Historic DC Buildings: Landmarks to Know and Their Stories

A guide to the historic Washington DC buildings covered on this site, with the story, architecture and history of each.

• The U.S. Capitol: Two Centuries of Building, Burning and Rebuilding - L'Enfant set the Congress House on Jenkins Hill in 1791, William Thornton's late entry won the design competition in 1793, and the building has been burned, expanded and rebuilt around his winning design ever since.
• The Lincoln Memorial: A Greek Temple for a Rail-Splitter - Promised almost before Lincoln was buried, the memorial slept through forty years of dead bills until Taft's commission chose Henry Bacon's Greek Doric temple for the prairie president.
• The Washington Monument: Forty Years of False Starts, Then the Tallest Building on Earth - L'Enfant reserved the spot in 1791, a private society laid the cornerstone in 1848, and after forty years of false starts the obelisk finally rose to become the tallest building on Earth.
• The White House: Burned Once, Gutted Once, Rebuilt for a Third Century - Washington and Jefferson chose James Hoban's restrained neoclassical house by public competition in 1792; it has been burned once, gutted once, and rebuilt for a third century.
• The Supreme Court Building: A Marble Temple, 145 Years Late - A tenant for its first century and a half, borrowing rooms in the Capitol, the Court finally got its own marble temple 145 years after it began in New York's Merchants Exchange.