View allAll Photos Tagged USCapitolBuilding
Tea Party Movement
Tea Party Photos, Washington DC, 03/20/2010, US Capitol Building, Healthcare Reform, Kill the Bill, R[evolution] Photography,
TeaPartyMovement.us
Independent journalist Josh Sautter at the September 15, 2007, march on Washington, DC, to end the Iraq war.
Corinthian Columns
Corinthian columns are the most ornate, slender and sleek of the three Greek orders. They are distinguished by a decorative, bell-shaped capital with volutes, two rows of acanthus leaves and an elaborate cornice. In many instances, the column is fluted. Columns in this style can be found inside and outside of the buildings on Capitol Hill, including the U.S. Capitol, the Supreme Court Building, the Russell Senate Office Building, the Cannon House Office Building and the Library of Congress.
The exterior of the Capitol Building contains examples of a modified Corinthian column style, including the East Front center portico and the West Front. On the first floor of the Capitol’s House wing is the dramatic, high ceilinged Hall of Columns, which takes its name from the twenty-eight fluted, white marble columns that line the corridor.
The column capitals are a variation on the Corinthian order, incorporating not only classical acanthus leaves but also thistles and native American tobacco plants. Earlier uses of American vegetation in the building’s capitals include Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s corncob capitals in a first-floor vestibule and his tobacco-leaf capitals in the Small Senate Rotunda.
The Supreme Court Building was designed in the classical Corinthian architectural style, selected to harmonize with the nearby congressional buildings. Its monumental entrance, facing the U.S. Capitol Building, contains a central temple-like pavilion fronted by a monumental portico with sixteen Corinthian marble columns that support an elaborate entablature and pediment.
In the Cannon House Office Building and Russell Senate Office Building, their identical rotundas contain eighteen Corinthian columns that support an entablature and a coffered dome, and whose glazed oculus floods the rotunda with natural light.
Tea Party Photos, Washington DC, 03/20/2010, US Capitol Building, Healthcare Reform, Kill the Bill, R[evolution] Photography,
TeaPartyMovement.us, FoxNews, Jon Voight
Tea Party Photos, Washington DC, 03/20/2010, US Capitol Building, Healthcare Reform, Kill the Bill, R[evolution] Photography,
TeaPartyMovement.us, FoxNews, Jon Voight
The domed, white-painted ceiling of the Chamber is elaborately coffered and enriched by decorative moldings. A central, semicircular skylight is bordered by five smaller circular skylights; they originally provided the Chamber with natural light but are now artificially lit. Additional light was provided by a large brass chandelier made by Cornelius and Company, a prestigious Philadelphia firm, like the one now hanging above the Vice President’s desk.
Marble busts of the earliest chief justices have been returned to their original locations in the room. In order of service, those represented are: John Jay (1789-1795), John Rutledge (1795), Oliver Ellsworth (1796-1800), and John Marshall (1801-1835).
Tea Party Photos, Washington DC, 03/20/2010, Capitol West Lawn 1
Description: Tea Party Photos, Washington DC, 03/20/2010, US Capitol Building, Healthcare Reform, Kill the Bill, R[evolution] Photography, TeaPartyMovement.us
Caesar Rodney
This statue of Caesar Rodney was given by Delaware to the National Statuary Hall Collection in 1934.
•Artist: Bryan Baker
•Material: Marble
•State: Given by Delaware in 1934
•Location: Crypt, U.S. Capitol
Caesar Rodney was born in Dover, Delaware, on October 7, 1728. Politics was one of his early interests. He was high sheriff of Kent County from 1755 to 1756, justice of the peace, judge of all lower courts, captain in the Kent County Militia in 1756, superintendent of the printing of Delaware currency in 1759, a member of the state assembly from 1762 to 1769, and an associate justice of the Delaware Supreme Court from 1769 to 1777.
A delegate to the Stamp Act Congress and a strong supporter of the Revolution, he participated in the First and Second Continental Congresses. His dramatic ride to Philadelphia on July 2, 1776, enabled the Delaware delegation to vote two to one for the Declaration of Independence. Rodney was elected the first president of Delaware and was responsible for keeping the militia loyal and efficient. He had a close relationship with General Washington. He was also responsible for guiding Delaware’s ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1779.
The last ten years of his life were difficult as he suffered from cancer. Rodney died at his farm, Poplar Grove, on June 26, 1784. His remains were reinterred in 1888 at the Christ Episcopal Churchyard in Dover.
Tea Party Photos, Washington DC, 03/20/2010, US Capitol Building, Healthcare Reform, Kill the Bill, R[evolution] Photography,
TeaPartyMovement.us
The domed, white-painted ceiling of the Chamber is elaborately coffered and enriched by decorative moldings. A central, semicircular skylight is bordered by five smaller circular skylights; they originally provided the Chamber with natural light but are now artificially lit.
Charles Carroll
This statue of Charles Carroll was given to the National Statuary Hall Collection by Maryland in 1903. Carroll was a statesman and signer of the Declaration of Independence.
•Artist: Richard E. Brooks
•Material: Bronze
•State: Given by Maryland in 1903
•Location: Crypt, U.S. Capitol
Charles Carroll was born on September 19, 1737, in Annapolis, Maryland. The child of a prominent family, he was educated in Paris and London, where he studied civil law. He returned to Maryland in 1765 to assume control of the family estate, one of the largest in the colonies. At that time he added “of Carrollton” to his name to distinguish himself from his father and cousins of the same name. As a Roman Catholic, he was barred from entering politics, practicing law, and voting. However, writing in the Maryland Gazette under the pseudonym “First Citizen,” he became a prominent spokesman against the governor’s proclamation increasing legal fees to state officers and Protestant clergy. Carroll served on various committees of correspondence.
He was commissioned with Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Chase in February 1774 to seek aid from Canada. He was appointed a delegate to the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, and signed the Declaration of Independence. He resigned in 1778 to serve in the Maryland State Assembly and helped draft the Maryland constitution.
Carroll served as Maryland’s first Senator from 1789 to 1792, but retired to manage his extensive estates, work for a canal to the West and serve on the first Board of Directors of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. He died on November 14, 1832, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Apotheosis of Washington
Painted in 1865 by Constantino Brumidi, the Apotheosis of Washington in the eye of the U.S. Capitol Building’s Rotunda depicts George Washington rising to the heavens in glory, flanked by female figures representing Liberty and Victory/Fame and surrounded by six groups of figures. The fresco is suspended one hundred and eighty feet above the Rotunda floor and covers an area of 4,664 square feet.
•Artist: Constantino Brumidi
•Technique: Fresco
•Area: 4,664 Square Feet
•Location: Rotunda, U.S. Capitol
The Apotheosis of Washington in the eye of the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol was painted in the true fresco technique by Constantino Brumidi in 1865. Brumidi (1805-1880) was born and trained in Rome and had painted in the Vatican and Roman palaces before emigrating to the United States in 1852. A master of creating the illusion of three-dimensional forms and figures on flat walls, Brumidi painted frescoes and murals throughout the Capitol from 1855 until his death.
The Apotheosis of Washington, his most ambitious work at the Capitol Building, was painted in eleven months at the end of the Civil War, soon after the new dome was completed, for $40,000. The figures, up to fifteen feet tall, were painted to be intelligible from close up as well as from one hundred and eighty feet below. Some of the groups and figures were inspired by classical and Renaissance images, especially by those of the Italian master Raphael.
In the central group of the fresco, Brumidi depicted George Washington rising to the heavens in glory, flanked by female figures representing Liberty and Victory/Fame. A rainbow arches at his feet, and thirteen maidens symbolizing the original states flank the three central figures. (The word “apotheosis” in the title means literally the raising of a person to the rank of a god, or the glorification of a person as an ideal; George Washington was honored as a national icon in the nineteenth century.)
Six groups of figures line the perimeter of the canopy; the following list begins below the central group and proceeds clockwise:
•War, with Armed Freedom and the eagle defeating Tyranny and Kingly Power
•Science, with Minerva teaching Benjamin Franklin, Robert Fulton, and Samuel F.B. Morse
•Marine, with Neptune holding his trident and Venus holding the transatlantic cable, which was being laid at the time the fresco was painted
•Commerce, with Mercury handing a bag of money to Robert Morris, financier of the American Revolution
•Mechanics, with Vulcan at the anvil and forge, producing a cannon and a steam engine
•Agriculture, with Ceres seated on the McCormick Reaper, accompanied by America in a red liberty cap and Flora picking flowers.
The Capitol’s cast-iron dome was designed in 1854 by Thomas U. Walter, the fourth Architect of the Capitol, who had also designed the building’s north and south extensions. Work on the dome began in 1856; in 1859 Walter redesigned the structure to consist of an inner and outer dome. A canopy suspended between them would be visible through an oculus, or eye, at the top of the inner dome, and in 1862 Walter asked Brumidi to furnish a design for “a picture 65 feet in diameter, painted in fresco, on the concave canopy over the eye of the new dome of the U.S. Capitol.” It is possible that Brumidi added a watercolor image of his final canopy design over a tentative sketch on Walter’s 1859 drawing at this time.
The fresco underwent a thorough cleaning and restoration in 1987-1988. Although fresco is a very durable medium, grime had accumulated on the surface of Brumidi’s Apotheosis for over a century. In particular, the joints between the giornate, the sections of plaster, had darkened, creating disfiguring lines in the composition. Today, with the fresco completely cleaned and treated, the unified effect and soaring illusion of space intended by the artist can once again be seen.