The Computer Graphic Capitol

An ambitious building program

By 1800, the United States Capitol was the largest and most ambitious building program on the continent. Begun in 1793 with the laying of the cornerstone by George Washington, the Capitol was a vessel for many ideas and ideals in the minds of its creators.

It would be a new building form, containing a bicameral legislature that would test a new form of constitutional government. It also would be a modern, world class building and a didactic architectural model for the young nation.

As James Sterling Young wrote in "The Washington Community," the United States holds a unique place in history in that the idea of its political system and the representation of its political system, its architecture, emerged simultaneously.

The first full manifestation of the Capitol was complete in 1830, spanning thirty-seven years, seven Presidents, five architects and the catastrophic fire that gutted the building in 1814.

My design research

My investigation of the Capitol began in 2001, when I was in Paris for the Gabriel Prize. There I examined and drew buildings that Thomas Jefferson admired during his tenure as Minister to France, as well as other examples of 18th c. architecture. Following these threads, I read the story of Jefferson and his Architect of the Capitol, Benjamin Henry Latrobe during the first building campaign, 1803-1814. On its surface, the Capitol was a monumental, neoclassical building evoking ancient Greece and Rome, but to its creators it also represented the leading edge of European design and technology.

My first subject for forensic recreation is the Hall of Representatives, a Latrobe masterpiece and a chamber that Jefferson suggested might be one of the handsomest rooms in the world. Was it? No topographical image exists; and no single document can synthesize the known facts about the room. I was immediately drawn to this enigma of history. The fact that the Capitol's early masterpieces were lost to the fog of time was too much of a mystery to be left unexamined. I've recreated the chamber as a digital model based on the handful of design drawings at the Library of Congress, existing building fabric in the Capitol's vestibules and hundreds of letters between the principals. My architectural history of the Capitol is a synthesis of hundreds of pieces of information into a coherent, determinate, and visual whole.

I have received two Fellowships from the U.S. Capitol Historical Society as well as in-kind support to conduct this research. Support is welcome, and will be acknowledged on this site as well as in other future productions.