joshua mhoon in

WashingtonD.C.

The Summer of 2011

• Where can you see all the important things that happen in our country and where our president lives? Washington, D.C!

The Capital Building

• The United States Capitol building is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the Legislature of the Federal Government of the United States. It is located on top of Capitol Hill at the east side of the National Mall.

!Me in front of the Capital Building

• I got to see it in Washington, D.C. It is also gigantic because it is 5 floors and each floor is 16.5 acres (6.7 ha.)

• Inside, the Legislature they have meetings and make laws. Me and my family went on a tour and this was the first place we went.

Thomas Jefferson Memorial

• The next place we went on the tour was to the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. The Jefferson Memorial was in construction from 1938 to 1943.

!Here is a picture of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. On the right side of it you can see a little bit of the

Washington Monument.

• The building was designed by John Russell Pope and the contractor was John McShain (both Johns) but the statue of him was not added until 1947. The area of the building is 18.67 acres. They made it for Thomas Jefferson because he was one of the fathers of our country, the third President of the United States.

The Washington Monument

• The next place we went was the Washington Monument.

• The obelisk was built in honor of General George Washington, the first President of the United States.

!Here is me standing in front of the

Washington Monument

• The construction started in 1848 but was stopped because of the war, and a lack of funds, so it was stopped from 1854 to1877 and it finally was completed in 1884.

• The building was made of marble, granite, and bluestone gneiss. Now it is both the worlds tallest stone structure and the worlds tallest obelisk. It is 555 ft.5 inches(169.294 m.)

• The Potomac River

• All of Washington, D.C., the nation's capital city, also lies within the watershed.

• The next place we went was the White House.The White House is the official residence of every single President since John Adams, the second president but the first to live in the White House.

The White House

• The White House was in construction from1792 and 1800, and the architect of the grand house was James Hoban. He was mostly known for his neoclassical houses like the White House. The White House was named the White House because they did not want black people even close to the building, but rules have changed since there is no segregation any more.

People Live & Work There

• The present man that lives in the White House with his family and secret service members is and was since January 20th, 2009, President Barack Obama.

East Wing and West Wing

• The East Wing has two floors. It’s office space for the First Lady and her staff and is used for social events. Beneath it is where the Presidents Emergency Health Operations staff is.

• The West Wing serves as the office of the President and his staff.

The Pentagon

• The next place we went was to the Pentagon, I never new that the Pentagon was that big. The Pentagon is the headquarters for the United States Department of Defense, it is located in Arlington county, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S military, ‘the Pentagon’’ is often used to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.

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• It was designed by George Bergstrom who lived from 1876 to 1955, and built by general contractor John McShain, the building was dedicated on the 15 of January, 1943. The Pentagon is the worlds largest office building by floor area, each floor area was 6,636,360 square feet. It also has two basements and in total it has 7 floors, and the height is 77 feet 3.5 inches (23.559 m.)

9-11

• It was also very expensive to build, it was 83 million dollars to build (expensive right?)

• Unfortunately the Pentagon had lots of incidents like the October and March shootings and especially the airplane that crashed into the Pentagon by the 9-11 hijackers who took control of American Airlines Flight 77 and killed 64 people on the flight and 125 workers in the building.

The FBI Building

• The final place we went was to the J.Edgar Hoover FBI Building. Although we did not go inside the building I learned a lot about the building online. It is the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

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This is a picture of me in front of the FBI Building

• The construction of the building started in March of 1965 but was not complete until September 30,1975.

• The building was so expensive 90 family’s could not buy it. It started at a price of 60 million (not that bad) then it changed to $126,108,000.

The J. Edgar Hoover Building

The Air and Space Museum

• My Dad and I at the Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

• This exhibit shown in this picture is the Tuskegee Airmen exhibit. The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American military aviators in the United States armed forces. During World War II, African-Americans in many U.S. states were still subject to the Jim Crow laws. Their nicknames were Red Tails, and Red-Tail Angels, and their motto was Spit Fire.

• We saw lots of cool things like rockets, missiles, and planes.

In conclusion

• Although we were only in Washington, D.C. for a couple of days, I did not feel like I was missing anything. Washington, D.C. is a great place to be.