Jul 4, 2020 3 min read

For most of its existence – from its creation by the Residence Act passed this week (July 9) in 1790 to its construction on a strip of mostly mosquito-infested swampland along the Potomac River between southern Maryland and northern Virginia – Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital, remained a sleepy town of little consequence.

Originally, the hoped-for city of bustling commerce never materialized, and since the founding fathers created a limited government with just a few enumerated powers and responsibilities, the number of federal workers, hence the number of Washington, D.C., residents, remained small.

Granted, during America’s occasional wars, the city’s population increased, but once wars ended, America retreated into its isolationist shell, dismantling all vestiges of the war, and Washington, D.C., reverted to its former small-towan self.

Two things would change that – President Franklin Roosevelt’s election in 1932 and World War II.

As president, Roosevelt greatly expanded the federal government to combat the Great Depression that had thrown millions out of work. FDR created countless federal agencies that created many thousands of jobs, mostly government-generated jobs, while other federal agencies gave out benefits to ameliorate the hardships of those unable to find jobs or physically unable to work. So many new federal agencies meant tens of thousands of new workers to staff those agencies, and Washington experienced record population growth as people flocked there seeking a government-guaranteed paycheck.

And when America entered World War II in 1941, within a year Washington, D.C.’s population went from 500,000 to more than 1 million as federal agencies charged with drafting, training and equipping a military force sprang up or expanded. In 1941, the Pentagon, permanent home to the military-industrial complex, also began construction and was completed in 1942. Soon other new office buildings, apartment buildings and homes were being built to accommodate the influx.

Alas, construction lagged behind demand, and living space became so scarce that in some places four tenants lived in one room. The search for living space became so cutthroat that a story, a joke really, went that a man crossing the 14th Street Bridge saw a man drowning in the Potomac River below, and shouted, “What’s your name and address?” The drowning man told him, and he raced to the address, only to learn the room was taken. “But I just left him drowning in the Potomac,” the man said. “I know,” the landlord replied, “but the man who pushed him in got here first.”

In any event, after the war was won, unlike after past wars, America realized it was now a major player on the world stage, and had to maintain a powerful armed force and government. So, Washington, D.C., became, and remains, the most powerful city in the world.