What was the District like when George Washington was president?
Peter Charles L’Enfant and Washington designed the city in March 1791. It was a 6,000-acre track that extended along the Potomac River, north along Rock Creek, toward present-day Florida Avenue, over to the Anacostia River, and back to the Potomac. The mudflats of the Potomac extended all the way to what are now the grounds of the White House. Georgetown, to the west of what is now the university’s campus, was at the time the largest tobacco exporter in the state of Maryland. The area had long been seen as a great place for development. There’s a story that the District, then known as the Federal City, was a swamp. This is nonsense. At the time, people used the term “swamp” to mean uncultivated land. But there was salt water, brackish and cattail marshes along the Potomac River and low lands to the north of GW’s current campus, just beyond K Street. The name Washington, D.C., was given to the city in September 1791. The city’s commissioners named the city after Washington within the fi
