Sometime before this, and in answer to an advertisement by the Commissioners, James Hoban, an Irish architect, then acting as supervising architect of the Capitol, had submitted plans for a “President’s House,” and they had been accepted. Inasmuch as the Act of Congress creating the District decreed that the houses for Congress and the President should be ready for occupancy by the year 1800, the work on both was now carried forward vigorously. Washington, retiring to his home at Mount Vernon at the close of his second term in 1797, gave over the care of the Federal city to his successor, John Adams. President Adams first appointed a new architect for the Capitol, Stephen Hallett, who resigned after holding the position for one year. George Hadfield, an Englishman, next appointed, resigned in 1798, and left James Hoban, the supervising architect, to finish the work alone. Congress having adjourned about May 20, 1800, to meet in Washington in November, the seat of government was removed from Philadelphia to Washington early in June of that year. The records and files of the various departments were transferred by vessels chartered for the purpose, and, as soon as possible, were put in order in the buildings to which they had been assigned. The government officials and clerks came by stage, bringing their families with them. From the records of the Treasury Department it appears that the Government met all the expenses of moving them and their household effects. When the government officials arrived, only the north wing of the Capitol had been completed, while the Treasury Building, a plain two-story structure of thirty rooms located on the site of the south front of the present edifice, was the only public building ready for the occupancy of the executive departments. Work had been begun on the War Office at the southwest corner of the White House grounds. When Congress convened in November, little progress had been made. The few hotels and buildings of the city were so overcrowded that few of the members could secure quarters nearer than Georgetown, three miles away through mud and forest. Streets existed for the most part only on paper, and Pennsylvania Avenue, the principal thoroughfare, was really a bog lined with bushes. The only sidewalk, that from the Capitol to the Treasury, being made of stone chippings, so wounded the feet and tempers of pedestrians as to make the mud of the street preferable. [Illustration: THE CITY OF WASHINGTON IN 1800. FROM AN OLD PRINT.]