Washington, D.C.

There’s a common saying (and belief) that Washington, D.C. was built on a swamp. While that’s not actually the case, it is true that the District’s rivers and tributaries—and the surrounding marshland—have caused some problems in the past. In the nineteenth century, the low-lying area around the National Mall and Tidal Basin was the perfect breeding ground for one of the largest public health concerns at the time: mosquitoes. One enterprising doctor had a very inventive solution.

What is BORF? Washington commuters in 2004 were all too familiar with the graffiti campaign and its mysterious artist. Even if the paint is gone, the punky, rebellious message remains. Borf is one, Borf is many. Borf is coming for your comfort.

Mrs. Mary E. Surratt was a Confederate sympathizer living in the heart of the Union during the Civil War. Her boardinghouse served as the meeting place for the group of conspirators who plotted to assassinate Lincoln. According to the military commission who tried her, she was part of plot. But how much did she really know?

The Senate has adjourned for the day, and the legislators, journalists, and visitors that had filled the chamber file out into the warm evening. Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, a well-known abolitionist, remains at his desk, scribbling notes among his spread of papers. A stranger approaches him from the aisle. He is holding a cane with a knobbed golden head. Leaning over, he reproaches Sumner for disparaging a relative of his in a speech given several days prior. Sumner still does not know who is speaking to him.

It is May 22, 1856, and as the stranger raises the cane over his head, America lurches closer to civil war.

President Lyndon B. Johnson had a secret weapon that he kept in his kitchen for more than 20 years: Chef Zephyr Wright. Famous at the time for her Southern cooking and later for her impact on the Civil Rights Movement, Zephyr Wright quietly held sway over one of the most powerful men in the world.

While other American cities are more often associated with Irish-American culture, Irish identity and history runs deep in Washington’s DNA. Case in point: Matilda Tone. The widow of Irish rebel Theobald Wolfe Tone, Matilda spent thirty years living in Georgetown, where she compiled and edited her martyred husband’s papers into a book that would become a “sacred scripture” of Irish nationalism after its 1826 publication in D.C. 

On July 4th, 1970, nearly 1,000 hippies traveled to the National Mall to disrupt Nixon's Independence Day Celebration. The "culture clash" ended with naked hippies, an overturned truck, dozens of arrests, and tear gas. 

The Lindens, a 1754 Georgian mansion, is the oldest home in Washington D.C. However, it began its life in a small town in Massachusetts. Thanks to the efforts of a wealthy antique-collecting couple, The Lindens had a second chance at life.

In the early 19th-century, Washington, D.C. had a problem: what to do with their population of the mentally ill. Dorothea Dix, a healthcare reform crusader from Massachusetts, came to their aid and, with a team of politicians and doctors, catalyzed the construction of what would come to be known as St. Elizabeths.

This map reveals the roadways that existed in Washington, D.C. before its development into the capital city (and before it was a city at all). Six of those roads are still in use today, and details of their history reveal the the central facets of early Washington life which busy D.C. residents no longer orbit, but whose trails we certainly follow.