No tsunami warning was issued, but air and train traffic was disrupted across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic.
In the Washington area, parts of the Pentagon, White House and Capitol were among the areas evacuated for several hours. All memorials and monuments on the National Mall were evacuated and closed for inspections.
Around 7:30 p.m. EST, the National Park Service reopened the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials to the public, but officials decided to keep the Washington Monument closed. After a secondary inspection, NPS officials discovered some cracking in the stones near the top of the monument. Structural engineers will be brought in to evaluate the cracks.
Park service spokesman Bill Line said Tuesday night that structural engineers found the crack where the 555-foot landmark narrows considerably.
He says the lower portions checked out fine earlier but later they found the crack. He says the monument will be closed indefinitely to keep the public safe.
An outside engineering service will study the crack on Wednesday. He says it's too early to say what would be involved in fixing it.
The 91,000-ton monument is made of Maryland marble.
At the Pentagon, a low rumbling built and built to the point that the building shook. People ran into the corridors of the government's biggest building and as the shaking continued there were shouts of "Evacuate! Evacuate!"
NBC Pentagon corresponent Jim Miklaszewski said the rumbling was eerily similar to the impact on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaida terrorists flew a jetliner into the Pentagon. "I, like many other people here, thought 'Oh my God, we've been hit again.'"
The quake ruptured a water pipe inside the Pentagon, flooding parts of two floors.
Initial damage reports from Washington included plaster falling off the Capitol building and three pinnacles falling off the 30-story-tall central tower at the National Cathedral.
There were no reports of deaths or serious injuries.
Centered some 90 miles south of the nation's capital, the quake was a magnitude 5.8, the U.S. Geological Survey said Tuesday after an earlier estimate of 5.9.
The quake was tied for third strongest along the East Coast in recorded history, USGS records show. Charleston, S.C., was hit by a 7.3 in 1886 and Giles County, Va., saw a 5.9 in 1897. A 5.8 quake struck New York state in 1944.
Several hours after the first earthquake, a 4.2 magnitude aftershock hit in Mineral, Va., just after 8 p.m., EST, according to USGS. Mineral is around 35 miles northwest of Richmond. NBC News' Tom Costello reported that a low rumble was heard as the aftershock occurred.
Two nuclear reactors near the epicenter were taken offline as a precaution, officials said. No damage was reported at either.
Dominion Resources Inc said its 1,806-megawatt North Anna nuclear station in Virginia was designed to withstand a 6.2 magnitude earthquake, a spokesman told Reuters.
At the U.S. Capitol, light fixtures swung and the building shook for about 15 seconds while the tremor hit, NBC News reported.
"I thought at first somebody was shaking my chair and then I thought maybe it was a bomb," said Senate aide Wendy Oscarson-Kirchner.
At Reagan National Airport outside Washington, ceiling tiles fell during a few seconds of shaking. All flights were put on hold and one terminal was evacuated due to a gas smell.
In New York City, NBC reported debris fell from the attorney general's office, causing a brief panic as people ran from the area.
Quake interrupts Manhattan for a New York minute
Airport towers and government buildings in New York, including City Hall, were evacuated. The 26-story federal courthouse in lower Manhattan began swaying and hundreds of people were seen leaving the building.
Flights from the New York area's John F. Kennedy and Newark airports were delayed while authorities inspected control towers and runways. Philadelphia's airport also halted flights for inspections.
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