Washington

Washington, the capital of the USA, is situated on the Potomac River in the district of Columbia. The District is named in honor of Columbus, the discoverer of America. The capital owes a great deal to the nation's first president George Washington. It was he, who selected the site for the District and laid the cornerstone of the Capitol building, where Congress meets. The location of the city on the Potomac river was the result of a political compromise between the wishes of the northern and the southern states. Washington was founded in 1791. The city was built to a preliminary plan. A rectangular network of streets combines with wide avenues which radiate from two main centers. One of them is the Capitol and the other is the White House. Washington is not the largest city in the country, for it cannot be compared in size with the cities like New York, Chicago, Detroit and Los-Angeles. But in the political sense it is the center of the republic. It is the home of government. The US Presidents lives and works here, the Congress and the Supreme Court are all in Washington D.C.

The First Article of the United States Constitution provides for a federal district, distinct from the states, to serve as the permanent national capital. The centers of all three branches of the federal government of the United States are located in Washington just as many of the nation's monuments and museums. Washington, D.C. hosts 174 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organization of American States (OAS), the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). The headquarters of other institutions such as trade unions, lobbying groups, and professional associations are also located in Washington.

The United States Congress has supreme authority over Washington, D.C.; residents of the city therefore have less self-governance than residents of the states. D.C. residents could not vote in presidential elections until the ratification of the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1961.

Washington, D.C., is a planned city. The design for the City of Washington was largely the work of Pierre (Peter) Charles L’Enfant, a French-born architect, engineer, and city planner who first arrived in the colonies as a military engineer with Major General Lafayette during the American Revolutionary War. In 1791, President Washington commissioned L'Enfant to plan the layout of the new capital city. L'Enfant's plan was modeled in the Baroque style, which incorporated broad avenues radiating out from rectangles and circles, providing for open space and landscaping.

After the construction of the twelve-story Cairo Apartment Building in 1899, Congress passed the Heights of Buildings Act, which declared that no building could be taller than the Capitol. The Act was amended in 1910 to restrict building height to the width of the adjacent street plus 20 feet (6.1 m). As a result, the Washington Monument remains the District's tallest structure.

Washington is divided into four quadrants of unequal area: Northwest (NW), Northeast (NE), Southeast (SE), and Southwest (SW). The axes bounding the quadrants radiate from the U.S. Capitol building. All road names include the quadrant abbreviation to indicate their location. In most of the city, the streets are set out in a grid pattern with east–west streets named with letters (e.g., C Street SW) and north–south streets with numbers (e.g., 4th Street NW). The avenues radiating from the traffic circles are primarily named after states. Some Washington streets are particularly noteworthy, such as Pennsylvania Avenue, which connects the White House with the U.S. Capitol, and K Street, which houses the offices of many lobbying groups.

The architecture of Washington varies greatly. Six of the top 10 buildings in the American Institute of Architects' 2007 ranking of " America's Favorite Architecture" are located in the District of Columbia, including the White House; the Washington National Cathedral; the Thomas Jefferson Memorial; the United States Capitol; the Lincoln Memorial; and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The neoclassical, Georgian, gothic, and modern architectural styles are all reflected among those six structures and many other prominent edifices in Washington. Notable exceptions include buildings constructed in the French Second Empire style such as the Old Executive Office Building and Library of Congress.

· SPEAKING

4. Answer the questions:

1. When was the federal capital founded? 2. What is a population of the city proper and its suburbs? 4. What is the location of the city? 5. What is the peculiarity of the city planning? 6. What are the most famous tourists’ attractions within the city? 7. What kind of organizations does Washington D.C. host? 8. What is the peculiarity about D.C. residents? 9. Who was the architect of Washington D.C.? 10. How many parts is the city divided into? 11. What is the law concerning the height of the buildings? 12. Enumerate the most popular buildings of Washington D.C.