Congressional Cemetery

Washington planned a capital city and forgot to put a cemetery in it.

The ten mile square along the Potomac was chosen in 1790 and Pierre L'Enfant had mapped the city by 1792, but none of the plans drawn in that decade set aside any burial ground. In 1798 the commissioners marked two squares on the edges of the city, one meant to be the eastern burial ground and one the western. The eastern square turned out to be prone to flooding. So residents of the east side formed an association, most of them also on the vestry of Christ Church, and secured a better 4.5 acre square instead. That is where Congressional Cemetery has stood since 1807, and it has been taking Washingtonians for more than 207 years.

Its official name is the Washington Parish Burial Ground and Christ Church still owns it. By 1817 sites were being set aside for government legislators, and the association with Congress stuck: members who died while Congress was in session were interred here. The federal government has purchased 806 plots, administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Over 65,000 people are buried or memorialised on the ground, a mile and a half southeast of the Capitol. One vice president. One Supreme Court justice. Six Cabinet members, nineteen senators and 71 representatives including a former Speaker of the House. Veterans of every American war. Early landowners and speculators, the builders and architects of early Washington, Native American diplomats, city mayors, and J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI. It is the only American cemetery of national memory founded before the Civil War.

It joined the National Register on 23 June 1969 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2011.

It is also still working. It still sells plots, it still buries people, and it is open to the living in a way most historic cemeteries are not: there is a K9 Corner, dogs are welcome on most days, and the cemetery publishes the dates the grounds are closed to them. Wreath-laying ceremonies happen alongside the dog walking. Potomac Avenue Metro is three blocks away.