XV

On February 22, 1827, members of the

House of Representatives spent the

afternoon debating the merits of legislation aimed at the gradual improvement of the

navy. Two days later, the subject of discussion was

licensing ships engaged in mackerel fishing. On

both occasions the galleries were full of sightseers

who had come to the Capitol to have a look around

and see Congress in action. Visitors watched from

galleries located behind the chamber’s magnificent

Corinthian colonnade. Tall shafts of variegated

stone and Italian marble capitals gave an impression of grandeur and monumentality that was

exceedingly rare in American architecture of the

period. Gold fringe dangled from crimson drapery

that was festooned between the columns. Sunlight

filtered through a large round aperture in the

wooden ceiling, which was painted and gilded to

imitate a coffered dome. On the carpeted floor

below, 212 representatives sat in armchairs covered with horsehair upholstery, their hats stowed

on small shelves held between the chair legs.

Some congressmen followed the proceedings, but

others read newspapers or wrote letters home.

Bad acoustics made it difficult to pay attention in

any event. Small clusters of congressmen congregated behind the rail to smoke cigars and discuss

politics or the evening’s entertainment. Presiding

over the spirited scene was the Speaker of the

House, who was seated on a raised dais with a silver inkwell and candelabra on the desk before

him. At his right was the ceremonial mace, symbol

of the authority of the House. Overhead, swags of

fringed drapery hung from a mahogany sounding

board.

Between the naval and mackerel debates, the

House took up the topic of funding the public

buildings in the capital city of Washington. Legislation before the House included an appropriation

for the continuation of the Capitol’s construction.

A congressman from Kentucky named Charles

Wickliffe rose from his seat to ask why the Capitol

was still under construction after thirty-four years

of work. He knew old men in his home district who

had spent their youths working on the building

and who were now utterly astonished to learn that

the Capitol was still not finished. He did not

understand how the United States, with all its

wealth and resources, could not complete a building in the span of more than three decades. He

would not support the appropriation because he

could foresee that there would be no end to these

funding requests.

In 1870, forty-three years after Wickliffe’s

remarks, the House was meeting in a new chamber designed for improved hearing and speaking.

Gone were the echoes that plagued the old hall,

but the new chamber was so cavernous that hearing was still difficult for those seated far from the

orator. The new hall was covered by a flat iron

PREFACE 

Capitol window trim, ca. 1806 
XVI Preface

ceiling with a stained-glass skylight framed by

gold-leafed moldings, stars, and pendants. Galleries surrounded the chamber on four sides without columns or draperies to block views or muffle

voices. In this new chamber, during a debate about

relocating a pair of bronze doors, Fernando Wood

of New York City rose from his leather-tufted chair

to complain that every year something was done

to change the Capitol purely for the sake of

change. He regretted to say that this desire for

change—particularly in reference to the Capitol—

was an unstable and unflattering aspect of the

American character.

In 1903 Joseph Cannon of Illinois sponsored

legislation to “complete” the Capitol with an addition to its east front. To document the need for a

larger Capitol, Cannon cited the growth of the

nation, the increasing number of congressmen and

senators, and the expanding number of committees that reflected the overall growth of public

business. The time was right, Cannon claimed, to

complete the Capitol with a new east front. Seventy-five years later, other legislators claimed they

wanted to finish the building with a new west

front extension. Despite outward appearances, it

had become clear that the Capitol’s completion

was in the eye of the beholder.

Like so many aspects of American life, the

Capitol is often viewed as a work in progress—an

architectural evolution reflecting the country’s

own political, economic, and social development.

It was not the vision of a single person nor the

product of a single age; rather, it was—and continues to be—the accumulation of thousands of ideas

worked by thousands of people over a two-hundred-year period. Honorable and gifted political

leaders, architects, and builders appear at critical

moments in the Capitol’s history, but the story is

also tangled and enlivened by dozens of unscrupulous and obstreperous characters who complicate

matters along the way.

How the Capitol has evolved makes for an

unusually intricate tale, but it is one worth telling.

Most early histories were written by architects

who saw the building’s story mainly through biographies of its designers. Robert Mills published

accounts of the design and construction of the

Capitol in guide books that he sold to visitors to

the federal city in the 1840s and 1850s. In 1877

The American Architect and Building News

carried an essay entitled “Architecture and Architects at the Capitol of the United States From its

Foundation Until 1875” written by Adolf Cluss, a

Washington architect. The most prolific writer on

the subject at the end of the nineteenth century

was Glenn Brown, an architect who served as secretary of the American Institute of Architects from

1899 to 1913. He began writing about the capital

city and its major buildings in 1894 when Architectural Review published his article “The Selection of Sites for Federal Buildings.” Two years

later he wrote a monograph on William Thornton,

one of the Capitol’s more enigmatic figures.

Brown’s series of articles for the American Architect and Building News appearing in 1896 and

1897 covered the early history of the Capitol and

formed the basis for the first half of his most

famous work, the two-volume History of the

United States Capitol (1900, 1902). Throughout

much of the twentieth century, Brown was the top

authority on the Capitol’s history.

Three years before Brown’s first volume

appeared, Washington lawyer and novelist George

C. Hazelton published The National Capitol: Its

Architecture and History. It was a popular history and guide to the building, which was

reprinted in 1902 and 1914. Many of the myths

surrounding the Capitol’s construction were

cheerfully retold by Hazelton, who divulged in the

preface that the most delightful “truths” in history

lie in “romance and tradition.” In 1940 art historian Ihna T. Frary published They Built the Capitol, a breezy work based largely on Brown. In 1963

the United States Capitol Historical Society began

publishing We, the People, a handsome and reliable guidebook currently in its fourteenth edition

and available in several foreign languages. Twentyseven years later, Congress issued a short

overview of the building’s construction in The

United States Capitol: A Brief Architectural

History prepared by the Architect of the Capitol.

Many of the visual delights of the Capitol’s architecture were captured by Fred Maroon, a gifted

photographer who published a collection of spectacular pictures in his book The United States

Capitol (1993). Works of recent scholarship

include Pamela Scott’s Temple of Liberty (1995),

an important catalogue accompanying a bicenten-
Preface XVII

nial exhibit held at the Library of Congress covering the Capitol’s early history. Annual symposia on

the Capitol’s art and architecture sponsored by the

United States Capitol Historical Society encourage

fresh inquiries by some of America’s most

respected scholars. A Republic for the Ages: The

United States Capitol and the Political Culture

of the Early Republic was published in 1999 as a

compilation of papers from the 1993 bicentennial

conference. Papers presented at the Society’s

1994 and 1995 symposia were published in The

United States Capitol: Designing and Decorating a National Icon. The Society promises to

continue holding conferences that will no doubt

stimulate further inquiries into various aspects of

the Capitol’s history.

In preparation for the 1993 bicentennial of the

Capitol’s first cornerstone, steps were taken by the

Architect of the Capitol to compile a comprehensive chronicle of its design and construction history. The bicentennial seemed a good time to

provide a fresh look at these intriguing subjects.

There was a need for an in-depth examination of

the Capitol’s development set within a broader

political and social context. Some of the ground to

be covered was not new, yet much needed a fresh

reexamination, while long-ignored or recent

aspects of the Capitol’s history needed to be

folded into the story. Illustrations from familiar

sources would be augmented from the lesserknown photographic records held by the Architect

of the Capitol. Preparation of the bicentennial history of the Capitol was supported by the Capitol

Preservation Commission, a bicameral congressional entity that funds projects related to the

Capitol’s history and preservation.

The text of the present volume draws heavily

on primary source material, such as the edited and

published papers of William Thornton and B.

Henry Latrobe. Unpublished primary sources, particularly papers and manuscripts only recently

made available, were valuable resources as well;

important examples were the papers of Thomas U.

Walter, acquired by the Athenaeum of Philadelphia in 1983, and the journals of Montgomery C.

Meigs, long available at the Library of Congress

but only recently transcribed from their original

Pitman shorthand. The records of the Architect of

the Capitol and the debates of Congress were two

valuable resources that were generally underutilized in previous histories. Not found in the bibliography are the personal observations made by

the author over an eighteen-year period. A daily

examination of the Capitol’s intricate structure

and architecture offered unique opportunities to

learn lessons about the building that no document

or book could provide. Bringing these documents,

observations, and illustrations together in a comprehensive history was one way the Architect of

the Capitol sought to make a permanent contribution to the understanding of one of America’s most

intriguing buildings.

With gratitude, the author would like to thank

his professional colleagues who helped in this

effort. First and foremost, Ann Kenny’s assistance

was indispensable. She performed innumerable

scholarly and dreary tasks with equal aplomb,

doing research, collecting illustrations, and keeping track of paper work. Her compilation of the

most extensive chronology of the Capitol’s history

brought mounds of diverse research materials into

sharp focus. John Hackett and Sarah Turner,

archivists in the office of the Architect of the Capitol, helped sort through 150 years’ worth of material generated by an agency that rarely discarded

anything. Pamela Violante McConnell, the agency’s

registrar, gambled her eyesight and sanity transcribing correspondence of Montgomery Meigs

and Frederick Law Olmsted. Benjamin Myers,

James Corbus, Michelle Gatlin, and R. Edward

Ashby of the Architect’s records center were

always helpful with the historic drawings and

records under their care. The Architect’s photo

lab, headed by Wayne Firth, holds a priceless and

growing collection of images dating from 1855.

Michael Dunn, Steve Payne, and Chuck Badal contributed their considerable talents to the photographic illustrations, as did their predecessors,

Harry Burnett and Mark Blair. Special drawings

were prepared in the Architecture Division by

staff architects Edward Fogle and Juliana Luke

and by an especially able intern, Eric Keune.

Three repositories outside the office of the

Architect of the Capitol hold key drawings significant to the history of the Capitol. At the Library of

Congress, C. Ford Peatross, curator of architecture, design, and engineering collections, generously shared his time and knowledge regarding
XVIII Preface

the extensive holdings in the Prints and Photographs Division. Bruce Laverty, archivist of the

Athenaeum of Philadelphia’s architectural collections, and Elizabeth Gordon, registrar at the Maryland Historical Society, provided similar access to

their collections.

I am grateful to many helpful people who

made it possible to include illustrations from their

collections: Jenna Loossemore of the American

Antiquarian Society; Sherry C. Birk of the American Architectural Foundation; Sarah Turner of the

American Institute of Architects Archives; Angela

Giral and Janet Parks of the Avery Architectural

and Fine Arts Library; Pamela Greiff of the Boston

Athenaeum; Elizabeth Lunchsinger of the Corcoran Gallery of Art; Jacklyn Burns of the J. Paul

Getty Museum; Lucinda P. Janke of the Kiplinger

Washington Collection; David Prencipe of the

Maryland Historical Society; William M. Fowler, Jr.

and Jennifer Tolpa of the Massachusetts Historical

Society; Annie Brose of the National Museum of

American Art; Ann M. Shumard of the National

Portrait Gallery; Radames Suarez and Wayne Furman of the New York Public Library; Mary Doherty

of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Rodney A.

Ross of the National Archives and Records Administration; Nancy Stanfield and Barbara Goldstein

Wood of the National Gallery of Art; Joyce Connolly of the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site; Thomas G. Sudbrink of the U. S.

Department of State; Arthur Lawrence and Duncan Burns of the Union League Club; Gail R. Redmann of the Historical Society of Washington, D. C.;

and Betty Monkman and Lydia S. Tederick of the

White House.

Scholars in specialized fields helped review the

manuscript and invariably offered useful advice.

Herbert M. Franklin, administrative assistant to the

Architect of the Capitol, made helpful suggestions

on the early draft. The Architect’s curator, Barbara

Wolanin, prevented errors from creeping into matters relating to the Capitol’s artwork. The Capitol’s

landscape architect, Matthew Evans, offered valuable insights regarding the Olmsted landscape.

Authorities in congressional history, Richard Baker

and Donald A. Ritchie of the U. S. Senate Historical

Office, Donald Kennon, chief historian for the Capitol Historical Society, and Cynthia Pease Miller, former archivist and historian in the office of the clerk

of the House of Representatives, shared their

unique perspectives and knowledge. Diane Skvarla,

curator of the Senate, and her predecessor, James

Ketchum, provided information regarding the

restoration of the old Senate and Supreme Court

chambers. Professor Charles E. Brownell of Virginia Commonwealth University generously

reviewed the chapters dealing with the work of B.

Henry Latrobe and provided valuable guidance. I

am indebted to Professor Michael Fazio of Mississippi State University for drawing my attention to

the only known sketch of the Capitol made while

the center building was under construction. I am

also grateful to Pamela Scott, Don Hawkins, Jhennifer A. Amundson, Susan Brizzolara Wojcik, and

James M. Goode, all of whom took time to review

parts of the text. Cynthia Ware and David C. Lund

suggested ways to make the manuscript more

accessible, consistent, and clear. Wendy Wolff, editor in the Senate Historical Office, provided valuable direction regarding the book’s index. Special

thanks goes to Architect of the Capitol staff editor

Eric Paff, who worked wonders with the manuscript. I am grateful to Lyle Green, Janice Sterling,

Bill Rawley and John Sapp at the Government

Printing Office for making the long road to publication so smooth. Particular thanks go to the patient

and talented designers of this book, Erika Echols

and DiAnn Baum.

A final word of appreciation is due to the men

and women who take care of the Capitol and its

surrounding campus. Many have made time to

share their insights and their gratifying affection

for the buildings under their care. It takes many

people to keep the Capitol going—carpenters,

painters, electricians, plumbers, sheet metal workers, laborers, gardeners, architects, and engineers.

Each of them is part of a long and worthy tradition

of knowledge, hard work, and perseverance.