Foggy Bottom

Foggy Bottom is one of the oldest late 18th and 19th-century neighborhoods in Washington, D.C. Foggy Bottom is west of downtown Washington, in the Northwest quadrant, bounded roughly by 17th Street to the east, Rock Creek Parkway to the west, Constitution Avenue to the south, and Pennsylvania Avenue to the north. Much of Foggy Bottom is occupied by the main campus of George Washington University (GW). Foggy Bottom is thought to have received its name due to its riverside location, which made it susceptible to concentrations of fog and industrial smoke, an atmospheric quirk.

The United States Department of State gained the metonym "Foggy Bottom" when it moved its headquarters to the nearby Harry S Truman Building in 1947.

History

The Foggy Bottom area was the site of one of the earliest settlements in what is now the District of Columbia, when German settler Jacob Funk subdivided 130 acres (0.53 km²) near the meeting place of the Potomac River and Rock Creek in 1763. The settlement officially was named Hamburgh, but colloquially was called Funkstown. In 1765, German settlers established the town of Hamburg on what would become the area between 24th and 18th NW Street. Jacob Funk (or Funck), the recorded founder of Hamburg, allegedly bought the land and divided it into 287 lots of land. There are reportedly two more founders: Robert Peter and James Linigan. The three had control of the land until 1791 when the territories were given to the city of Washington and the United States government. In the town of Hamburg, a German community was founded by many German immigrants.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as "Washington", "the District", or simply "D.C.", is the capital of the United States. The signing of the Residence Act on July 16, 1790, approved the creation of a capital district located along the Potomac River on the country's East Coast. The U.S. Constitution provided for a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress and the District is therefore not a part of any U.S. state.

The states of Maryland and Virginia each donated land to form the federal district, which included the pre-existing settlements of Georgetown and Alexandria. Named in honor of George Washington, the City of Washington was founded in 1791 to serve as the new national capital. In 1846, Congress returned the land originally ceded by Virginia; in 1871, it created a single municipal government for the remaining portion of the District.

Washington had an estimated population of 672,228 as of July 2015. Commuters from the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the city's population to more than one million during the workweek. The Washington metropolitan area, of which the District is a part, has a population of over 6 million, the seventh-largest metropolitan statistical area in the country.

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