Chapter VIII: Building the Capitol

George Washington’s Anxiety about it—His View of it Politically—Various
Plans for the Building—Jefferson Writes to the Commissioners—His
Letter to Mr. Carroll—“Poor Hallet” and His Plan—Wanton Destruction
by the British, A. D. 1814—Foundation of the Main Building Laid—The
Site Chosen by Washington Himself—Imposing Ceremonies at the
Foundation—Dedicatory Inscription on the Silver Plate—Interesting
Festivities—The Birth of a Nation’s Capital—Extension of the
Building—Daniel Webster’s Inscription—His Eloquent and Patriotic
Speech—Mistaken Calculations—First Session of Representatives
Sitting in “the Oven”—Old Capital Prison—Immense Outlay upon the
Wings and Dome—Compared with St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s—The Goddess
of Liberty—The Congressional Library—Proposed Alterations—What Ought
to be Done.

George Washington believed the building of the Capitol to be identical with the establishment of a permanent seat of government. To the consummation of this crowning building, the deepest anxiety and devotion of his later years were dedicated. Next to determining a final site for the city was the difficulty of deciding on a plan for its Capitol.

Poor human nature had to contend awhile over this as it seems to have to about almost everything else. A Mr. S. Hallet had a plan: Dr. Thornton had one, also. Jefferson wrote “to Dr. Stewart, or to all the gentlemen” Commissioners, January 31, 1793:

“I have, under consideration, Mr. Hallet’s plans for the Capitol,
which undoubtedly have a great deal of merit. Doctor Thornton has also
given me a view of his. The grandeur, simplicity and beauty of the
exterior, the propriety with which the departments are distributed,
and economy in the mass of the whole structure, will, I doubt not give
it a preference in your eyes as it has done in mine and those of
several others whom I have consulted. I have, therefore, thought it
better to give the Doctor time to finish his plan, and for this
purpose to delay until your meeting a final decision. Some difficulty
arises with respect to Mr. Hallet, who, you know, was in some degree
led into his plan by ideas which we all expressed to him. This ought
not to induce us to prefer it to a better; but while he is liberally
rewarded for the time and labor he has expended on it, his feelings
should be saved and soothed as much as possible. I leave it to
yourselves how best to prepare him for the possibility that the
Doctor’s plans may be preferred to his.”

February 1, 1793, Jefferson writes from Philadelphia to Mr. Carroll—

“DEAR SIR:—Doctor Thornton’s plan for a Capitol has been produced and
has so captivated the eyes and judgments of all as to leave no doubt
you will prefer it when it shall be exhibited to you; as no doubt
exists here of its preference over all which have been produced, and
among its admirers no one is more decided than him, whose decision is
most important. It is simple, noble, beautiful, excellently
distributed and moderate in size. A just respect for the right of
approbation in the Commissioners will prevent any formal decision in
the President, till the plan shall be laid before you and approved by
you. In the meantime the interval of _apparent_ doubt may be improved
for settling the mind of poor Hallet whose merits and distresses
interests every one for his tranquillity and pecuniary relief.”

These quotations are chiefly interesting in connection with the fact that poor, pushed-to-the-wall Hallet rebounded afterwards, notwithstanding Jefferson’s enthusiasm over Thornton’s plan, and Washington’s declaration that it combined “grandeur, simplicity and convenience.” The architects preferred the design of Hallet and in building retained but two or three of the features of Doctor Thornton’s plan.

After the burning of the Capitol wings by the British, August, 1814, Mr. B. H. Latrobe, of Maryland, began to rebuild the Capitol on Stephen Hallet’s plan. The foundations of the main building were laid March 24, 1818, under the superintendence of Charles Bulfinch, and the original design was completed in 1825. The site of the Capitol was chosen by George Washington, on a hill ninety feet above tide-water, commanding a view of the great plateau below, the circling rivers, and girdling hills—a hill in 1663 named “Room,” later Rome, and owned by a gentleman named “Pope.”

September 18, 1793, the south-east corner of the Capitol was laid by Washington with imposing ceremonies. A copy of _The Maryland Gazette_, published in Annapolis, September 26, 1793, gives a minute account of the grand Masonic ceremonial, which attended the laying of that august stone. It tells us that “there appeared on the southern bank of the river Potomac one of the finest companies of artillery that hath been lately seen parading to receive the President of the U. S.” Also, that the Commissioners delivered to the President, who deposited in the stone a silver plate with the following inscription:

“This south-east corner of the Capitol of the United States of
America, in the city of Washington, was laid on the 18th day of
September, 1792, in the thirteenth year of American Independence; in
the first year, second term of the Presidency of George Washington,
whose virtues in the civil administration of his country have been as
conspicuous and beneficial, as his military valor and prudence have
been useful, in establishing her liberties, and in the year of
Masonry, 5793, by the President of the United States, in concert with
the Grand Lodge of Maryland, several lodges under its jurisdiction and
Lodge No. 22 from Alexandria, Virginia.

[Signed] THOMAS JOHNSON, }
DAVID STEWART, } _Commissioners, etc._”
DANIEL CARROLL, }

The _Gazette_ continues:—

“The whole company retired to an extensive booth, where an ox of 500
lbs. weight was barbecued, of which the company generally partook with
every abundance of other recreation. The festival concluded with
fifteen successive volleys from the artillery, whose military
discipline and manœuvres merit every commendation.”

“Before dark the whole company departed with joyful hopes of the
production of their labors.”

Fifty-eight years later, near this spot another corner-stone was deposited bearing the following inscription in the writing of Daniel Webster:—

“On the morning of the first day of the seventy-sixth year of the
Independence of the United States of America, in the city of
Washington, being the fourth day of July, eighteen hundred and
fifty-one, this stone designed as the corner-stone of the extension of
the Capitol, according to a plan approved by the President in
pursuance of an act of Congress was laid by

MILLARD FILMORE,

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,

Assisted by the Grand Master of the Masonic Lodges, in the presence of
many Members of Congress, of officers of the Executive and Judiciary
departments, National, State and Districts, of officers of the Army
and Navy, the Corporate authorities of this and neighboring cities,
many associations, civil and military and Masonic, officers of the
Smithsonian Institution, and National Institute, professors of
colleges and teachers of schools of the Districts, with their students
and pupils, and a vast concourse of people from places near and remote
including a few surviving gentlemen who witnessed the laying of the
corner-stone of the Capitol by President Washington, on the 18th day
of September, 1793. If, therefore, it shall hereafter be the will of
God that this structure shall fall from its base, that its foundation
be upturned, and this deposit brought to the eyes of men; be it then
known that on this day the Union of the United States of America
stands firm, that their constitution still exists unimpaired, and with
all its original usefulness and glory growing every day stronger and
stronger in the affections of the great body of the American people,
and attracting more and more the admiration of the world. And all here
assembled, whether belonging to public life or to private life, with
hearts devoutly thankful to Almighty God for the preservation of the
liberty and happiness of the country, unite in sincere and fervent
prayer, that this deposit, and the walls and arches, the domes and
towers, the columns and entablatures, now to be erected over it may
endure forever.

“God Save the United States of America.

DANIEL WEBSTER,
_Secretary of State of the United States_.”

In the speech made by Mr. Webster on this occasion he uttered the following words:—

“Fellow citizens, what contemplations are awakened in our minds as we
assemble to re-enact a scene like that performed by Washington!
Methinks I see his venerable form now before me as presented in the
glorious statue by Houdon, now in the Capitol of Virginia.... We
perceive that mighty thoughts mingled with fears as well as with
hopes, are struggling with him. He heads a short procession over these
then naked fields; he crosses yonder stream on a fallen tree; he
ascends on the top of this eminence, whose original oaks of the forest
stand as thick around him as if the spot had been devoted to Druidical
worship and here he performs the appointed duty of the day.”

Fifty-eight years stretched between this scene and the last and already the mutterings of civil revolution stirred in the air. Could Webster have foreseen that the marble walls of the Capitol whose corner-stone he then laid would rise amid the thunder of cannon aimed to destroy it and the great Union of States which it crowned, to what anguish of eloquence would his words have risen!

The Capitol fronting the east was set by an astronomical observation of Andrew Ellicott. Its founders were as much mistaken in the direction which the future city would take as they were in the future commerce of the Potomac. They expected that a metropolis would spring up on Capitol Hill, spreading on to the Navy Yard and Potomac. Land-owners made this impossible by the price they set upon their city lots. The metropolis defied them—went down into the valley and grew up behind the Capitol.

The north wing of the central Capitol was made ready for the first sitting of Congress in Washington, November 17, 1800. By that time the walls of the south wing had risen twenty feet and were covered over for the temporary use of the House of Representatives. It sat in this room named “the oven” from 1802, until 1804. At that time the transient roof was removed and the wing completed under the superintendence of B. H. Latrobe until its completion. The House occupied the room of the Library of Congress. The south wing was finished in 1811.

The original Capitol was built of sandstone taken from an island in Acquia Creek, Virginia. The island was purchased by the government in 1791 for $6,000 for the use of the quarry. The interior of both wings was destroyed by fire when the British took the city in 1814, the outer walls remaining uninjured. Latrobe, who had resigned in 1813, was re-appointed after the fire to reconstruct the Capitol. The following December, Congress passed an act leasing a building on the east side of the Capitol, the building afterwards so famous as “Old Capitol Prison,” and which was crowded with prisoners during the war of the Rebellion. Congress held its sessions in this building till the rebuilt Capitol was ready for occupation.

By act of Congress, September 30, 1850, provision was made for the grand extension wings of the Capitol, to be built on such a plan as might be approved by the President. The plan of Thomas C. Walter was accepted by President Fillmore, June 10, 1851, and he was appointed architect of the Capitol to carry his plan into execution. Walter was the architect of Girard College, Philadelphia, and to him we owe the magnificent marble wings and iron dome of the Capitol. The dome cost one million one hundred thousand dollars. The wings cost six millions five hundred thousand dollars. The height of the interior of the dome of the Capitol from the floor of the rotunda is 180 feet and 3 inches. The height of the exterior from the floor of the basement story to the top of the crowning statue is 287 feet and 5 inches. The interior diameter is 97 feet. The exterior diameter of the drum is 108 feet. The greatest exterior diameter is 135 feet, 5 inches. The Capitol is 751 feet, 4 inches long, 31 feet longer than St. Peter’s in Rome, and 175 feet longer than St. Paul’s in London. The height of the interior of the dome of St. Peter’s is 330 feet. The height of the interior of the dome of St. Paul’s is 215 feet. The height of the exterior of St. Peter’s to the top of lantern is 432 feet. The height of the exterior of the dome of St. Paul’s is 215 feet.

The ground actually covered by the Capitol is 153,112 square feet or 652 square feet more than 3 ½ acres. Of these the old building covered 61,201 square feet and the new wings with connecting corridors, 91,311 square feet.

The dome of the Capitol is the highest structure in America. It is one hundred and eight feet higher than Washington Monument in Baltimore; sixty-eight feet higher than Bunker Hill Monument and twenty-three feet higher than the steeple of Trinity Church, New York. Mr. Walter was succeeded by Mr. Edward Clarke, the present architect of the Capitol. Thus far Mr. Clarke’s work has consisted chiefly in finishing and harmonizing the work of his varied and sometimes conflicting predecessors. Under his supervision the dome has been completed, and Thomas Crawford’s grand goddess of liberty, sixteen and one-half feet high, has ascended to its summit while he has wrought out in the interior the most harmonious room of the Capitol—the Congressional Library.

The greatest work which he still desires to do is to put the present front on the rear of the Capitol facing the city, and to draw forth the old freestone fronts and rebuild it with marble, making a grand central portico parallel with the magnificent marble wings of the Senate and House extension. To rebuild the central front will cost two millions of dollars. The face of the Capitol will never be worthy of itself till this is accomplished. The grand outward defect of the Capitol is the slightness and insignificance of the central portico compared with the superlative Corinthian fronts of the wings. Between their outreaching marble steps, beside their majestic monoliths the central columns shrink to feebleness and give the impression that the great dome is sinking down upon them to crush them out of sight. There is something soaring in the proportions of the dome. Its summit seems to spring into the empyrean. Its proud goddess poised in mid-air, caught in their swift embrace, seems to sail with the fleeting clouds. Nevertheless its tremendous base set upon that squatting roof threatens it with perpetual annihilation.

From the very beginning the Capitol has suffered as a National Building from the conflicting and foreign tastes of its decorators. Literally begun in the woods by a nation in its infancy, it not only borrowed its face from the buildings of antiquity, but it was built by men, strangers in thought and spirit to the genius of a new Republic, and the unwrought and unimbodied poetry of its virgin soil. Its earlier decorators, all Italians, overlaid its walls with their florid colors and foreign symbols; within the American Capitol, they have set the Loggia of Raphael, the voluptuous ante-rooms of Pompeii, and the Baths of Titus. The American plants, birds and animals, representing prodigal nature at home, though exquisitely painted are buried in twilight passages, while mythological bar-maids, misnamed goddesses, dance in the most conspicuous and preposterous places. The Capitol has already survived this era of false decorative art.

Congress in 1859 authorized a Commission of distinguished American artists, comprising Messrs. Brown, Lumsden and Kensett, to study, the decorations of the Capitol and report upon their abuses. Their suggestions are beginning to be followed, and yet so carelessly, that after the lapse of fourteen years they need reiteration. The Artist Committee recommended an Art Commission, composed of those designated by the united voice of America. Artists as competent to the office who shall be the channels for the distribution of all appropriations to be made by Congress for art purposes, and who shall secure to artists an intelligent and unbiased adjudication upon the designs they may present for the embellishment of the national buildings. When one remembers some of the Congressional Committees who have decided on decorations for the Capitol even within the last ten years, it is enough to make one cry aloud for a Commission designated by artists, whose art-culture shall at least be sufficient to tell a decent picture from a daub, a noble statue from a pretense and a sham.

In conclusion the Commission of Artists said:—

“The erection of a great National Capitol seldom occurs but once in
the life of a nation. The opportunity such an event affords is an
important one for the expression of patriotic elevation, and the
perpetuation, through the arts of painting and sculpture, of that
which is high and noble and held in reverence by the people; and it
becomes them as patriots to see to it that no taint of falsity is
suffered to be transmitted to the future upon the escutcheon of our
national honor in its artistic record. A theme so noble and worthy
should interest the heart of the whole country, and whether patriot,
statesman or artist, one impulse should govern the whole in dedicating
these buildings and grounds to the national honor.”