An office building for the use of members of the House has been constructed (1909) on the block on B Street, between New Jersey Avenue and First Street, southeast of the Capitol. A similar building has been erected northeast of the Capitol, for the use of Senators. The two buildings are connected by an underground road, on which swift automobile-like cars run for the convenience of legislators. The House offices contain 410 rooms, the Senate offices 99 rooms. The appropriation for each building was $2,500,000. There is a general feeling in Washington that too much luxury pervades these buildings.
IV
INTERIOR OF THE CAPITOL
In 1808 Jefferson made Benjamin Henry Latrobe supervising architect of what we now call the old Capitol, being the central portion of the present building.
He constructed the original Senate Chamber, now the Supreme Court Room, on the plan of the old Greek theater, the general outline of which it yet retains. The House (now Statuary Hall) also had a decidedly Grecian aspect. It was finished in 1811. Statuary Hall is semicircular in shape, and has a vaulted roof. Its ornamentation is not yet completed. This is right. It would not be well to occupy all the space in one generation. We need the perspective of time to know that which will be of permanent interest to the world.
Here Clay presided, here Webster spoke, and here Adams stood for the right of petition and for the abolition of human slavery. What pictures these scenes would make! A plate in the floor southwest of the center marks the spot in the House where John Quincy Adams fell stricken with paralysis. In a room opening from the Hall is a memorial bust, whose inscription reads: "John Quincy Adams, who, after fifty years of public service, the last sixteen in yonder Hall, was summoned to die in this room February 23 1848."
The room has special acoustic qualities which in early days occasioned much trouble. A whisper scarcely audible to the ear into which it is breathed is distinctly heard in another part of the hall. It is one of the most remarkable whispering galleries in the world, and its peculiar properties, accidentally discovered, produced no end of disturbances before they were fully understood. Their effect has been much modified by a recent change in the ceiling.
Each State is now permitted to place in Statuary Hall two statues of its most renowned sons.
Virginia has Washington and Jefferson. Think of that! New Hampshire has Daniel Webster, who made these walls echo with his thrilling, patriotic sentences, and John Stark, of Bunker Hill fame, who cried: "See those men? They are the redcoats! Before night they are ours, or Molly Stark will be a widow!"
Pennsylvania has Robert Fulton, the inventor, and John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, the preacher, Major-General in the Revolution. He was also Senator and Member of Congress. New York has Robert R. Livingston, of the Continental Congress, and Alexander Hamilton. The latter was Washington's Secretary of the Treasury during both of his Presidential terms. He had much to do with securing a good financial system for the new government. His pathetic death enhanced his fame and ruined Burr; but under the search-light of history one can not help wondering had Burr been killed and Hamilton survived that duel, would the halo of the latter have faded? The statue of Hamilton is one of the best in the Hall. It was made in Rome by Horatio Stone.