Population of Washington

Washington, D.C., grew slowly from the time of its origins until the Civil War. It's founders expected it to emerge as a great city because of its favored trading site along the Potomac River.

However, the city proved incapable of fully exploiting its opportunities—due to, among other things, a lack of federal funding for development—and it lagged behind other major port cities along the eastern seaboard.

Washington’s population boomed during the Civil War, rising from a modest population of 61,122 in 1860 to 109,199 only a decade later.

During the first half of the 20th century, the federal presence in the city expanded, and population grew with it, reaching a peak of more than 800,000 in 1950.

The city’s population dropped thereafter, as it lost residents to the suburbs.

Nearly 69 percent of the metropolitan population lived in Washington in 1940; by 1960 that number had fallen to 37 percent, and to less than 12 percent in 2000.

In 2000 the population of the city was 572,059, and by 2004 it was estimated at 553,523.

In contrast, the population of the metropolitan area in 2004 was 5,139,549.

Partly because the District of Columbia was originally formed from slaveholding states, the national capital has always had a significant black presence, approximately 25 percent of the population from its origins until World War II.

After the war, many white families relocated to the suburbs, and the city’s demography changed.

In 1957 Washington became the first major city in America with a black majority.

Between 1950 and 1960 Washington’s black presence grew by nearly 50 percent, from 280,803 to 411,737, while the white population declined by one-third.

Until recently the great majority of the black population was located inside the city. But like an earlier generation of whites, the black middle class began to leave the city and move to the suburbs.

In 2000, blacks constituted 60 percent of the city’s population, compared with 30.8 percent white.

Asians were 2.7 percent of inhabitants, Native Americans 0.3, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders 0.1 percent, and people of mixed heritage or not reporting race 6.2 percent. Hispanics, who may be of any race, made up 7.9 percent of the population.

During the early 19th century, Washington lacked the industrial base that drew immigrants to other cities, and so the population retained its largely native-born character.

In the late 19th century, small Italian and Eastern European Jewish communities formed, creating their own churches and synagogues and associated ethnic institutions.

Many descendents of these immigrants left the city for the suburbs in the 1950s, along with much of the rest of the white population.

While the Italian Roman Catholic Church, Holy Rosary, still functions near Union Station, few of its parishioners still live in the city.

Most of the early synagogues near downtown have left, replaced by black Protestant congregations.

A small Chinese community formed in Washington in the late 19th century.

Originally concentrated downtown along Pennsylvania Avenue, Chinatown moved several blocks north to make way for completion of the Federal Triangle office complex in the 1930s.

Chinatown still exists along H Street NW, but only about a third of Washington’s 3,000 Chinese listed in the 1990 census live in that area.

An additional 37,000 Chinese live in surrounding suburbs.

In the suburbs, they are joined by more recent immigrant groups from Asia, most notably Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Lao.

Both suburban Maryland and northern Virginia support Asian populations of about 100,000 each.

Hispanics form the other major immigrant group in the area.

Although the District of Columbia’s population is about 5 percent Hispanic, the largest number of these immigrants are located in the suburbs: an estimated 90,000 in Maryland and 100,000 in Virginia.

In 1991 the Washington metropolitan area ranked tenth in the nation as a destination for new immigrants.