Foggy Bottom

Foggy Bottom is a neighborhood of Washington, D.C., United States, located in the city's northwest quadrant. It stretches west of the White House towards the Potomac River, north of the National Mall, east of Georgetown, south of the West End neighborhood and west of Downtown.

Foggy Bottom originated in a landholding planned as a town in the 1760s by Jacob Funk. Following the establishment of the District of Columbia in 1791, the neighborhood first emerged as a lightly settled area with both wealthy and middle class residents. The opening of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (C&O) in the 1830s, which provided access to coal, limestone, and other commodities, expanded Foggy Bottom's industrial capacity. By the mid-19th century, Foggy Bottom's western half became primarily a working class community composed of immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe; many found work in its factories, which consisted of businesses including breweries, lime kilns, and a gasworks. Its black population, which had resided in Foggy Bottom since its inception, also expanded as freedmen migrated to Washington in the aftermath of the American Civil War and emancipation. Like elsewhere in Washington during its post-Civil War population boom, alley dwellings and shanties emerged in Foggy Bottom to house its poorest residents, many of whom were black laborers and families.

Deindustrialization caused by the decline of the C&O Canal and Prohibition resulted in Foggy Bottom's historical working class residents migrating to the region's suburbs and newer neighborhoods during the first several decades of the 20th century. This development mostly excluded Foggy Bottom's black residents, who were significantly restricted in their choice of housing by the area's prevailing Jim Crow policies and racially restrictive housing covenants. Private developers, government agencies, and the George Washington University, which had moved to the neighborhood in 1912, demolished many of Foggy Bottom's alley dwellings and tenements during the first half of the 20th century, facilitating its eventual transformation into a white, middle class neighborhood and mostly displacing its black population by 1960.

Today, Foggy Bottom is part of Washington's central business district and is home to the headquarters of various U.S. government agencies and international organizations, including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the United States Department of State, and the United States Department of the Interior. It is also the location of George Washington University's main campus, which encompasses over 40 acres of Foggy Bottom east of 23rd Street, the Kennedy Center, the national cultural center that serves as a memorial to President John F. Kennedy, and the Watergate complex, the location of the 1972 Watergate scandal. Two historic districts, the Foggy Bottom Historic District and the George Washington University-Old West End Historic District, incorporate much of Foggy Bottom's remaining historic architecture.