Washington D.C. was especially built as America's capital city because, at the time it was built, it was roughly centered between the northern and the southern states. Land was taken from both Maryland and Virginia for the new national capital. The D.C. is an abbreviation for District of Columbia. This district was created so that the capital city is not in any state, and is also not a state unto itself. Washington has a mayor while the District of Columbia does not have a governor, since it is not a state, but is run by a council.
The selection of the site for Washington D.C is very reminiscent of King David selecting Jerusalem as his capital because of it's central location and lack of connection to any one tribe. Ottawa follows the same principal as being between French- and English-speaking regions. In a similar way, Canberra was specially built as the capital of Australia as a compromise halfway between the two major cities of Sydney and Melbourne, neither of which was about to agree to the other being the capital.
The original designer of the city was Charles L'Enfant, a Frenchman, and it is easy to see how the layout of the city resembles that of Paris. The Mall being equivalent to the Champs Elysees, the Washington Monument to the obelisk in Place Concorde and the diagonal streets linking squares in the city.
George Washington replaced Charles L'Enfant with Andrew Ellicott, as the main planner of the city. He was the brother of Joseph Ellicott, who designed cities such as Buffalo and Batavia and whose name is all over western New York State, but who unfortunately suffered from mental illness.
The street pattern of Washington is divided into four quadrants by compass direction. The center is the Capitol Building. East-west streets are named with letters. North-south streets are named with numbers. Then there are diagonal avenues superimposed on the grid pattern that are often named for states. The two best-known of these avenues is Pennsylvania Avenue, which runs from the White House to the Capitol, and Massachusetts Avenue, where "Embassy Row" is located.
We saw the dome of the Capitol Building, America's legislature, and the White House on the travel photos blog of North America. These represent two of the three branches of the U.S. Government. The executive branch is the president, who lives in the White House. The legislative branch is the Congress, which meets in the Capitol Building. The third branch is judicial, the top of which is the Supreme Court.
The Congress is bicameral, meaning that it has an upper and a lower house. The upper house is the Senate, each of the fifty U.S. states has two senators, one from each of the two main parties. The number of seats that a state has in the lower house, the House of Representatives, depends on it's population.
This is the dome of the Capitol Building. The statue is of former president James Garfield.
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Here is the White House. This side of the White House, facing south toward the Washington Monument, is actually the back. There is room for a helicopter to land. The front of the White House, with the columns and the triangular pediment, faces north.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5492/3756/1600/dc_250978.jpg
The first of the following scenes is looking along the National Mall, with the Second World War Memorial in one direction and the obelisk of the Washington Monument in the opposite direction. The Washington Monument was the tallest structure in the world until the Eiffel Tower, which was built by the same designer that gave the U.S. the Statue of Liberty.
Two prominent presidents have memorials made of white stone with columns. The Thomas Jefferson Memorial is circular, with a dome, and at water's edge. The Abraham Lincoln Memorial is similar, but is rectangular and is at the end of the Reflecting Pool along the National Mall.
There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >, After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.
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The following scenes begin inside the White House. The adjacent Eisenhower Executive Building, just west of the White House, holds a lot of government offices. The Treasury Building is on the east side of the White House. Remember that the north-facing side of the White House with the triangular pediment supported by four columns is actually the front.
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This is the Lincoln Memorial, at the end of the National Mall and Reflecting Pool with the Washington Monument in the opposite direction. This is where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his "I Have A Dream" speech in 1963.
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The Smithsonian is an organization which operates a number of museums. The best-known of the Smithsonian network is the Air and Space Museum.
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The eastern end of the National Mall is the Capitol Building. Just east of that, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Library of Congress, America's national library, are across the street from each other. The first of the following scenes begins there. The first building that you see is the Library of Congress. The white building across the street is the Supreme Court. in the Capitol Building south of the dome is where the lower house, the House of Representatives meets, north of the dome is where the Senate meets. Did you know that the dome of the Capitol looks like it's made of stone, but it isn't?
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Democracy doesn't always work smoothly. But the ideal is that no one is special or above the law. What America's Watergate Scandal showed is that the leader of the country, the president, has to obey the laws just like everybody else. The same law is to be written down for everyone.
The modern complex of buildings in the following scenes, with the curved facades, is the Watergate Complex. This is where a burglary took place in June 1972 in an effort to get information on the Democrat National Committee, which had it's headquarters in the complex. The root of it was the obsession with Cuba. Several of the burglars, sent by the Republicans, had ties to the anti-Castro movement among Cubans and were apparently looking for evidence that the Democrats were receiving funds from, or had ties to, Cuban Communists.
The building had doors that were latched so that they opened from the inside but not the outside. Someone put tape over the latches so that they could reenter the building at night from the outside. A security guard removed the tape but then later noticed that someone had replaced it, and called police.
Five burglars were caught and the ensuing effort to cover it up brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon. What was so absurd about it was that Nixon won the 1972 election, getting reelected to his second term, in an absolute landslide. Any such sneaky effort to find out information about their opponents was completely unnecessary. Journalists exposed it and it made the journalism profession very highly respected.
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This is America's National Cathedral. It looks like one of the Gothic cathedrals of Europe although, of course, it isn't as old. The denomination of the cathedral is Episcopal. This is an American denomination formed after America separated from Britain.
The Anglican Church was formed, as one of the four main branches of the Reformation, as an attempt at compromising between Calvinistic Puritanical Protestants and Catholics. It kept some of the form and liturgy of the Catholic Church. But it didn't please everybody, some Protestants wanted nothing to do with anything that even resembled Catholicism. Many of these were the Pilgrims and Puritans who left to form their own society in Massachusetts.
The Anglican Church was widespread in the American colonies. But when America became independent, it's Anglican Church was cut off from outside, and it was renamed the Episcopal Church. But the Episcopal Church has since rejoined the global Anglican network, known as the Anglican Communion. In a similar way, there are the "Southern Baptists" because the Baptists split at the time of the U.S. Civil War, and have never gotten back together.
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Massachusetts Avenue NW is the famed "Embassy Row". Remember how the grid of the city has east-west streets named with letters and north-south streets named with numbers, and the diagonal avenues usually named for U.S. states. The following scenes begin outside the Embassies of India and Turkey. Embassies used to really decorate themselves in the way of the host country. But now the tendency seems to keep a lower profile.
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South of the Potomac River is Arlington National Cemetery and the Pentagon. This is America's national cemetery and the headquarters of it's military. The first of the following scenes is from the highway between the cemetery and the Pentagon.
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Washington D.C. isn't all about the U.S. Government. It is also a city where ordinary people live. Following is an everyday neighborhood of Washington.
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