CHRIST CHURCH BURIAL GROUND, LATER KNOWN AS “CONGRESSIONAL CEMETERY”
SHOWING CENOTAPHS ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS IN EARLY DAYS
Chapter VIII
WASHINGTON, 1816-1839
The administration of President Monroe, who served two terms (1817-1825) is known as the “era of good feeling,” but so far as developing the plan of Washington little was done. In 1820 the population of Washington was 13,247.
During these years the Capitol was rebuilt and was reoccupied by Congress. In 1820 the corner stone of the city hall on Judiciary Square was laid. In 1824 General Lafayette made his memorable visit to Washington.
In 1825 trees were planted on two squares of the filled lowlands south of Pennsylvania Avenue. That year, also, the eastern portico of the Capitol was completed; Pennsylvania Avenue was graded from Seventeenth to Twenty-second Streets; the grounds of the White House, as the Executive Mansion came to be known after the War of 1812, and the grounds of the city hall were also graded. At that time there were about 13 miles of brick paving, average width 13 feet.
Among churches that were built during this period was Foundry Methodist Church, founded in 1816, at Fourteenth and G Streets NW. The site was given by Henry Foxall, who operated a foundry about a mile above Georgetown, near the site of the canal, in fulfillment of a vow that if his foundry were spared during the attack on Washington he would make this gift.
On January 27, 1824, the Legislature of Virginia granted a charter to the newly organized Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Co., which was to supersede the old Potomac Co., of which George Washington had been first president, and which had developed commerce with the West. At Little Falls, on the north side of the river, a canal 2¹⁄₂ miles long, with 4 masonry locks having a total elevation of 37 feet, had been constructed. At Great Falls, on the south side, a canal 1,200 yards long, with 5 locks having a total difference of level of 76 feet 9 inches, was constructed. The two lower locks were cut in solid rock.
On July 4, 1828, President John Quincy Adams turned the first spadeful of earth for the new canal, which was completed to the first feeder at Seneca on July 4, 1831. From this place to Point of Rocks work was delayed by a legal contest with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co., which extended its first 45 miles along the same course as the canal. That railroad company, organized in 1828 at Baltimore, was the beginning of one of the great railroad systems of the United States that were to revolutionize commerce and industry. To-day the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal remains the property of the United States Government, and is to be made into a great park.
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ABOUT 1820
FROM PAINTING MADE BY SAMUEL F. B. MORSE, SHORTLY AFTER REBUILDING OF THE CAPITOL AFTER THE FIRE OF 1814 ORIGINAL IN THE CORCORAN GALLERY OF ART