Washington D.C. guide for interns and students👩‍🎓📚📖

🗺️Know before you go: ground plan + areas of DC

If you're not American, you're probably not familiar with the clever layout of American cities. As a European, I know streets by their old medieval names. But since American cities are relatively new, they're more often than not purposefully and cleverly named. The result is a gridded street network, with diagonal avenues visually and physically connecting key civic buildings and spaces. This makes navigating around the city very easy. The sooner you figure this out, the sooner you'll know your way around the city and, in turn, feel more familiar with your surroundings. Take a look at Washington's ground plan on Google Maps. From the Capitol, almost all lanes and streets are named after their geographical location, relative to that building.

United States Capitol

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In simpler terms: 'vertical' streets (north-south) start with numbers: 'First Str, Third St' and so on. Additionally, their geographical location seen from the Capitol is noted. 'First St NE, First St NW,...' and so on. And horizontal streets (West-East) are given letters instead of numbers. This way, when someone tells you they live at, let's say, '4th St NE', you know they live North-East of the Capitol, on the fourth street vertically running down. Americans will also give you an indication of another street passing, such as 'close to / I live on fourth and: D St, NE', so you know approximately where on 4th they live. Fourth and D are both a number and letter very close to the Capitol, so you immediately know in which area they reside, without having to know about every area and street in DC.

Furthermore, some important avenues are given memorable names. Such as 'Constitution Ave. NW', 'Pennsylvania Avenue NW', or 'New York Ave NW'. These are some of the few lanes running diagonally through the city, which break up the square pattern. 

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