The
U.S. Constitution in 1789 called for the creation of a
federal district under
exclusive jurisdiction of the
U.S. Congress. As such, Washington, D.C., is not part of any
state, and is not one itself. The
Residence Act, adopted on July 16, 1790, approved the creation of the
capital district along the Potomac River, and is considered the city's founding date. In 1800, when the capital was moved from
Philadelphia, the
6th Congress started meeting in the then-unfinished
Capitol Building, and the second president,
John Adams, moved into the newly finished
White House. In 1801, the District of Columbia, formerly part of Maryland and Virginia and including the existing settlements of
Georgetown and
Alexandria, was officially made the federal district; initially, the city was a separate settlement within the larger district. In 1846, Congress shrank the district when it
returned the land Virginia had ceded, including the city of Alexandria. In 1871, it made the whole district into
one municipality. There have been several failed
efforts to make the district into a state since the 1880s, including a
statehood bill that passed the
House of Representatives in 2021 but was not adopted by the
U.S. Senate.