History of Washington, D.C.
Georgetown was established in 1751 when the Maryland legislature purchased sixty acres of land for the town from George Gordon and George Beall at the price of £280, while Alexandria, Virginia was founded in 1749. Situated on the fall line, Georgetown was the farthest point upstream to which oceangoing boats could navigate the Potomac River. The strong flow of the Potomac kept a navigable channel clear year-round; and, the daily tidal lift of the Chesapeake Bay, raised the Potomac's elevation in its lower reach; such that fully laden ocean-going ships could navigate easily, all the way to the Bay. Gordon had constructed a tobacco inspection house along the Potomac in approximately 1745. Warehouses, wharves, and other buildings were added, and the settlement rapidly grew. The Old Stone House, located in Georgetown, was built in 1765 and is the oldest standing building in the District. It did not take long before Georgetown grew into a thriving port, facilitating trade and shipments of tobacco and other goods from colonial Maryland. With the economic and population growth of Georgetown came also the founding of Georgetown University in 1789, at its founding drawing students from as far away as the West Indies.
History of Georgetown University
Georgetown, as a major world university, has been featured in many media over the years. The most prominent example is the 1971 horror novel, "The Exorcist", written by William Peter Blatty, who received an English degree from Georgetown in 1950. The novel is loosely based on a series of 1949 exorcisms conducted on a fourteen-year-old boy at Georgetown University Hospital, nearby Maryland, and in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1973, Blatty's bestselling novel was made into a film, also titled "The Exorcist". Like the novel, the film was set at Georgetown and filmed on campus during the fall semester in 1972. The climatic scene uses a steep staircase between Prospect Street and Canal Road, previously know popularly as the "Hitchcock Steps" for their spooky appeal. However, since the film's release they have been called the "Exorcist steps."