Streets and highways of Washington, D.C.
This article needs additional citations for verification. (April 2008) |
Highway names | |
---|---|
Interstates | Interstate X (I-X) |
US Highways | U.S. Route X (US X) |
State | District of Columbia Route X (DC X) |
System links | |
The streets and highways of Washington, D.C., form the core of the surface transportation infrastructure in Washington, D.C., the federal capital of the United States. Given that it is a planned city, the city's streets follow a distinctive layout and addressing scheme. There are 1,500 miles (2,400 km) of public roads in the city, of which 1,392 miles (2,240 km) are owned and maintained by city government.[1]
City layout
The District of Columbia was created to serve as the permanent national capital in 1790. Within the district, a new capital city was founded in 1791 to the east of an existing settlement at Georgetown. The original street layout in the new City of Washington was designed by Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant.[3][4]
As a
President Washington dismissed L'Enfant in March 1792 due to L'Enfant's insistence on micromanaging the city's planning, which had resulted in conflicts with the three commissioners appointed by Washington to supervise the capital's construction. Andrew Ellicott, who had worked with L'Enfant surveying the city, was then commissioned to complete the plans. Though Ellicott made revisions to the original plans, including changes to some street patterns, L'Enfant is still credited with the overall design of the city.[10][11][12]
The district is divided into four
Most portions of the north–south axis and the eastern portion of the east–west axis are marked by streets with the common name of Capitol Street: North Capitol Street, South Capitol Street, and East Capitol Street. Since an axis runs down the middle of those streets, the addresses on each side are necessarily in different quadrants. The western portion of the east–west axis runs down the Mall. Two avenues, Constitution Avenue and Independence Avenue, line each side of the Mall.[13]
Many of the diagonal streets and avenues in Washington are named after states. Some of these streets are particularly noteworthy, such as Pennsylvania Avenue, which connects the White House with the U.S. Capitol and Massachusetts Avenue, a section of which is informally known as Embassy Row from the number of foreign embassies located along the street.
There is no J Street in any quadrant. The reason for this is that, until the mid-19th century, the letters "I" and "J" were indistinguishable when written.
Expansion of the street-name system
During most of the 19th century, each municipality within the federal district maintained its own separate government and street system. With the passage of the
Through much of the 19th century, developers of land outside of the center city tended to build streets wherever they liked. An 1887 report of the commissioners of the District of Columbia, the three-member panel that governed the district, said that many of these streets "go nowhere and connect with nothing." The Commissioners said that "If the configuration and architecture of a city has a moral influence upon its residents, the rectification of the irreclaimable obliquity of the... streets is manifestly desirable for more than physical reasons."[19]
In 1888, Congress passed a law requiring that future subdivisions built outside of the City of Washington and Georgetown must have streets that conform to the general plan of the City of Washington. However, the law allowed existing streets to remain, contrary to the wishes of the commissioners of the District of Columbia.[20]
In 1893, Congress passed a law mandating that existing streets must be changed or moved in order to be in conformity with the district's street plan.[21] Some property owners were upset that their private property would need to be seized without compensation in order to move streets in conformance with the street plan.[20] The Supreme Court agreed, striking down the law as unconstitutional.[20] In 1893, Congress mandated a new system of highways within the district that conformed to the City of Washington's street plan but left existing streets in place.[22] A separate act of Congress in 1895 required that the street names in Georgetown be changed to conform to the street naming system used in the City of Washington.[23] However, the old street names were shown on maps as late as 1899.
The commissioners of the District of Columbia mandated a new system of naming streets in 1901.[24] Streets running north and south would continue to be numbered.[24] North of Florida Avenue, streets running east and west would be named after famous Americans.[24] The streets would be given one-syllable names in alphabetical order. Alphabetical names after the letter W would-be two-syllable name starting with A (e.g., Allison St) ending with W (e.g., Whittier St), and then three-syllable names. Selected names are common across the quadrants. Only in the Northwest Quadrant was a "fourth alphabet" necessary. This fourth alphabet uses botanical names without regard to the number of syllables: Aspen, Butternut, Cedar, etc. Verbena Street NW is the last in this series before the Maryland state line.[24] South of the center city, a similar system would be used with streets named after famous Americans or prominent geographical locations.[24] In 1905, the streets east of Rock Creek Park, north of Florida Avenue, and west of North Capitol Street were renamed in conformity with the single street-naming system.[25] Eventually all street names in the District of Columbia were made to conform to a single street-naming system.
The boundaries of the District of Columbia with the State of Maryland are marked by Western Avenue, Eastern Avenue, and Southern Avenue.
Address system
The city's
Another example is the White House, located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW: it is located at 16th Street NW (Lafayette Square) and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. This works both ways; an address at 514 19th St NW would be on 19th St west of the Capitol, and since E is the fifth letter of the alphabet, the 514 address would be between E and F Streets NW. Because J is omitted from the scheme, it is not counted in numbering. Thus, the 900 block is in between I and K Streets, and the 1000 block is in between K and L Streets (even though K is the 11th letter of the alphabet).
For the first block of a street as counted from the relevant axis (that is, with house numbers from 1 to 99), the city posts the word "unit" on a plaque below the street name sign and labels the first block the unit block. This practice differs from most American cities, which post a plaque bearing a zero or a one followed by an arrow. Subsequent blocks are marked in the conventional fashion as "100", "200", and so forth.
Address numbers also correspond with a particular side of the street, with odd numbers on the right as one faces in the direction of increasing numbers. This works out by quadrant as shown below:
Quadrant | East–west streets | North–south streets |
---|---|---|
Northwest | Odd numbers on north side | Odd numbers on east side |
Southwest | Odd numbers on north side | Odd numbers on west side |
Southeast | Odd numbers on south side | Odd numbers on west side |
Northeast | Odd numbers on south side | Odd numbers on east side |
Major roads
Interstate highways
A convergence indexing based road traffic monitoring system was installed on Washington's highways in 2008.[citation needed]
Other expressways and parkways
The
City streets
Among the major roads in the city are
While city streets generally do not have route numbers, U.S. Routes
are routed predominantly or entirely over city surface streets.See also
- History of Washington, D.C.
- List of circles in Washington, D.C.
- List of state-named roadways in Washington, D.C.
- Architecture of Washington, D.C.
Notes and references
- ^ "Public Road Length". Highway Statistics 2006. Federal Highway Administration. Archived from the original on November 22, 2012. Retrieved November 14, 2011.
- LCCN 88694201. Retrieved March 5, 2017. Facsimile of the 1791 L'Enfant plan in Repository of the Library of CongressGeography and Map Division, Washington, D.C.
- ^ ISBN 1-58093-091-3.
- ISBN 978-0-9727611-0-9). The United States Code states in 40 U.S.C. § 3309: "(a) In General.—The purposes of this chapter shall be carried out in the District of Columbia as nearly as may be practicable in harmony with the plan of Peter Charles L'Enfant." The National Park Service identifies L'Enfant as "Major Peter Charles L'Enfant Archived April 5, 2014, at the Wayback Machine" and as "Major Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant Archived February 28, 2010, at the Wayback Machineon its website.
- The Constitutional Sources Project (ConSource). Retrieved July 16, 2010.[permanent dead link]
- S2CID 116818764.
- El País (España). Retrieved February 14, 2022.
- ^ "Map 1: The L'Enfant Plan for Washington". National Park Service. Archived from the original on January 21, 2009. Retrieved October 10, 2009.
- ^ "The L'Enfant and McMillan Plans". National Park Service. Archived from the original on August 27, 2011. Retrieved May 27, 2008.
- .
- ^ The L'Enfant and McMillan Plans Archived October 28, 2010, at the Wayback Machine in "Washington, D.C., A National Register of Historic Places Travel Inventory" Archived October 10, 2009, at the Wayback Machine in official website of the U.S. National Park Service Archived June 26, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ The U.S. National Archives holds a copy of "Ellicott's engraved Plan superimposed on the Plan of L'Enfant showing the changes made in the engraved Plan under the direction of President Washington". See "Scope & Contents" page of "Archival Description" for National Archives holding of "Miscellaneous Oversize Prints, Drawings and Posters of Projects Associated with the Commission of Fine Arts, compiled 1893 - 1950", ARC Identifier 518229/Local Identifier 66-M; Series from Record Group 66: Records of the Commission of Fine Arts, 1893 - 1981. Record of holding obtained through search in Archival Descriptions Search of ARC - Archival Research Catalog Archived May 1, 2017, at the Wayback Machine using search term L'Enfant Plan Ellicott, August 22, 2008.
- ^ a b "Layout of Washington DC". United States Senate. September 30, 2005. Archived from the original on September 16, 2011. Retrieved July 14, 2008.
- ^ Hagner, Alexander B. (1904). "Street Nomenclature of Washington City". Records of the Columbia Historical Society: 240.
- ^ a b "Latin alphabet | Definition, Description, History, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved October 1, 2022.
- ^ "No Way, No Jay: Old historical legends holds that architect Pierre L'Enfant omitted 'J' Street from his plans for Washington, D.C., because he disliked John Jay". Snopes: Fact Check. Snopes.com. Retrieved December 30, 2017.
- ^ Google. "Location of A Street NE east of the U.S. Supreme Court building" (Map). Google Maps. Google.
- ^ Dodd, Walter Fairleigh (1909). The government of the District of Columbia. Washington, D.C.: John Byrne & Co. p. 4.
- ^ Proctor, John Clogett, ed. (1930). Washington Past and Present. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc. p. 158.
- ^ a b c Proctor, John Clogett, ed. (1930). Washington Past and Present. New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc. p. 159.
- ^ Laws relating to the permanent system of highways outside of the cities of Washington and Georgetown. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. 1908. pp. 3–4. Archived from the original on January 14, 2016.
- ^ Laws relating to the permanent system of highways outside of the cities of Washington and Georgetown. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. 1908. p. 3. Archived from the original on January 14, 2016.
- ^ "CHAP. 79.-An Act Changing the name of Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, and for other purposes" (PDF). United States Statutes at Large from August 1893 to March 1895. p. 679. Archived (PDF) from the original on November 16, 2011. Retrieved July 10, 2011.
- ^ ProQuest 144270485.
- ProQuest 144591749.
- ^ Tom (March 8, 2012). "What Is The History of the Capital Beltway?". Ghosts of DC. Retrieved February 17, 2019.
Further reading
- Ovason, David (2002). The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital: The Masons and the building of Washington, D.C. New York: Perennial. ISBN 978-0060195373.
- History of D.C. Street Names - Ghosts of DC blog
- What is the History of the Capital Beltway - Ghosts of DC blog