Congress establishes the National Capital Park Commission to acquire land for public parks, parkways, and playgrounds in Washington and jurisdictions in Maryland and Virginia.
Congress grants the agency, renamed the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, broad planning authority for highways, housing, parks, sewers, subdivisions, and more for both the federal government and local residents.
Congress renames the agency to the current National Capital Planning Commission. It formalizes NCPC as Washington’s central planning agency, with planning responsibilities for the federal and local city.
The District of Columbia Home Rule Act hands local planning to an elected mayor. NCPC continues to this day to plan and review proposals for developing federal properties in Washington and the region, and certain District properties.
NCPC celebrates its Centennial and looks toward another century of planning for the National Capital Region.
NCPC will continue to serve as the federal government's planning agency, protecting the historic nature of the city while advancing plans and policies that will have a positive impact of the National Capital Region.
Long before it becomes Washington, DC, this land is home to Indigenous people known as Nacotchtank or Anacostans. They hunt, fish, quarry stone, and trade at the confluence of the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers for thousands of years. In the 1600s, European settlers take their land for farming and bring diseases that kill them. Indigenous people from different nations remain in the region today.
President George Washington chooses the land for the nation’s capital in 1790. His wartime assistant, engineer Pierre L’Enfant, draws up a plan for the new city of Washington. L’Enfant’s visionary design, which includes many parks, places key civic buildings on higher ground, connects them with grand avenues, and creates long, sweeping views. L’Enfant designs the city to represent the young country’s democratic ideals. For example, he uses Pennsylvania Avenue to link the White House and the U.S. Capitol, two of the three branches of government.
As the city grows through the 1800s, development veers from L’Enfant’s plan. The 1901 Senate establishes a commission, led by Senator James McMillan, to restore and give new meaning to L’Enfant’s vision of a beautiful and inspiring capital. The National Mall’s open greenway, the city’s public park and open space system, and the grand neo-classical buildings that characterize Washington’s federal core would result from the McMillan Plan.
At the turn of the 20th century, the National Mall looks very different from today. Stands of trees and winding paths are in the foreground, while a train station and tracks are located closer to the U.S. Capitol.
The 1910 federal Height of Buildings Act limits building heights across the city. Over time, this restriction shapes development and results in Washington’s distinctive, low skyline.
The 1894 construction of the Cairo luxury apartment building prompts concerns about design and fire safety, leading to the Height of Buildings Act.
In the 1930s, the Federal Triangle displaces working-class
neighborhoods, including Washington’s first Chinatown. This is a
view of an industrial section of the old neighborhood.
In the early 1940s, Pentagon construction destroys a historic Black
community known
as
Queen City (or East Arlington), seen above, whose residents are
given
only weeks to
vacate their homes.
WETA
Video
on Queen
City
In 1933, many federal employees park in this Federal Triangle lot,
now
filled by the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.
Federal Bureau of Investigation clerks at work in the Justice
Department
building in 1956.
Transportation drives development patterns. Later NCPC plans adapted this concept, locating intensive development along highway “corridors” while preserving open space and encouraging less dense development in the “wedges” in between, as seen in this 1961 map. This idea is most fully realized in Montgomery County, Maryland. Other parts of the region have grown in more sprawling patterns.
In 1969, Rev. Walter Fauntroy, at right, confers with architect Herbert McDonald and young Cedric Carter on plans for a block destroyed during the previous year’s civil unrest that would ultimately become the site of the Lincoln-Westmoreland Apartments. (Reproduced with permission of the DC Public Library, Star Collection © Washington Post)
This 1969 MICCO publication celebrates redevelopment work in Shaw. (All Souls Unitarian Archives)
Prior to serving as an NCPC Commissioner and the agency’s Executive Director, Reginald Griffith worked for MICCO. Check out his Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate thesis exploring MICCO’s work with the community.
In the early 1960s, Adams Morgan residents worked with NCPC and others to look at less disruptive urban renewal approaches. Unable to find an option without major displacement of homes and businesses, including those in this 1977 photo of 18th Street, NW, NCPC dropped its renewal plans.