Presents L' Enfant's original plan of Washington, D.C. and early pictures of the Capitol and the White House.

Presents the story of building the nation’s Capitol and the symbolic, aesthetic, and pragmatic issues that surrounded the creation of America’s most important public building.

This online exhibition offers insights into how the nation’s founding documents were forged and the role that imagination and vision played in the unprecedented creative act of forming a self–governing country.

A select list of early images of Washington, D.C. from the Prints and Photographs Division.

Congress declared the city of Washington in the District of Columbia the permanent capital of the United States on July 16, 1790.

The cornerstone of the White House was laid on October 13, 1792.