Washington: A History of Our National City

by Thomas S. Lewis

On January 24, 1791, President George Washington chose the site for the young nation's ten miles square, it stretched from the highest point of navigation on the Potomac River, and encompassed the ports of Georgetown and Alexandria. From the moment the federal government moved to the District of Columbia in December 1800, Washington has been central to American identity and life. Shaped by politics and intrigue, poverty and largess, contradictions and compromises, Washington has been, from its beginnings, the stage on which our national dramas have played out.In Washington, the historian Tom Lewis paints a sweeping portrait of the capital city whose internal conflicts and promise have mirrored those of America writ large. Breathing life into the men and women who struggled to help the city realize its full potential, he introduces us to the mercurial French artist who created an ornate plan for the city “en grande”; members of the nearly forgotten anti-Catholic political party who halted construction of the Washington monument for a quarter century; and the cadre of congressmen who maintained segregation and blocked the city's progress for decades. In the twentieth century Washington's Mall and streets would witness a Ku Klux Klan march, the violent end to the encampment of World War I “Bonus Army” veterans, the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the painful rebuilding of the city in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination.“It is our national center,” Frederick Douglass once said of Washington, DC; “it belongs to us, and whether it is mean or majestic, whether arrayed in glory or covered in shame, we cannot but share its character and its destiny.” Interweaving the story of the city's physical transformation with a nuanced account of its political, economic, and social evolution, Lewis tells the powerful history of Washington, DC—the site of our nation's highest ideals and some of our deepest failures.

Genres: History, American History, Nonfiction, Cities, Dc Comics

560 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2012

About the author

Thomas S. Lewis is a professor emeritus of English at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Reviews

[Socraticgadfly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was torn between three and four stars, but one lie, either out of ignorance or more I suspect out of deliberation, and one doozy of an error that an English prof shouldn't have made, gets it three stars.

The lie? The claim that Woodrow Wilson was nothing other than a passive pawn to his Cabinet in the segregation of Washington. Wilson's racism is actually well known.

The error? Claiming Harding invented "normalcy." The word actually goes back before the Civil War.

There is a lot good about the history of the city, but errors like this will get you dinged.

[Mesut Bostancı · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cover of this book is very misleading. It is not in fact a credulous dad history hagiography of the capital! It is rather a myth-dispelling, racially honest, and deeply ambivalent recounting of this weird, weird city. By that I mean it's excellent. We have a vision of the national mall as timeless, of l'Enfant's plan having been carried out to the letter in the late 1700s, but it didn't happen like that all! The mall as we know it only really looked like them when they took down the last tempos after WWII. Also great stuff about uptown and the black history of Washington, treated with great candor.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chock full of interesting information about my hometown (yes, I was born in D.C.). Just fascinating, and makes it possible to understand so much about decisions made that shaped the district. Highly recommend this if you have any interest in the actual nation's capital, rather than the seat of the Federal Government.

[Chris Chester · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me a full two months to finish this book. That should tell you everything you need to know.

I didn't grow up in the District but I've lived and worked in the area for a good 10 years in aggregate now -- about a third of my life. Nobody takes great pains to teach the history of the city, so mostly what you get is accumulated political history since the beginning of Home Rule. All of which is generally embodied in the person of Marion Barry.

But the capital is of course quite a bit older, which is where this book steps in to fill the gap. From the first surveys of a capital on this bog along the Potomac to the construction of the Metro, you get a little bit from nearly every period in D.C.'s history. Some years get a whole heck of a lot more pages. Indeed, the modern era barely seemed to get any at all.

One gets the impression after learning about it in its totality that D.C. isn't actually just one place. It's been many different kinds of cities -- from an unfinished Southern backwater, to an unfinished target of insurrection by bodies foreign and domestic, to several versions of a swollen militarized capital, to its modern form as a slightly stunted modern city. As a resident today, it doesn't even really feel like the 1 million-resident-strong city during WWII could have shared the same streets.

It's possible that the fragmentation I felt was due to the writing. This book is extraordinarily dry, and broken up into a myriad of tiny fragments that only vaguely come together into a coherent collage. The masters of nonfiction are able to figure out how to weave long threads of story together into a coherent narrative, but Tom Lewis is unfortunately not among them.

I do feel as though I learned a lot about my city, but I remain skeptical about how much I'm going to retain. If you can't tie facts to emotions, then a work isn't going to stick with you. And so I doubt this one will.

[Jerrodm · Rating 2 out of 5]

On the one hand, this is a good, if somewhat standard-issue, history of the development of Washington, the nation's capital. On the other hand, it's almost entirely focused on Washington-as-national-capital not the Washington that the majority of its residents know and understand. Which is to say, it's primarily preoccupied with white, political Washington, not with black DC. I get it -- people want to know the stories of national politics, founding fathers, etc. etc. But I can't rate the book more highly because I feel like any book that seeks to profile this city fully (which this tries to do) needs to do a better job of incorporating both pieces of its history and character, particularly given how de-centered, ignored and marginalized DC has been at the expense of Washington throughout its history.

So, for example, there is extensive treatment in the book of the development of the downtown/Mall area of the city, Georgetown, Capitol Hill, Dupont Circle and the Massachusetts Ave corridor of the city, somewhat less discussion of the U Street corridor and Shaw, primarily as places where black Washingtonians went to socialize in pre-integration DC, and almost no mention at all of any other part of the city. The words "Anacostia" and "Barry Farm" get mentioned in exactly one place in the book, as a development championed by Oliver Otis Howard, the (white) president of Howard University and champion of black advancement during Reconstruction. Other large segments of black DC, including Brookland, Fort Totten, Brightwood and (my own) Petworth never even merit a single reference. It's as if virtually all of eastern DC doesn't exist for the author, which sadly recreates the image of Washington in the minds of many readers.

The book's treatment of history does the same -- there's plenty of detail about Washington's plans for the city, the machinations of various city planners (starting with Pierre L'Enfant) and the obstructionism of Congress. And there are some nods to black slaves and freedmen in the antebellum period, and then to black communities in the city in the post-War period. But they're treated almost exclusively as objects, people acted upon rather than individuals and groups with distinct perspectives, identities, goals and actions. So there will be 90 percent discussion of what white people did, and then 10 percent reflection on how this affected the black community.

It's not until the civil rights era that we get some discussion of black leaders and black-led activities in the city, but even then it's restricted to the well-worn examples of art/cultural heroes (Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes), religious leaders, civil rights leaders (MLK, Stokely Carmichael), and just two black political figures (Walter Washington and Marion Berry). It feels like a sop thrown in in the name of inclusion, rather than a truly curious investigation into what the city means and has meant for the majority of the people who actually live in it.

OK so in terms of its coverage, I'd say the book is relatively good on the post-colonial to World War II period, but gets a little broad-strokes from there forward. It largely repeats the pretty trite (and I'd say pretty racist) mantra about the fate of American cities in the second half of the 20th century: "the Civil Right era started pretty well with buttoned-down MLK, but after he died (!) and blacks got uppity and violent, everything just went to hell." There are some nods in here to the effects of racist policies around housing, segregated communities and the reaction of whites to the repeal of Jim Crow and school desegregation, but it just feels like the bare minimum coverage needed to forestall complaints, not like the author is terribly interested in it. Frankly you could likely get better out of a middle school history book.

What's fascinating to me is that the book makes virtually no mention of any specific events after about 1969 -- it all kind of gets heuristic and hand wavy, like after the riots following MLK's assassination and the flight of white residents to the suburbs, things just stopped happening. The last chapter does cover the establishment of limited home rule in the city, the opening of the Metro (which the author praises as a gem of city planning and efficiency, marking him clearly as not being a Washingtonian!), the defeat of plans to build an inner loop highway around the city. Notable events the book, published in 2012, does not cover include: the national bicentennial celebrations in '76, the DC sniper attacks, the Million Man March, and the friggin 9/11 attacks! Again similar to a high-school history class, it feels like the author used most of his time and intention to treat distant subjects that felt safe, already well-framed and sufficiently sanitized by time, and avoided a lot of the more interesting parts of DC's recent history.

OK so there's a lot of discussion about city planning and building design and construction in here, which for a city like Washington makes sense given how purposefully it was designed as a showpiece. In the same vein as my previous critique, I do find it curious that the author can spend chapters talking ad nauseum about the development (and de-development, and subsequent re-development, etc.) of the Capitol, the White House and Pennsylvania Avenue, but doesn't find space to mention more recent, but still undoubtedly massively important, architectural additions like the Kennedy Center, the MLK Library, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Dulles Terminal, and the Hirshhorn museum. Apparently if it doesn't have Greek columns it doesn't rate space in this book.

OK so those are my gripes. If you're looking for a pretty vanilla history of the part of Washington most (white) Americans think about when they think about our nation's capital, replete with details about Congressional scandals, foibles of Presidents and their families, and obscure bureaucratic tales of why buildings got sited in one place rather than another, then brother, this is the book for you. It is well-written, I'll give it that. It's easy to read, and for what it discusses it's well researched. I didn't think it was a waste of my time, and I'd recommend it on a qualified basis, but I think it does a disservice by reinforcing the idea that Washington is merely the capitol of our country, and failing to treat seriously the other part of its history, character and identity, one that has historically been ignored and marginalized. Too bad.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable history of my favorite city, Washington, DC. Lewis covers everything from the Constitutional Convention that established a Federal District (Article I, Section 8, Clause 17) in the prologue all the way up to the 1990s. It might have been nice to have a little bit more on the last 20 years, especially since the last chapter that covers the 1970s-1990s is a bit dark. But that is recent history, so I understand why there's not too much there besides a few paragraphs noting the recent demographic reversal of the previous decades.

Overall, I definitely recommend this book to anyone looking to learn more about the history of the nation's capital. Though a non-resident himself, Lewis does a pretty great job of centering local Washingtonians in the story as much as possible, especially in the chapters covering the 19th century and the first few decades of the 20th. Towards the end of the book the chapters become a little bit more focused on how the federal government and even the presidents themselves affected life in the capital. (This is most evident in the list of sources consulted for these later chapters, where standard biographies of the presidents are abundant.) Still, local characters do shine, and I certainly learned a lot of new things about my home town.

(Also for the record, it took me four months to read this because I was in the middle of planning a wedding and focused on a few other non-book things. That's not a indication that this book was boring or a slog to get through. Far from it, I found it quite readable when I did dedicate time to it.)

[Scott Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

We spent 5 days in Georgetown in April. Whenever I travel somewhere I always become interested in learning more about the area. We've visited Washington a couple of times before, of course, but it was always to see the museums and monuments, not the city itself (though I did make a trip specifically to attend a couple of Nationals games with my brother and nephew a few years ago). Staying in and exploring a neighborhood made me want to learn more. I learned much of Georgetown during our visit, but I wanted to learn about other parts of the city too. This history was very informative, interesting and enjoyable to read, providing just enough detail, told in a quick-paced manner, illustrated with interesting stories about all kinds of people to bring the story of the city alive. Washington is a unique city, designed and built to be the National Capital, unlike any other city in the country. Since everything in Washington is political, the author had many opportunities to comment on various administrations over the years and I thought he did a very good job, as a good historian should, to show balance in his observations. Though some governments are ultimately better than others, they all do some things well and others not so well. This was one of the best histories I've read. Perfect to get an overview of a fascinating place.

[B. Tyler Burton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Compelling true stories that speak so much to the particularities of why our country is what it is, how we define success, boundaries, legacy.

Personally I just couldn't finish, kept getting drawn back to fiction, and I'd blame myself and the current state of the world rather than the work.

If you like US history this is a winner.

[Mayan Botts · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great in depth book!

[Will Zadeskey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not particularly interesting and lacked a strong narrative.

[Elizabeth Raines · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot and this gave me pretty much everything I wanted out of if. The issue was it jumped around quite a bit and there were awkward gaps in between. That being said it did not flow well.

[Todd Stockslager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review title: Multifaceted history of DC

The history of any city to be well rounded must be multifaceted, but especially so in the case of Washington, DC, for two very important reasons Lewis makes clear in this history:

1. DC is a rare city that was created out of wilderness where no previous city existed to serve as a national capital.

2. The survival of the new city was often in doubt and often at odds with its country's principles.

Most Americans with any interest in history will know the bare outline of Lewis's history: The continental congresses and the new American government shuttled between New York and Philadelphia to meet and govern the 13 colonies. Settling on a permanent location easily accessible and acceptable to all 13 colonies was considered essential for the success of the American experiment. A compromise between northern businessmen and southern pastorialists resulted in the diamond shape 10 miles on a side centered on the Potomac River in Maryland and Virginia. The capital grew from rural swampland in 1800 to the center of power of the world's largest democracy in the second half of the 20th century.

But it was touch and go for a while. George Washington himself was bullish on the location but presciently worried that survival of the fragile united states depended on the successful establishment of the capital city, with a place for its President and Congress to call home and productively manage the new nation. Congress refused to appropriate funds for the many tasks needed to establish a new city: surveying, building roads and infrastructure, and creating areas for living, working, and conducting business. Washington devoted his own time and money in the effort of promoting and building out the new city, sometimes with positive results and sometimes with failed business and lost money. Even with a passing familiarity of the city's history, I was surprised to realize just how fragile was the compromise to sit the city, the investment to build the city, and the commitment to keep both the city and it's country whole and growing. As late as the end of the Civil War and the expansion of the country westward, there were calls to relocate the capital northward or westward.

Also working against the success of the venture was that the citizens of the new district for most of its nearly 220 years to date had no representation in Congress, no elected local government, and no control over taxation and spending. Congressional committees, chaired and staffed by members who were mostly part-time short-term residents of the city, often ignored or severely underfunded basic infrastructure like water and sewage, police protection, and schools. Committee service offered little incentive and was usually filled by the more junior and least competent members. In fact, the only members usually interested in the District were southerners determined to defend slavery there before the Civil War and legal and informal racism and segregation afterwards, because, yes, despite the high moral tone of the words in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution by which those Congressmen and Presidents governed, Washington, DC is a southern city where slavery was the law until Lincoln's Emancipation. This conflict between words and actions would arise many times in Washington's history, and in Lewis's telling of it.

Lewis keeps all these threads moving forward throughout. Architecture, government, politics, business, culture, and leadership, are all facets woven into this account that make it a complete and well-rounded history. The price of such broad coverage in a readable sized books is that Lewis can't deep-dive into any facet. He includes chapter sources and footnotes to guide the reader into their own research, and in the introduction points the readers to what he believes are the best complete multi-volume (and much larger than his) histories. For those who want to go deeper than a tourist guidebooks or their high school American history classes, Lewis provides the perfect introduction.

[Brett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is true to its title, offering a history of our ‘national city’ not our ‘local city.’ It states ‘in no way does it purport to be a definitive history’ so cannot be faulted too much for what it misses. That said, if you are a resident of ‘our local city’ looking to learn about its history and culture, this book will only take you so far. It largely takes the perspective of the city as the site of the Federal capital and government as opposed to a more local perspective of the city as having its own culture, politics, institutions, tensions and recreations.

Gaps that came to mind:
-The 1846 retrocession of parts of the District to Virginia: was there much local debate over this? Was there a sense of identity as a city that was harmed by losing a third of the territory?
-Only one paragraph is devoted to Mayor Bowen, an influential 19th Century social reformer.
-No mention is made of the 1922 Knickerbocker theater collapse ('the worst disaster in DC history'), killing 98, nor of positive events, such as the 1924 Washington Senators’ World Series win.
-The author punts on the question of whether ‘urban renewal’ was worth it (p. 397), something on which many residents of the time would likely have an opinion.

A better view of local DC history can be found in the book “Between Justice & Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, DC” by Howard Gillette, Jr. Gillette’s book goes into greater depth about many of the things this book briefly mentions: Reconstruction era DC, alley clearance, southwest redevelopment, and home rule politics.

To be fair, the book does give a local perspective on some events and personalities.
-Congress’ imposition of Prohibition on the city two years prior to the 18th amendment, something that hurt German breweries but was largely flouted by elites (including President Harding who had voted for it).
-Profiles of local residents at the turn of the 20th Century: General Oliver Howard, for whom the university is named, poet Paul Dunbar, and educator Mary Church Terrell.
I thought President Wilson was given overly harsh treatment (‘eight priggish and puritanical years of Woodrow Wilson’), considering he ended up living and being buried here following his presidency.

Overall, this book gives readers a good understanding of how war, the country’s struggle with race, and Federal control (out from which the city continues to struggle for autonomy) have shaped the ‘national city.’

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book, and learned a lot about the city I live in, as well as the history of our nation itself. I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much if I didn't live in DC, but it was fun to learn about some event and have an idea of where in the city that occurred (even if the city looks much different today). He follows the history of the capital all the way from before it was even decided where it would be located, to modern day. He makes the point that the history of the capital is in some ways a history of our nation.

My only complaint, which is very minor, is that this was written in 2015, yet he barely makes mention of anything after 2000. I understand that this is a history book, and perhaps he wanted to leave discussion of the present to future historians. However, I was expecting at least some mention of the current state of DC. He discusses the metro being completed in 2000, then talks about the 2010 census and how we're more racially diverse than ever, and that's about it. Considering how much he discussed racial issues throughout the book, it seemed odd that there was no mention of the election of the nation's first black president or the crowds of people that showed up for his inauguration. He mentions we're more racially diverse than ever but no mention of the differing views on gentrification and the rising cost of living in the city. Some of the more recent safety issues with the Metro have happened after publishing this book, but even before 2015, there were clearly issues with the Metro yet he only has positive things to say about it. He doesn't mention 9/11 or how that impacted access to some of the public buildings that he discussed earlier in the book (more security, areas closed off).

Anyway, I think that would have made for a better closure to the book but as I said, it's very minor and overall I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would especially recommend it to anyone that lives in DC.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recently moved to the Washington DC area and wanted to learn more than just the big picture many of us have of the city's history. This recently published book seemed like a good place to start. And I definitely learned a lot that I wasn't aware of. I've read that much of the area was quite swampy and hardly seemed to be fit for the nation's capital. You forget that even swamps were owned by someone, and some of those original owners' names have been attached to neighborhoods, streets and suburbs in the area. Although poor Jenkins is pretty much forgotten. It was his land (Jenkins Hill) that became Capitol Hill.

Lewis takes us from the compromise over slavery that led the Founding Fathers to locate the capital here, to the peaceful protests and violent riots of the 1960s, right up to the present day - though he spends much more time on the city's early history than on the last 50 years or so, and that was fine with me.

It's impossible to chronicle a city like this completely and stay under a thousand pages or so, but Lewis does a nice job introducing us to a mix of well known and lesser known figures and events. In addition to learning the history of some of the buildings and neighborhoods, we learn much about the politics of the city - and the fact that today's efforts to secure representation in Congress isn't new. It's a fight that goes back to not too long after the city's founding.

Summing up - it's an interesting, but by no means complete story. One big boost for it would have been inclusion of maps detailing the changes we were hearing about in the text.

[Barbara (Bobby) Title · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't remember when I've read a history book as interesting as this one. From start to finish I was hooked. Considering that as students we begin learning about our country in our earliest grades - and while history was not my major in college, I was still having classes in it. But none was like what was in this book -- the focus was on, as the title says, a city, and all those folks we learned about in our schools had a life that touched this city, or perhaps as well said as a city that touched their lives. Using Lewis' approach was like discovering something really amazing in something you thought you knew about already.

I discovered this book when a portion on the Pope's involvement in building the Washington Memorial was printed on DelanceyPlace.com. It was so interesting it drove me to read all 400+ pages of small type to get every tidbit that Lewis had used to keep me interested. Cassius Marcellus Clay and Ulysses Grant also captured my attention in a way that I never, ever suspected.

I have been in D.C. twice for very short stays - more as a place to lay my head when I was through at the College Park Branch of the National Archives. I must confess if I went now I would see things very differently than I did then.

Thanks, Mr. Lewis, for this super, very readable and very interesting book.

[Jennifer Early · Rating 3 out of 5]

The unfortunate part of the whole book is at page 114 it skips to page 139 finishing chapter 5 with thoughts that didn't flow from the beginning of that chapter. And again in chapter 6 it skips from page 162 back to pages 139 through the unrelated chapter. Then it repeats chapter 6 completely again.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for all native Washingtonians (and those that wish they were!) who love history. From Banneker, Barry, Boss to Corcoran, Renwick etc. I learned so much more about my city of birth. Did you know that there was a proposal to move the Capital to St. Louis? Move the White House to Meridian Hill? A great book!

[Gerry Connolly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tom Lewis has written a thoughtful and engaging history of the national Capitol in Washington: a History of Our National City. From George Washington to Daniel Patrick Moynihan key figures have shaped DC into a cosmopolitan metropolis. All of post-revolutionary history resides here. A worthy effort.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd been looking for a comprehensive history of our new hometown, and this did not disappoint. It was a thorough examination of how the city expanded, and the highs and lows of the city's social history from its founding in the early 1800s through the present day.

[Greg Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book! A must read for anyone who’s spent meaningful time living in the DMV region. A lot of the current idiosyncrasies of DC can be easily traced back to specific events highlighted by this book.

[Janice · Rating 5 out of 5]

good history of the city, attention to the issues as residents changed through historic times