Washington, DC

Washington, DC. See Map. The capital (2019 pop 705,749; 2019 metropolitan pop 6,216,589) of the United States. In 1988 there were approximately 4,900 Ukrainians living in the area. The Ukrainian community in Washington dates from the late 1930s, when federal jobs began to attract Ukrainians from other states. By 1940 there were over 30 families in the district, and the American-Ukrainian Society was formed. In 1949 the Alliance of Ukrainians in Washington assumed leadership in local Ukrainian cultural and social life. The community grew rapidly through the 1950s and 1960s as new immigrants and American-born Ukrainians assumed professional positions at the Ukrainian section of the Voice of America, the Library of Congress, and various federal agencies. A monument to Taras Shevchenko was unveiled in 1964. The Ukrainian Catholic parish of the Holy Family and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Saint Andrew were organized, and Saint Josaphat’s Ukrainian Catholic Seminary was transferred to Washington from Philadelphia. In the 1970s a branch of the Ukrainian Catholic University (Rome) was founded, and in the 1980s the Ukrainian National Shrine of the Holy Family was built. The Washington Group, a local association of Ukrainian-American professional and business people, was inaugurated in 1984. As the capital of the country, Washington has been the scene of Ukrainian-American lobbying efforts since the formation of the first representative Ukrainian associations in 1915 and 1916. In 1977 these efforts were supplemented by the establishment of an information bureau in the capital by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]