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Plan of the city of Washington in the territory of Columbia, ceded by the states of Virginia and Maryland to the United States of America, and by them established as the seat of their government, after the year MDCC

This 1792 map was among the first printed plans of Washington, D.C., the new seat of government for the federal government. Its location on the Potomac River was determined as a result of the Compromise of 1790. Thomas Jefferson and his supporters agreed that the nation would take on state debts incurred during the Revolutionary War in exchange for the mid-Atlantic capital site selected by George Washington. Though Maryland surveyor Andrew Ellicott created this map, he based it on designs by French engineer Pierre L'Enfant.

Metadata

Creator

Ellicott, Andrew, 1754-1820

Engraver

Thackara & Vallance

Date

[1792]

Name on Item

engrav'd by Thackara & Vallance ; in order to execute this plan, Mr. Ellicott drew a true meridional line ... and left nothing to the uncertainty of the compass.

Publisher

[s.n.]

Scale

Scale [ca. 1:19,800]

Language

English

Location

George Washington's Mount Vernon

Collection (local)

Richard H. Brown Revolutionary War Map Collection at Mount Vernon

Subjects
  • Washington (D.C.)--Maps--Early works to 1800
  • Georgetown (Washington, D.C.)--Maps--Early works to 1800
Places
  • District of Columbia
  • Georgetown
  • North and Central America
  • United States
  • Washington
Extent

1 map ; 52 x 68 cm.

Terms and License
  • No known copyright restrictions.
  • This work is licensed for use under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License (CC BY-NC-SA).
Notes
  • Relief shown by hachures. Depths shown by soundings.
  • Shows block numbers and proposed government buildings.
  • Also covers Georgetown.
  • Includes text, notes, and coat-of-arms.
  • This map can be viewed as a georeferenced overlay in an interactive application made especially for We Are One: Mapping America's Road from Revolution to Independence http://d2o8owo4k087al.cloudfront.net/index.html?mapId=91.

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