Washington, D.C.

D

Libraries

The Library of Congress is the national library of the United States and includes a record of every book printed in the United States. Among its priceless documents are the first draft of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and an early draft of the Declaration of Independence as composed by Thomas Jefferson and corrected by John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. The library’s music collection contains original manuscripts, ranging from a Ludwig van Beethoven sonata to the score of the musical Oklahoma!, as well as a large collection of instruments. The affiliated Folger Shakespeare Library contains 79 first folios (early printings) of Shakespeare’s plays. Other distinguished libraries in Washington include the Founders Library at Howard University, with 50,000 volumes relating to black history and culture.

E

The Performing Arts

Washington provides many outlets for the performing arts. The National Theatre, opened in 1835, hosts new theatrical productions. The Arena Stage, founded in 1950, opened a new facility in the early 1970s as part of redevelopment of the city’s southwest area and has achieved worldwide recognition for its productions. Also starting in the early 1970s, the Elizabethan Theatre of the Folger Library began offering Shakespearean productions. Twenty years later the Shakespeare Theatre opened to enthusiastic audiences in the restored Lansburgh Department Store on Seventh Street downtown.

One really big boost for the city’s arts came in 1971 with the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The center includes the Opera House, the Concert Hall, and the Eisenhower Theater, and also provides a home for the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Ballet, and the American Film Institute’s National Film Theater. The opening of the center stimulated the creation of a number of smaller theaters serving diverse interests. In the suburbs, the Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts in Virginia and Merriweather Post Pavilion in Maryland have become major performance centers.

F

Cultural Events

Washington hosts many annual events, including the National Cherry Blossom Festival, which celebrates the blossoming of the Japanese cherry trees in the Tidal Basin. The Hispanic Festival has taken place each summer in Washington since 1970. The Mall hosts an annual Fourth of July fireworks display and the National Folk Festival. The city also celebrates the Chinese New Year, Columbus Day, and Saint Patrick’s Day with parades.

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V

Recreation

The Washington region has many well-known parks and recreational areas. The Mall is Washington’s most prominent park, and it hosts many special demonstrations and events. Nearby East and West Potomac parks, formed from reclaimed land along the Potomac River, provide space for a range of recreational activities, including rugby, softball, volleyball, and polo. The Ellipse, between the White House and the Washington Monument, is a large public park that contains the Zero Milestone, from which distances are measured on all national highways that pass through Washington. Within the city, Rock Creek Park, which stretches from downtown to the Maryland border, is home to the National Zoological Park. The National Arboretum is in northeast Washington. Also, the intersection of Washington’s broad diagonal avenues with other streets laid out on a straight grid provides a number of small parks.

Professional sports are important in Washington. For many years Griffith Stadium in LeDroit Park hosted two baseball teams, the national Negro League’s Homestead Grays and the American League’s Washington Senators. Integration of the major leagues doomed the Grays, and poor fan support resulted in a franchise move for the Senators. Another team that left the city was the Washington Redskins professional football team, which moved to Prince George’s County, Maryland, in 1997. As that team moved from city to suburb, however, the region’s professional hockey team, the Washington Capitals, and basketball team, the Washington Wizards, returned downtown after spending nearly a generation in the Maryland suburbs. The Capitals and the Wizards play in a new sports and entertainment complex, the MCI Center, which opened in December 1997. The Center has helped to revitalize the downtown area. The D.C. United soccer team, based in Washington since 1996, plays in the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium. In 2005 major league baseball returned to the city when the ailing Montréal Expos franchise became the Washington Nationals. The Nationals initially made RFK Stadium their home, but the team began playing in Nationals Park in 2008.

VI

Economy

A

Major Economic Activities

From the time of its origin, Washington was expected to emerge as a great trading city because of its site along the Potomac River. However, the city lagged behind other major port cities, such as Baltimore, along the eastern seaboard. Instead of trade, the driving force of the city’s economy has proved to be the federal government.

At first employing no more than several hundred workers, the federal bureaucracy grew steadily in the 19th century and exploded in the 20th century. By 1940, 44 percent of civilian workers in the city of Washington were federal employees. Although the private economy grew faster than the public sector after World War II, it still remained closely tied to the federal presence through the proliferation of national associations, lobbyists, subcontractors, lawyers, and accountants associated with government work. America’s increasingly global role created scores of jobs in such organizations as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organization of American States, in addition to the U.S. government’s own departments of state and defense. These federal jobs stimulated the economy and boosted the value of real estate in Washington, especially in the 1980s.

Tourism is the second most important aspect of the city’s economy. The national monuments and museums attract more than 18 million visitors each year; hotels are numerous. The city hosts many conventions, and a major convention center opened in 1983. The functions of federal and local government and the tourism industry have created a large service economy, which employs more than one-third of all the city’s workers. Manufacturing is of only minor importance and is dominated by the printing, publishing, and food industries.

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