Of course, it was the business of the Commissioners to advertise the attractions of the federal city as effectively as possible, to promote its early settlement; so perhaps we may forgive their taking a good deal for granted, and permitting real estate speculation to go practically unchecked. Congress for several years ignored their appeals for an appropriation for the development of the city, and in the interval their chief dependence for the funds necessary to spend for highways and buildings was on the sale of lots, and on grants or loans obtained from neighboring States. The most sightly hill was set apart for the Capitol, and a beautiful bit of rising ground, overlooking a bend in the river, for the President’s House. The two buildings had their corner-stones laid with much ceremony, but progress on them was slow. Nevertheless, their sites, as well as the spaces reserved in L’Enfant’s plan for parks, fountains, and statuary, were always treated by the speculators, in correspondence with prospective customers, as if the improvements designed eventually to crown them were already installed. The outside public manifested no undue eagerness to buy, and the auction sales of lots proved very disappointing. Then a lottery was organized, with tickets at seven dollars apiece, and for a first prize “a superb hotel” with baths and other comforts, worth fifty thousand dollars; but that, too, fell short of expectations, all the desirable prizes going to persons who felt no concern for the city’s future, and the hotel, though started, never being finished. It was a pretty discouraging prospect, therefore, which confronted the officers of the Government when, on May 16, 1800, President John Adams issued his order for their removal from their cozy quarters in old Philadelphia to what seemed to them, by contrast, like a camp in the wilderness.
The six Cabinet members, with their one hundred and thirty-two subordinates, made the journey overland at various dates during the summer, and in October the archives followed. These filled about a dozen large boxes, which, with the office furniture, were brought down by sea in a packet-boat and landed on a wharf at the mouth of Tiber Creek, a tributary of the Potomac which then ran through the city but was later converted into a sewer. All Washington, numbering perhaps three thousand persons, turned out to greet the vessel; and amid cheers, ringing of bells, and blasts from an antique cannon brought forth for the occasion, its precious contents were carried ashore. “The Department buildings” to which they were consigned were a wonderful assortment. The Treasury was a two-story brick house at the southeast corner of the President’s grounds, the War Office a still unfinished replica of it at the southwest corner. The Post-office Department found shelter in a private house in which only half the floors were laid and four rooms plastered; while the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Attorney-general had to direct their affairs from their lodgings. All these temporary accommodations were sought as near as possible to the President’s House. Congress had striven, for its greater ease of access, to have the Departments quartered near the Capitol; but Washington had set his face resolutely against every such proposal, citing the experience of his own secretaries, who had been so pestered with needless visits from Senators and Representatives that some of them “had been obliged to go home and deny themselves, in order to transact current business.” Which shows that one modern nuisance has a fairly ancient precedent.