Book Description

Introduction -- Part I. Grand visions and financial disasters. Dreams of metropolis -- Speculating in failure -- A boomtown without a boom -- Part II. A "federal town" on the Potomac. Jeffersonians and the federal city -- The limits of local control -- Part III. Making the capital national, 1814-1828. Saving and rebuilding Washington -- Striving to be a national city -- Part IV. The seat of a continental empire. A symbolic national capital -- Federal intervention -- Epilogue.