The White House and Foggy Bottom, Washington DC

A brief history;

• The White House (President's House) is the official residence of the President of the United States and stands at the centre of the neighbourhood.

• The White House is flanked by impressive architecture including the striking French Second Empire styled Eisenhower Old Executive Office Building to the west & the colossal Classical stlyed Treasury Building to the east.

• The Foggy Bottom region was the site of one of the earliest settlements in the District of Columbia, with a 130-acre area between the Potomac River & Rock Creek subdivided by German settler Jacob Funk.

• The settlement was officially named Hamburg on which the German settlers established the town of Hamburg which is the area today between 24th and 18th Street NW.

• The Foggy Bottom became a community of labourers employed by the nearby breweries, glass plants & city gas works by the turn of the 19th century.

• This is where many believe the name of the area (Foggy Bottom) came from, the "fog" or concentrated smoke produced by these industrial facilities located nearby to the Potomac.

• Today the Foggy Bottom is home to the main campus of George Washington University (GWU) which occupies a 42-acre site and opened in 1912.

• Geographically the Foggy Bottom is west of downtown Washington, located in the north-west quadrant, straddled by 17th Street to the east, Rock Creek Parkway to the west, Constitution Avenue to the south & Pennsylvania Avenue to the north.

If you would like to see more of my photography from the "Foggy Bottom" please visit these galleries;

• The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts