VIEWS OF HISTORY

417

At the close of World War II, the

United States was a proud and

confident nation. Yankee strength,

knowhow, and vast natural resources defeated

fierce enemies and overcame great hardships

abroad. It was widely believed that problems at

home—clearing slums or building modern highways—could be faced with the same determination

and skill that crushed foreign tyranny and restored

peace to the world. The country was not particularly hospitable to those who cherished the past—

particularly those defending old buildings that

otherwise stood in the way of “progress.” Similarly,

the intellectual struggle over architectural style

and taste was waged by a small clique of traditionminded preservationists against the more dynamic

proponents of modern concrete, steel, and glass

structures. Reminders of the old world and its velvet-tufted aristocracy were typically shunned,

while the “international style” was the rage among

the design intelligentsia. Not surprisingly, these

multiple and overlapping conflicts in architecture,

history, and taste had a significant influence on the

continuing development of the Capitol and its surrounding campus following the second World War.

Upon the death of Franklin Roosevelt on April

12, 1945, Harry S Truman became president. He

inherited a presidency that had been strengthened

and expanded through Roosevelt’s management of

New Deal programs and the massive war effort.

Powerful executive departments grew at a brisk

rate under Roosevelt while the Congress limped

along with an archaic and inefficient committee

system manned by a small and largely nonprofessional staff. Following the war, the public generally

viewed Congress as unhelpful to the president.

Robert La Follette, a progressive Republican senator from Wisconsin, led a bipartisan effort to

streamline and professionalize the committee system and, thereby, reassert Congress’ role in government. By the provisions of the Legislative

Reorganization Act of 1946, the number of standing committees was reduced from forty-eight to

nineteen in the House and from thirty-three to

fifteen in the Senate. However, expanding responsibility for a growing and more complex government and Congress’ emerging oversight role called

for a substantial increase in staff. The number of

people working for congressional committees actually doubled in the decade following the adoption

of the act. A new emphasis on the efficiency of the

work of committees, aided by a new class of professional staff, resulted in a need for more hearing

rooms and staff space in the Capitol and the legislative office buildings. Like the country it served,

CHAPTER TWELVE

Aerial View of the Capitol, Looking West

1996
418 History of the United States Capitol

Congress was experiencing a period of rapid postwar growth.

In 1948, the Senate Office Building Commission acquired half a city square immediately east of

the 1909 office building. Dormant since the First

Street wing was finished in 1933, the commission

acted in response to the Senate’s need for office

space tailored to its new committee structure. The

site was selected partly due to its convenient location and partly to rid the neighborhood of substandard housing. In announcing the plan to acquire

the site, The Washington Post published a photograph of the neighborhood under the banner: “Senate Office to Replace This Slum.” 1 Speaking for the

commission, David Lynn asked the attorney general to condemn the properties, including 148 tiny

dwelling units in “Schott’s Alley,” along with various rooming houses and residences collectively

known as “Slum’s Row.” Congress appropriated

$1.1 million to acquire and clear the site in preparation for the Senate’s second office building. About

500 residents were left to find housing elsewhere.

With the demise of the trusty Carrère & Hastings firm, the commission was obliged to interview

architects for the job of designing the new office

building. Although matters of style were left to the

design professionals, the commission expressed a

desire for a building that would look at home among

the classical structures on Capitol Hill, without

necessarily replicating the expensive and (to some

eyes) archaic detail of a full-blown classical design.

A synthesis of modern and antique would do.

The facilities needed in the new physical structure were dictated by the Senate’s new committee

structure. The building was expected to house all

fifteen standing committees, and their various subcommittees, with office suites for chairmen located

nearby. Staff would be accommodated near the

chairmen and the committee rooms. Most important, the committee rooms would be set up not

with a central conference table but with a rostrum

where senators would face witness tables and the

public. That arrangement would be more conducive

for holding informational and investigative hearings. A large auditorium equipped with radio, television, motion picture, recording, and broadcasting

facilities was also needed, along with a cafeteria, a

stationery room, a barber shop and beauty salon, a

mail room, and underground parking.

On April 30, 1948, after interviewing five architectural establishments, the Senate Office Building

Commission directed Lynn to hire the New York

firm of Eggers & Higgins to prepare the preliminary plans and estimates for the new building. An

initial fee of $14,500 was set aside for this phase of

work. Otto Eggers and Daniel Paul Higgins had

worked in the office of John Russell Pope, one of

America’s great classical architects, and carried on

with his practice following the master’s death in

1937. Pope’s designs for the National Archives, the

Jefferson Memorial, and the National Gallery of

Art, built in the 1930s and 1940s, already adorned

the federal city. Against the trends of the day,

Eggers & Higgins continued to work in the classical

idiom and were considered to be among the few

firms able to blend a modern office building into

the design context of Capitol Hill.

On June 8, 1948, only six weeks after the

Eggers & Higgins firm was hired, the Senate Office

Building Commission was shown a design for a

seven-story “E”-shaped building with its principal

elevation (about 450 feet long) on First Street

backed by three rear wings. The building was a

simple structure dominated by a central pavilion

on First Street with square engaged columns

capped by a plain entablature. (A pediment was

Original Design for the Second Senate Office Building

by Eggers & Higgins, 1948

The entrance into the office building appeared to be located in the center of the

main elevation, yet the doors were actually located around the corners. Despite this

deception, the design of the Senate’s second office building (now called the Dirksen

Building) is a successful synthesis of classical and contemporary design.
Views of History 419

added later.) By its location and design the central pavilion seemed to indicate the main entrance

to the building, but the promise was a sham. There

was in fact no room to spare behind the portico

for a grand entrance so side entrances on Constitution Avenue and C Street north were the main

ways into the building. The suggestion of a colonnade was created by tall ribbons of glass and dark

spandrel panels alternating between white marble

piers. Cast into the panels were commemorations

of American shipping, farming, manufacturing,

mining, and lumbering. Unfurnished, the cost of

the building and its underground connections and

subway was first estimated at about twenty million dollars. The design was approved without

debate and Lynn was instructed to meet with the

legislative counsel of the Senate to draft the necessary authorization to build the second Senate

office building, as well as to secure $850,000 to

begin work. The legislation was approved on June

9, and two weeks later the money was granted. In

two months, schematic designs had been developed and approved, and funding started—yet the

hopes raised by this auspicious beginning soon

turned sour.

Eggers & Higgins signed a contract with Lynn

to provide architectural services for 51

⁄2 percent of

construction cost. Final plans were approved on

April 7, 1949, and construction documents were

sent out for bids. Ten million dollars was requested

to start work, but despite the support of Dennis

Chavez of New Mexico, chairman of the Senate

Office Building Commission, it was defeated at the

hands of Senator Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana,

chairman of the Legislative Appropriations Subcommittee. The project was sent back to the drawing board to trim costs. Lynn was directed to

survey the Senate’s existing facilities to see if a

more economical solution to the space problem

could be identified. The possibility of adding a new

floor to the existing office building was investigated but rejected due to the cost of relocating air

conditioning equipment in the attic. Space in the

proposed east front extension of the Capitol was

also found to be insufficient. Various studies were

made that eliminated or lowered the three rear

wings of the new building. When debate resumed

in July 1950, senators in favor of the new office

building declared that the project would have to

wait until settlement of the Korean conflict that

had begun in June. For the next four years, action

on the second Senate office building was deferred.

A NEW ARCHITECT

W ith expansion plans in limbo, internal security investigations and spy

scandals kept the political climate

on Capitol Hill charged with paranoia and fear. In

1950, the suspected spy Alger Hiss was convicted

of perjury, and the following year Ethel and Julius

Rosenburg were convicted of passing atomic

secrets to the Soviet Union. Also in 1950, Senator

Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, claiming that hundreds of communists worked in the State Department, launched his investigations to root out

traitors. McCarthy held his hearings in the elegant and versatile caucus room in the Senate

office building under the hot lights brought in for

television cameras. Building on hearsay and innuendo, McCarthy’s fanatical investigations continued into the early days of Dwight Eisenhower’s

administration, ending only when the Senate

could bear the charade no longer. In 1954,

McCarthy was censured for bringing that body

into “dishonor and disrepute.”

As McCarthy stumbled into disgrace, David

Lynn, one of Congress’ most honest, trustworthy,

and respected servants, retired from office. His

resignation was written on August 5, 1954, and

effective on September 30. His letter to Eisenhower, reviewing thirty-one years as architect of

the Capitol, emphasized the buildings constructed

and the vast sums of money expended under his

supervision. At age eighty-one, he felt it was time

to relinquish the post and retire from public service. Newspapers acknowledged Lynn’s retirement

with stories of his fidelity to the job, his longevity,

and, most particularly, the changing face of Capitol

Hill that took place during his long years in office.

A few days before Lynn resigned, the Speaker

of the House, Joe Martin of Massachusetts, wrote

Eisenhower recommending a replacement. Martin

suggested an old friend who had served with him

in the 74th Congress, a Republican from Delaware

named J. George Stewart. The Speaker’s petition

was cosigned by all of the Republican hierarchy in
420 History of the United States Capitol

Congress, including the president pro tempore of

the Senate, Styles Bridges of New Hampshire, and

the Republican leader of the House, Charles Halleck of Indiana. Martin’s efforts were quickly

rewarded, precluding the American Institute of

Architects or any other interested party from

becoming involved in the process of recommending Lynn’s replacement. On August 10, newspapers

announced that Stewart would become the next

architect of the Capitol. He was appointed on

August 16, 1954, and, with Lynn looking on, took

the oath in the Speaker’s office on August 19, 1954.

His service began on October 1.

Nearly twenty years earlier, as one of the victims of Roosevelt’s landslide reelection victory of

1936, Stewart had been swept out of office after

one term as Delaware’s lone representative in the

House. After his defeat, he returned to Wilmington

to run the family’s construction business and

helped to build some of the area’s great estates.

After selling the business, Stewart returned to

Washington to serve as the chief clerk of the 

Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, and 

he later worked as a civil engineer for the Justice

Department and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Gregarious and well liked, Stewart was equally

comfortable in the company of Democrats and

Republicans, and his status as a former congressman afforded him access and courtesies reserved

for members. But because he had not come up

through the ranks like Woods and Lynn, or been

trained as an architect like Walter or Clark, 

Stewart’s qualifications for the office soon came

into question.

Stewart took the reins at the beginning of a

period of great construction activity on the Hill.

While plans were afoot to construct a third office

building for the House of Representatives, and

while the east front extension project simmered

on the back burner as usual, the first project Stewart became involved with was the new Senate

office building. (The armistice ending the Korean

conflict had been signed in July 1953.) In July

1954, the Senate Office Building Commission

issued a report urging Congress to fund the work,

noting that every possible economy had been

taken to assure a fine product at a reasonable cost.

The center rear wing was eliminated to save

money, as were a page school, a suite for the vice

president, and thirty-five parking spaces. Twelve

committees, instead of the previously planned

fifteen, would be accommodated in the new building. A simple exercise room replaced plans for a

gymnasium. On August 26, 1954, Congress appropriated six million dollars to begin construction.

Groundbreaking ceremonies were held on January

26, 1955, and the cornerstone was laid on July 13,

1956. The building was finished in October 1958 at

a final cost of $26.3 million.

THE EAST FRONT

EXTENSION

W hile investigating ways to provide

more and better-equipped hearing

rooms, the Senate Office Building

Commission looked again at the accommodation

provided in the proposed east front extension.

Only one committee room and twenty-six offices

were on the drawing board in the Senate’s half—

not enough to solve the problem. The idea of building a new addition to the east front had been

originated by Thomas U. Walter in 1863 as a means

to correct the impression that the dome was not

adequately supported. Since then others had come

to see the project as a good way to add more rooms

to the Capitol, while covering the flaking sandstone

wall with a new marble facade.

People who disagreed with the proposal cited

the history of the east front as reason enough to

preserve it. Since Andrew Jackson’s first inauguration in 1829, most presidential swearing in ceremonies had taken place on the central portico.

Some inaugural speeches were considered defining

moments in American history, including Abraham

Lincoln’s eloquent words of reconciliation near the

close of the Civil War and Franklin Roosevelt’s

buoyant message of assurance during the depths of

the Great Depression. The Capitol’s central portico

was revered as one of America’s greatest historic

places. The condition of the sandstone and the

overhanging dome did not bother history-minded

observers, who considered these quirks as harmless or even charming. They wanted the Capitol

maintained just as it was, and they could become

quite vocal in calls for its preservation.
Views of History 421

By 1955, many members of the House and Senate were well acquainted with the reasons behind

the proposal to extend the east front. Almost every

year, the architect of the Capitol reviewed the conditions there, asking for the authority and money

to build the addition. The dome that bore down on

the east-central portico and the crumbling sandstone were two architectural reasons given year

after year in support of the project. A quieter mention of additional rooms whetted the appetites of

senior legislators who stood to gain a Capitol office

if the project were authorized. The basis of discussion was usually Carrère & Hastings’ scheme “B,”

devised in 1904, which would create an addition

thirty-two and a half feet deep that approximated

the existing facade but did not replicate it.

Joe Cannon almost succeeded in his attempt

to authorize the extension in 1903. In 1935 and

1937 the Senate approved legislation, but the

House disagreed. World War II and the Korean

conflict deferred the project until the return of

peace. During this period the architect of the Capitol made sure that the east front project was not

forgotten. At the beginning of 1955, a new Democratic Congress was seated and a veteran Speaker

returned to preside over the House. Sam Rayburn

soon gave the east front project the push it needed

to proceed. He agreed wholeheartedly with the

arguments supporting the project and thought that

too much time had been spent in discussion when

it was clear something needed to be done soon.

What Joe Cannon could not accomplish a half-century earlier, Sam Rayburn did within a few weeks

after returning to the Speaker’s chair in 1955.

In June 1955 Stewart gave the House Appropriations Committee an account of the proposed

project, including arguments for and against. No

one who disagreed with the project was invited to

the hearings, and there was little interest within

Rayburn’s circle of friends for further discussion.

After ninety-two years, every argument that could

be made on either side of the issue had been made,

again and again. With the help of the Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas (critics

began calling the new addition the “Texas Front”),

Rayburn secured an appropriation of five million

dollars to “provide for the extension, reconstruction, and replacement of the Central Portion of the

United States Capitol in substantial accordance

with Scheme ‘B’” by Carrère & Hastings.2 A new

commission was authorized to oversee the work,

including the leadership of both houses of Congress and the architect of the Capitol. Rayburn was

named chairman and Stewart was elected secretary. The public was neither invited to participate

in the decision nor even informed that the extension was so close to authorization. To some, it

seemed that Rayburn slipped the legislation

through as quietly as possible—more than a few

called it “sneaky.”

On August 5, 1955, Stewart was authorized to

spend $50,000 for preliminary engineering studies

to determine site soil conditions and the condition

of the Capitol’s foundations. The first meeting of

the Commission for the Extension of the Capitol

was held on March 26, 1956, with only Vice 

President Richard Nixon absent. Stewart

announced that the legislation under which the

commission operated authorized the enlargement

of the central building and, therefore, did not preclude other things such as an extension to the west

Speaker 

Sam Rayburn

(wearing a hat)

and J. George

Stewart

The development of

Capitol Hill was profoundly influenced by

Rayburn (1882–1961). 

He singlehandedly

revived the proposal to

extend the Capitol’s east

front and spearheaded

the creation of the third

House office building,

which would eventually

bear his name. He worked

to provide better parking,

restaurants, and other

creature comforts for visitors and representatives

alike. Throughout, he

found a loyal lieutenant

in the person of George

Stewart (1890–1970), the

architect of the Capitol.

(1960 photograph.)
422 History of the United States Capitol

front, an underground garage, or a “security vault”

(bomb shelter) under the west grounds. These

facilities had not been openly discussed but were

items on an informal “wish list” worked up by Rayburn and Stewart.

The work of the commission required the assistance of several architectural and engineering firms.

Stewart brought with him the names and resumes

of four associate architects, two associate engineers, and three advisory architects. Heading the

list were Roscoe DeWitt and his partner Fred L.

Hardison of Dallas, architects better known for their

hospitals, office buildings, and banks in Texas.

Alfred Poor and his partner Albert Swanke of New

York City were recommended as associate architects. Jesse M. Shelton and Allen G. Stanford from

Atlanta were proposed as the associate engineers.

To fill seats on an advisory board Stewart recommended Arthur Brown of San Francisco, John

Harbeson of Philadelphia, and Henry Shepley of

Boston. Only Harbeson had a prior association with

the Capitol, having served in 1949–1950 as an associate architect on the project to rebuild the House

and Senate chambers. With his partners, he was

also engaged in developing a design for a third

office building for the House of Representatives.

DeWitt and Hardison had recently been retained to

remodel the old House office building, while Poor

and Swanke were preparing documents for a similar project for the new House office building. Shelton and Stanford were developing plans for a pair

of underground garages to be located behind the

House office buildings. The Texas architects had

been associated with Rayburn, although the extent

of their association is difficult to determine. Roscoe

DeWitt, for instance, designed the Sam Rayburn

Library in Bonham, Texas, without charge. All the

architects were endorsed by the Commission of

Fine Arts and according to Stewart were outstanding members of their professions. The commission

unanimously approved the recommendations,

launching the associate and advisory architects and

engineers on an intensive study dealing with the

Capitol’s expansion possibilities.3 Once confirmed,

the architects from Dallas and New York City joined

the engineers from Atlanta in a business venture

known as DeWitt, Poor & Shelton.

The consulting architects proved to be an

imaginative group. With Rayburn and Stewart’s

encouragement, they thought about enlarging the

Capitol in ways never before (or since) contemplated. Ideas that were put forward included building three stories of underground offices beneath

the Olmsted terraces, building sets of wings on the

Walter extension in every available direction,

adding to the center building both above and below

ground, and building a bomb shelter with living

and working space for 800 people. One proposal to

improve the architectural effect of the Capitol suggested removing the east porticoes from Walter’s

wings to make way for additions. Thus, the central

entrance would stand alone without flanking porticoes competing for attention.4

While the brainstorming sessions were going

on behind closed doors, the American Institute of

Speaker Rayburn’s Working Office

Sam Rayburn referred to his private office (modern day H–128) as the “Board of

Education,” for it was there that new House members learned their lessons about getting along and going along. On April 12, 1945, Vice President Harry Truman was visiting Rayburn in this room when a phone call from the White House asked him to come

quickly. Truman had no idea that Franklin Roosevelt was dead and he was about to

become the nation’s 33rd president.

In 1857 the room was specially decorated for its original occupant, the House

Committee on Territories. (1959 photograph.)
Views of History 423

Architects became alarmed at the prospects of

drastic alterations being made to the nation’s most

revered building. The Committee on the National

Capitol was formed by members of the AIA along

with other preservationists to oppose the east

front project. It became a vocal critic of the

Speaker, the architect of the Capitol, and the associate architects (who, awkwardly enough, were all

members of the AIA). On June 12, 1956, Edmund

R. Purves, the executive director of the AIA,

appeared as a witness before the Senate Committee on Appropriations. He spoke against further

funding for the extension, citing a report prepared

by the Committee on the National Capitol, but he

could not be specific because the report was

confidential. Reluctantly, he confessed that he

supported the plans to extend the Capitol, but

because the AIA was opposed he was obliged to

testify against it. This ambivalence so annoyed

Senator Bridges of New Hampshire that he suggested Purves apologize to the committee and

leave.5 Meanwhile, the Dallas and Fort Worth chapters of the AIA refused to endorse the institute’s

position. The Dallas chapter’s secretary transmitted a joint resolution to the Washington headquarters stating its belief that the project was in

“trustworthy hands.” 6

On May 23, 1957, the associate architects

issued a report with their recommendation regarding the enlargement of the Capitol. The architects

took the position that the current generation had

every right to add to the Capitol to meet the needs

of Congress, as Walter’s generation had done in

the past. As long as the nation grew, it was only

natural that the Capitol should grow along with it.

Nothing was considered sacred, except that the

Capitol should function efficiently. According to

their calculations, the Capitol needed about 90,000

more square feet to accommodate an anticipated

growth from 2,848 occupants (including visitors)

per day to 3,174 occupants. It recommended

spending $10.1 million on an east front extension

and included an entirely new idea: rather than

using the design developed by Carrère & Hastings

in 1904, the original elevation was to be replicated

exactly in marble. It was hoped that this “archaeological reproduction” would satisfy those who did

not want the Capitol’s appearance altered.

Continuing their extensive list of proposed

improvements, the associate architects recommended a vast west front extension necessitating

demolition and reconstruction of the Olmsted terraces at a cost of more than nineteen million dollars, a four-level parking garage for 1,800 cars

costing almost forty-two million dollars, new

pedestrian tunnels to the Library of Congress and

Supreme Court estimated at $960,000, and four

million dollars for new subway terminals for the

Capitol and the legislative office buildings. On the

bottom line, the architects totaled some seventyfive million dollars. This figure did not include cost

of the bomb shelter, which was considered

classified information.7

When he transmitted the architects’ report to

the commission, Stewart added a few items of his

own. He wanted the Capitol’s foundations underpinned, the dome repaired, the landscape

improved, and the electrical service and lighting

upgraded. Stewart estimated $110 million would

be needed for all contemplated improvements. In

addition, the advisory architects came up with

their own recommendations, including restoration

of the old Supreme Court chamber on the first

floor and improvements to other “Shrine features.”

They wanted to ban automobiles from the east

plaza and add dining facilities to the terrace to

take advantage of the views.8

“DELIBERATE

DESECRATION”

The full effect of the sweeping recommendations was not felt immediately.

To some in Congress, Rayburn, Stewart, and the architects had overstepped their

bounds and misinterpreted their legislative mandate. The American Institute of Architects began

agitating for public hearings and the press started

to question the matter as well. While Rayburn and

the architect of the Capitol had encouraged their

associates to “think big,” they were now obliged to

chart a more modest course to calm the protests.

Rayburn took the view that the package of

improvements should be treated as a long-range

plan for the Capitol. Only the east front extension,
424 History of the United States Capitol

dome repair, lighting improvements, and new Senate subway terminal would be pursued for the time

being. On January 22, 1958, Stewart gave the associate architects oral instructions to proceed with

the working drawings for the extension based on

the “archaeological reproduction” design concept.

Along with plans and specifications, the associate architects drafted rebuttals to the increasingly

vigorous opposition heard from historical societies

and patriotic groups. The troublemakers were, in

the opinion of the architects, too sentimental and

not sufficiently informed about the problems facing

the Capitol. They thought that the cry of “desecration” was nothing more than a “catchy phrase”

shouted by overexcited agitators. They wanted the

commission to prepare a sound and irrefutable

defense.9 It would come in handy during the public

hearing on the east front matter that was scheduled for February in response to legislation introduced by Senators Alexander Smith of New Jersey

and Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania to revoke the

project’s authorization. The hearings were the first

(and only) time the east front question was discussed before a congressional committee during

this period.

The day before the hearings were held, The

New York Times’s highly regarded architecture

critic, Ada Louise Huxtable, wrote a scathing article condemning the east front extension. She called

on people to wake up to America’s architectural

heritage, which she claimed was threatened by the

proposed addition. The “deliberate desecration”

was too high a price to pay for a few more committee rooms and a few more restaurants. Filling up

the Capitol’s forecourt with the new addition was

also a grave aesthetic mistake. She criticized Stewart by noting that the architect of the Capitol was

not an architect and condemned the secrecy

shrouding the project. After questioning the

motives of the various architects and politicians

who supported the extension, Huxtable observed:

“Since one of our fundamental freedoms seems to

be freedom of taste (in the democratic tradition,

the layman’s is equal to the expert’s) Congressmen

are perhaps no less guilty than many of us in exercising unqualified expertise in matters of art.” 10 On

its editorial page, The New York Times joined the

opposition with a strongly worded opinion. Under

the banner “Capitol Folly,” the paper wrote that

“architectural vandals” plotting at the Capitol were

nothing more than self-centered men bent on putting “the impress of their incompetence” on the

most important building in the land. It did not

begrudge Congress the space needed to do its

work, noting that the Senate’s second office building was almost finished and the third office building for the House was under way. But it argued

that the historic east facade of the Capitol, “the

product of Thornton, Latrobe, & Bulfinch ought to

be left alone.” 11

On February 17, 1958, the Public Buildings

Subcommittee of the Senate Public Works Committee held a full day of hearings on legislation to end

the east front project. Senator Smith read a joint

statement signed by three colleagues warning of

the great mistake that was about to take place, a

mistake “for which we are all responsible.” He hoped

the hearings would explore ways to relieve the

space shortage without resorting to the “drastic

alteration to the historic east front of the Capitol.” 12

George Stewart testified that the preservation

of the old sandstone walls was not feasible. The

legacy of Thornton, Latrobe, and Bulfinch was, in

fact, encrusted beneath thirty-five layers of dirty

paint that hid the evidence of their design skills.

Falling stone was a danger to the public, and the

necessary patching further eroded the authenticity of the facade. To answer the charge of “desecration,” Stewart presented his own definition of

the term:

Decade after decade, century after century,

down the vista of years beyond man’s imaginative vision, the painting continues. Whereas

there are now 35 coats of paint, a hundred years

from now there would be 60, in another 

century 85—a staggering prospect. Already

peeling and cracking, already obscuring the

fine detail, there would only be a trace. Such a

treatment of a fine old building can only be

called desecration.13

A discussion followed about the Speaker’s handling of the business of the commission, the lack of

meetings, and the absence of open debate. It

seemed that Rayburn ran the commission with an

iron fist, not allowing other members to participate.

A copy of a note written by Joe Martin was read

into the record indicating that the minority leader

of the House did not recall ever voting for the east

front extension during commission meetings. Julian

Berla from the AIA spoke at length about the need

for Congress to create more working space, 
Views of History 425

suggesting that perhaps Stewart should give up his

Capitol office. Berla also hinted at the possibility

that the architect of the Capitol might be willfully

neglecting maintenance of the outside walls in

order to promote the extension project. Dr. Richard

Howland, the president of the National Trust for

Historic Preservation, sent a statement condemning the east front extension as an “ill-advised alteration . . . in the guise of necessary repairs.” He

understood that the Capitol was a working building

but hoped that “present needs and the heritage of

the past can be so reconciled that future generations will receive from us at least this small part of

our legacy.”

The president of the AIA diplomatically

praised the architect of the Capitol as well as the

associate architects, but condemned the legislation that led them astray. Another witness, 

Douglas Haskell, editor of Architectural Forum,

noted that his magazine as well as Look opposed

the extension. He thought the project cost was

indefensible: it was a waste of money to tear one

wall down to build another to gain a “thin sandwich of space.” He did not believe the stories about

falling stone posing a threat to the safety of the

public or legislators:

Mr. Chairman, to listen to gossip around the

city of Washington, you would think that the

present east front was showering everyone

with meteors of falling stone. We have heard

described some entirely fictitious stones weighing as much as 60 pounds which casually fell

off as if a dog were shaking off water. Mr. Chairman, if this condition were indeed a fact, it

would cast grave doubt on the competence and

integrity and even the mother-wit of the Architect of the Capitol, who is charged with maintaining our public buildings and should long

ago have prevented such stone shower baths

by prudent patching.14

The docket was full of other people anxious to

help put a stop to the east front project. Letters

were introduced from the historical societies of

Vermont and the District of Columbia, the state

museum of Florida, the Society of Architectural

Historians, and the American Veterans Committee.

All agreed that the Capitol’s east front was a historic treasure not to be meddled with after so many

years as witness to the nation’s history.

What no one who spoke that day noted was

that a fundamental change was occurring in the

perception of the nation’s Capitol. Until quite

recently, the building had been considered susceptible to improvement, capable of enlargement and

modernization to keep pace with the needs of the

legislative branch of government. Now voices were

heard opposing change. For the first time in the

history of the Capitol, the swell of a grass-roots

preservation movement could be felt by those who

ran the place. In years past, a handful of committee

members discussed what course the Capitol should

take, what should be done to make it better.

Speeches were made in the House and Senate to

debate the wisdom and cost of proposed changes,

but the public’s participation in the discussion had

been largely reactive. Now, the public was trying to

involve itself at an early stage of discussion, bringing a sense of history to the debate. With so much

of the nation’s past being swept away by highway

construction and urban renewal, preservation of

the Capitol’s east front seemed a matter of great

Condition of Exterior Sandstone

1958

By the mid-twentieth century the Capitol’s exterior

sandstone was in places worn, cracked, and encrusted

with paint. A particularly graphic example of deteriorated stonework is shown here.
426 History of the United States Capitol

importance. Historic preservation had become a

growing force in the Capitol’s destiny.

Sam Rayburn, however, was not deterred. He

considered the project good for the Capitol, good

for the House of Representatives, and good for the

American people. Four days after the Senate hearings he convened the commission and told Stewart

to proceed. Repairs to the dome, a new Senate subway terminal, and improvements to the electrical

and lighting systems were also authorized. (For

the time being no further plans would be pursued

on the west front extension, bomb shelter, terrace

reconstruction, underground garage, or landscape

improvements.) Stewart was authorized to enter

into contracts as soon as possible so that the extension would be finished before the next inaugural

ceremony on January 20, 1961. Samples of 

Vermont Imperial Danby marble and White Georgia

Golden Vein marble were presented by Stewart to

the commission, which responded by leaving the

decision up to him. The Georgia Marble Company

later withdrew its Golden Vein sample because

there was not enough available for the project and

requested that Georgia Special White be considered instead.

Stewart asked the advisory architects for ideas

about the disposition of materials to be removed

from the Capitol to prepare for the new work. They

replied that pieces of the columns, stairs, entablature, and balustrade coming off could be stored or,

as Harbeson suggested, reconstructed into a

national museum. What to do with the sculptural

decorations was also open for discussion. The statuary groups on the two cheek blocks, Discovery of

America by Luigi Persico and Rescue by Horatio

Greenough, were, in the opinion of the advisory

architects, not worth reusing. The Greenough

group was considered particularly offensive to

American Indians and was thought best consigned

to a museum. With these sculptures out of the way,

there would be an opportunity to commission new

statuary groups as a show of more sophisticated

contemporary taste. Other worn pieces of sculpture, such as the two figures of War and Peace by

Persico and Antonio Capellano’s Fame and Peace

Crowning Washington, would be reproduced

under the supervision of a trustworthy sculptor.

During the spring of 1958, arguments over the

wisdom of going ahead with the project showed up

again in the nation’s newspapers. Although the

committee hearing was over, the full Senate had

not yet voted on the proposal to shelve the project.

Writers pro and con kept the editorial pages filled

with all the old arguments. A series of well-balanced articles by George Beveridge began to

appear in The Washington Star on March 23, 1958,

fairly presenting the justifications to extend or

restore. The first was titled “East Front Architects

Blast Foes As Unethical,” followed by “Architects

Differ Widely on East Front Extension—Views

Range From Vandalism of Shrine to Improvement

of Historic Values.” Next came an article under the

short rhetorical headline “Sense or Sentiment?”

Editorially, The Washington Star eventually concluded that the east front project had been victimized by the “sinister accusations and half-truths of

the whipped up ‘Write Your Congressman campaign’” and should proceed immediately without

“further dillydallying.” 15

On May 18, 1958, news of an important change

of heart was reported in Washington’s Sunday

Star. The executive committee of the local AIA

chapter had passed a resolution supporting the

east front project. Members of the committee noted

that the plans were “basically sound, esthetically

pleasing, and in harmony with the design of the

present Capitol.” 16 Editorially, the Sunday Star

thought that the reconsideration was wise and

asked the architectural profession in general to

take another look at the east front question. Too

much passion and not enough hard facts had colored the debate, and it urged the profession to

decide the matter “based on knowledge—not emotion.” On June 13 The Evening Star reported that

the Metropolitan (Washington) Chapter of the AIA

voted to withdraw its opposition to the project. It

was, according to the paper, a “knockdown, drag

out session” lasting four hours. Richard Howland of

the National Trust for Historic Preservation and

one of the project architects, Albert Swanke, were

among those who presented opposing arguments

before the chapter that evening.17

On May 27, Rayburn went to the National Press

Club to defend himself against charges being made

regarding his handling of the project. Accusations

that the Speaker thought he “owned” the Capitol,

and that he was a dictator, were charges that surprised him. One by one Rayburn went down the

list of problems with the east front: the thick paint

obscuring carved details, falling stones that might
Views of History 427

bop a president elect on the head as he stepped

forward to be sworn in, cracks patched with

cement, and the dome overhanging the portico.

The materials could not be saved, but the design

could be, if faithfully replicated in a durable material like marble. On another issue, Rayburn pleaded

innocent to the charge of trying to pull a fast one.

After all, he argued, generation after generation

starting with Thomas U. Walter had advocated the

project. He summed up changes made by Latrobe

and additions made by Walter to illustrate the point

that the Capitol had always been the subject of

alteration and expansion.

The Speaker then took questions from the audience. A reporter wanted to know why so many

architects had opposed the east front extension.

Rayburn replied that of the thousands of members

of the AIA, only a few had ever seen the Capitol up

close; those who had, had approved the project.

The recent action taken by the Washington chapter

reversing its position proved the point. Would he

consent for the House and Senate to vote on the

issue again? Rayburn argued that Congress voted

on the issue twice in the 1930s and again in 1955

and he did not see any use of “chewing over that

old cud again.” Questions continued and Rayburn

cheerfully kept up his spirited defense. It was his

first appearance before the Press Club in twentyone years, a performance characterized as “lively”

and “impassioned.” No one doubted that Rayburn

was determined to see the project through.18

The Washington Post was not swayed by the

Speaker’s performance and thought that he should

let the question be voted on again. It did not believe

that the east front was crumbling, or that Congress

absolutely had to have more space in the Capitol.

But even if those assertions were true, why did the

Speaker and his “staunch ally”—the architect of

the Capitol—oppose a fair and open hearing before

Congress and let the facts speak for themselves?

The paper concluded gravely: “We fear that Architect Rayburn made Parliamentarian Rayburn a

trifle arrogant in dogmatically insisting that any

reconsideration was out of order.” 19

In July 1958, the American Institute of Architects held its annual convention in Cleveland and

considered a proposal to reaffirm its traditional

stand against the east front extension. One of the

leading critics, Julian Berla, addressed the assembly about the “hydra-headed issue that will not

stay dead.” He blamed Stewart for not allowing the

project to wither on the vine, and urged the institute to uphold its position in favor of retaining the

old facade. His stand was supported by Ralph

Walker of the New York chapter and Turpin Bannister, the dean of the University of Florida’s school

of architecture. One of the few voices raised against

the current policy was that of Amos Emery of the

Iowa chapter. He claimed that architects did not

have the exclusive right to determine what was

best for the Capitol and that the institute was just

saving face by refusing to reconsider its position.

He warned his fellow architects that “consistency

is the hobgoblin of little minds, little statesmen, little creatures, and little men.” 20

The delegate from Iowa notwithstanding, the

convention voted to reaffirm its opposition to the

extension. In a few weeks, Fred Schwengel, a

Republican representative from the Hawkeye State,

gave a speech in the House condemning what he

saw as the AIA’s personal attacks on the Speaker.

He demanded an apology for its “gross misunderstanding” of Rayburn’s role in the extension and

for calling him an “historic barbarian.” As a member of Congress, Schwengel did not appreciate

being called an “arrogant politician” just because

he supported the Speaker, nor did he think the

charges of “vandalism,” “mutilation,” and “destruction” were accurate or fair. He spoke of the honorable intentions of those involved in the project and

again demanded that the AIA apologize to the

Speaker.21

THE FOURTH

CORNERSTONE

The AIA never apologized and Rayburn

never budged. On August 14, 1958,

the full Senate rejected Senator

Smith’s bill to send the project back for further

study. Advocates of historic preservation may have

been shaken by this defeat, but they soon learned

to be more vigilant. It was nearly impossible to

derail Rayburn’s plans once the first appropriation

passed. The public debate aired many issues but

ultimately could not alter the course of events. Yet

interest in the preservation of historic buildings

was growing deeper and broader every day, and
428 History of the United States Capitol

there would be ample opportunity to savor victory

in the future.

At the end of August 1958, the decision was

made to use Special Georgia White marble for the

exterior of the extension, and Stewart accepted

the offer of the Georgia Marble Company of

Atlanta to furnish and deliver it for $2,873,650. In

September, three local firms were asked to bid on

the work to remove the east central portico and

other features standing in the way of the new

extension. John McBeath & Sons was awarded

the contract on October 3, 1958, and directed 

to have demolition completed by the first week 

in April. A sculptor’s shed was built on the east

grounds, where artisans working for the Vermont

Marble Company repaired the weathered figures

of Fame and Peace Crowning George Washington, the statues of War and Peace, and the

three figures in the pediment comprising the

Genius of America. When repairs were completed, carvers made reproductions from Vermont Imperial Danby marble. Repair and

replication of exterior sculpture were supervised

by Paul Manship of New York.

Portico Removal

1958

The head of America, the central figure in Luigi 

Persico’s Genius of America, was one of the first things

removed from the east portico during its demolition.

Portico Removal

1958

The monolithic column shafts, which were so

difficult to quarry, transport, cut, and install in the

1820s, were removed with ease in the 1950s.
Views of History 429

As the sandstone was removed, some was

stored at a facility operated by the National Park

Service, while other things such as the column

shafts were stored at the Capitol Power Plant. Later,

when the power plant was enlarged, the columns

were transferred to a remote nursery operated by

the U. S. Botanic Garden. Once demolition was complete, excavation was begun and workmen began

installing new underpinning under the old foundations. On June 23, 1959, Stewart’s office issued a

press release announcing that the cornerstone of

the east front extension would be laid by President

Eisenhower on the upcoming Fourth of July. A block

of red granite was ordered in the form of a threefoot cube and bearing the inscription “A. D. 1959”

on one face. The top of the stone was cut to receive

a metal box for memorabilia. The cornerstone was

quarried near Marble Falls, Texas, not far from Lyndon Johnson’s ranch.

Construction of temporary stands and platforms began a week before the ceremony. There

were none of the parades or barbecues that marked

previous ceremonies, but Eisenhower, like Washington and Fillmore before him, came to the Capitol to personally lay the stone. An estimated 3,000

people were at the Capitol on July 4, 1959, to hear

Rayburn introduce the president, who, in turn,

made a short speech. Descending into a deep pit,

Eisenhower spread cement on a foundation slab

using the same trowel Washington wielded at the

Capitol in 1793. As he leaned down to dip up the

mortar, the president noted the small size 

of the tool and observed, “You can’t get much mortar on this trowel!” A crane lowered the stone 

into place. With his hand on the cornerstone, Eisenhower tapped it lightly with the gavel that Washington had used in 1793. The president left as soon

as the rites had been completed.

On July 17, 1959, the copper box containing

memorabilia of the ceremony was removed from its

niche in the cornerstone. It contained sealed messages from members of Congress, telephone books,

a signed copy of the president’s speech, and a

Portico Removal

1958

The lower half of a Corinthian capital was 

taken away while workmen disassembled another in 

the foreground.

East Front

Columns at the

National

Arboretum

Friends of the

National Arboretum proposed reusing the

columns from the east

portico in a new setting

at the arboretum located

in northeast Washington.

The noted landscape

architect Russell Page

provided the plan. After

years of work and fund

raising, permission was

granted in 1984 to transfer custody of the

columns to the Department of Agriculture.

Four years later the

columns were re-erected

along a nearly square

plan in front of a water

stair and reflecting pool.

(1991 photograph.)
430 History of the United States Capitol

replica of the Bible on which Washington took his

first presidential oath. A tape recording and a movie

of the ceremony were added. The box was then

treated by scientists at the National Bureau of Standards, who replaced the interior air with helium

containing a small amount of moisture. The box

was then hermetically sealed. (The same steps

were followed to preserve the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution at the National

Archives.) Weighing more than eighty-two pounds,

the box was returned to the cornerstone by Rayburn on September 3, 1959.

The Charles H. Tompkins Company was contracted to build the extension, a steel-frame structure with brick walls, reinforced concrete floors,

and a facing of white marble. While construction

was under way, the J. F. Fitzgerald Company of

Boston repaired the dome. By the end of 1959, 

the exterior of the dome was surrounded by a scaffold with towers, ramps, and hoisting equipment. 

East Front

Construction and

Dome Repair

1960

Stripped of white

paint, the ironwork of the

dome was primed with a

rust inhibitor.
Views of History 431

Workmen wielding special pneumatic hammers

removed paint from the iron, which was then sandblasted. Since bare iron rusts quickly, it had to be

treated with a protective coating within five hours

of paint removal.22 Corroded and cracked metal was

repaired or replaced where necessary, loose bolts

were tightened, and missing bolts were replaced.

New bronze window frames were installed in the

tholus and the interior bracing in the statue of Freedom was reinforced. Repairs were made to the

drainage system and flashing and the dome was

completely inspected and repaired, using stainless

steel wherever strength was required. Additional

lightning protection was provided, along with a

modern electronic bird control system. On the interior, Stewart hired a muralist, Allyn Cox of New

York, to restore Brumidi’s Apotheosis of George

Washington. The methods used by Cox included

scraping the fresco with nylon brushes, filling bare

spots and overpainting with pigments ground in

water. (The painting was subsequently treated by

professional conservators in 1988.) The dome repair

work was completed in the spring of 1960.23

On May 26, 1960, the first marble column shaft

was installed on the new east central portico. It

weighed about eighteen tons and was hoisted into

place by a crane as Rayburn and Stewart proudly

Dome Repair

1959

Afew sheets of nineteenth-century hammered

glass were replaced while repairs were made to the

dome. Opaque glass diffused light and thus reduced

glare and heat gain.

East Front Construction

1960

The original walls gradually disappeared as the new

addition grew higher.
432 History of the United States Capitol

looked on. Installing one column each working

day, twentieth-century builders completed the

colonnade in less than a month; the job had taken

Charles Bulfinch, George Blagden, and their men

more than two years in the 1820s. The last column hoisted was one of the eight Maryland marble columns taken down and reused from the

House and Senate connecting corridors. It was

reset on June 29, 1960.

As the exterior marble work was being finished,

it was discovered that some marble blocks were

defective. Cracks were patched in an attempt to

fool inspectors, who caught the imperfections only

after the stones had been set. Once discovered at

the end of August, the faulty stones were ordered

replaced. Luckily no other problems arose to

threaten the completion of the outside in time for

the inaugural ceremony on January 20, 1961. On

that bitterly cold, blustery day, forty-three-year-old

John F. Kennedy stood on the new portico and took

the oath of office. His inaugural address is usually

ranked with the most eloquent in the nation’s

Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives

1960

Before work began on the interior phase of the east front project, a photographic

survey was made of every room affected by the new addition. This office (modern-day

H–235) was about to lose its view of the east plaza but otherwise would remain essentially as seen here. When this photograph was taken the office was occupied by Ralph

Roberts, the clerk of the House. Today, it is part of the congresswomen’s suite named

in honor of Lindy Boggs of Louisiana.

Before the fire of 1814, the room was occupied by the Committee on Ways and

Means. From 1819 until 1857 it was the Speaker’s office. Here, on February 23, 1848,

John Quincy Adams died on the sofa seen against the wall. The ex-president was serving his ninth term in the House of Representatives when he suffered a stroke at his

desk in the nearby chamber. The bust of Adams by John Crookshanks King was

acquired by Congress in 1849 and mounted on a marble bracket near the sofa.

New Senate Reception Room

1962

This photograph was taken before carpets were laid

or paintings hung. The colonial revival paneling,

pilasters, and entablature were fashioned from walnut

by a Baltimore woodworking firm.

In 1976 the reception room was named in honor of

Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana.
Views of History 433

annals, and with it the patina of history began to

accrue on the Capitol’s new east front.

THE THIRD HOUSE

OFFICE BUILDING

In the spring of 1955, Speaker Sam

Rayburn requested $25,000 to study

the feasibility of building a third office

building for the House of Representatives. When

the legislation came before the House, Rayburn

left the chair, took the floor, and offered an amendment to replace the modest planning funds with

$2 million and any additional money “as may be

necessary” to begin construction of a new building. Republican Representative Clare E. Hoffman

of Michigan objected to funding a project that had

not yet been authorized pointing out that it was

contrary to House rules. Yet, the chairman of the

Appropriations Committee, Clarence Cannon of

Missouri, quickly accepted the amendment in light

of the urgent need for such a facility. After little

debate, the House approved Rayburn’s amendment on a voice vote. The legislation came less

than four months after ground was broken for the

second Senate office building, two months before

the east front project was approved, and only two

months after Sam Rayburn became Speaker and

chairman of the House Office Building Commission. Other members of the commission, James

Auchincloss of New Jersey and Carl Vinson of

Georgia, supported the Speaker’s plan to provide

members with three-room suites and other rooms

to accommodate the increasingly heavy load of

committee business resulting from the Legislative

Reorganization Act of 1946.

Building a large new office structure was but

one component in a complex scheme to improve

accommodations for the House outside the Capitol. Each of the two older office buildings would be

remodeled to provide three-room suites and to

improve the spaces occupied by committees and

staff. A three-level garage was planned for the

courtyard of the 1908 building, while a cafeteria

was to be built in the courtyard of the 1933 structure. The site for the new building was created by

closing a block of Delaware Avenue, S. W. and uniting the two squares immediately downhill from 

(i. e., west of) the second House office building.

Adjacent blocks south of the site were acquired

and cleared for park land, but the decision was

soon made to build underground garages there as

well. A transportation system, consisting of pedestrian tunnels connecting the new and old structures and an electric subway, was planned to link

the new office building with the Capitol. Taken

together, Rayburn’s schemes for the House office

buildings and other improvements far exceeded

any project ever before seen on Capitol Hill.

The same architects who helped design the

new House and Senate chambers, Harbeson,

Hough, Livingston & Larson of Philadelphia, were

retained by the House Office Building Commission

East Front Lobby

1962

Although the outside of the east front extension

was completed by January 1961, the interior was not

ready until eighteen months later. Here, the new 

ground floor lobby appears as completed in July 1962.

The column shafts were made of Colorado breccia while

white Vermont marble was used for the capitals.
434 History of the United States Capitol

to design the new building. As noted earlier,

Roscoe DeWitt and Fred Hardison of Dallas were

hired for the remodeling of the 1908 building, while

work in the other structure was planned by 

Albert Swanke and Albert Poor of New York City.

Underground structures were the responsibility of

Jesse Shelton and Alan G. Stanford, engineers

from Atlanta in Congressman Vinson’s home state.

All of these firms were also involved in the east

front project, which was undertaken at the same

time as the new House office building.

Work began on the site of the new office building immediately after the land and title were clear.

Soil samples and test borings were taken to help

design the building’s foundations. On May 8, 1958,

McCloskey & Company of Philadelphia was

awarded the contract (worth more than eight million dollars) for excavation and foundation work,

while two months later the Bethlehem Steel Company was given a contract (worth almost seven

million dollars) for the delivery and erection of the

building’s skeleton.24

As the highly visible site along Independence

Avenue was excavated, the press became curious

about the building destined to occupy the enormous hole. On August 13, 1959, the New York

Herald Tribune ran a story about the new House

office building under the banner “6-Block Hole in

Ground Has Washington Guessing.” 25 According to

the article, plans for the new building were “top

secret,” a charge Stewart vigorously denied. He

said the plans were under revision and would not

be made public until they were finalized. The plans

were, therefore, not “secret” but, rather, “unavailable.” The Washington Post asked its readers if

they had “Ever seen a $10 million hole?” and wrote

that “no one knew what’s going on.” On the editorial page the Post complained about Stewart’s

“Edifice Complex”:

The plans for this new edifice are still sealed

up in secret—even though $16 million has

already been spent on digging the biggest hole

in town for the foundation. The architect’s

office will concede that the four-story building

will be made of white marble and shaped like

an “H,” but not much else. The plans, Mr. Stewart’s office explains, are still not in a final form

for release, although preliminary sketches have

been on hand for a year. Will it be Gothic? Or

Byzantine? Or an H-shaped copy of Stonehenge. We mere mortal taxpayers must just

wait and see.26

Working closely with Rayburn and Stewart,

the Harbeson firm labored at the building’s design

over a four-year period. Neither the Speaker nor

the architect of the Capitol wanted to expose the

design to public scrutiny until it was finalized. On

October 16, 1959, Stewart unveiled the design and

informed the press that his office would soon solicit

bids from general contractors. From the elevation

prepared by the associate architects, it was

difficult to comprehend the scale of the new building. It would be 720 feet long and 450 feet wide,

enclosing more than a million square feet (25 percent more than the Capitol), with another 1.2 million square feet for a garage capable of parking

1,600 cars. It contained 169 congressional suites,

nine standing committee rooms, sixteen subcommittee rooms, fifty-one committee staff rooms,

twenty-four passenger elevators, four freight elevators, stationery rooms, press and television facilities, a post office, work shops, storage rooms, a

cafeteria with 750 seats, shipping and receiving

docks, two gymnasia, and a swimming pool.

A typical office suite was fifty-four feet long,

thirty-two feet wide, and divided into three rooms.

The middle room housed the reception area and

an office for the chief assistant. On one side was

the member’s private office with an adjacent toilet,

closet, and file room with a burglarproof safe. The

third room accommodated the general staff office

and was lined with built-in file cabinets. Another

storage room, coat closet, and toilet facility were

nearby. Later, after the building was occupied in

1965, some representatives complained that the

plan made it necessary for them to pass through

the public waiting area in order to confer with

staff. Without private access to the staff room,

wrote the Sunday Star:

a Congressman would have to sashay through

a waiting room exposed to the pleading eyes,

rapid tongues, and clutching hands of his constituents. To protect him, doors were cut from

private offices to staff rooms, but, symbolically

enough, you couldn’t just cut a door. Built-in

files had to be unbuilt and money had to be

thrown to the winds in great handfuls to

accomplish belatedly what the most chuckleheaded architect could have seen as necessary

from the first.27

After advertising for bids, the general construction contract was awarded on March 19, 1960,

to McCloskey & Company, the same Philadelphia
Views of History 435

firm that built the foundations. The contract was

in the amount of $50,793,000, a figure that helped

make the new House office building the most

expensive construction project yet undertaken on

Capitol Hill. McCloskey & Company’s success at

landing lucrative government contracts raised eyebrows because the owner of the firm, Matthew H.

McCloskey, was the treasurer of the Democratic

National Committee and one of its major contributors. (During the Great Depression he invented

the $100-a-plate fund-raising dinner. In 1962 President Kennedy named him the ambassador to Ireland.28) The press and politicians began

complaining about the cost of the project, comparing it with the Pentagon or the new Pan Am building in New York City. Charges of extravagance and

waste were hurled at the architect of the Capitol,

who defended the large expenditures by noting

the size and permanence of the structure and the

costly materials used to build it.

During a brief ceremony held on December

14, 1961, an American flag was run up on the last

steel column installed on the site. The “topping

out” ceremony was conducted by Republican Representative James Auchincloss, who expressed his

hope that the spirit of “Mr. Sam” would forever

inhabit the building. Only a month earlier, Rayburn, to many Americans the very personification

of the House of Representatives, had died of cancer. His intense interest in the building being built

for the comfort and convenience of the House was

well known and appreciated by the majority of his

colleagues. Few members quarreled with him over

matters concerning their accommodations, in

either the east front extension or the new office

building. “Mr. Sam” always had their best interests

in mind and they loved him for it.

On May 21, 1962, the House voted to name its

new office building after Rayburn. At the same

time, the 1908 building was named for Joseph Cannon and the 1933 structure for Nicholas Longworth. Each man honored had served as Speaker

at the time the building was authorized. Three

days after the Rayburn Building was named,

Speaker John McCormack and President Kennedy

laid its cornerstone. They spread mortar on the

half-ton marble block and, with the help of some

professional masons, guided the cornerstone into

place. During his remarks, the president recalled

that Rayburn was serving his 34th year in Congress when he, as a freshman representative from

Massachusetts, came to Washington in 1947. Having now served at both ends of Pennsylvania

Avenue, he appreciated the comity between the

legislative and executive branches of government

that Rayburn had always promoted.29

A QUESTION OF STYLE

W hen the architect of the Capitol

released plans for the Rayburn

Building in 1959, he described it

as a “simplified classic design” that would fit in

with its neighbors on Capitol Hill.30 After seeing

the rendering, the editors of The Washington Post

were relieved to find that rumors of the building

being “shaped like a wilted mushroom” were

untrue. “Judging from the sketch now in public

view,” they continued:

the third House office building looks just about

like every other office building designed under

Government auspices. This comes as something of an anticlimax after all the furtiveness

of the past. For a while, the Capitol architect

had us thinking that the House was really building a factory for H-bombs.... 31

The Post’s initial assessment of the building’s

architecture was high praise compared to the scorn

heaped on it as construction neared completion.

As its bulk became clearer and its sparse, eccentric details came into focus, critics began to use

words like “hideous” or “monstrosity” when

describing the Rayburn Building. One design critic

claimed it could only be defended militarily. Its

position on the slope of Capitol Hill, a site necessitating a towering podium in the form of a rockfaced wedge, caused others to speak chillingly of

Valhalla, the Great Wall of China, or the great ziggurat of Babylon. Masses of cold, white marble,

punctuated by long rows of square, unadorned

windows, reminded at least one wag of ice cube

trays. The Washington Post could not discern a

single style and thought it might be a hybrid of

“Middle Mussolini, Early Rameses, and Late Nieman Marcus.” 32 Even thirty years after the building

was finished, its detractors were as acerbic as ever.

In 1993, a survey of Washington architecture

included a scathing assessment of the building’s
436 History of the United States Capitol

design. After describing the city’s “most maligned

public building,” the author concluded:

The difficulties of designing in a historical style

whose time has passed by those untrained or

ill-trained in the basic principles is manifested

most obviously in the Rayburn Building by the

lack of a comprehensive human scale, the most

fundamental legacy of the classical system of

architecture.... The end result is a bombastic

architectural expression of raw, arrogant, and

uncontrolled power that dominates through

sheer size rather than coexisting amicably with

its neighbors or enhancing the art of architecture by contributing a viable new interpretation of its building type or architectural style.33

Not everyone, however, condemned the building. Paul Manship wrote George Stewart a letter

Rayburn Building

1965

The design of the Rayburn Building struggled to reconcile the practical needs of a modern office building to the architectural context of

classical Capitol Hill—compliments from the architectural community

have been few. Yet with fifty acres of floor space, views of the Capitol,

and a subway, the Rayburn Building holds some of the most highly prized

House offices.

Rayburn Building’s Finishing Touches

1964

Ancient drinking horns called “rhythons” inspired

the design of these unusual sculptural ornaments.

Committee Room in the Rayburn Building

1965

Following reforms contained in the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, committee rooms were designed to allow

members to face witnesses from a raised podium.
Views of History 437

praising the design, which the architect of the

Capitol found “reassuring.” The sculptor wrote:

May I say how much I enjoyed the architecture

of the building which impressed me by its beautifully proportioned simplicity. It is modern in

its adaptation of grand traditional forms and

style. The fenestration, the great entrances

with majestic columns and lofty ceilings add

their impressive harmony to the whole; just

but reticent detailing of ornament enhanced

the architecture. The materials, marble and

granite, are beautiful and fitting to this building in the great stately tradition.... 34

But Manship’s opinion of the building’s architectural merit was not shared by many others, and

condemning the building remains a favorite pastime among Washington’s design critics.

Representatives and their staffs began occupying the Rayburn Building at the end of February

1965. With the remodeling of the Cannon and

Longworth buildings and the land acquisitions,

underground parking garages, tunnels, subway,

furniture, and landscaping, the entire project had

cost more than $135 million. Despite unfavorable

reviews, the Rayburn Building is the most popular

House office building among members, who covet

its convenience, amenities, views, and space.

WEST FRONT

The Rayburn Building brewed a storm

of controversy that was slow to pass.

At the same time, another controversial project was to keep architects and politicians

on Capitol Hill under intense scrutiny for two more

decades. The latest idea was to build an addition

to the Capitol’s west front, a scheme hatched by

the Rayburn team of architects and engineers soon

after the east front extension was authorized in

1955. They considered the west front extension

the logical next step in the building’s inevitable

development. For precedent, they cited plans by

Thomas U. Walter and Edward Clark, both of whom

had designed additions to the west front for the

expansion of the Library of Congress. They also

claimed that Olmsted anticipated an addition to

the west front by providing courtyards between

the terrace and the Capitol. The argument that a

west front extension was not a new idea was accurate; however, the present proposal was entirely

unlike anything suggested before. It would have

enclosed four and a half acres of space behind new

marble walls, changed the composition of that side

of the Capitol, and required the demolition and

reconstruction of the terrace.

As with the east front project, the condition of

the outside walls was a major factor behind the

proposal to build a new marble addition. The Aquia

Creek sandstone had not held up well, and ample

evidence of structural failure was visible to the

untrained eye. Particularly frightening was the

sagging entablature above the central colonnade.

A few keystones had dropped and there were

cracks everywhere. In one farfetched additional

observation, extension proponents claimed that

the old building was somehow out of proportion

with the dome. For those who admired the new

east front, the obvious solution to the problems

was a new marble facade on the west. To those

who fought against the east front project, the solution was restoration and better maintenance. The

battle lines were soon drawn over the last part of

the old Capitol not covered by marble additions.

On December 30, 1963, Congress appropriated $125,000 to survey, study, and examine the

structural condition of the west front. Stewart

contracted with the engineering firm of Thompson

Vice President’s

Office

The vice president’s

office (modern day

S–214) appears little

used in this view taken

while Lyndon Johnson

presided over the Senate.

A bust of Vice President

Henry Wilson, who died in

the room, was placed

there in 1885. Rembrandt

Peale’s portrait of George

Washington hung in the

vice president’s room

from 1859 until it was

returned to the old Senate chamber in 1976.

(1962 photograph.)
438 History of the United States Capitol

& Lichtner for the structural survey and with the

J. F. Fitzgerald Construction Company for soil tests

of the ground immediately adjacent to the west

front as well as for drilling core samples in the old

walls. Both firms were headquartered in Speaker

John McCormick’s home state, Massachusetts. In

November 1964, the consulting engineers presented their findings in a five-volume report

describing the alarming conditions of the west

front. Not surprisingly, they wanted to brace the

old walls behind a new addition, providing more

room for offices and committees. A public hearing

was held on the recommendations in June 1965,

with McCormack presiding. The president of

Thompson & Lichtner, Dr. Miles Clair, gave extensive testimony about the west front, its construction history (as he understood it), soil conditions,

stone weathering, deterioration, and settlement.

Representative Gerald Ford of Michigan (later

president of the United States) asked about the

“net result” of all these conditions and Clair predicted that the Capitol would begin to collapse

within five years. Some areas, such as the portico,

were in more immediate danger. He warned that

stopgap measures would only delay a final solution. “You can keep compromising with this,” Clair

warned, “or you can face the problem.” 35 George

Stewart recommended that Congress appropriate

funds to build an addition in order to buttress the

old walls. Meanwhile, stout wooden braces were

installed to keep the entablature from falling from

the west central portico.

On October 31, 1965, $300,000 was appropriated to the architect of the Capitol to prepare preliminary plans and cost estimates for the extension

of the west front. The veteran firm from the east

front project—DeWitt, Poor & Shelton—was

retained for this work. Within six months, three

schemes were developed. All the plans called for a

large addition, eighty feet deep, that would necessitate the demolition of the Olmsted terraces. Each

scheme sought to “improve” the composition of

the west side of the Capitol, an architectural pastiche that a handful of critics deemed “incorrect.”

Bulfinch’s portico with its odd intercolumniation

(2–2–1–1–2–2) baffled some observers, as did the

lack of a pediment. Such architectural oddities

would be “corrected” by a new front.

Taft Memorial and

Carillon

The memorial to

Robert Taft is a lean,

modern design consisting

of a rectangular bell

tower 100 feet tall faced

with Tennessee marble.

Douglas Orr of Connecticut was the architect of

the memorial, which 

is located in the park

between the Capitol and

Union Station near a site

once proposed for the

Lincoln Memorial.

Wheeler Williams

sculpted the bronze

statue of the Ohio senator. (1961 photograph.)

Study for the West Front Extension

by DeWitt, Poor & Shelton, 1963

One of the more drastic proposals for the west front envisioned an unbroken colonnade stretching from one end of the Capitol to the other. A massive reconstruction of

the terrace included scores of new windows that would have diminished the impression

of strength that Olmsted intended.
Views of History 439

Before an appropriation was secured, however, history-minded preservationists began loud

protests. In June 1966, the American Institute of

Architects asked the Commission for the Extension of the Capitol to reconsider. The AIA offered

to make an impartial examination of the structural

conditions and recommend solutions to problems

it uncovered. Building on the growing strength of

the preservation movement, the AIA led the battle

over the west front, hoping to atone for its losses

in the war over the east front. Unlike the east front

project, however, the west front had no champion

with Rayburn’s single-mindedness or clout, and

opponents had sufficient warning to fend off an

initial appropriation. At the same time, historic

preservation became a national policy on October

15, 1966, when President Johnson signed the

National Historic Preservation Act—legislation

that helped prevent federal money from harming

historic sites. Although it did not directly affect

the Capitol, the act emboldened preservationists

in their efforts to preserve the west front.

One of the leading opponents to the extension

was Representative Samuel S. Stratton of New

York. He published a call to the American people

to save the west front in a widely read article in

Parade magazine. Stratton claimed that the architect of the Capitol, the Speaker, and other members of the Commission for the Extension of the

Capitol were about to accomplish something that

British invaders had failed to do in 1814—destroy

the Capitol. He described one of the plans for an

addition eighty feet in front of the old north and

south wings and forty-four feet in front of the central building. Thus, Stratton concluded, the pleasing composition of the Capitol’s west front would

become a “flat and undistinguished architectural

blob.” He also described what would happen to the

Olmsted terraces:

To add the restaurants, auditoriums, extra

hideaway offices and special-access road for

service deliveries and garbage removal that he

deems necessary, Stewart further proposes a

vast, seven-level expansion down under the

back side of Capitol Hill. This means the grand

terraces and marble staircases, added in 1874,

are slated for extinction.36

Sixteen senators and twenty-five representatives had already formed a committee to defeat

the project, and Stratton urged readers to write

Speaker John McCormack and Vice President

Hubert Humphrey: “You’ll be surprised how effective your voice can be here in Washington.” 37

The AIA submitted its report on the west

front’s structural conditions on March 24, 1967.

Officials of the institute presented alternatives to

the extension before hearings of the House and

Senate Legislative Appropriations Subcommittees.

Such maneuvers and the escalating conflict in Vietnam prevented the project from being funded.

Meanwhile, the forces against the extension grew

stronger, persuading key members of Congress to

examine alternatives that might be wiser and less

expensive. In 1970, an appropriation of $2.75 million was given to the architect of the Capitol for a

restoration feasibility study, and on May 25, 1970,

a consulting engineering firm from New York,

Praeger, Kavanaugh & Waterbury, was retained to

undertake it. By the end of the year, the engineers

reported that restoration was indeed feasible. They

recommended strengthening the structure by

injecting grout and epoxy into the foundations and

walls and installing steel tie rods to strengthen the

arches and vaults. All exterior stone work would

be cleaned of paint and each block evaluated for

stability and strength. Stone would be replaced

only as needed. The entablature would be dismantled and rebuilt, using tensioning cables for

strength. Following repairs, the exterior could be

treated with a stone preservative and repainted.

The engineers had no question that a restoration

could return the west front to a stable, authentic,

and attractive condition.

George Stewart, however, never learned of

this recommendation: he had died the day before

Praeger, Kavanaugh & Waterbury was hired. His

health had been impaired for some months, and

during his last days in a nursing home his office

was operated by his assistant, Mario Campioli.

Over his seventeen-year tenure Stewart had been

hounded by critics, who loved to point out that he

was not an architect. While the same was also true

of his two predecessors, it made no difference to

the critics. The real difference between Stewart

and Lynn or Woods was not so much the persons

as the times in which he and they worked. Stewart’s alliance with Rayburn, for example, was different from Woods’ relationship with Cannon:

whereas Cannon championed and protected
440 History of the United States Capitol

Woods, Stewart used his office to protect the

Speaker. Criticism that should have been aimed at

Rayburn was routinely fired at Stewart, who gladly

took the shot. Another factor was that too often

the Speaker and architect kept their plans to themselves, not letting people know of their intentions

and opening themselves to legitimate charges of

secretiveness. Consequently, their relations with

the architectural profession, the press, and the

Capitol Hill community were hardly cordial. Following Stewart’s death, plenty of ammunition

remained in detractors’ arsenals for the next architect, who inherited the hornet’s nest hanging over

the Capitol’s west front.

A PROFESSIONAL

ARCHITECT

W hen news of Stewart’s death

reached the White House, President Richard Nixon assigned his

staff assistant (and future New York senator) Daniel

Patrick Moynihan to the task of identifying a

replacement. For the first time since the agency

reached its present form in 1867, the initiative to

fill the top position came not from Congress but

from the president. The sentiment in both branches

of government was that the next architect of the

Capitol should be an architect, one with professional credentials to quiet the perpetual controversies that seemed to envelop the office.

Nevertheless, rumors circulated around Washington that William Ayers, a ten term representative

from Ohio who recently lost his reelection bid, was

under consideration. Alarmed at the prospect of

another politician in the architect’s job, Congressman Andrew Jacobs of Indiana introduced a resolution providing that if the next architect of the

Capitol were not an architect, then the next attending physician of Congress should not be a doctor.

Logically, Moynihan turned to the American

Institute of Architects for advice. A roster of

qualified candidates was duly prepared by the

institute, and its own vice president, George M.

White of Ohio, was at the top of the list. With a

diverse and accomplished background, White

seemed perfectly suited for a job with so many different demands and clients. He held two degrees

in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology, a degree in business

administration from Harvard, and a law degree

from Case Western Reserve University. He was a

registered architect and engineer, a member of the

bar, and a successful businessman. Ohio Senators

William Saxbe and Robert Taft, Jr. lent their support, and Nixon appointed White on January 27,

1971.

When White took office, the controversy over

the west front was hardly front-page news. The

effort to “complete” the Capitol was stymied by

the war in Vietnam. After two weeks on the job,

White was obliged to deal with an explosion in the

Capitol, the result of a bomb planted to protest

America’s military presence in Southeast Asia.

Growing unrest in the streets and on college campuses reflected a nation uncertain of itself and

unsure of its leaders. Antiwar marches and

protests grew louder as a fumbled break-in at the

Watergate began to undermine the Nixon administration. His subsequent resignation, the ascent of

Gerald Ford, and the end of America’s involvement in Vietnam started a healing process that

helped restore faith at home.

During the early 1970s, the Senate refused to

go along with the idea of enlarging the Capitol,

which was advocated mainly by the leadership of

House of Representatives. In 1973, the Senate

Subcommittee on Legislative Appropriations

blocked a request for funds to build the addition.

Despite opposition in the Senate, the Commission

for the Extension of the Capitol, chaired by

Speaker Carl Albert of Oklahoma and, later,

Thomas P. O’Neill of Massachusetts, remained

committed to the project. While skeptical at first,

the new architect of the Capitol became converted

to the cause, which he felt promised the best

chance to ensure the building’s structural stability.

But the size and scope of the proposed extension

had to be trimmed to become architecturally and

financially palatable. Under White’s direction, the

associate architects modified their design, scaling

it back enough to preserve Olmsted’s terraces. The

revised design, varying from nineteen to sixty feet

in depth, was also considerably less expensive

than its predecessor.

After a four-year lull, the west front issue

exploded upon the front pages of the nation’s
Views of History 441

newspapers in the spring of 1977. A change in the

chairmanship of the Senate Legislative Appropriations Subcommittee gave hope to backers of the

extension that the project would be funded. The

new subcommittee head, Walter Huddleson of Kentucky, replaced Ernest Hollings of South Carolina,

who had opposed the extension. On May 20, 1977,

White presented the revised extension plan to

Huddleston’s subcommittee, telling the lawmakers

that its estimated cost of fifty-five million dollars

compared favorably with the estimated forty-five

million dollars that would be needed for restoration. For a mere ten million dollars more, White

argued, 135,000 square feet of office space could

be added to the Capitol and the original walls

would be protected behind the new addition.

Writing for The Washington Post, columnist

George Will characterized the latest extension proposal as “Another Mindless Attack on the West

Front.” He claimed the extension would block

views of the dome, flatten the elevation that so

clearly expressed the bicameral legislative principle, and bury a “splendid achievement” of American architecture. Senator Ernest Hollings was

praised for his sense of stewardship in having protected the Capitol from vandals. In a final thought,

the author observed solemnly:

Preservation is a civilizing task; it involves discerning and cherishing the most excellent work

of previous generations and holding it in trust

for subsequent generations. Preservation of

the Capitol is a test of Congress’s fitness for

trusteeship, the most important measure of

fitness to govern.38

The editorial board of The Washington Post

strongly opposed the west front extension and

claimed that upon learning that the congressional

leadership approved the latest design, it had suffered a “sinking sensation.” While agreeing that

Revised Design for the West Front Extension

by DeWitt, Poor & Shelton, ca. 1973

To calm the storm of criticism gathering around the west front extension proposal,

the architects scaled it back and left the terraces undisturbed. Congress rejected the

extension scheme in favor of restoration in 1983.
442 History of the United States Capitol

the new design was an improvement over its

“monstrous” predecessor, it considered restoration the only proper treatment for the ills plaguing the facade:

The “Commission for the Extension of the

Capitol” should restrain its lust for architectural disfigurement and get on with its real

duty: the repair and restoration of the existing

West Front, parts of which are now supported

by unsightly heavy timbers. Three times in the

past four years the Senate has voted to do just

that, and the proposal has been shot down by

the space-hungry House each time. The

responsible action for congressional leaders

would be to proceed with repairs that should

have been done years ago—at a fraction of

present costs.39

When the House Appropriations Committee

voted fifty-five million dollars for the extension 

on June 29, 1977, The Washington Star wrote 

in disbelief:

A reasonable piety toward the past is no more

than a form of present self-respect. Considered in that light, the congressional itch to

vandalize the West Front of the Capitol 

suggests a severe deficiency in our sense 

of national self worth—so far as that quality 

is refracted through the current crop of

elected representatives....

The American Institute of Architects has

valiantly opposed the congressional vandals.

And the Capitol Hill poo-bahs who have pushed

stubbornly ahead with the extension have disregarded even an engineering study commissioned by Congress itself that found restoration

of the West Front to be feasible. The cost of

the restoration would be more than expansion:

to adduce that as a telling argument is to carry

historical insensitivity to a canine level. The

Capitol is a glorious monument and its preservation is not to be toted up merely in dollars.40

On the Fourth of July 1977, The New York

Times weighed in with a stinging rebuke of the

extension and its few but powerful supporters. On

its editorial page, the Times demanded that the

west front be restored. Scolding the powers in

Washington, the editors wrote:

Surely it is time to stop all the foolishness, once

and for all, about extending the West Front of

the Capitol. This dangerous Congressional

boondoggle has now survived three times, and

the idea doesn’t improve with revival.... This

is a proposal so unequivocally bad as economics, art history and planning, that one marvels

at its apparent immortality.41

National news magazines wrote of the controversy as a classic struggle between the House and

the Senate, between sentimental citizens and a

handful of powerful politicians. Newsweek’s story

was entitled “The Facade of Power,” while U. S.

News and World Report called its piece “Uproar

over the West Front.” Diagrams and floor plans

gave readers a sense of the magnitude of the proposed addition and what it would do to the architecture of the Capitol. Neither article took sides,

but the publicity did not help the proponents of

the extension.

On July 20, 1977, a conference committee

made up of members of the House and Senate

Appropriations Committees agreed to postpone a

decision on the west front until an estimate could

be made of the cost of a restoration. Drawings and

specifications for a restoration were needed in

order that a fair comparison might be made. Money

was an important issue, but the lawmakers also

wanted to compare the time required for each

project, the probable disruption to the workings of

Congress, and other factors. Using an appropriation of $525,000, the architect of the Capitol hired

Ammann & Whitney of New York City to prepare

plans and cost estimates for a restoration. Their

report was finished in March 1978.

For four years nothing was done with either

proposal for the west front. In March 1983, the

House Committee on Public Works and Transportation began another round of hearings that seemed

no more auspicious than its predecessors until a

section of lower west wall fell to the ground on

April 27, 1983. Suddenly, the issue came to a head

and there was no way to ignore the problems facing the Capitol’s west front any longer. On May 18,

the House Appropriations Committee approved

more than seventy million dollars for an extension.

Eight days later the Senate approved forty-eight

million dollars for a restoration. By a wide margin

(325 to 86), the full House disagreed with its committee’s recommendation, deleting money for the

extension, and substituting forty-nine million dollars for a restoration. On July 19, 1983, the House

and Senate agreed in conference to fund the

restoration with an appropriation of forty-nine million dollars. The legislation was approved by President Ronald Reagan on July 30, 1983.
Views of History 443

Although it had taken more than twenty years,

the most recent attempt at a west front extension

was finally overpowered by the hue and cry of ordinary citizens, letter-writing architects, and noisy

preservationists. For the first time since the British

burned the building in 1814, forces outside of the

Capitol altered the course of its future. To be sure,

there were those in Congress who were instrumental in the effort to restore the west front, but

the final outcome was determined by a powerful

lobbying effort with roots reaching across America. It was a well- earned victory for those who valued the architectural legacy of the Capitol and

were determined not to entomb the west elevation

behind yet another marble addition. Arguments

about space and money rang hollow against the

names of Washington, Jefferson, Thornton,

Latrobe, Bulfinch and Olmsted. At this point in the

Restoration of the

West Front

1984

After layers of

paint were removed from

the walls, each block of

stone was categorized

according to its condition. About 40 percent 

of the stone was replaced

with Indiana limestone.

Dating from the 1790s,

the west wall of the old

north wing is shown here.

West Front

Restoration

1984

While the restoration

was under way, the old

sandstone walls were 

hidden behind a scaffold.
444 History of the United States Capitol

The West Front

The restoration

returned the west 

front to a state of 

structural stability. 

(1997 photograph.)

West Courtyard Prior to Infill

Frederick Law Olmsted intended to plant the courtyards between the Capitol and the terrace as winter gardens. His plans never materialized and the courtyards

were generally used as work areas. (1991 photograph.)

Courtyard Infill

Construction of new offices and meeting rooms was

completed within the west courtyards in 1993. The new

structures were tied to the old walls by a continuous

skylight. (1994 photograph.)
Views of History 445

Capitol’s evolution, American history became more

precious than office space. And with that victory,

historic preservation came of age in America.

By the first of February 1984, all the paint had

been removed from the Aquia Creek sandstone on

the west front. Bids were received from general

contractors for the structural reinforcement and

stone repair phase of the project, and on May 2

the Charles H. Tompkins Company was awarded

the general restoration contract. Cement grout

was injected into spaces within the foundations

and behind the walls, and stainless steel rods were

installed to strengthen the masonry arches and

vaults. The portico was dismantled above the

columns and rebuilt. Severely cracked or damaged

sandstone was replaced with Indiana limestone,

which was found to share many important physical

characteristics with the original sandstone. Ultimately, about 40 percent of the old stone was

replaced. The original cornice was replicated with

the subtle variations of detail found in the old

work. After a protective coating was applied to the

new and old stone, the walls were repainted. The

restoration was completed in November 1987, substantially under budget.

In 1986, the architect of the Capitol received

permission to use funds remaining from the

restoration to study the structural condition of the

Olmsted terraces. Ammann & Whitney discovered

weakness in parts of the terrace, as well as evidence of extensive failure in the waterproofing

system. While repair documents were being prepared, a well-known Washington architect, Hugh

Newell Jacobsen, was retained to design new structures to be located within the courtyards separating the terrace from the Capitol. The one-story

structures (8,000 square feet each on the House

and Senate sides) would provide additional meeting rooms and offices and extend Olmsted’s terrace with new paving and additional plant cases.

On March 7, 1991, the Charles H. Tompkins Company was awarded the construction contract

(worth $11.3 million), and the terraces were closed

to the public two months later. As work progressed, unforeseen structural problems were

uncovered, making it necessary to commit an additional $2.8 million to the project. Work was finished

on January 15, 1993, just five days before the inauguration of President William J. Clinton.

CAPITOL SHRINES

As the twin sagas of the east and

west front extensions played out

on Capitol Hill during the 1960s

and 1970s, the fates of some of the Capitol’s historic interiors were also under discussion. In the

spring of 1960, Senator John Stennis of Mississippi

spearheaded a movement to restore the old Senate and Supreme Court chambers as a tribute to

the great men and deeds associated with those

historic rooms. He was distressed to see the old

Senate chamber playing host to endless rounds of

luncheons, receptions, and cocktail parties. In his

opinion, the room should be cherished as a shrine

to American history, not degraded by the lingering

odors of finger food, liquor, and cigars.

In an address delivered on May 10, 1960, Stennis lectured his colleagues about the scandalous

Inaugural

Luncheon for

President 

John F. Kennedy

1961

From the time the

Supreme Court left in

1935 until its restoration

in 1975, the old Senate

chamber was a popular

place for luncheons, cocktail parties, and meetings.

Old Senate

Chamber

1970
446 History of the United States Capitol

condition of the sacred room where their predecessors met from 1819 until 1859 and where the

Supreme Court met from 1860 until 1935. He asked

the architect of the Capitol to look into the cost of

restoring the room as well as the chamber below,

which had been home to the Supreme Court prior

to 1860. The lower room, over which Chief Justices John Marshall and Roger Taney had once

presided, had since been subdivided into four

offices occupied by the Joint Committee on Atomic

Energy. Latrobe’s beautiful and bold vaulting was

hidden by a suspended acoustical tile ceiling, while

Franzoni’s figure of Justice was buried behind

sheets of protective plywood. But once the east

front project was finished, the committee relocated to new quarters and the old chamber stood

ready for restoration.

The idea of restoring the two chambers was

not original to the junior senator from Mississippi.

At the end of 1932, David Lynn had been

approached by Frederic A. Delano, who expressed

an interest in seeing the rooms preserved or

restored to their early nineteenth-century appearances. A man of considerable influence, Delano

was chairman of the National Capital Park and

Planning Commission, president of the American

Planning and Civic Association, and a favorite

uncle of the president elect, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.42 The idea of preserving the historic rooms

had, in turn, been brought to Delano’s attention by

Mrs. John Lord O’Brian, the widow of a high-ranking official in the Department of Justice. A conference was held in the offices of Attorney General

Seth Richardson, with Lynn, Delano, Mrs. O’Brian,

and a few others in attendance. There this ad hoc

committee drafted a resolution calling for preserving the old Senate chamber and keeping it open to

the public once vacated by the Court. On February 6, 1934, Majority Leader Joseph T. Robinson of

Arkansas introduced the resolution in the Senate.

David J. Lewis of Maryland introduced it in the

House two weeks later. Soon the resolution was

amended to include the old Supreme Court chamber on the first floor. It passed on May 28, 1934.

Although it had been in effect for more than

twenty-five years, the resolution calling for the

preservation of the two chambers was not strong

enough to satisfy Senator Stennis. The old Senate

chamber remained either locked or in use for parties or meetings. The press referred to it as the

“Senate’s Rumpus Room.” Common offices still

cluttered the old Supreme Court chamber, which

was in no condition to be shown to the public. While

the restoration was being studied, Stennis wanted

the 1934 resolution toughened to prohibit the old

Supreme Court

Chamber Prior to

Restoration

1961

While it was occupied by the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy,

the old Supreme Court

chamber was divided into

staff offices and a meeting room. A glimpse of

Latrobe’s magnificent

ceiling and the Doric

arcade may be seen in

this view.

Supreme Court Chamber 

Prior to Restoration 

1961

Sandstone columns and acoustical tiles were odd

architectural companions when the old chamber was

occupied by a committee.
Views of History 447

Senate chamber from being used for “any other

purpose than a reminder of the Capitol’s history.” 43

Using estimates supplied by Stewart’s office,

Senator Stennis introduced an amendment to the

1961 Legislative Appropriations Act providing

$400,000 for the restoration of the old Senate

chamber and the old Supreme Court chamber. The

restoration would afford the American people an

opportunity to appreciate two chambers that witnessed much of the nation’s early history.44

The funds that Stennis inserted into the appropriations bill caught his counterparts in the House

off guard. In conference, the House insisted that

the money be removed until the matter could be

fully digested. The Senate conferees, however,

vowed to try again the following year.

Throughout September 1961, The Washington Daily News carried a series of articles and

editorials highly sympathetic to Stennis’ proposed

restorations. In one article, which called the historic Senate chamber a “Cocktail Party Site,” readers were told of a disturbing scene in the venerable

room where a “young lady jiggled her martini—

and it dribbled on the floor where Daniel Webster

stood in his greatest debates.” 45 A subsequent 

article noted that the parties held in this “stately

night club” were so secretive that the sergeant at

arms refused to reveal the “bookings.” 46 According to one editorial, the use of the chamber for

these purely social events was a “Misuse of a

National Shrine.” 47

As time passed, the restorations were

endorsed by Democratic leader Mike Mansfield of

Montana and Carl Hayden of Arizona, chairman of

the Committee on Appropriations. They held a

news conference on April 1, 1962, announcing the

Senate’s intention to “kick out the cocktail parties”

by restoring the chambers.48 Still, more detailed

cost figures and architectural information were

needed before the project could proceed. Accordingly, on April 30, 1962, the architect of the 

Capitol asked for $37,500 to develop plans,

specifications, and cost estimates for the restorations, but the funds were again removed by the

House. Members of the House Appropriations

Committee did not like the idea of restoring the

old Senate chamber because they would lose a

favorite place to hold their conferences with the

Senate. The following year, however, they relented

and planning funds were approved.

On March 6, 1964, Stewart hired DeWitt, Poor

& Shelton to plan the restoration of the old Senate

and old Supreme Court chambers. The firm was

enjoying a string of successful engagements with

the architect of the Capitol, including the east and

west front extensions and a vast new building for

the Library of Congress. With more than five million dollars in fees paid since 1955, there were

charges of favoritism in the press. Aside from the

near monopoly the firm had on Capitol Hill projects, it was also noted that Stewart’s chief assistant, Mario Campioli, once worked for two of the

firm’s partners. To answer the charges, Stewart

claimed that the DeWitt, Poor & Shelton firm was

among the few in America practicing “traditional”

architecture, a claim which the AIA later characterized as “hogwash.” 49

Section of the Old

Senate Chamber

and Old Supreme

Court Chamber

by DeWitt, Poor &

Shelton, 1965

This rendering illustrates the relative position and height of the two

rooms as well as an early

suggestion for chandeliers in the Supreme

Court chamber, which 

was later dropped for

lack of documentation.
448 History of the United States Capitol

Funding was held up year after year by the

House of Representatives. George Mahon of Texas,

the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, was the principal stumbling block. He

viewed the old Senate chamber as a perfectly good

meeting room and wanted to delay the restoration

until the west front project was finished, when

more conference rooms would become available

for his committee’s use. Since the Senate was

holding that project up, he felt the restoration

should wait as well. One of his colleagues on the

committee, Robert Casey of Texas, did not favor

the Senate restoration, but felt it was wrong to tie

the two projects together, especially considering

that the west front extension was a vastly more

expensive endeavor.

During the impasse, the cost of the restoration

tripled, from about $400,000 in 1961 to $1.2 million

eight years later. Upon taking office in 1971, the

new architect of the Capitol, George M. White, was

asked to investigate the possibility of using the old

Senate chamber and the old Supreme Court chamber as meeting rooms after the restorations were

completed. Plans were drawn showing that such an

arrangement was possible in the Court room, and

this was used to help win Mahon’s support. White

was also asked about dividing the project into

phases so one room might be used while work on

the other was under way. Such an approach, White

reported, would drive the project costs to one and

a half million dollars, but this scheduling advantage

was considered to be worth the money.

During this period the press, including the Los

Angles Times and the Chicago Tribune, carried

stories about the classic impasse between the

House and Senate over the extension and restoration projects. In 1972, the deadlock finally ended

when Mahon received a phone call from Lady Bird

Johnson supporting the restoration. At the same

time, Speaker Albert convinced him to drop his

objection in exchange for a promise from Senator

Mansfield to use his influence with William Proxmire to drop legislation designed to kill the west

front project. The deal worked and funds for the

restorations were provided in the Legislative

Appropriations Act for 1973.50 It seemed appropriate that the latest chapter in the history of the two

chambers was decided by a legislative compromise

nurtured by a gentle nudge from a well-respected

former first lady.

To oversee these restorations and other matters relating to its history and patrimony, the Senate created a Commission on Art and Antiquities

in 1968. The commission directed much of the

research and hired many of the nationally known

consultants used in the documentary phase of the

project. Others in the architect of the Capitol’s

office conducted research as well. The commission

was dissatisfied with the architects hired for the

restoration because of their lack of experience in

the field of historic preservation. White convinced

the commission it would be unfair to hire a new

firm to implement the designs of another. The

Supreme Court

Chamber

Perhaps Latrobe’s

finest interior design 

was the Supreme Court

chamber. The difficulties

encountered in vaulting

the one story space

resulted in a dramatic

ceiling structure 

that is unique in 

American architecture.

(1996 photograph.)
Views of History 449

argument prevailed, and while DeWitt, Poor &

Shelton remained project architects, the Senate

promised to scrutinize their work carefully.

The first phase of the restoration work, focusing on the old Supreme Court chamber, was finished

in the spring of 1975. Partitions and the dropped

ceiling were removed and the space was opened to

its original configuration. Thinking that it was not

an original treatment, restorers removed paint from

the stone columns, leaving them bare. The room’s

three original fireplaces, two of which had been

closed in 1936 and used as air-conditioning ducts,

were reconstructed. New mantels were designed,

drawing on the room’s Doric order for inspiration.

An 1854 guidebook gave restorers the chamber’s

general layout, showing that the justices originally

sat with their backs toward the east windows. A

portrait of John Marshall documented the color and

design of a carpet used in the chamber and was the

basis for the reproduction floor covering. Much of

the original furniture, including desks, chairs,

benches, and tables, was returned to the room from

private collections and from the Supreme Court

itself. Simon Willard’s wall clock, made in 1837, was

returned to its original position below Franzoni’s

figure of Justice. Busts of the first four chief justices

of the United States were placed on brackets affixed

to the arcade.

The old Supreme Court chamber was dedicated and opened to the public on May 22, 1975. A

year later the restored old Senate chamber was

ready for public inspection. The work in that space

had involved removing what little was remaining

from the period when the Court used the chamber

and building a new terraced floor covered with

wall-to-wall carpet. Reproductions of the 1819

desks, chairs, and sofas originally made by the

New York cabinetmaker Thomas Constantine were

put into place. The visitor’s gallery, designed by

Charles Bulfinch in 1828 and removed by the 

commissioner of public buildings in 1860, was

replicated using historic views as guides. Two pairs

Supreme Court

Chamber

Carlo Franzoni’s 

allegorical group 

representing Justice 

and Young America occupies the place of honor

over the west fireplace.

(1996 photograph.)
450 History of the United States Capitol

of mantels remained in the room, one of statuary

marble designed by Giovanni Andrei and a much

simpler one in verd antique and Potomac marbles.

Although the second pair may have been in the

chamber since 1819, they were not considered

original and were replaced by two reproduction

mantels matching the Andrei design. Reproduction iron stoves were placed in the niches flanking

the principal entrance into the room. Also reproduced was a gilt chandelier with twenty-four oilburning lamps, originally made by Cornelius &

Baker of Philadelphia in 1837 and modified to burn

gas in 1847. The canopy sheltering the president’s

chair reused the original gilt eagle and shield, while

a reproduction crimson drapery was hung from a

new mahogany valance. Rembrandt Peale’s portrait of George Washington, purchased by the Senate in 1832 and removed from the chamber in

1859, was returned to its place of honor above the

east gallery.

On June 16, 1976, the Senate convened in its

restored chamber and was welcomed by Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, who presided over the

dedication ceremony. In a short speech Rockefeller opened the room as a “new shrine of American liberty.” Senator Mansfield was impressed with

the splendor of the chamber and its furnishings

and remarked that the modern Senate was not as

beautifully accommodated as it had been in the

past. He noted that the “Senate has lost some of

its elegance over the past century and quarter.

One might say that the peacock plumage has been

plucked not only from the nest but from its occupants.” But despite the different style of accommodation, Mansfield declared that

what moved Senators yesterday still moves

Senators today . . . . It is to remind us that the

Senate’s responsibilities go on, even though

the faces and, yes, the rooms in which they

gather fade into history. With the Nation, the

Senate has come a long way and, still, there is

a long, long way to go.51

Old Senate

Chamber

The Senate chamber

of 1816–1819 is one of

America’s great neoclassical interiors. 

(1996 photograph.)
Views of History 451

THIRD SENATE 

OFFICE BUILDING

In 1972, the Senate’s 1909 office building was named in honor of Senator

Richard Brevard Russell of Georgia

and the 1958 structure was named for Senator

Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois. In the same

year, the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration asked the architect of the Capitol to survey the space occupied by senators and their staff

and report on their work environment. In the

decade and a half since the Dirksen Building had

opened, the number of persons working for the

Senate had grown from 2,500 to 7,000. This growth

resulted in overcrowded conditions, leading some

resourceful staff to fashion offices in toilet rooms

and improvise meeting rooms in passageways. It

was discovered that the average Senate employee

occupied a meager sixty-seven square feet of

space, less than half of the minimum government

standard of 150 square feet.

On October 31, 1972, Congress approved

funds to enlarge the Dirksen Building with a rear

addition as a means to ease overcrowding. It was

first thought that the project would involve merely

constructing a mirror image of the existing building, doubling its capacity and replicating its

appearance. But as the requirements for the new

building grew in the minds of those in charge, it

became clear that an entirely new structure was

called for, one that might be physically attached to

the old building but would be separate in every

other sense. (For instance, after it was decided to

move fifty senators into the new building, it

became clear that it would need to be significantly

larger than the older structure.) The new building

was to be a contemporary design with proportions

sympathetic to surrounding classical buildings, but

without any direct reference to classical detail. Its

interior environment was to be sunny, cheerful,

healthful, and flexible. Historic preservation and

energy conservation were two new concerns that

were also to be incorporated into the building’s

design. An important early nineteenth-century

residential structure located on the corner of the

site, the Sewell-Belmont House, was to be preserved rather than bulldozed as it most certainly

would have been only a few years earlier.

Under the direction of the Senate Office Building Commission, White interviewed sixteen nationally known architects for the “Dirksen Extension,”

which was soon renamed the Philip A. Hart Senate

Office Building after the much-admired senator

from Michigan. The designers of the old building,

successors to the firm of Eggers & Higgins, were

among those eager to be considered for the project. On April 19, 1973, however, The Washington

Post announced that John Carl Warnecke, a longtime friend of the Kennedy family, had been

selected. The announcement assured readers that

with Warnecke as architect, the new Senate office

building “will bear no resemblance to the Kennedy

Center,” a gratuitous reference to the new and

controversial performing arts center that now vied

with the Rayburn Building as the structure Washingtonians most loved to hate. Warnecke, it

Statuary Hall

Statuary Hall was refurbished in 1976 with crimson draperies, a new paint scheme, and a reproduction of the original oil-burning chandelier. These improvements recalled the time when the

room served as the hall of the House. (1988 photograph.)
452 History of the United States Capitol

confided, “detests the white marble monument to

JFK.” It continued with praise for Warnecke’s

designs for the executive office buildings on

Lafayette Park, opposite the White House, and

mentioned his design of Kennedy’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery. The president’s widow had

selected Warnecke for that important work, as

well as for the Kennedy library at Harvard.52 Now

it seemed part of the Kennedy mystique was about

to rub off on Capitol Hill.

The new building that emerged from

Warneke’s drafting room added more than a million square feet to the Senate’s inventory of office

and support space. Fifty senators would have

suites, which would range in size from 4,000 to

6,000 square feet. A public hearing room would be

equipped for the electronic and written press,

while facilities for food service, parking, physical

fitness, police, mail, and maintenance needs were

also provided. The most novel aspect of the plan

was its flexible offices. All the older office buildings provided offices in rooms strung along one

side of a corridor, putting a considerable distance

between staff members. For the new building,

Warneke devised a totally new scheme. Each suite

would occupy an envelope of space on two floors.

The senator’s personal office would have a ceiling

height of sixteen feet, and staff areas with ceilings

eight and a half feet high would be grouped around

it. Within the staff space, partitions could be

rearranged anywhere along a five-foot grid. Each

office could be laid out with ease according to the

management practices of an individual senator.

After the preliminary plans were finished in

the spring of 1974, the chairman of the Senate

Public Works Committee, Jennings Randolph of

West Virginia, made an unusual announcement.

Through a press release, Randolph invited “Architects and others with experience in building design

and urban planning” to discuss the exterior design

of the proposed building:

‘It is especially important that the City of Washington—and particularly Capitol Hill—be

reflective of the best America has in planning,

architecture, and construction,’ Randolph said.

‘Poor design occurs in many buildings after it

is too late for correction.’ 53

Clearly, lessons had been learned from the

perception of secrecy surrounding the design of

the Rayburn Building, and there was no wish to

repeat past mistakes. White sent letters to six

nationally prominent architects, including I. M.

Pei, Pietro Belluschi, and Hugh Stubbins, asking

them to help evaluate Warnecke’s design. A similar

letter was sent to J. Carter Brown, director of the

National Gallery of Art and chairman of the Commission of Fine Arts. The unprecedented public

hearing on the design was held on June 5, 1974,

with generally positive reviews coming from the

design community. The architecture critic for The

Washington Post, Wolf Von Eckardt, wrote:

The building as now designed is classic in the

sense that it is a kinetic building. As you see it

from one side, it is almost a solid wall, and then

when you start walking, the columns open up,

the spaces between the columns—in this case

between the fins—become larger so that the

building changes in appearance and becomes

alive. I like that. I like it very much. The quality

and, yes, even excellence in this building rests

on the right proportions. They are pleasing,

they are good. We can’t ask for more.54

On August 8, 1974, the design for the Hart

Building was approved by the Senate Office Building Commission and the Committee on Public

Works. The first construction contract was

awarded on May 20, 1975, with excavation beginning in December. Work proceeded in a total of six

phases before the first occupant moved in during

November 1982. Construction took place during a

period of unprecedented inflation in which the

national index of construction costs jumped 76

percent. With costs rising daily, interior work worth

about twenty-four million dollars was deferred in

Rendering of 

the Philip Hart

Senate Office

Building

by John Carl Warneke

1975

The simplicity of the

Hart Senate Office Building, its human scale, and

its uncomplicated and

regular fenestration

helped to disguise its

bulk—over a million

square feet. It was the

first building on Capitol

Hill subjected to preliminary design review by

neighborhood residents

and professional critics.
Views of History 453

order to save money. Still, the building’s final cost

ran to more than $137 million, bringing down a

storm of criticism from those who noted that the

original estimate was around forty-seven million

dollars. But the original estimate contemplated a

much smaller building, and one built without

inflation’s debilitating effects. White pointed out

that the cost per square foot (ninety-eight dollars)

compared favorably with that in the better class of

corporate buildings of the period.

The Senate’s first nonclassical building opened

in 1982 to mixed reviews. Some thought it was a

refreshing change from the old-fashioned type of

building—endless corridors lined with locked

doors. Others missed the classical grandeur of the

Russell Building, with its incomparable rotunda

and caucus room. Yet few failed to appreciate the

strides made in planning, circulation, and adaptability by the architects of the Hart Building. Those

comparing it to the Rayburn Building viewed this

newest congressional structure as a polite and

modest addition to Capitol Hill. Critics comparing

it to the East Wing of the National Gallery (a much

different and smaller structure that coincidently

cost about the same), found that the “architectural benefits to Washington are not comparable.” 55

But the benefits to the architectural development

of Capitol Hill were significant. The Hart Building

reinvented and redefined the congressional office

building: it provided a modern, workable environment promoting the efficiency, health, and happiness of its occupants and at the same time

signaling a break from classicism as the official

language of Capitol Hill architecture. It remains to

be seen if the break is permanent.

PLANNING AHEAD

I n 1959, Senator Thomas C. Hennings,

Jr., of Missouri introduced a joint resolution to create a commission to plan

a memorial to James Madison, Father of the Constitution and fourth president of the United States.

The commission would be empowered to accept

gifts, hold hearings, organize contests, and otherwise oversee the development of a permanent

memorial to Madison in the capital city. It would

also be instructed to study the feasibility of reusing

the columns recently removed from the east front

of the Capitol. (That idea was later dropped.) After

the legislation was approved on April 8, 1960, the

commission met to discuss what form the Madison

Memorial might take. They soon hit upon the idea

of incorporating the memorial into a new building

for the Library of Congress, noting that Madison

first proposed a library for use by the Continental

Congress in 1783. They also noted that the library

needed more space and that plans were already

afoot to provide a second annex. It seemed especially appropriate to memorialize Madison in a

library because his achievements seemed to lie in

the area of intellectual pursuits.

The site for the Madison Memorial was the

next topic for consideration. A square of land on

Independence Avenue, near the Library of Congress and the Cannon House Office Building, had

recently been acquired by the government and

was being cleared of its residential and commercial structures. Because property owners had been

given little warning about the government’s intentions for their land, the architect of the Capitol was

again accused of keeping plans secret. But to the

memorial commission, the site seemed perfect.

Atrium in 

the Hart Senate

Office Building

Interior offices were

provided with a view of

the light-filled atrium,

which also furnished a

dramatic setting for

Alexander Calder’s sculptural composition called

Mountains and Clouds.

(1987 photograph.)
454 History of the United States Capitol

Already at work on the design of the library’s third

building, DeWitt, Poor & Shelton quickly sketched

a memorial building standing on a large plaza. For

a time the architects considered using the Folger

Shakespear Library or Madison’s home, “Montpelier,” for inspiration, but they settled instead on a

plain rectangular structure that was devoid of ornament except for Corinthian porticoes on each of

the four elevations. On July 20, 1961, the general

design was approved by the commission.

The site for the new library annex was to be

behind the library’s existing annex (now called the

John Adams Building), an area containing four

blocks of residential structures and a church.

Alarmed at the prospect of losing yet another

significant piece of their Capitol Hill neighborhood,

citizens gathered to condemn the proposed action

as “extravagant vandalism,” totally at odds with

their efforts to restore the historic architecture of

the area.56 They also disapproved the design of the

Madison Memorial itself, criticizing it for a lack of

taste and imagination. These problems were

resolved in October 1965, however, when Congress

approved a proposal to merge the Madison Memorial building and the new library annex into a single

building sited on vacant land already owned by the

government. A memorial hall with a statue of Madison would occupy an alcove off the main entrance

to the annex. Seventy-five million dollars was

appropriated for planning and construction. Thus,

the Library of Congress James Madison Memorial

Building reconciled the objectives of the commission with the library’s space requirements, while

saving four blocks of historic Capitol Hill architecture from needless destruction.

After twelve years of planning, construction of

the Madison Building began on May 1, 1971, soon

after George White became architect of the Capitol. There were well-founded rumors that the

House of Representatives was planning to take the

building from the library to convert it into an office

building for its own use. Such a move was not without reason, White thought, because the building’s

location on the south side of Independence Avenue

seemed to indicate that it “belonged” to the House

of Representatives rather than to the Library of

Congress. The more White thought about the matter, however, and the more he learned about the

way building sites were selected, the more it

Capitol Hill with Proposed Buildings

1961

This aerial view was overlaid with sketches showing two new buildings: a large

annex for the Library of Congress and a smaller building for the James Madison

Memorial. Eventually the two buildings were merged.

James Madison Memorial

by DeWitt, Poor & Shelton, 1961

The original design for the Madison Memorial consisted of a stripped-down 

classical building containing a hall for a statue of the fourth president. It was to be

surrounded by exhibit spaces, study carrels, a library, and offices. Archival space for

presidential papers was planned for the space beneath the plaza.
Views of History 455

became apparent that there was no logic to the

way Capitol Hill had developed in the past. It

seemed to him as if a game of darts had been used

to select where buildings were placed on the map

of Capitol Hill. The haphazard approach would

doubtless continue unless logic, order, and reason

were imposed in a master plan, a blueprint to guide

future growth. Only two plans had ever been made

for Capitol Hill: L’Enfant’s 1791 city plan locating

the Capitol alone on Jenkins Hill, and the McMillan

plan of 1902 showing the Capitol surrounded by

uniform classical buildings. Both plans were important in the Capitol’s history, but neither could help

guide its future.

To address the complicated issues surrounding the long-range development of Capitol Hill,

White secured an appropriation of $350,000 in

1975 to prepare the “Master Plan for Future Development of the Capitol Grounds and Related Areas.”

He assembled a team of professionals —representing the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, ecology, civil engineering, urban and social

planning, economics, transportation, and historic

preservation—to assist him in developing not only

a comprehensive plan, but one of excellence and

stature. Promising that the planning process would

take place in full public view, White proposed a

thorough analysis of historic patterns, current

conditions, and a broad spectrum of future scenarios. A plan for rational growth could improve the

relationship among existing buildings and provide

a coherent and perceptive vision for those to come.

The distinguished Philadelphia architectural and

planning firm of Wallace, McHarg, Roberts & Todd

was retained as the principal consultant.

Phase I of the Master Plan, a “plan for a plan,”

was published in August 1976. It traced the history of development of Capitol Hill, defining the

principal focus of the initial effort as the creation

of a framework for rational decision making.

Three major problems were identified and examined in detail: space needs, movement problems,

and visual disruption. The document also presented an extensive outline for the future study

of many aspects of Capitol Hill’s natural and physical environment.

The planners looked at each of the major tenants of Capitol Hill—the House and Senate, the

Library of Congress, and the Supreme Court—to

assess future space needs and offer logical places

for future expansion. Without encroaching on historically sensitive residential neighborhoods, most

of the areas available for expansion lay north and

south of the Capitol core. Growth on the Senate

side was thought best targeted to the squares

immediately north of the Russell, Dirksen, and

Hart Buildings, thus preserving the open space

between the Capitol and Union Station. In the

opposite direction, development of the House side

was envisioned along the axis of South Capitol

Street, which had become a hodgepodge of nondescript commercial structures, highway and railroad bridges, and ramps that could benefit from

thoughtful development and beautification.

One of the plan’s controversial recommendations was to relocate the Supreme Court to its own

precinct off the Hill. The planners thought the

Rendering of the 

James Madison Memorial Building 

of the Library of Congress

by DeWitt, Poor & Shelton, 1967

Measuring 500 feet wide and 400 feet deep, 

the Madison Building is the largest library structure 

in the world. (It encompasses 1.5 million square feet 

of space.) The undecorated colonnades attempt to 

echo classical columns while remaining faithful to

canons of modern design.
456 History of the United States Capitol

Court’s location was one of the few mistakes made

by the McMillan Commission and concluded that

this should be corrected. A “Judicial Campus,”

symbolically equivalent to the Capitol Hill campus

with its own monumental identity, should some

day be created for the Supreme Court. In the

meantime, growth of the Court could be accommodated on nearby sites. When the Court left 

Capitol Hill, planners thought, its former home

could be adapted for special use by the Library 

of Congress.

Facts about visitors’ experiences were gathered and analyzed. It was increasingly obvious that

the Capitol was more than a legislative center. It

was also a museum of American history and art,

attracting almost four million tourists a year. Visitors had been coming since the building opened in

1800, but the numbers increased dramatically after

World War II. The inadequacy of existing restaurant facilities, restrooms, and parking was acknowledged, and part of the solution seemed to lie with

a new visitor’s center proposed for Union Station—

then a vast, deteriorating, and underutilized building. After parking their cars at the station, or so

the reasoning went, visitors could travel to points

throughout the Hill via a “people mover,” using a

part of the tunnel built originally to carry southward-bound train traffic. (These suggestions did

not anticipate the future restoration of Union Station, or a later idea for an underground visitor center attached directly to the Capitol.) Parking would

be prohibited on the plaza in front of the Capitol.

Since sites available for future parking lots seemed

limited, the planners recommended ways to

encourage the use of mass transit by staff and

tourists alike.

Future intrusion by Congress in the residential neighborhood of Capitol Hill was considered

unwise for historic preservation and urban design

The Master Plan 

for the United States Capitol

1981

This drawing illustrates several aspects of 

the Master Plan, including suggested location of 

future buildings.
Views of History 457

reasons. The suggestion was made, however, to

create a buffer zone between the monumental core

of the Hill and the purely residential neighborhoods only a few blocks away. In the “Periphery

and Historic District Transition Areas,” the federal

government would have jurisdiction over building

facades, landscaping, fences, lamp posts, and other

items of “street furniture.” Area residents and the

architect of the Capitol would jointly determine

the best treatment of the architecture, while the

government would provide uniform maintenance

of sidewalks and outdoor lighting. Although the

neighborhood might be domestic in design and

scale, the standard of its maintenance would be

worthy of its location so near the Capitol.

The Master Plan was transmitted to Congress

in 1981. It was a heavily illustrated document brimming with facts, ideas, and proposals. Like the

plans by L’Enfant and the McMillan Commission

before it, the Master Plan did not suggest designs;

rather, it designated specific sites for unspecified

buildings. Its basic message was: “If a new building

is needed in the future, build it here.” In other

areas of investigation, the Master Plan’s message

became entangled in the theory and rhetoric of

design. Esoteric discussions focused on such issues

as the “genius loci” of Capitol Hill, the “axial linkage” of buildings, and the “hierarchy of open

space.” Despite its occasionally stilted language,

which few outside the design profession appreciated, the Master Plan’s copious illustrations and

free-ranging ideas continue to stimulate thought

and discussion.

The first building sited in accordance with the

Master Plan was the Thurgood Marshall Federal

Judiciary Building, an administrative center for

the federal court system. Its location, adjacent to

Union Station, completed the “spacial enclosure”

of Columbus Circle and was considered a long

overdue complement to the city’s train station and

post office. In 1985, the architect of the Capitol

was authorized to study the possibility of providing a facility for the courts, in consultation with

the chief justice among others. White invited the

country’s leading architects and developers to submit proposals for the new building; they were to

present ideas combining architectural solutions

with creative financing options to “minimize or

eliminate initial capital investment by the United

States through the use of public-private partnerships or non governmental sources of financing.” 57

The invitation was an innovative scheme to provide the judicial branch with a first-class building

without resorting to the usual appropriation

process. Financial and real-estate consultants were

retained to advise the architect of the Capitol in

matters relating to market analysis, cost evaluation, business deal structure, and implementation.

Forty-three development firms were contacted, of

which nineteen indicated an interest in the project. From this list, five developer-architect teams

were asked to submit proposals. A jury unanimously selected the team of Edward Larrabee

Barnes/John M. Y. Lee & Partners as the architects

and Boston Properties as the developer. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist approved the selection

on January 13, 1989.

By the terms of the innovative financing package, the architect of the Capitol agreed to lease

the site to the developer for thirty years. He also

agreed to lease the finished building for thirty

years, at which time it would revert to the government at no cost. Rents would be used to amortize

the privately raised debt. Not since the 1790s,

when the board of commissioners attempted to

finance the Capitol and White House through the

sale of city lots, had such unconventional financing

been tried on a federal construction project. Unlike

the commissioners’ bungled efforts, however, this

financing scheme proved entirely satisfactory.

Ground was broken for the Thurgood Marshall

Federal Judiciary Building on April 4, 1990, and

tenants began to occupy the finished building on

October 1, 1992. It cost $101 million, providing

more than 600,000 square feet of rentable space

within its overall million-square-foot interior.

Entrance is through a glass atrium planted with

bamboo. The Massachusetts Avenue elevation was

designed to recall the columns and arches that are

conspicuous elements in Union Station, its neighbor to the west. Nowhere are classical moldings or

carvings to be found, but the scale, rhythm, and

sculptural qualities of the granite facade and 

its low dome (actually a mechanical penthouse)

suggest a polite and deferential relationship with

its grand neighbor.
458 History of the United States Capitol

THE CAPITOL

BICENTENNIAL S eptember 18, 1993, was the 200th

anniversary of the day George Washington came to the heights of Jenkins Hill to lay the cornerstone of the Capitol. Under

clouds and light rain, Masons from Federal Lodge

No. 1, Potomac Lodge No. 5, and Alexandria-Washington Lodge No. 22 held a simple ceremony to

commemorate the building’s bicentennial. About

300 Masons from around the country also participated in the ceremony. There were none of the

artillery salutes, parades, nor barbeques that

marked the original event, nor were there such

choral or carillon performances as marked the centennial celebration 100 years later. During the

short program, contemporary Masons simply laid a

ceremonial cornerstone. While the bicentennial

was observed in historical exhibits, symposia, and

publications, the small, soggy Masonic ceremony

on the west front was the only event held on the

actual anniversary. It served as prelude to a larger,

more festive bicentennial celebration accompanying the return of the statue of Freedom to its place

atop the dome.

The impetus for Freedom’s brief sojourn on

the ground was a 1991 study by bronze conservation specialists hired by the architect of the Capitol to assess her condition. They found the surface

extensively pitted and corroded. The joints

between the statue’s five sections had been

caulked numerous times, leaving disfiguring lines

that were visible from the ground. In addition, the

cast-iron pedestal was cracked and rusted. Following an investigation addressing conservation and

logistical issues, it was decided to remove the

statue from the dome and place it on the east plaza

while restoration was under way. This gave conservators easy access to the statue and afforded

the public an opportunity to inspect the progress

of the work. With Freedom secured in a harness

and the bolts loosened, the statue was removed by

a jet-powered Skycrane helicopter early on the

morning of May 9, 1993.

Pressurized water was used to clean the surface corrosion and more than 700 bronze plugs

were used to fill holes and pits. The metal was

repatinated to “bronze green,” the term used to

Thurgood Marshall

Federal Judiciary

Building Aglass atrium

occupies the space

between two stone-clad

wings and acts as the

principal entrance 

into the building. 

(1996 photograph.)

Bicentennial

Ceremony

1993 To honor the 200th

anniversary of the 

Capitol’s first cornerstone, a ceremonial cornerstone was laid during

a program held on September 18, 1993. Among

those participating in the

event was the architect 

of the Capitol, George M.

White (b. 1920).
Views of History 459

describe the statue’s color when it was new. After

coating the surface with a corrosion inhibitor, conservators applied lacquer and wax. During a festive and dramatic congressional celebration in

honor of the Capitol’s 200th anniversary, the statue

was returned to its place on top of the dome on

October 23, 1993. President Clinton was among

those who greeted the return amid the roar of

thousands of cheering voices.

The cost of the statue’s restoration ($780,000)

was paid for by the Capitol Preservation Commission, a congressional leadership group that raises

money for projects relating to the stewardship of

the Capitol and its contents. In 1994, the commission provided the architect of the Capitol with

$2.55 million to develop plans and estimates for a

new underground visitor center based on a 1991

conceptual study by the architectural firm RTKL

Associates. The center would provide an educational introduction to the history and work of Congress and to the history, architecture, and art of

the Capitol. Amenities such as food service and

rest room facilities would be included. In addition,

the underground location presented an opportunity to redesign the east plaza and remove parking, as had been recommended in the Master Plan.

Security concerns and precautions could also be

better handled in a new visitor center rather than

in the Capitol itself. An underground loading dock

would eliminate the need for trash trucks and

other service vehicles to drive onto the plaza and

mar the view. The center was authorized and

funded in October 1998.

Planning for the Capitol Visitor Center was one

of the last projects begun during White’s tenure.

Under the provisions of the Legislative Branch

Appropriation Bill for 1990, Congress for the first

time established a ten-year term for the architect

and made the appointment subject to the advice

and consent of the Senate. Under the new law,

names of at least three potential appointees would

be submitted to the president by a congressional

panel comprising the chair and ranking member of

each of the numerous committees with oversight of

the architect’s office. These were the first reforms

to the way the architect’s appointment was handled since the agency reached its modern form.

Under the terms of the legislation, White retired

from office on November 21, 1995, after nearly

Statue of Freedom

Visitors to the Capitol were able to watch the progress of the statue’s restoration

taking place within a fenced yard on the east plaza. (1993 photograph.)
460 History of the United States Capitol

twenty-five years of service. During his time as

architect, White restored the office to a position of

trust among the various communities it served.

Professionalism and openness helped restore faith

in an agency once known for secrecy and cronyism. The quality of architectural design was greatly

improved and, for the first time, preservation and

restoration became objectives in the care of Capitol

Hill’s historic buildings. And with the Master Plan,

a sensible blueprint for growth was left for future

generations to follow.

Upon White’s retirement, the office was run by

the assistant architect of the Capitol, William L.

Ensign, until a successor was named. The AIA gave

Congress a list of candidates it thought suitable for

the job. Among others, the institute recommended

Alan Hantman, who had been vice president 

of Facilities Planning and Architecture for the

Rockefeller Center Management Corporation.

President Clinton nominated Hantman to be architect of the Capitol on January 6, 1997, and the

Senate confirmed the choice on January 30. He

entered upon his duties on February 3, 1997.

EPILOGUE

W hen Dr. William Thornton came to

the Capitol on November 22, 1800,

to hear President John Adams

welcome Congress to its permanent residence, his

wife Maria was taken with the stately portraits of

the king and queen of France hanging in the Senate chamber. Ever since that day, visitors have

come to Washington to observe the operations of

the House and Senate and to have a look around.

Art, history, and politics permeate the building’s

every fiber, and coming to the Capitol is one of the

best ways Americans can see and understand

themselves, their country, and their government.

Few buildings have been begun under less favorable circumstance, and fewer still enjoy greater

architectural success than does the United States

Capitol. Luck, grit, and determination played parts

in the story, along with the brawn and brains of

thousands of workers. A few key people played

disproportionately significant roles. Two amateur

architects, William Thornton and Thomas Jefferson, and two professionals, B. Henry Latrobe and

Charles Bulfinch, shaped the Capitol during more

than three decades of trial and error. Thomas U.

Walter transformed their efforts into the powerful

and majestic Capitol that today commands the

world’s respect. Countless senators and representatives wielded political influence over the Capitol’s destiny, bringing to it all the wisdom and

foolishness at their disposal. Two dozen state capitols, built after the Civil War, have been based

upon the federal Capitol, making the genre a

uniquely American contribution to world architecture. The Founding Fathers invented a new building type accommodating a new form of

government. It was George Washington’s vision

that established the scale, extent, and style of the

Capitol. His reputation fueled the project during

his presidency and his memory continued to do so

long after his death.

As the Capitol evolved, unforseen and unpredictable forces affected its course, influencing its

development in ways Washington could never have

imagined. In this regard, fire and fireproofing had a

potent impact on the Capitol’s history. The

conflagration of 1814 still divides the Capitol into

“pre-fire” and “post-fire” periods, while the fear 

of fire drove the idea to replace the wooden 

dome with one made of cast iron. Similarly, the

development and growth of congressional committees affected the Capitol’s history. There was only

one standing (i.e., permanent) committee in the

House and none in the Senate when the 1792

advertisement for the Capitol’s design called for

twelve rooms for committees and clerks. Latrobe’s

effort to build an “office story” for the House of

Representatives; his 1816 plan to alter the north

wing for the accommodation of the Senate’s first

permanent committees; Bulfinch’s endeavor in

1818 to find space for committees, thereby saving

the rotunda; and the replacement of Walter’s revolutionary iron library with committee rooms in

1900 were major episodes in the Capitol’s history

driven by the demand for more meeting rooms.

Reforms mandated in the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, and the dramatic staffing increase

that followed, brought about new office buildings

designed around the new, more modern and professional committee system. In addition to

fireproofing and space problems, questions about

acoustics, ventilation, and heating challenged 
Views of History 461

succeeding generations and their resolutions left

imprints on the Capitol’s fabric. Throughout the

years, each improvement built upon a general idea

that the Capitol should be useful as well as beautiful.

What would Washington think if he were to

return today and look upon the city he founded

and the Capitol he began? He might not recognize

them at first. The city has spilled out beyond the

boundaries shown on L’Enfant’s map, appearing

much larger and more beautiful than any city he

had known. Turning to the Capitol, he might look

at the dome in wonderment, perhaps gazing in disbelief at the masses of marble, or marveling at its

sheer size. Yet he would probably recognize the

basic design that so pleased him. Doubtless, too,

Washington would be gratified that the Capitol still

houses the Congress in great style, magnificently

presiding over the capital city on his beloved

Potomac River.

The East Front

1997

Floor Plans

Two additions built after the second World War—the

east front extension and the courtyard infill project—

added 147,200 square feet of floor space to the Capitol,

resulting in a total of 774,700 square feet.