I probably won't be able to get another war update done this weekend, so this week will be the start of a new side segment I've been wanting to do.
Here's a 19th century map of DC to help orient things. I'll have a map up of TTL's downtown DC in a few days.
Spotlight on the City #1: Washington, DC
In the more than two centuries since the founding of the nation's capital, the city of Washington has undergone many changes, growing from two port cities surrounded by swampland to a bustling metropolitan hub. The greatest period of Washington's growth was in the latter half of the 19th century. As the United States expanded, so did the needs of the central government. The city of Washington grew from only fifty thousand people in 1850 to over three hundred thousand by the turn of the 20th century. It was also throughout this time that the city and the District of Columbia as a whole went through massive changes.
The biggest change that resulted from the large growth in population was the expansion of Washington beyond the original plan set out by Pierre Charles L'Enfant at the founding of Washington. By 1880, the city had expanded north of Boundary Street, the original northern boundary of the city. In 1881, the new neighborhoods north of the street centered along 14th Street and Georgia Avenue[1] were annexed into Washington and Boundary Street was renamed. The straight section of Boundary Street east of 9th Street NW was changed to Florida Avenue following the city's naming conventions, while the more irregular section between 9th Street and its western terminus at Massachusetts Avenue was renamed Old Boundary Road[2]. However, this was not the first time the city of Washington had been expanded. That was six years prior in 1875, when Congress voted to revoke the city status and municipal government of Georgetown[3]. That year the streets running east-west through Georgetown were renamed to conform with the letter naming of Washington streets. The streets running north-south were not renamed until 1883, with High Street and the road going north from it to the boundary of the District of Columbia becoming Marquette Avenue[4].
The population expansion in the District of Columbia was not limited to the city of Washington itself. After the National War, the counties of Arlington and Alexandria on the southern bank of the Potomac once again became part of the District of Columbia. The city of Alexandria continued to expand as well, and after the National War the city had grown slightly outside the previous borders of the District. As such, when it was reintegrated into DC, the whole city border was kept, resulting in the slight irregularity in the square shape of the District. Outside of Alexandria, in Custis County[5], the cities of Rosslyn and Fort Runyon became the principal cities of the county. Rosslyn expanded slowly at first in the 1800s, but grew faster after the replacement of the Potomac Aqueduct Bridge with the John Mason Bridge that connected Marquette Avenue on the Georgetown riverfront with Mason's Island and Rosslyn. Fort Runyon, meanwhile, was founded after the National War after the eponymous fort ceased to be of significant military importance. Fort Runyon grew fast and soon rivaled Rosslyn, as its position where the Columbia Turnpike meets the Long Bridge[6] was a good site for traffic entering and exiting Washington.
Downtown Washington also underwent an extensive renovation during the post-National War era. It was particularly during the 1890s and the Roosevelt administration that the emergence of the current plan for the National Mall was put in place. While the original L'Enfant plan had laid out a grand avenue extending west from the Capitol Building, the actual implementation of the Mall had been haphazard since then. After the completion of the Washington Monument in 1882, however, interest in a grand expansion for the Mall grew among many members of Congress. Under the Cleveland administration, Calvert Vaux[7] was appointed by president Cleveland and approved by the House Committee on the District of Columbia as the chief engineer of the District. During this time, Vaux outlined a plan for the National Mall that included several new monuments and the enlargement of the park through reclamation of land in the Potomac. The land reclamation and the filling in of Tiber Creek was completed by 1893, but further development of the Mall did not occur until the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt[8]. In 1905, further land was cleared as Maine and Missouri avenues in front of the Capitol Building were converted to parkland, and the Gas Works and Armory on Maine Avenue were transferred south to the vicinity of the Navy Yard. In this area, the portion of Tiber Creek was kept and widened into a small pool. This time also saw the construction of several monuments in downtown Washington. The National War Memorial at Lafayette Park was unveiled in 1896, and an equestrian statue of former president Samuel Houston was erected on the far western edge of the Mall just south of where 21st Street ran into the newly created Constitution Avenue. Further construction of buildings and monuments on the National Mall was stalled until after the Great War.
The other major development in DC in the turn of the century was in the Tenleytown neighborhood. The area had long been strategically significant as the point of highest elevation in the District of Columbia. Fort Reno, built at the outset of the National War to protect the capital, became even more significant in the early 1900s when Nikola Tesla began experimenting with electrical transmission and wireless radio transmissions. A large radio tower was constructed at Fort Reno in 1907 which Tesla used to conduct experiments. Later in 1912 Congress approved the establishment of the Tesla Technological Institute in Tenleytown. Wanting to attract more scientists and engineers to the capital after the Great War, Secretary of the Interior John Muir and Tesla organized the campus in Tenleytown. Tesla was heavily involved in the area as president of Tesla Tech. during the 1910s, and was so influential that during the early decades of the twentieth century the neighborhood was often referred to as "Teslatown". The Tesla Institute became a pioneer in both military and civilian scientific projects for many decades, often competing with MIT as one of the premier scientific schools in the United States.
[1] All streets mentioned are in NW DC unless otherwise stated.
[2] In OTL all of Boundary Street became Florida Avenue.
[3] Four years later than OTL.
[4] OTL Wisconsin Avenue.
[5] OTL Arlington County. Originally named Alexandria County, after the National War ITTL it was renamed Custis County after George Washington Parke Custis, adopted son of George Washington and father in law of Robert E. Lee.
[6] At what is now the 14th Street Bridge.
[7] Calvert Vaux was one of the designers of Central Park.
[8] Tiber Creek ran through what is now Constitution Avenue.