from schooldays and television. Foreign visitors may be surprised to discover how freely accessible - though strictly controlled - even such sensitive areas of government as the Capitol are. They will also find an abundance of museums, some of which are among the most important of their kind in the world.Washington DC is the seat of Congress (the Senate and the House of Representatives) and of the President of the United States. Over 350,000 people - from drivers to the White House Chief of Staff - are employed by the Administration, and tens of thousands more work in various national and international organizations (the World Bank, the Organization of American States, the International Monetary Fund) based in Washington, as lobbyists or in various services dependent on government.Washington has little industry, but there are in the city, in addition to five universities, various research institutes and laboratories concerned with electronics, space travel and armament projects, so that Washington's population has the highest percentage of qualified researchers of any American city. The city's second most important source of revenue - after the work of government - is tourism.Culture is represented in Washington by theatres like the National Theatre and orchestras like the National Symphony Orchestra, housed in the extensive John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. More important, and perhaps of more interest to visitors, are the city's numerous museums, headed by the National Gallery and the Smithsonian Institution. Washington also has the National Archives and the Library of Congress, the largest library in the world. Nor should the culinary world be forgotten: the city's eating-places range from the hamburger stand by way of a variety of foreign cuisines to gourmet French restaurants.HistoryAfter breaking away from Britain in 1776 the young United States had at first no capital and in consequence Congress met in eight different places. In 1789 New York became the capital, but a year later gave place to Philadelphia. Congress then passed the Residence Act, which provided for the establishment of a 10-mile square Federal District responsible only to Congress, and authorized President George Washington to select a site for the new capital. Washington chose an area on the Potomac River near his country house of Mount Vernon and commissioned Major Pierre-Charles L'Enfant (1754-1825), an officer of French origin who had been dismissed for insubordination, to prepare a plan.L'Enfant's plan provided for two commanding buildings as "poles" of the layout, the Congress House (Capitol) and the Presidential Palace (White House), to be linked by a wide avenue. By 1800 the Presidential Palace and the Capitol were so far advanced that Congress was able to meet and President John Adams to take up residence in the new buildings in August. Washington suffered a severe setback, however, in 1814, during the British-American war, when British troops took the city and burned down the Capitol and the White House. For many years the new capital was to remain a wish rather than a reality, and Virginia was able to take back the land which it had made over on the right bank of the Potomac.It was only after the Civil War and the influx of tens of thousands of former slaves that fresh stimulus was given to the development of the capital, mainly due to the energy of Alexander "Boss" Shepherd, and L'Enfant's plans were brought out again. The Washington Memorial, which had been begun in 1848, was completed in 1884, and the much derided city, less than half finished, gradually became the imposing capital of the United States. The appointment in 1901 of the MacMillan Commission on the development of Washington, an Act of 1915 which laid down limits on the height of buildings, the Public Building Act of 1926 (which provided for the construction of magnificent new government buildings), the influx of government officials during the two world wars, the restoration of Pennsylvania Avenue during the Presidency of John F. Kennedy and the opening of the Metrorail system in 1976 were further milestones in the development of the city. Since 1961 citizens of Washington have been able to take part in the election of the President.Sights: Layout of the cityThe townscape of Washington today largely reflects L'Enfant's ideas. The Capitol and the White House are set in a network of streets intersecting at right angles, across which cut thirteen diagonal avenues named after the thirteen founding states. From the Capitol four streets radiate to the points of the compass, dividing the city into four quadrants - Northwest (NW), Northeast (NE), South-west (SW) and Southeast (SE). The north-south streets are numbered, the east-west streets named after the letters of the alphabet. A special position is occupied by the wide Mall running between Capitol Hill and the Lincoln Memorial, which was designed to open up the layout of the capital.The principal tourist sights lie almost exclusively in the north-western quadrant, along the Mall and in the immediately surrounding area, and can be seen on foot. The three other quadrants are of little interest and are areas not without danger, certainly not to be visited after dark.