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.