It’s a capital carved out of two different states, a town at the center of a government
that doesn’t represent them, and a diverse, multicultural city known for its unusually
high number of geriatric white dudes in power.
What is Washington, DC, if not the land of contradictions?
Even its shape seems contradictory; it is—unlike the natural sprawl of most cities—almost
a perfect square until it disappears into the Potomac river.
But why is DC a perfect square, and where did the rest of it go?
Our story begins the same way the musical Hamilton begins if you snuck in during intermission:
with the Constitution—specifically, the convention that ratified it in 1789.
There were many vexing questions that they needed to answer, with not a lot of time on
their hands—how many votes did states get in national elections?
How did congressmen get elected?
Are women real people or are they just kind of fun, decorative objects that you can put
in your house?
But in between these important matters was the issue of the capital.
After bouncing between Philadelphia, Trenton, Annapolis, and New York City for sessions
of Congress, they wisely deduced that sending every member of congress up and down the east
coast was ultimately going to be at odds with Amtrak’s plan to never offer cheap train
tickets ever in history, so they decided to establish one permanent capital city to meet
in instead.
Article I, Section Eight of the Constitution states that the nation’s capital must be
created as a district that encircles the city, which can’t be bigger than 100 square-miles,
or 259-square-kilometers, and that land must be ceded by one or more states to create it.
Representatives had landed on two potential sites in Pennsylvania, one near Philadelphia,
and one in Lancaster, presumably to capitalize on the untapped Amish labor market for building
all those rotundas.
The problem was, the convention’s southern delegates resented having the nation’s capital
in a state they considered the North—especially because Alexander Hamilton had been haranguing
southern states to pay back their Revolutionary War debts at the convention, even though the
southern states insisted that they were totally good for it and to just chill out, man.
Things weren’t looking good, so Hamilton thought up a good compromise that would appease
everyone in the moment and annoy everyone in the long term.
Known as the Compromise of 1790, the capital would be established in the South in exchange
for Southern states indirectly paying off the war debts of Northern states.
George Washington suggested the unoccupied parts of Maryland and Virginia on the Potomac
river as a good compromise, because neither the North or South really wanted it—and
what better place to put the nation’s capital than a piece of land nobody wants.
At the convention, Virginia and Maryland agreed to donate those lands to the US government
in a perfect diamond shape that looked like this.
DC became established as the required 100 square-mile, or 259-square-kilometer, well,
square, that included the cities of Alexandria and Arlington within its borders.
Roughly 60% of the city would be located in Maryland, and 40% in Virginia.
By 1800, the move was complete and DC kept the same shape for 50 years, until changed
by America’s third favorite pastime, racism.
Trouble started a-brewing on the Virginia side in the 20s, with Alexandria experiencing
quite an economic decline because the city—much like climate change or members of Congress’
children—was neglected by members of Congress.
DC still didn’t have its own set of laws, which meant that Virginia laws governed the
Virginia half, and Maryland laws governed the Maryland half—which, from an urban planning
perspective, and also from a regular perspective, seems bad in one city, let alone the nation’s
capital.
Plus, both states’ laws were frozen in 1801, with zero DC citizens having any political
representation—either in Congress or in a special local government.
And the feds’ ignorance of the consequences of their actions proved to be their downfall:
the district’s five jurisdictions—which included Alexandria City, Arlington County,
Georgetown, Washington City, and Washington County—didn’t agree on how to sort out
this negligence, so they each took different courses of action.
As Lincoln would say 10 years later, “a house divided cannot stand.”
Alexandria City and Arlington County became disillusioned by being a part of DC, because
the federal government had decreed that buildings could only be constructed north of the Potomac—which
effectively shut Alexandria out of having any new construction or industry.
Meanwhile, DC East was thriving.
This meant Alexandria relied on a brilliant economic development tool called enslaving
people, and they were worried the United States might, for some reason, decide that wasn’t
cool anymore—so they wanted to rejoin Virginia to keep slavery legal.
Although it took 10 years, Alexandria voted to petition the state of Virginia to take
back the land it had donated to DC, which is known as “retrogression” and seems…
familiar.
And despite the fact that leaving DC would increase taxes by $20,000 each year, a majority
of residents made the classic American decision that they liked racism more than money, and
voted to leave the district.
Both Virginia and, surprisingly, Congress approved the retrocession in 1846—probably
because they were too busy trying to keep the United States you know, united, and didn’t
care if some whiny racist babies wanted to be reabsorbed into Virginia, as long as they
were still part of the union, which meant that no part of Virginia was part of DC anymore.
Since then, the metro area has expanded exponentially, but DC itself has stayed the same size—this
weird half square, half squiggle—because Maryland won’t donate any more land to the
district, and Virginia hasn’t budged on giving back the land they pledged and then
took back from the city.
And even if the feds wanted to expand DC’s borders, which they don’t, they’d have
to pass it through Congress, which they couldn't even if they wanted thanks to the 109th word
in this video.
And whether you live in the nation’s wonky capital or the lost city of El Dorado, just
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