Washington, D.C., city on the Potomac River that became the U.S. capital in 1790, and was considered an obvious choice since it was already home to the White House, the Capitol Building, the Supreme Court, the U.S. Constitution, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Pentagon, the National Archives, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial, the Department of Homeland Security, and almost 200 foreign embassies. Prior to 1790, both Philadelphia and New York City served as capitals, though neither made as much sense as D.C. because they lacked a National Mall, the Jefferson Memorial, the FDR Memorial, the president of the United States, the Department of Justice, and all three branches of government. Washington, D.C., is expected to remain the U.S. capital indefinitely, unless Chicago, San Francisco, or Toledo, Ohio, manages to construct better buildings for every department of the government, establish local headquarters for several hundred national and international governing bodies, and dig new graves for the roughly 300,000 soldiers buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
