Washington City Canal
The segment of Constitution Avenue west of Pennsylvania Avenue was once the Washington City Canal.
Construction on the canal, which was part of Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant's original plan for the city, began substantially in 1810. Tiber Creek was transformed into the northern portion of the City Canal, which ran along what is today Constitution Avenue, eventually working its way towards the U.S. Capitol and southward to the Anacostia River. The canal began operation in 1815.
It is believed that early city plans called for building connections to an extensive network of canals that would snake through the northeastern United States. Plans for such a canal system were abandoned around this time, in favor of a railroad system that would connect Washington to the West. After the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad built tracks into the city in 1835, city officials abandoned their plans for their own rail system.
By the 1850s, the City Canal had fallen into disuse. It had become common for Washington residents to throw their garbage into it, and the unsanitary conditions became a health concern. In the 1870s, the city began to convert the Tiber Creek portion of the canal to an underground tunnel. Other portions of the canal were also paved over.
Read more about this topic: Constitution Avenue
Famous quotes containing the words washington, city and/or canal:
“I thought it altogether proper that I should take a brief furlough from official duties at Washington to mingle with you here to-day as a comrade, because every President of the United States must realize that the strength of the Government, its defence in war, the army that is to muster under its banner when our Nation is assailed, is to be found here in the masses of our people.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“What life is best?
Courts are but only superficial schools
To dandle fools:
The rural parts are turned into a den
Of savage men:
And where ‘s a city from all vice so free,
But may be termed the worst of all the three?”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“My impression about the Panama Canal is that the great revolution it is going to introduce in the trade of the world is in the trade between the east and the west coast of the United States.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)