Los Angeles herald., 1909-11-07

ia AAz4fpHik,i HELM INC COHSItsS VI thS
IEY kyM MI United States meets on
IE III M El the first Monday in De-
81 vi cember 1t will find itself
IVA 2~ to be the best housed leg
lE2A3AM@y islative body in the world.
With the capitol, the
house and the senate office buildings,
the congressional library and the new
heating plant, congress, directly and
indirectly, will occupy buildings rep
resenting an expenditure of $3O,000,000
The equipment of the national Amer
lean legislature has come, by gradual
growth, to be an estate of magnifi-
cence. The British parliament ranks
next to the American congress In the
splendor and beauty of its building,
yet the London establishment cost but
15,000,000 The homes of the French
chamber of deputies, the German reich
stag and other continental parliaments
are not nearly so large.
The American legislative plant Is so
much larger than the ordinary visitor
to Washington imagines that very few
persons appreciate it's immensity. The
buildings occupied and used by con-
gress including the library OF congress,
contain more than 400 separate rooms
There are forty elevators, several thou
sand windows. more than a thousand
doors, and everything else in propor-
ton. Even the telephone service Is
larger than that of on American city
of 10000 inhabitants. Foreigners who
are in the habit of accrediting Amer
leans with innate vulgarity and with
disposition to consider quantities
rather than qualities are surprised to
find that this huge legislative plant is
known more for it's artistic beauty
than for it's vast extent.
The capitol is one OF the most i'm
posing structures in the world. 1t Is
not so magnificent as the British par
Lament building, but when it is eX-
tended and improved in accordance
with plans already adopted 1t Will
stand, even without its flanklng build
ings. as the peer OF the great pile on
the banks of the Thames. The capitol
was built piecemeal, and its chief
wonder is that it possesses any archi-
tectural beauty at all. AS matter
of fact, the lines are so harmonized
that the casual observer rarely notices
that the building is the product of diff
ferent minds in different times. For
the first half of the history OF the re-
public the capitol consisted only of
the link that now binds together the
surmounted by a dome so ill-propor-
toned and so ugly that the whole
structure was q nightmare.
When the capitol was enlarged by the
building of the house and senate wings
congress fortunately employed a far
sighted and capable architect to plan
the improvements. This architect,
Thomas u. Walker, sympathetically
studied the plans of Thornton, the
original architect of the capital, and
evolved the conception of the capitol
as it stands today. The great wings
were built large enough, as 1t was then
believed, for generations to come.
Therefore each wing extended laterally
beyond the front and back of the old
capitol. over the center of the old por-
tion of the building was erected the
beautiful and graceful dome which has
become, in the eyes Of all the world, a
symbol of the great American republic.
Several years later the central or older
portion Of the capitol was extended on
the west front in line with the two new
wings. The next Improvement proposed
to be made is the extension OF the
central portico OF the east front TO
correspond with those or the senate ana
house wings.
The extension on the west front was
made for the purpose of accommodating
the rapidly growing library of congress.
It was never large enough Adequately
to serve its purpose. About twenty
years ago congress authorized the erec-
tion Of a separate building for the ac-
ing, erected at a cost Of nearly H,OOO,-
600, was opened to the public thirteen
years ago. It is a most beautiful build
ing as seen from its exterior while its
interior ranks with the most splendid
edifces in all the world It's book
stacks were arranged to hold what was
then the entire library Of CONGRESS. with
provisions for receiving and storing the
additions Of a generation. How greatly
congress underestimated the growth of
the country is shown in the fact that
the entire shelf space of the library IS
already levied upon and new book
stacks are being built. The library of
congress now has the third greatest
collection of books and manuscripts in
the world, coming after the British
museum and national library of France.
Although congress used all OF the
space in the capitol except the COM
paratively small portion reserved for
the supreme court, there was not
enough room to enable the senators and
representatives properly to conduct
their affairs. Each senator had a
separate office, many of them in the
third sub basement of the capitol cata-