Georgetown is a neighborhood of Washington, DC, the capital of the United States. It is located in the Northwest quadrant of Washington on the Potomac River waterfront.
Geography
Georgetown is bounded by the Potomac River on the south, Rock Creek to the east, and Glover Park to the north. Its primary commercial corridors are M Street and Wisconsin Avenue NW, whose high fashion stores draw large numbers of tourists year-round. There are also several high-end developments on K Street, on the waterfront, featuring outdoor bars and restaurants popular for viewing boat races. Between M and K Streets runs the historic Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, today plied only by tour boats; adjacent trails are popular with joggers or strollers.
Georgetown is home to the main campus of Georgetown University, as well as the embassies of Mongolia, Thailand, and Ukraine. Other landmarks include Dumbarton Oaks, where the United Nations was outlined in 1944; the Old Stone House, built in 1765 and the oldest original structure in DC; and the Mount Zion Cemetery, which offered free burials for Washington's earlier African-American population. The Oak Hill Cemetery, a gift of William Wilson Corcoran whose Gothic chapel and gates were designed by James Renwick, is the resting place of Abraham Lincoln's son Willie and other figures.
The 1973 horror film The Exorcist was set in Georgetown. Several scenes of the movie were filmed in Georgetown, including the climactic scene where the protagonist hurls himself down the 75-step staircase connecting Prospect Street with M Street below at 36th Street.
History
First settled in 1696, Georgetown was incorporated as a town and first regularly settled in 1751, when the area was part of the British colony of the Province of Maryland, later one of the 13 original states. it grew into a thriving port, the farthest point upstream which oceangoing boats could navigate the Potomac River, and a key point for transferring goods, particularly tobacco, from boats on the Potomac to boats on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.
After the American Revolution, Georgetown became part of the federal District of Columbia, but retained a large degree of independence. It was not formally annexed by the City of Washington until 1871, and remained nominally separate until 1895.
Many African-Americans moved to Georgetown following the Civil War, establishing a thriving community, but an 1890 flood and expansion of the railroads brought destitution to the C&O Canal, and Georgetown became a depressed slum. As a result, many older homes were preserved relatively unchanged.
The waterfront area retained its industrial character in the first half of the 20th century. Georgetown was home to a lumber yard, a cement works, and a meat rendering plant, and its skyline was dominated by the smokestack of a garbage incinerator. Indeed, in 1949, the city constructed the Whitehurst Freeway, an elevated highway above K Street, to allow motorists entering the District over the Key Bridge to bypass Georgetown entirely on their way downtown.
Some gentrification occurred during the 1930s, as a number of members of the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt moved into the area, but the area did not become fashionable until John F. Kennedy lived there in the 1950s while serving in the U.S. Senate. Parties hosted by his wife, Jackie, drew political elites to Georgetown away from hotels downtown or in the upper 16th Street neighborhoods. Kennedy went to his presidential inauguration from the neighborhood in January 1961.
Since then, Georgetown has acquired a reputation as the leading center of wealth and style within the U.S. capital. Many political and governmental leading figures own expensive dwellings there, holding often-lampooned cocktail parties. High-end developments along the waterfront have replaced all trace of the neighborhood's industrial past—except for the old incinerator smokestack, preserved as a historic landmark and, as of 2003, incorporated into the layout of a newly built Ritz Carlton Hotel. The Whitehurst Freeway has been proposed for demolition.
At present, Georgetown is not served by the Washington Metro subway though there have been discussions about adding an additional subway line and tunnel under the Potomac to service the area.
Current inhabitants of Georgetown include John Kerry, John Edwards, and Madeline Albright.
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