Wasn’t the original plan for Washington DC to be a perfect square? What happened? Did Virginia reneg on the idea? Or was land sold back to VA at some point?
We had a pretty thorough discussion on this, just over a year ago:If Washington’s a “district” where’s the rest of Columbia?
Originally, the district was a square tipped on one point. The rest of the details you can find in that thread.
In short; it was a square. However, the Federal Government gave Virginia it’s portion back sometime in the 1800s.
Zev Steinhardt
AWB
April 20, 2001, 1:10pm
4
The Virginia portion mostly became Arlington County.
From the Arlington County, Virginia, history page:
Arlington County was originally part of the ten-mile square parcel of land surveyed in 1791 to be the Nation’s Capital. Then known as “Alexandria County of the District of Columbia,” it included what is now Arlington County plus part of the neighboring city of Alexandria. The U.S. Congress returned that portion of the land to the Commonwealth of Virginia following a referendum among its citizens. In 1870, the City of Alexandria and Arlington officially separated their jurisdictions, and in 1920, the name Arlington County was adopted to end confusion with the City of Alexandria.
The name “Arlington” refers to the home of the Civil War General Robert E. Lee, located on the grounds of the Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington House is the building shown in the Arlington County Seal.
There are no cities or towns within Arlington County, and by law the County cannot be divided for the establishment of separate jurisdictions.
Arlington County remained largely undeveloped until recent times, although, beginning about the mid-nineteenth century, some residents of Washington, D.C. built summer homes here. It was not until after 1920 when the County’s population was only 16,000, that more intensive development began. Today almost all of the land in Arlington has been developed, and consists of extensive single-family residential areas and areas where commercial, office and multi-family dwellings predominate.