Information
about Washington DC - District of Columbia:
Pierre L'Enfant, designer of the city, thought of it as the
Capital City. Jefferson referred to it as Federal Town. Washington,
however, considered this undignified, and instead used the name
Federal City. The
initial plot of land authorized by the Constitution for the
seat of the US government was a 100-square mile area. The
first commissioners appointed to acquire the property for
the new capital and construct the first government buildings
made the obvious choice and named the city Washington. At
the same time, they decided to call the entire 100 square-mile
area the District of Columbia. Congress later went along with
this decision through legislative references to the area.
The
city of Washington as designed by L'Enfant did not, of course,
fill the 100 square-mile area authorized by the Constitution
for the seat of government. The area also included the cities
of Georgetown (1751) and Alexandria (1749), which were already
in existence. Congress designated the rest of the 10-mile
by 10-mile portion outside the corporate limits of these three
cities as the County of Alexandria, in the section given by
Virginia, and the County of Washington, in the Maryland-ceded
portion.
In
1846 Congress voted to give back to Virginia all the land
that state had given to the government in 1790 for creation
of the District of Columbia. This move returned about 32 square
miles of territory to Virginia. Residents of Alexandria and
what is now Arlington County, Virginia, thus lost District
of Columbia residency and again became Virginia citizens.
If
all this sounds confusing, think of Congress trying to enact
legislation dealing with the local affairs of this area. Congress
tried to clarify the jurisdictional muddle when it established
a territorial form of government for the capital in 1871.
It revoked the charters of the cities of Washington and Georgetown
and also abolished a levy court for the County of Washington.
All legal municipal functions were given to the District of
Columbia.
Then
Congress changed its mind again and decided that Georgetown
and the County of Washington should be separate entities.
In 1895, Congress legally ended Georgetown's status as a separate
city by merging it with the City of Washington, yet this act
said nothing about the County of Washington. Technically,
this Maryland-ceded portion of the District of Columbia is
still a part of that namesake even though it operates as a
separate identity. The slip-up, moreover, has never been corrected.
So,
today, a resident of the District of Columbia may be living
either in the old County of Washington or in the merged section
made up of L'Enfant's City of Washington and of Georgetown.
Washington, D.C., however, is a city in name only - a mapmaker's
designation and the established pseudonym for the District
of Columbia.
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