Capital City

Washington, D.C.,formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as"Washington", "the District", or simply "D.C.",is the capital of the United States.

The D.C. is located between the states Virginia and Maryland on the Potomac River. Some of you may feel confused when you look at map, as there are two places share the same name Washington in this country. In fact, the capital city Washington is on the country’s East Coast. And the one lies in the Pacific Northwest region is Washington State, which bordered with Canada to the north. Both of them are named in honor of George Washington, the forefather as well as the first President of the United States.

The D.C. had an estimated population of 700,000. During the workdays, many people commute into the city from the surrounding areas, raising the population to more than one million.

Washington D.C.is the center of the three branches of the US federal government, including the Congress, the President, and the Supreme Court. So the federal government could be regarded as the mainstay of the city’s economy, which account for about 29%of the jobs in the city.

The second largest industry here is tourism. Approximately 23.8 million visitors contributed an estimated $7.8 billion to the local economy in 2018. There are a number of important institutions in this city, such as the White House and the Capitol Hill.

The White House is a grand mansion with 132 rooms at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the middle of Washington, D.C. It is the oldest federal building in the US, where the president of the United States works and lives. Philadelphia architect James Hoban designed the Georgian-style gray sandstone building. George Washington, the first US president, helped lay the building’s first stone in 1792. John Adams,the second president, was the first president to live in the White House.

The United States Capitol has been the seat of the US Senate and House of Representatives since 1800. William Thornton, a man with no formal training inarchitecture won the competition for design of a new United States Capitol inthe early 1790s. George Washington laid the cornerstone for the new Capitol on September 18^th, 1793, and it was completed over a period of decades under the supervision of many architects. The building is situated on Capitol Hill, overlooking the Potomac River.

The Nationalmall is a large open part in downtown D.C., which has hosted many political events, festivals and concerts. It includes more than a dozen units of the National Park System and more than 100 unique monuments and memorials, such as the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument.

The Washington Monument is an obelisk on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate George Washington, the first President of the United States. The monument is both the world's tallest predominately stone structure and the world's tallest obelisk. It’s 169 meters high, which is taller than a 50-storybuilding.

The Lincoln Memorial is a monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865). It is located on the western end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., across from the Washington Monument. The structure was inspired by classical Greek architecture, and it houses a grand,marble statue of Lincoln. On the marble wall is his short Gettysburg Address.He delivered this speech in 1863 during the Civil War. The Lincoln Memorial iswhere 200,000 people in 1963 heard Martin Luther King, Jr., give his famousspeech “I Have a Dream”.

(For more detailsabout the National Mall, you may check out  its public website)

Besides, nearly 200 foreign embassies, many international organizations, and unions are headquartered here, such as the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund(IMF).

      One interesting but controversial fact about D.C. is that the people who live there don’t actually have voting rights in Congress. That is because only states have votes in Congress and obviously the D.C. is not one of them. Some people are pushing for the District to become the 51st state in the United States, but some opponents argues that such a move would destroy the notion of a separate national capital.

Map of National Mall