Georgetown is a neighborhood located in the Northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C., along the Potomac River waterfront. Founded in 1751, the city of Georgetown substantially predated the establishment of the city of Washington and the District of Columbia. Georgetown retained its separate municipal status until 1871, when it was assimilated into the city of Washington. Today, the primary commercial corridors of Georgetown are M Street and Wisconsin Avenue, which contain high-end shops, bars, and restaurants. Georgetown is home to the main campus of Georgetown University and the Old Stone House, the oldest standing building in Washington. The embassies of France, Mongolia, Sweden, Thailand, Venezuela, and Ukraine are located in Georgetown.

Geography

Georgetown is bounded by the Potomac River on the south, Rock Creek to the east, Burleith and Glover Park to the north, with Georgetown University on the west end of the neighborhood. Much of Georgetown is surrounded by parkland and green space that serve as buffers from development in adjacent neighborhoods, and provide recreation. Rock Creek Park, the Oak Hill Cemetery, Montrose Park and Dumbarton Oaks are located along the north and east edge of Georgetown, east of Wisconsin Avenue.^[29] The neighborhood is situated on bluffs overlooking the Potomac River. As a result, there are some rather steep grades on streets running north-south. The famous "Exorcist steps" connecting M Street to Prospect Street were necessitated by the hilly terrain of the neighborhood.

The primary commercial corridors of Georgetown are M Street and Wisconsin Avenue, whose high fashion stores draw large numbers of tourists as well as local shoppers year-round. There is also the Washington Harbour complex on K Street, on the waterfront, featuring outdoor bars and restaurants popular for viewing boat races. Between M and K Streets runs the historic Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, today plied only by tour boats; adjacent trails are popular with joggers or strollers.

Historic landmarks

Georgetown is home to many historic landmarks including:

• Canal Square Building, 1054 31st Street, NW, former home of the Tabulating Machine Company, a direct precursor of IBM^[30][31]
• The City Tavern Club, built in 1796, is the oldest commercial structure in Washington, D.C.
• The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, begun in 1829.
• Dumbarton Oaks, 3101 R Street, NW, former home of John C. Calhoun, U.S. vice president, where the United Nations charter was outlined in 1944.
• Evermay, built in 1801 and restored by F. Lammot Belin^[17]
• The Forrest-Marbury House, 3350 M Street, NW, where George Washington met with local landowners to acquire the District of Columbia. Currently the Embassy of the Ukraine.
• Georgetown Lutheran Church was the first church in Georgetown, dates back to 1769. The current church structure, the fourth on the site, was built in 1914.^[32]
• Georgetown Presbyterian Church was established in 1780 by Reverend Stephen Bloomer Balch. Formerly located on Bridge Street (M Street), the current church building was constructed in 1881 on P Street.^[33]
• Healy Hall on Georgetown's campus, built in Flemish Romanesque style from 1877 to 1879 was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987.
• Mount Zion United Methodist Church and Mount Zion Cemetery^[18]
• The Oak Hill Cemetery, a gift of William Wilson Corcoran whose Gothic chapel and gates were designed by James Renwick, is the resting place of Abraham Lincoln's son Willie and other figures.^[34]
• The Old Stone House, built in 1765, located on M Street is the oldest original structure in Washington, D.C.^[35]
• Tudor Place^[36] and Dumbarton Court^[37]

Transportation

Georgetown's transportation importance was defined by its location just below the fall line of the Potomac River. The Aqueduct Bridge (and later, the Francis Scott Key Bridge) connected Georgetown with Virginia. Before the Aqueduct Bridge was built, a ferry service owned by John Mason connected Georgetown to Virginia.^[38] In 1788, a bridge was constructed over Rock Creek to connect Bridge Street (M Street) with the Federal City.^[39]

Georgetown was located at the juncture of the Alexandria Canal and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. The C&O Canal, begun in Georgetown in 1829, reached Cumberland, Maryland in 1851, and operated until 1924. Wisconsin Avenue is on the alignment of the tobacco hogshead rolling road from rural Maryland, and the Federal Customs House was located on 31st Street (now utilized as the post office). The city's oldest bridge, the sandstone bridge which carries Wisconsin Avenue over the C&O Canal, and which dates to 1831, was reopened to traffic on May 16, 2007, after a $3.5 million restoration. It is the only remaining bridge of five constructed in Georgetown by the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal Company.

Several streetcar line and interurban railways interchanged passengers in Georgetown. The station was located in front of the stone wall on Canal Road (currently occupied by a gas station) adjacent to the "Exorcist steps", and the former D.C. Transit car barn at the end of the Key Bridge. Four suburban Virginia lines, connecting through Rosslyn, Virginia, provided links from the D.C. streetcar network to Mount Vernon, Falls Church, Great Falls, Fairfax, Vienna, Leesburg, and Purcellville. Streetcar operations in Washington, D.C. ended January 28, 1962. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad built a branch line from Silver Spring, Maryland to Water Street in Georgetown in an abortive attempt to construct a southern connection to Alexandria, Virginia. It served as an industrial line to a General Services Administration power plant on K Street (now razed) until at least 1982. The abandoned right-of-way has since been converted into the Capital Crescent Trail – a rails-to-trails route – and the power plant into a condo.

There is no Metro station in Georgetown. The planners of the Metro never seriously considered locating a station in the neighborhood, primarily due to the engineering issues presented by the extremely steep grade from the Potomac River (under which the subway tunnel would run) to the center of Georgetown. Some Georgetown residents concerned about outsiders entering their wealthy neighborhood wrote letters against a station, but no serious plans for a station were ever drafted in the first place.^[40] Since the Metro's opening, there have been occasional discussions about adding an additional subway line and tunnel under the Potomac to service the area. Three stations are located roughly one mile (1.6 km) from the center of Georgetown: Rosslyn (across the Key Bridge in Arlington), Foggy Bottom-GWU, and Dupont Circle. Georgetown is served by the 30-series, D-Series, and G2 Metrobuses, as well as the DC Circulator.

Education

Georgetown University

The main campus of Georgetown University is located on the western edge of the Georgetown neighborhood. Father John Carroll founded Georgetown University as a Jesuit private university in 1789, though its roots extend back to 1634.^[41] Although the school struggled financially in its early years, Georgetown expanded into a branched university after the American Civil War under the leadership of university president Patrick Francis Healy. As of 2007^[update], the university has 6,853 undergraduate students and 4,490 graduate students on the main campus.^[42]

The main campus is just over 100 acres (0.4 km²) in area and includes 58 buildings, student residences capable of accommodating 80 percent of undergraduates, various athletic facilities, and the medical school.^[42] Most buildings employ collegiate Gothic architecture and Georgian brick architecture. Campus green areas include fountains, a cemetery, large clusters of flowers, groves of trees, and open quadrangles.^[43] The main campus has traditionally centered on Dahlgren Quadrangle, although Red Square has replaced it as the focus of student life.^[44] Healy Hall, built in Flemish Romanesque style from 1877 to 1879, is the architectural gem of Georgetown's campus, and is a National Historic Landmark.^[45]

Primary and secondary education

Throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries the concentration of wealth in Georgetown sparked the growth of many university-preparatory schools in and around the neighborhood. One of the first schools was the Columbian Academy on N Street, which was established in 1781 with Reverend Stephen Balch serving as the headmaster.^[46]

Private schools currently located in Georgetown include Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School, while nearby is the eponymous Georgetown Day School. Georgetown Preparatory School, while founded in Georgetown, moved in 1915 to its present location several miles north of Georgetown in Montgomery County.

District of Columbia Public Schools operates area public schools, including Hyde Elementary School on O Street.^[47] Hardy Middle School and Wilson High School both serve Georgetown.^[48][49]

Popular culture

Several movies have been filmed in Georgetown, including 1973 horror film The Exorcist, which was set in the neighborhood and partially filmed there. In the

movie's climactic scene, the protagonist is hurled down the 75-step staircase at the end of 36th Street NW, which connects Prospect Street with M Street below. The staircase has come to

be known as the "Exorcist steps".^[50] A false front was built onto the house at the top of the steps so that the bedroom windows would immediately overlook the steps. The real structure has considerable set-back.

In 1976, All the President's Men showed Georgetown’s skyline in the distance as an aerial shot eventually focuses in on the Watergate. During the making of the film, sandwiches were ordered from the Booeymonger,^{[citation needed]} a Georgetown institution. Bob Woodward, Ben Bradlee, and Katharine Graham, all portrayed in the film, lived in Georgetown at the time.

The 1985 Brat Pack film St. Elmo's Fire was set in Georgetown, though the campus fraternity row portions were filmed at the University of Maryland campus in College Park. (Like most Jesuit colleges, Georgetown University does not recognize fraternities or sororities, though several exist.)

The 1987 film No Way Out featured a Georgetown Metro stop as a plot device, even though no such station exists; the subway station shots were filmed in Baltimore, Maryland. Chase

scenes for the film were shot on the Whitehurst Freeway. Other films with scenes in Georgetown are The Man with One Red Shoe (1985, an early Tom Hanks film), Chances Are (1989), Timecop (1993), True Lies (1993), Dave (1993), The Jackal (1996, private homes), Dick (1998, C&O Canal), Election (1999), Minority Report (2001),The Recruit (2003), The Girl Next Door (2004), Wedding Crashers (2005), Transformers (2007), and Burn After Reading (2008).

The television series The West Wing occasionally filmed scenes in and around Georgetown. 

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