The Capitol Dome

Winter 2012

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1861 The U.S. Capitol at War By Guy Gugliotta W HEN THOMAS U. WALTER returned to Washington at the beginning of July 1861, he found an appallingmess. For 10 years he had served as the architect in charge of building the new Senate and House wings of the United States Capitol and the cast iron dome that would crown the rotunda. When war broke out, Congress was not in session and the buildingwas empty. TheUnion Army took it over. What followed had not been pretty. Virtually overnight the Capitol became a barracks. Before long, the troops were baking bread in the basement, dumping greasy sides of bacon in the committee rooms, busting up furniture and turning the dark hallways into latrines. "The smell is awful," Walter wrote in a letter to his wife, Amanda. "The building is like one grandwater closet—every hole and corner is defiled." By July 4, 1861, when Congress THE EXPANDED CAPITOL, conceived in 1850, was designed to provide space for lawmakers from states to be carved from the vast territories won in the Mexican War. At first the projectwas not particu- larly popular—seen as preten- tious and unnecessary for provincial folk who prided themselves on homespun virtue and simplicity. By the time the war began, Figure 1. TheCapitolwas an active construction sitewhen theCivilWar began, as seen in this early 1861 photograph. expanding President Lincoln's war powers. There was no time to talk about the Capitol. This would all change in the coming arrived in town for a 33-day extraordinary session, the building had taken a terrible beating. Walter wanted desperately to resume construction, suspended since May 15, but "things do not look very promising," he wrote a friend in Philadel- phia. Congress was financing the war and WINTER 2012 months, but in July, the Capitol, like the nation it served,was still awork in progress. The old order was gone. Congress was finished trying to hold the several states together and was getting ready to build a nation, but in the meantime there was chaos. however, many in official Washington had come to understand that people needed something to remind them that the whole of the United States ought to be greater than the sum of its feuding parts. The new Capitol—imposing and immense—was that symbol. But the building was not there yet. Some pieces were finished. The House, since 1857, and the Senate, since 1859, had been meeting in new, elegantly furnished chambers flanked by dazzling ceremonial rooms decorated with chandeliers,wall paintings, and floors tiled in intricatemosaic patterns. But the outside porticoes for the new wings remained unfinished, as did the dome, and the rotunda had a temporary wooden roof coveredwith canvas. The new dome peristyle was built, but the columns THE CAPITOL DOME 19 COURTESY ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL

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