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US Capitol Building Washington DC - Washington DC Stock Photography
The United States Capitol Building is located on Capitol Hill at the east end of the National Mall in Washington DC. The US Capitol is among the most symbollically important and architecturally impressive buildings in the United States. It has housed the meeting chambers of the US House of Representatives and US Senate for two centuries. An example of 19 century neo-claccical architecture. Architectural details include columns, porticos, arches, steps, the US Capitol dome and rotunda. A washington D.C. landmark and national icon it is a popular tourist attraction and travel destination in Washington DC.
All images on this site copyright Randy Santos 2007 - 2010
No unauthorized use of any image without written permission
All images are very high quality image files available for license in various media. Please contact for license or visit:
Martin Luther King Jr. Bust
The bust of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been on display in the Capitol Rotunda since 1986. The bronze sculpture is 36 inches high on a 66-inch high Belgian black marble base.
•Artist: John Wilson
•Medium: Bronze
•Date: 1986
•Location: Rotunda, U.S. Capitol
Martin Luther King Jr. born in 1929 to a family of pastors and civil rights leaders, received a B.A. degree from Morehouse College in 1948, a B.D. degree from Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania in 1951 and a Ph.D. from Boston University in 1955. He returned to Montgomery, Alabama, to work for civil rights while serving as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.
Already a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), he gained national recognition as a leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In 1957, he founded and was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He traveled extensively, giving over 2,500 speeches, and wrote five books as well as numerous articles.
During his 1963 incarceration in Alabama he wrote his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” He planned drives in Alabama for the registration of African-Americans as voters; he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., of 250,000 people, to whom he delivered his “I Have a Dream” address in 1963; and he counseled Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
His actions brought about consideration and passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, Dr. King was the youngest man to receive that honor.
On April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, he was assassinated.
The Bust
The bust of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s head and shoulders depicts Dr. King in a contemplative and peaceful mood, looking slightly downward. His face is smoothly modeled, in contrast to the textures of his hair and of his jacket and tie. The pedestal was designed by the sculptor to follow the lines of the shoulders of the bust, creating a unified shape and enhancing the monumental effect. The bronze sculpture is 36 inches high on a 66-inch high Belgian black marble base.
On December 21, 1982, the Congress passed House Concurrent Resolution 153, which directed the procurement of a marble bust “to serve to memorialize [Dr. King’s] contributions on such matters as the historic legislation of the 1960s affecting civil rights and the right to vote.” Senator Charles McC. Mathias, Chairman of the Joint Committee on the Library, the congressional committee overseeing the procurement, said at the unveiling that “Martin Luther King takes his rightful place among the heroes of this nation.”
Because the bust would be such an important and visible work of art, the Joint Committee on the Library decided to have a national competition to select a sculptor. The competition was conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts, using a panel selection process that the Endowment had successfully developed over the previous 20 years. Mrs. Coretta Scott King agreed to serve on the advisory committee and to advise the panel of “the salient qualities of Dr. King’s character and physical expression which the Panel should consider in evaluating the qualifications of the competitors.”
In December 1984, the panel selected John Wilson of Boston, Massachusetts; Elizabeth Catlett of New York City and Mexico; and Zenos Frudakis of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as finalists in the competition. Each sculptor received a $500 grant to create a maquette (i.e., a model) for the panel to review before making its final decision. The Chairman of the Arts Endowment was proud to point out that “this was the first time that Arts Endowment was asked by Congress to prove the expertise of its peer review process, which specifies artistic excellence as its primary criterion to select an artist to create a work of art to be placed in the U.S. Capitol.” After reviewing the maquettes at a special meeting on April 15, 1985, the committee selected John Wilson; the artist was awarded a $50,000 commission to cast the model in bronze.
The bust was unveiled in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on January 16, 1986, the 57th anniversary of Dr. King’s birth, by Mrs. King, accompanied by their four children and Dr. King’s sister.
The Sculptor
African-American sculptor John Wilson was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1922. After graduating from Tufts University in 1947 he studied in Paris and Mexico City. He served as professor of art at Boston University from 1964 to 1986. He won prizes in national exhibitions from 1951 to 1969. His work is in the collections of the DeCordova Museum, the Smith Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the University of Wisconsin. His most notable work, Eternal Presence, is at the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists in Boston. He also won the 1983 competition for the statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for Buffalo, New York.
Minton Tiles
The richly patterned and colored Minton tile floors are one of the most striking features of the extensions of the United States Capitol. They were first installed in 1856, when Thomas U. Walter was engaged in the design and construction of vast additions to the Capitol (1851-1865). For the floors in his extensions, Walter chose encaustic tile for its beauty, durability and sophistication.
•Artist: Minton, Hollins and Company
•Date: Installed in 1856
One striking example of the contrast between the interiors of the Old Capitol (finished in 1826) and the extensions (begun in 1851) may be seen in the differences in flooring materials. In the Old Capitol, stone pavers were used in corridors and other public spaces, such as the Rotunda and Crypt, while brick was used to floor committee rooms and offices. These materials, although durable and fireproof, would have looked plain and old-fashioned to the Victorian eye. In the mid-19th century, encaustic tile flooring was considered the most suitable and beautiful material for high-traffic areas. Unlike ordinary glazed tile, the pattern in encaustic tile is made of colored clays inlaid or imbedded in the clay ground. Because the color is part of the fabric of the encaustic tile, it will retain its beauty after years of wear. One observer noted:
“The indestructibility of tiles may be judged from the fact that the excavations at Pompeii have unearthed apartments where painted tiles are just as beautiful, the colors as fresh and bright as... when the fated city was in all its glory.”
Two types of tile were used at the U.S. Capitol: plain and inlaid encaustic tiles in a range of colors. Plain tiles were used as borders for the elaborate inlaid designs or to pave large corridor areas. They were available in seven colors: buff, red, black, drab, chocolate, light blue and white. Additional colors, such as cobalt blue, blue-gray, and light and dark green, appear in the inlaid encaustic tiles that form the elaborate centerpieces and architectural borders. They were made by “filling indentations in the unburnt tile with the desired colors and burning the whole together.”
The patterns and designs formed in the inlaid tiles were limited only by taste and imagination. They include geometric patterns such as the Greek key, guilloche, and basket weave; floral designs such as the fleur-de-lis; and figures such as dolphins and classical heads. Few of the patterns are repeated. Although most of the tiles are six-by-six-inch squares, some are round, triangular or pie-shaped. Approximately 1,000 different tile patterns are used in the corridors of the Capitol alone, and up to 100 different tiles may be needed to create a single design.
The original encaustic tiles in the Capitol extensions were manufactured at Stoke-upon-Trent in Staffordshire, England, by Minton, Hollins and Company. The firm’s patented tiles had won numerous gold medals at international exhibitions and were considered the best tiles made. In 1876, having seen Minton’s large display at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, one critic wrote, “Messr. Minton shone superior to all exhibits of the sort… and may be cited as showing the highest results in tile-pottery achieved by modern skill and research.”
Beginning in 1856, and continuing for five years, the tile was installed by the import firm of Miller and Coates of New York City. For the journey from New York to Washington, the tiles were packed in wooden casks weighing about 1100 pounds; each cask contained enough tiles to pave about 100 square feet. The cost of the tile ranged from $0.68 to $2.03 per square foot.
Thomas U. Walter had every reason to believe that the encaustic tile floors would last as long as his extensions stood. One visitor noted in 1859 that the tile floors vied with the beauty of marble and surpassed it in durability. While perhaps valid for other installations, however, this prediction proved overly optimistic for the Capitol Building. By 1924, the Minton tile was removed from the corridors in the first and second floors of the House Wing and replaced by “marble tile in patterns of a simple order.” In that day, marble was selected for its superior durability and because suitable replacement tile was difficult to find.
In the 1970s, however, a similar condition prompted a very different response. In 1972, a search was undertaken to determine a source of similar tiles in order to restore the original appearance of the building. Inquiries were made of all major American tile manufacturers, the American Ceramic Tile Manufacturers Association, and even Mexican and Spanish tile suppliers. Although the colors and designs could be reproduced relatively easily, the patterns would quickly wear because they would be applied to the surface. The “inlaid” feature of the encaustic tiles, i.e., the approximately 1/8-inch thickness of the pattern and color, is the characteristic that enables the Minton tiles to be walked upon for over 100 years without signs of wear. It was this technique that formed the basic difficulty of manufacture.
Finally, as a result of the Capitol’s needs becoming generally known, the Architect of the Capitol was placed in contact with H & R Johnson Tiles Ltd., located at Stoke-on-Trent, England. It was discovered that that firm was a successor company to the Minton Tile Co. and had even retained many of the original hand tools and forms in a private museum at the company’s manufacturing site.
Contact was then made with Mr. James Ellis, the Directing Architect of Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings for the Crown. He had been trying for many years to establish a program for the replacement of the worn Minton tiles at the Houses of Parliament but had more or less given up the attempt because of H & R Johnson’s continued unwillingness to revive the encaustic tile process. However, the restoration work at the Arts and Industries Building of the Smithsonian Institution was in process at about the time the needs of the Capitol became known; it thus appeared that a market for such tiles was developing to the degree that the manufacturer began to reconsider its prior position. The company thus began the experiments that finally led to the present availability, after many decades, of the original Minton-type tiles.
Because the tiles in the Capitol are more decorative and have more complicated designs and color combinations than those in either the Houses of Parliament or the Smithsonian, those institutions were able to obtain replacement tiles sooner than the Capitol. The lessons learned in the manufacture of the simpler tiles served as a basis for filling the later needs.
Color photographs and full-sized drawings of the many required patterns were made and recorded, and many developmental submissions were made as the hand-made manufacturing process was re-developed. Finally, in 1986, the first acceptable tiles were delivered. The installation process was accomplished with modern cement adhesives and has yielded excellent results.
The program enabled the original tiles to be replaced with exact replicas. This project began on the first floor of the Senate wing, where the effects of 130 years of wear and tear were most noticeable. Replacement tile was closely scrutinized to ensure fidelity to the nineteenth-century originals. While difficult and slow, this process is the only fitting response to the history of the Capitol extensions, not only to restore the original beauty and elegance of these unique floors, but also to provide for their continuing attractiveness for the foreseeable future.
© 2018 Brian Mosley - All Rights Reserved
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Taken with my Diana+ 110mm plastic lens on my Nikon D300. I have a set of similar shot photos.
US Capitol Building Washington DC - Washington DC Stock Photography
The United States Capitol Building is located on Capitol Hill at the east end of the National Mall in Washington DC. The US Capitol is among the most symbollically important and architecturally impressive buildings in the United States. It has housed the meeting chambers of the US House of Representatives and US Senate for two centuries. An example of 19 century neo-claccical architecture. Architectural details include columns, porticos, arches, steps, the US Capitol dome and rotunda. A washington D.C. landmark and national icon it is a popular tourist attraction and travel destination in Washington DC.
All images on this site copyright Randy Santos 2007 - 2010
No unauthorized use of any image without written permission
All images are very high quality image files available for license in various media. Please contact for license or visit:
US Capitol Building Washington DC - Washington DC Stock Photography
The United States Capitol Building is located on Capitol Hill at the east end of the National Mall in Washington DC. The US Capitol is among the most symbollically important and architecturally impressive buildings in the United States. It has housed the meeting chambers of the US House of Representatives and US Senate for two centuries. An example of 19 century neo-claccical architecture. Architectural details include columns, porticos, arches, steps, the US Capitol dome and rotunda. A washington D.C. landmark and national icon it is a popular tourist attraction and travel destination in Washington DC.
All images on this site copyright Randy Santos 2007 - 2010
No unauthorized use of any image without written permission
All images are very high quality image files available for license in various media. Please contact for license or visit:
“The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
- George Washington
US Capitol Building Washington DC - Washington DC Stock Photography
The United States Capitol Building is located on Capitol Hill at the east end of the National Mall in Washington DC. The US Capitol is among the most symbollically important and architecturally impressive buildings in the United States. It has housed the meeting chambers of the US House of Representatives and US Senate for two centuries. An example of 19 century neo-claccical architecture. Architectural details include columns, porticos, arches, steps, the US Capitol dome and rotunda. A washington D.C. landmark and national icon it is a popular tourist attraction and travel destination in Washington DC.
All images on this site copyright Randy Santos 2007 - 2010
No unauthorized use of any image without written permission
All images are very high quality image files available for license in various media. Please contact for license or visit:
I originally took this photo for a contest that was sponsored by Haute Doll magazine back in 2007. This one features an Ellowyne Wilde doll outside the U.S. Capitol building.
Bain News Service,, publisher.
Capitol in readiness
1913 March 2.
1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in. or smaller.
Notes:
Title and date from data provided by the Bain News Service on the negative.
Photo shows the United States Capitol in Washington D.C., with stand for the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson on March 4th. (Source: Library staff, 2008)
Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress).
Format: Glass negatives.
Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.
Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
General information about the Bain Collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.ggbain
Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ggbain.11390
Call Number: LC-B2- 2504-6
The United States Capitol is the meeting place of the United States Congress, the legislature of the Federal government of the United States. Located in Washington, D.C., it sits atop Capitol Hill at the eastern end of the National Mall.
Two capitol police officers in riot gear behind a metal barrier guard the US Capitol building during the September 15, 2007, march on Washington, DC, to end the Iraq war.
US Capitol Building Washington DC - Washington DC Stock Photography
The United States Capitol Building is located on Capitol Hill at the east end of the National Mall in Washington DC. The US Capitol is among the most symbollically important and architecturally impressive buildings in the United States. It has housed the meeting chambers of the US House of Representatives and US Senate for two centuries. An example of 19 century neo-claccical architecture. Architectural details include columns, porticos, arches, steps, the US Capitol dome and rotunda. A washington D.C. landmark and national icon it is a popular tourist attraction and travel destination in Washington DC.
All images on this site copyright Randy Santos 2007 - 2010
No unauthorized use of any image without written permission
All images are very high quality image files available for license in various media. Please contact for license or visit:
US Capitol Building Washington DC - Washington DC Stock Photography
The United States Capitol Building is located on Capitol Hill at the east end of the National Mall in Washington DC. The US Capitol is among the most symbollically important and architecturally impressive buildings in the United States. It has housed the meeting chambers of the US House of Representatives and US Senate for two centuries. An example of 19 century neo-claccical architecture. Architectural details include columns, porticos, arches, steps, the US Capitol dome and rotunda. A washington D.C. landmark and national icon it is a popular tourist attraction and travel destination in Washington DC.
All images on this site copyright Randy Santos 2007 - 2010
No unauthorized use of any image without written permission
All images are very high quality image files available for license in various media. Please contact for license or visit:
I originally took this photo for a contest that was sponsored by Haute Doll magazine back in 2007. This one features an Ellowyne Wilde doll outside the U.S. Capitol building.
Frieze of American History
The Frieze of American History in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol contains a painted panorama depicting significant events in American history. The frieze’s nineteen scenes are the work of three artists: Constantino Brumidi, Filippo Costaggini and Allyn Cox. The frieze is painted in grisaille, a monochrome of whites and browns that resembles sculpture. It measures eight feet and four inches in height and approximately three hundred feet in circumference. It starts fifty-eight feet above the floor.
•Artist: Constantino Brumidi, Filippo Costaggini and Allyn Cox
•Location: Rotunda, U.S. Capitol
Thomas U. Walter’s 1859 cross-section drawing of the new Dome (constructed 1855-1863) shows a recessed belt atop the Rotunda walls with relief sculpture. Eventually it was painted in true fresco, a difficult and exacting technique in which the pigments are applied directly onto wet plaster. As the plaster cures the colors become part of the wall. Consequently, each section of plaster must be painted the day it is laid.
In 1877 the Architect of the Capitol reported, “The belt of the Rotunda intended to be enriched with basso relievos [low relief] is being embellished in real fresco representing in light and shadow events in our history arranged in chronological order, beginning with the Landing of Columbus…”
The frieze is the work of three artists. It was designed by Constantino Brumidi, an Italian artist who studied in Rome before emigrating to America. He worked at the Capitol over a period of twenty-five years, decorating numerous committee rooms and the areas known as the Brumidi Corridors; he also painted the Rotunda canopy fresco, The Apotheosis of Washington. Brumidi created a sketch for the Rotunda frieze in 1859 but was not authorized to begin work until 1877. After enlarging the sketches for the first scenes, Brumidi began painting the frieze in 1878, at the age of seventy-three. His design traces America’s history from the landing of Columbus to the discovery of gold in California. As was common in the history books of the day, the Spanish explorers and the Revolutionary War are emphasized. While working on the figure of William Penn in the scene “William Penn and the Indians,” Brumidi’s chair slipped on the scaffold platform. He saved himself from falling only by clinging to the rung of a ladder for fifteen minutes until he was rescued. He returned to the scaffold once more but then worked on enlarging his remaining sketches until his death a few months later in February 1880.
Filippo Costaggini, who had also been trained in Rome, was selected to complete the remaining eight scenes using Brumidi’s sketches. When he finished in 1889 there was a gap of over thirty-one feet because of early miscalculations about the height of the frieze. Costaggini hoped to fill it with three of his own scenes, but Congress failed to approve his designs before his death in 1904. In 1918 Charles Ayer Whipple painted a trial scene in the blank section; it was later removed.
In 1951 Allyn Cox was commissioned to paint the last three panels tracing the growth of the nation from the Civil War through the birth of aviation. Cox also cleaned and retouched the frieze. The frieze was completed in 1953 and dedicated the next year. In 1986 Congress appropriated funds for a careful cleaning and restoration of the frieze to remove accumulated grime, overpaint, and streaks caused by leaking water. The conservation treatment, completed early in 1987, restored the original details and vividly brought out the illusion of relief sculpture. Minor repairs were made in 1994.
The sequence of nineteen scenes begins over the west door and moves clockwise around the Rotunda.
1.“America and History”
2.“Landing of Columbus” (1492)
3.“Cortez and Montezuma at Mexican Temple” (1520)
4.“Pizarro Going to Peru” (1533)
5.“Burial of DeSoto” (1542)
6.“Captain Smith and Pocahontas” (1607)
7.“Landing of the Pilgrims” (1620)
8.“William Penn and the Indians” (1682)
9.“Colonization of New England”
10.“Oglethorpe and the Indians” (1732)
11.“Battle of Lexington” (1775)
12.“Declaration of Independence” (1776)
13.“Surrender of Cornwallis” (1781)
14.“Death of Tecumseh” (1813)
15.“American Army Entering the City of Mexico” (1847)
16.“Discovery of Gold in California” (1848)
17.“Peace at the End of the Civil War” (1865)
18.“Naval Gun Crew in the Spanish-American War” (1898)
19.“The Birth of Aviation” (1903)
Stones leftover from the 1958 remodeling of the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol Building abandoned in Rock Creek Park
War and Peace
Marble allegorical statues “War” and “Peace” flank the East Central Front entrance to the U.S. Capitol. Plaster models may be seen in the vestibule area outside the east door of the U.S. Capitol Rotunda.
•Artist: Luigi Persico
•Medium: Marble
•Location: East Front, U.S. Capitol
In the niche right of the East Central Front entrance is “War,” a male figure with his head slightly tilted and his gaze fixed ahead.
His left hand holds the hilt of his sheathed sword and his right supports his shield as it rests upon the ground. He wears the costume of an ancient Roman, with a toga over his shoulders and a tunic extending as low as his knees; its border, like his belt, is richly ornamented.
“Peace” stands in a contrapposto pose in the niche left of the entrance.
She is a female figure dressed in simple, flowing robes with sandaled feet. In her left hand, she holds a fruit-bearing branch of the olive, which she extends towards “War,” while with her right hand she points gracefully to her bosom.
History
The first figures of “War” and “Peace” that stood in the niches beside the Rotunda doors were works in marble, commissioned by Congress in 1829 from Italian sculptor Luigi Persico. They arrived in the United States in 1834 and were installed in 1835.
Over the years that followed, both marbles suffered severe deterioration. In 1958, the Architect of the Capitol initiated their replication as part of the U.S. Capitol East Front Extension project. A team was assembled to repair the damaged marbles, create new plaster models from them and carve the marble replicas with work supervised by sculptor Paul Manship. In a workshop on the U.S. Capitol Grounds, New York sculptor Carl Schmitz repaired the marble statues.
Parts of “War’s” face, hands, helmet, armor, sword, clothing, feet and shield were gone; some of these missing parts had already been replaced in cement. Schmitz found that “Peace” was even more deteriorated than “War,” “to the extent that large areas sounded like cardboard when tested and, upon the slightest scratch, broke and released the sand-like substance of the stone.” During this phase of the project, much of which was guided by early photographs, work included applying plaster fills, working over surfaces with rasps or chisels and recreating parts as large as “War’s” scabbard and “Peace’s” left arm.
Upon completion of the repairs, George Giannetti of Maryland oversaw the creation of the molds and plaster models to create new marbles. The plasters were then transported from Washington, D.C., to Proctor, Vermont, where Manship supervised carvers from the Vermont Marble Company as they chiseled the marble replicas. In 1960 the new marble statues were placed in their niches in the new East Front facade. Also, in 1960, the plasters were placed on view in the Cannon House Office Building rotunda, basement level, where they were seen by tens of thousands of people every year.
As the decades passed, the Cannon Building itself fell increasingly subject to the effects of time, and in 2015 the Architect of the Capitol began a multi-year building renewal project. Part of that project would require that the plasters of “War” and “Peace” be relocated, and the Architect of the Capitol undertook to have professional conservation assessment and treatment work performed. The plasters were repaired, cleaned, repainted and mounted on steel plates.
In late 2016, the congressional Joint Committee on the Library gave its approval to move the plasters to the niches long occupied by the very marbles from which they had been created. In 2017, the plaster models were installed in the niches now inside the U.S. Capitol, protected from the elements thanks to the East Front Extension.