The Residence Act of 1790 established Philadelphia as the temporary U.S. capital and selected the Potomac site for a permanent capital.
Congress passed the act during the second session of the First Congress, and President George Washington signed it on July 16, 1790. It authorized a federal district along the Potomac River and set December 1800 as the deadline for moving the government to the new seat.
Philadelphia served as the temporary capital while the new federal city was planned and built. The measure emerged from the Compromise of 1790, associated with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. Northern support for the Potomac capital was connected to a federal assumption of state Revolutionary War debts.
The act did not create the modern city overnight. Commissioners surveyed the site, the district was named Columbia, and the city was named Washington in 1791. Congress began meeting in Washington in November 1800. The Residence Act is often confused with the later District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801, which organized the district under federal authority.